Chapter 2: Something Fish-ed This Way Comes

Chapter 2: Something Fish-ed This Way Comes

“Run!”

Electra followed her own advice.

She booked it towards the beach, half running into me.

“Gah—!” She knocked me off my feet, and I crashed into the surf. It drove the air from my lungs and scattered my armful of salvaged parts into the waves. My hands snapped out, but I caught nothing but air. The thing let out an ululating cry.

The sound hit me like a blow. I gasped, sound driving through my head like nine inch nails. Someone started screaming. I didn’t realize that someone was me until I’d already clapped my hands over my ears. Blinking rapidly, I saw the mass of tentacles advance on me in an roiling mass.

I was going to die here.

Then a hand came down on my shoulder. It cut through the fog surrounding me. I only had time to blink before Electra hauled me to my feet. “Come on!” Her voice sent my head spinning again, but in a good way, spinning back to the real world and away from whatever mess the monster had left me in.

“We have to run!”

I nodded, turning with the hero to dash towards the shore. As I ran, I snatched up what bits of metal and wire that I could, thoughts churning as frantically as the waves beneath my feet.

Unfortunately, I was also much shorter than Electra, and the water was pouring up the beach now, as if someone had upended a pitcher the size of a stadium onto the coast. I scrambled, armful of salvaged parts in hand, but I barely managed to make any headway.

Beneath my feet, the waves pulled back at the sand, making me feel like I was running on a treadmill as I struggled not to slip on the softening sand.

Ahead of me, Electra pulled further and further away with each step. The water only came up to her calves, but for me, each step felt like I was running through molasses instead of just water.

In addition to the twenty pounds of metal in my arms. But I couldn’t drop it.

Not if we were going to make it out alive.

Electra glanced back over her shoulder, and I felt my heart fall to the bottom of my feet as her expression paled. “Just run!” She waved her hand. “We don’t need that stuff!”

I shook my head, breath heaving.

So much, I thought, for no more cardio today.

“You’re gonna die!”

“Without—” I heaved a breath, “this, we—” I almost fell, my ankle screaming as it twisted, “die anyway!”

I could see the moment she realized that I wasn’t going to make it. Electra’s face flickered through a dozen emotions in the span of a heartbeat, before settling on resignation. She was going to leave me, because I was too slow.

And I was going to die.

I bowed my head, legs striving frantically against the waves. It didn’t matter if Electra was just out to save her own skin! I didn’t need her help! I’d save myself just like I always—

I had a moment to blink as a pair of hands grabbed me, looking up just in time to see Electra toss me over her shoulder.

“This is why!” She turned, legs pumping. “You never skip leg dayyyyyyyy!”

I gaped.

“That’s what you’re going with?!” I glanced back, stomach twisting in knots when I saw how close the tentacle thing was.

“You’re the one—” The salt water sprayed beneath her feet, “who can’t run to save your life!”

I swallowed a retort. Even with me on her back, the hero was going nearly twice as fast as I’d managed. I looked away from the monster as my head started to throb. “Just get us to the sand!”

“I’m trying!”

I growled, trying desperately to keep a hold of the metal and wires in my hand. I bit back a curse. Would I even be able to get it set up in time?

It seemed like I’d have to.

Somehow, I felt a grin spreading across my face.

“Brace yourself!”

My head snapped up at the words. Electra crouched. I felt her muscles tensing beneath me like a steel spring, and then she threw.

I went flying, mouth agape. As I tipped over backwards, I saw Electra a half step behind.

I closed my eyes and curled into a ball, hitting the sand with all the grace and poise of a boulder. The impact drove the air from my lungs and my precious cargo from my grip for the second time.

“No!”

I forced myself upright, staggering as another mind-bending scream shattered the air. I dove across the sand, snatching up the wire and the metal coil, tossing them farther from the water.

Even now, the waves continued to crash against the shore like a storm. We’d landed on a berm of higher ground where the sand swept upwards. It was probably the normal high tide mark, showing the edge of the water’s reach.

