“I am one who attracts death.

I am one who lives with death.

I'm never alone...”

Mornings symbolizes rebirth, the start of a new beginning in many cultures. The rising sun would bring forth light to the world that had suffered the oppression of the night, rousing animals from their shelters in the dark. It was the signal to the start of life. And that day, inside a cave illuminated by a hole in the wall and something else, the divine air of sunrise was broken by the bellows of a wild beast.

“Holy shit! Sixteen hour nights?! Owwwww!”

Her name is Elaine Kirika Dawn, a resident of homely Earth who had found herself abducted by strange circumstances into another world. It was a trope she was quite familiar with, being a fan of many such stories herself. She was a third year engineering student, and a big fan of the Boston Red Sox, despite not being in the same state.

Elaine was a half-blooded American with a Japanese mother, evident in her second given name; a name she liked a lot because it raised a lot of eyebrows about where she came from. But regardless of how rare she thought she was, anybody would have had a different first impression seeing her roll on the ground in agony half-naked. As someone who regularly slept only in her underwear with an impeccable internal clock, being transported to another world right before sleeping raised serious concerns, especially in the hygiene department. She was caked in dirt, smelled weird and could probably give her mom a heart attack.

It took her five minutes to calm down. Carefully, she pushed her bangs away from her burned right side and tucked it over her ear. While any form of breeze hurt, it was nothing compared to the repetitive stinging sensation of her hair brushing against it.

What exactly happened? Why was half of her face a burnt patch of flesh? And why was she not in constant, horrifying pain? To answer that question, one only needed to look at the corner of the chamber's entrance. There, one of those leech monsters lay with its 'belly' up.

It was dead.

Elaine felt goosebumps crawl up her arms as she observed the lifeless creature. It still had part of her face on its creepy maws, spilling blood and eye fluids on the ground. The question was why did it die?

… Did she taste so bad it dropped dead from a mere taste? Surely that can't be it... right? But if that was the case, she didn't know if she should be thankful or insulted. She was well aware that wasn't the case anyway. After all, a few small critters were already feeding on the dead monster's body, along with her own, and they were perfectly fine. As of the moment though she had no idea how to arrive at any kind of answer.

Still... It was a weird feeling, watching something feed on your own body parts.

The reason why she did not bleed out was the same reason why she wasn't groping around in partial darkness. At the center of the chamber was a stone unceremoniously placed on the ground. It looked like any other piece of rock one could find lying about at random on an ill-tended lawn; it looked rough, had the size of a fist and jagged around the corners. What set it apart was that it glowed as bright as an incandescent bulb. It was way hotter too. In fact she was sweating from its heat despite the cave being colder than winter and her being at least ten meters away from it.

As far as she remembered, she must have run into the chamber and got bitten soon after. Then she fell on her face on top of the rock, which partially cauterized her wound. Her memory ended there but judging from the drag marks along the ground, she must have crawled away from it before passing out, waking up a few hours later.

Strange how only her face was savaged despite having long bangs, but whatever. And since the creature that took a bite out of her had no scorch marks, it couldn't have died from being burned.

“So, what no—ooowww...”

Being a loner in nature, Elaine had a habit of talking to herself, which wasn't the best idea at that moment. Sharp pain rocked her composure every time she used her facial muscles.

But the issue was: what was she supposed to do? How did every other isekai fantasy story go again? She tried to remember if she had read anything with a protagonist that had the same circumstances as her, but none really came to mind. Most isekai fantasies had protagonists that were blessed with miraculous abilities by a god or goddess, or by some mechanic in the process of the dimension transfer. Did she receive anything? Aside from the searing pain on her face and severe exhaustion from running and staying awake for sixteen hours, she felt pretty much the same as usual. Or maybe her new power was something beyond feeling? Like she was stronger than an average human, or able to think faster than any other.

… Well if that was the case then she did a pretty bad job running away earlier.

Without any clues, trying to guess was a waste of time; that, she had to admit. The best thing for her is to assume that she wasn't blessed with any gifts. If that was the case, what should she do instead?

“Food, water, shelter?”

A boring answer, but clearly the right one. In a sense she already had the last item; the cave was a good place to spend the night provided that the safety it had provided for her was not a one-night-only event. The rock was essentially a campfire, too.

She'd already spent sixteen hours without any food or water.

Regarding the issue of looking for those, however... a cursory attempt at moving her legs caused much disappointment and alarm.

“Fuck...”

At that moment she discovered that talking hurt slightly less if she tried to use only the left side of her mouth.

Despite being able to rest for such a long time, her legs were only able to recover enough for her to painstakingly stretch them out. She could also lock her joints. That was something. Did that mean she had to crawl again to look for food and water? The path down the mountain was way too long. Even if the forest could provide everything she needed, the thought of having to risk it with her legs brought her no sense of confidence at all.

If she encountered more of those leech monsters, or worse...

But she couldn't just stay there and starve to death.

