🙡 Chapter 2.3 🙣

Trap

My objective finally in front of me, I stopped, rooted to the ground, the moment I entered the shadow of the front line of trees. The grass and plants were gone, only black sand remained, with signs of being purposely burnt. A sign of civilization, and its father, conflict with nature.

Yeah, let’s for now not go deeper. Who knows what kind of fantasy monsters dwell inside…Even if I can’t hear anything coming from the inside. Suspicious forest is suspicious.

Well, it’s not as If I’ve ever been in a fantasy forest before. Also, it’s not as if there is any other place I could go! While looking around, there was nothing apart from the trees until the horizon! Maybe I should try climbing one of them later to scout?

Yes, I was currently useless, rooted in place, squid on the ground. Not because I was trying to, for the first time, walk... but because of the scary atmosphere. Please ignore the round face print, on the ground just behind me. After all, what’s behind us should be left behind us, time to walk forward!

And that was indeed what I needed to master, moving forward in this body—forgetting the human walking experience. Instead I can move like a caterpillar, undulating a few tentacles lying on the ground. Painfully slow! And surely adding +3 to my charisma stats to all humanoid observers—or... a bit as if I was “climbing” horizontally? Using a few arms to stay up, while using a few others to catch/grab something and propel forward like a thing from an old Japanese horror movie.

Yep, no walking in public, only floating.

I moved closer to two big obelisks. I could see more of them every 100 m or so along the forest line, obviously man-made. Some kind of border marker? A first undoubtful sign of civilization—only here I could see two of them so close—as one stood on each side of the “river”.

Amazon this was not, especially here—a rather calm current, with occasional small fish here and there. The water, clear, thanks to the riverbed being covered with rocks and pebbles—the Perfect place for a trap!

Not wasting any time, I started gathering surrounding stones and twigs, wanting to build an U-shaped dam that I could close at a moment's notice! I quickly started throwing smaller stones in…

Plop. Plop.

Plop plop.

Plop plop plop.

Wait. Plop plop plop? Holy shit, I used 3 tentacles at once! Wait, why the hell did I only use 2 of them until now? I have dozens of them! Dozens! If I can work with 3, why not 4!

Plop Plop Plop Plop

… actually, why am I limiting myself to only 4, let's try more! And 5! And 6! And

Bam! - I hit the ground with the grace of a first grader hit by a dodge ball straight into their face. Again. Not to mention hitting myself with the stone I was trying to throw into the river.

*AWOWOWO!*

After a bit of hard work, I actually managed to create a very small pool, in a slower moving part of the stream, next to some otherworld reeds.

I even saw some fry swimming around the entrance, though it got scared when I tried closing the gate… but it should come back, shouldn’t it?

…

…

An hour later, and nothing goes in. I should have known it wouldn’t be this easy. At least I had some fun trying to discern my appearance from the waters surface- and believe me it was quite interesting. Purple-blueish ball, with dozens of tentacles, and round mouth that is usually hidden. My sclera was black, so was the square pupil, but the iris itself was yellow.

My tentacles… I can expand them quite a bit, though when I do that they seem barely strong enough to keep their own weight. I have to entwine a few of them to make them strong enough to be useful as arms—something that I did instinctively, and so noticed only now, playing in front of my reflection… I think I might have seen this type of thing in certain comics on earth. No comments on country of origin.

Honestly, if not for these weird fog-like particles floating around me when I float, I would seem like an animal that could live on earth!

…

“Fucking bullshit”

Like what the hell! Really! Tentacle monster! Not even something humanoid! I hit the water surface. I know, I know, It could be worse—at least I’m not living in someone's ass, but still!

… Let’s hope its the hunger that’s making me cranky. Pity that the trap is still empty. Well, I should have started doing something about it earlier, but I didn’t realise how tired all this floating around made me. Only now that I actually stopped, I realised the exhaustion. But time for rest is over, I need bait. Only after securing water and food will I be able to think about doing something else.

So, climbing up to float again, and catch some flying bugs it is! It is slightly weird that there are no insects here, even though I can see so many just a few meters further away. Whatever, maybe they don’t like the smell of wood. I walked closer to one of the marker stones. It was about 2m tall, gray, but with some runic letters and patterns curved on it, with a tapered pyramid top. I looked at it while resting, and I was certain that whatever is written on this thing—I cannot read it. Well, no translation cheat this time.

More importantly, above them floated more markers than I’ve ever seen over a single target—there was red, green, gray and gold, and all of them were shining quite intensively.

Is this the moment I was waiting for as the MC? A free super skill lottery? I just have to find a way to do… something to these runes, and surely It will be enough for a nice reward?

Yeah, no. Listen “me”, I used up all my luck not becoming a louse in my second life, okay? Also, there are no free things in life. I’m sure that if I were to destroy these stones it would end up releasing some kind of ancient demon king, but not the succubus-companion kind, the instant game over one. Not to mention, other people.. Nope, not trying that. I am going to live the baller high life this time, and for that I am NOT going to die stupid death. Still, those stones might be easier to climb than a tree...

ZAP! -

I fell backwards, feeling tremendous pain in my whole body. What the hell?!

What the hell was I doing! Why the hell did I go into the forest? Am I stupid? Do I want to get eaten by hundreds of animals living in it? And why would I touch mysterious, dangerous looking, apparent magical artifacts?! It was as If a fog obstructing my thinking cleared up. I don’t know when it appeared.. Could it have been when I first set sight upon these woods?

Shit.

I walked to the spring, and, while making sure I was always holding something, put my head in the cold water, to clean up any residue of stupidity… or at least the parts that do not come out of my apparent lack of brain. “Idiot!” I complained at the nightmare-horror looking reflection staring back at me.

Now, calm… calmer, I tried summarizing my situation

I got a job as someone working with fate. Details to be determined. Contract already signed, no backsies. I got reincarnated as a tentacled monster in a fantasy world I got baited/brainwashed into coming to a forest, surrounded by magical equivalent of electric fence And now I’m stuck on the side that—since I doubt it was built just for fun—has whatever it was meant to keep out

Yep—I’m fucked!