Now we had at most a minute until we were back in the water.

And maybe half of that until the tentacled monstrosity got close enough to kill us both. It was speeding up, too. Like it was getting used to walking on land.

I pushed the thought from my head. Now it was my turn.

“Keep running!” Electra skid to a stop besides me, grabbing at my shoulder.

“Where?” I was already working, frantically twisting a length of scrap metal into a U shape. “We don’t have anywhere to run! The water’s not stopping!”

“It’ll stop!”

“And if not?” I shook my head, pulling out a length of wire. “Cut this for me, here!”

With a growl, she yanked a thin utility knife from its thigh holster, slicing through the metal with a flick. “We don’t have much time, Empress!”

“What?” Electra turned to look at me, eyes back to their normal dull blue. At some point she’d fallen back to the ground. “I can’t hear you!”

“I said!” This time I yelled for real. “Did that kill it!?”

Then the It moved.

We both spun towards the monster.

If possible, it looked even more grotesque than it had before. All the eyes I could see were popped from the force of the current, great gouts of rancid yellow ichor pouring down its burned and boiled flesh. The thing twitched and spasmed, stretches of its skin sloughing off to reveal blackened muscles and bones beneath.

Its cells, in the billions, realized that they were dead.

I shivered at the sight.

I forced myself off the sand, staggering back. To my side, Electra’s legs gave out, and she collapsed to the ground.

“I don’t—” she doubled over, panting, “think I can run, anymore.”

“SKRUUUERRRRSIAAAAAAAAA!!!”

I clutched at my ears, fingers coming back red. “I don’t think it would let us even if we could.” The beast’s movements became even more frantic. My heart began to sink, as I realized that we hadn’t killed it.

Or rather, as tentacles and eyes and blood all cascaded down to the frothing waves, we hadn’t killed enough of it.

The monstrosity raised itself up from the water, almost drunkenly, flesh and tentacles sloughing off to reveal a single, massive eye at its core. The cross shaped pupil widened, before looking at me, boring into the depths of my very soul. And I fell into the void of its gaze.

I would have screamed, but I could not find my mouth.

I was nothing.

The darkness was everything.

I struggled, breathlessly, against it, but I couldn’t do anything but hold it back for a second longer.

Tendrils of darkness reached towards me.

Then—

I gasped, snapping backwards as the real world surged back to fill the void.

In front of me, the massive eye rolled back into the creature’s morbid mass.

And it crashed down into the waves.

“Is it...” Electra staggered upright. “Dead?”

Ding!

I blinked, as a blue box appeared in front of my face.

System Message

For defeating a creature from beyond and communing with forces beyond mortal comprehension, you have unlocked the Demogogue class!

What?

No, seriously, What?!

“Oh, hell the fuck yes!” Electra leapt to her feet. “I knew it was an Isekai!” She turned to me, grinning. “This is gonna be great!”

I stared at the woman, dumbstruck. Then, slowly, I reached up to pinch my nose. “We almost got killed by a tentacle monster from beyond time and space, and you think it’s gonna be ‘great’?”

“Well, yeah.” She punched the air. “We got skills out of it! That means we have a system!”

“A system?”

She gave me a concerned look, and for some reason that made me even more irritated. “No offense, Empress, but did you not like, have books growing up? TV?”

I glared. “I read real books, not whatever garbage you’re insinuating is literature.”

She gasped, placing a hand against her chest. “You take that back about my light novels!”

I shook my head, pushing away the creeping feeling of dread and giving into my irritation. “Light novel? So, they’re not even real books then?”

“Yes, they are!” She stalked forward, grabbing onto my shoulders.

I glared—unfortunately—up at her. “It’s in the damn title! Light—not real!”

“There are heavy light novels!”

“That’s just a novel you imbecile!”

“Who killed the giant tentacle monster! Was it you!?”

“Yes! It was my invention.”

“But it was my power!”

“So, you’re the Light, and I’m the novel?”

“What?”

“Exactly my fucking point!”