She thought about the cave. Caves have a source of water somewhere, right? She could just barely remember something from her geology class that caves are formed by water dissolving... something. Soil? Whatever. But what the cave wouldn't be able to provide her with is food. Probably. Unless she willed herself to eat any small animal she found, and mushrooms probably. Of course, the last thing she wanted to experience while alone was food poisoning. Too many hours of watching YouTube had taught her that.

A miserable groan escaped her lips as she saw the things feeding on the dead leech monster. Disregarding those that were obviously insects, some of them looked vaguely like rats... with six feet. Are they safe to eat? Can she even bring herself to eat them if they were? She was sure that if it came down to it, she could, but that was still a long time coming. Humans could be made to do all sorts of things when desperate.

Either way, the risks were just guesses. She was better off thinking that both choices were equally dangerous. She could always just sleep, which was probably the best choice actually. But ah, she was too scared to do so. If she were to pass out from exhaustion or fatigue again, then so be it.

“Heads for the forest, tails for the deep, dark, scary place.”

She took something out from the rose gold locket on her necklace – the one accessory that never left her body regardless of what she was doing. With a flick of her wrist, the shining piece soared through the air in an almost perfectly vertical trajectory. As it flipped through the air, Elaine clearly made out Liberty and the Eagle despite the bad lighting.

It was an American Eagle Gold Coin. Her coming into possession of one of them isn't an interesting story; her father simply gave her one as commemoration for her entry into junior high school. According to him, taking on the responsibility of owning one at such a young age would force her to learn about the value of money earlier – but she was sure that it wasn't the only reason. It did work though, since she hadn't sold it off for gacha money... at least not yet... She did come dangerously close... several times...

A satisfying sound echoed inside the chamber as she clumsily caught the coin with the back of her left hand and right palm. She almost missed it, not being used to having only one eye tracking it and having slightly blurry vision.

… She shouldn't have remembered her father like that.

Simply feeling the coin through her palm told her what side had come up. She had memorized every nook and cranny of the coin after more than six years of tossing it religiously. The result made her face twist in dismay, though it would have made the same expression regardless of what side it landed on.

She was just sour about the next part.

Soon she found herself clambering down the mountain – protected by nothing but her underwear. Hopefully there was nobody there to see her. Last she checked, there were no settlements in sight for miles. She remembered the sights she had seen the night before and told herself not to go anywhere near that area.

The biggest issue with going to the forest would be the predators. Considering her near-useless legs requiring her to lean on the rocks for each step, she would surely become something's breakfast if anything were to run into her. Hopefully it won't happen. It was also really damn cold. It wasn't as bad as inside the cave with the bright glowing stone of magic, but the air outside was chilly enough to make her guess that it was probably almost winter there.

It took her almost an hour to stumble down the mountain. Fortunately for her the mountain had a dirt trail; it was almost like someone, or something went up the mountain regularly.

There, as she looked up amongst the sea of trees, she realized something she cursed nature for.

“Shit. Right. Fruit-bearing trees.”

Surely there should be fruits on the ground, she thought. Climbing up with her legs the way they were was asking for a few broken bones. But then something appeared on her peripheral vision.

“Is that an octopus?”

It looked exactly like an octopus if it had green, grass-like fur, twice her size and had clawed tentacles. It crept slowly away from her. On its tentacles was... a bag of fruits?

“Are those... fruit? Hey! Oww!”

The octopus-thing jumped in surprise and looked towards her direction. Elaine met its eyes with her singular one. Its eyes had two pupils, which seriously creeped her out. Their eye contact lasted a mere few seconds before the beast drew itself back.

At first she thought it was preparing to run away, but as it drew back she realized that it was actually trying to flip itself over.

Elaine felt the blood drain from her face as what could only be described as a horror show revealed itself to her. It was like a kid with a glue gun created a Frankenstein’s monster using souvenir shark teeth and a fur carpet. Blood and chunks of meat dripped from the creature's mouth and onto the soil, clearly defining where the creature's place was in the food chain. What made it even more horrifying was that it also had eyes underneath – tens of them around what should be the mouth. And they were all staring in her direction.

Memories of last night resurfaced in her mind. The resulting overload of fear caused her already weak knees to buckle. Though she managed to catch herself falling backwards with her elbows, that was the limit of what her fear-induced paralysis allowed her to do. All she could manage afterwards was to flap her jaws like a fish out of water. She expected a painful death from what was essentially a sheet of teeth.

What she did not expect was for the octopus-like monster to turn tail and run. It took her a few seconds before she realized what had happened.

“Wh— th' f'ck?”

Anybody would be speechless. Maybe it really was just trying to get away. Just in case, she turned her head back to see if there was something behind her that could scare it off, but curiously, or rather fortunately enough there was nothing.

The feeling of relief washed away all the remaining strength she had in her body. Her shoulders gave out and soon she found herself staring at the empty morning sky.

It reminded her of home.

“Some things just don't change. And there’s only one sun, too.”

The sky was still blue and the sun still looked like a white ball of fire she can't stare at directly.

She looked down towards the direction where the monster ran off to, only meaning to see if it had come back – maybe it running away was just a strange predator tactic in that world. Instead she saw something that made her day; the creature dropped the bag that it had been carrying. That solved the problem of food. It only almost cost a life. No problem.

Given a chance, though, she'd rather not do that again.

Her entire body felt terrible. Every time she moved her body, she felt the dirt that clung to her skin rub against her. She reeked of blood and sweat, which was a big no-no for anyone in the wilderness. Her feet hurt and walking around with them caused her blisters to hurt and her wounds to open.

And her burn hurt.

“I want a shower.”

Admittedly, the soft soil felt comfortable to be on. It wasn't anything like her bed, but it was enough for someone in her state. The way the grass scratched against her every time she shifted was a small comfort against the throbbing pain throughout her entire body. Additionally, the morning breeze was cool and comforting, and the bright morning sun’s rays were mostly blocked by the trees around her.

“Just for a short while should be fine.”

She knew it was a bad idea, napping in the middle of the woods especially with how she smelled like prey. But she can't help herself. Exhaustion gripped her entire body. She was sleepy, and all of her small wounds begged her to rest. And with those words, she closed her eye.

Her smartphone was a thing of wonder for many people. For most people her age, the regular apps would include Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and the like; all kinds of social media. Hers? Games. It only had games. Okay, sure, it had Facebook; it was required for some class activities. She had mail, too. But before she was transported to another world, there was only one person she contacted regularly; her mom.

It sounded like an awful joke, but Elaine was bad at dealing with people. It wasn’t much of a long shot to say that she was socially inept. She grew up listening only to the words of books, games and her mother, often losing herself to their fictional stories. When she was at an age where she didn’t know any better, she considered the prospect of talking to girls her age about the latest fashion or the most-handsome Hollywood actor to be a chore. She wanted to escape all the time and immerse herself within the world of fantasy, where excitement followed at every turn and people faced obstacles that had unexpected solutions.

Real life was boring. And for Elaine, that never changed. That was why being transferred to a foreign, magical world was a dream come true for her. But only in losing something do people realize their true worth.

But she didn’t feel distressed. Not at all.

She didn’t want to go back home. Not yet.

... Though, she does wish she could play her mobile games.

With the practiced movements of a madwoman, Elaine pushed her body from a prone position to a sitting one. The sound her spine made was like a twig that snapped in half and her face at that moment could likely scare the monster from earlier worse than it already had. As a girl who played games almost religiously, she was an expert at bringing herself out of her stupor. It was an essential skill for someone who played on the Eastern servers where the events were scheduled on the most horrifying of time slots for an American.

Judging by her impeccable internal clock, her nap lasted a mere fifteen minutes. It was better than nothing.

Fine-tuning herself to be able to wake up after fifteen minutes of napping was difficult, but not impossible. She could also do sixty to ninety minute sessions, but decided that the more time she could spend on the move, the better.

The first thing she did after making her scary face was to check if the food the monster left behind was still there – it was. She sighed in relief while holding her chest. Understandably her heart skipped a beat with the thought that it might have disappeared.

Still lacking in the strength to walk, Elaine crawled, eager to taste her rewards. If her mother saw her then, covered in dirt and bloodied in places while creeping towards fruit dropped on the ground, she'd probably be moved to tears in bitter disappointment.

The first thing Elaine noticed was the bag. It was made out of some sort of material that resembled spider silk, only much thicker. The thought of giant spiders immediately caused goosebumps to shoot through her arms. Opening it caused much trouble, but after a while of trying, she finally managed to pry it apart.

Inside the bag were, as expected, fruits. Looking upwards she saw that they were the same ones the trees nearby had. Did that mean that monster picked them up itself? Why would it do that? It was obviously a carnivore.

... Maybe it was an omnivore?

Whatever. What mattered was that she finally had some food. It looked like apples, too, so that was a plus. But just in case, she threw one of them against a rock as hard as she could.

It might have been a mimic-like monster? She was slowly becoming paranoid.

Expectedly, and rather deliciously, the fruit broke into pieces and scattered some of its meat around the area. Elaine felt a small piece land somewhere on her lips. She tried to taste it, but it proved futile as she was too thirsty to produce any saliva.

Seeing that things with teeth or tentacles didn’t burst out of the fruit encouraged her. Without investigating further into the matter, she took another and bit into it. Immediately she discovered two problems.

“Eugh. Seeds.”

Well that wasn’t a big problem, but a problem nonetheless. Her favorite fruit was the summer staple watermelon, so encountering seeds on her mouth posed no issue at all. The real issue was that despite looking like apples, the fruits were very bitter. But, much to her delight, the fruit had quite a bit of water in them, so if she ate enough she should be able to address her hydration issues fairly well.

Hopefully the fruit wasn’t poisonous.

It shouldn’t be. After all, looking towards the branches she saw a squirrel eating one without care. It looked like a squirrel at least? If a squirrel had compound eyes, then there’s no difference.

There were quite a lot of them inside the bag. A quick count told her the monster had collected fourteen of the fist-sized fruits. She thanked the monster and hoisted the bag over her shoulders, invigorated from having something in her stomach.

She just had to imagine she was eating coffee-flavored apples.

The next bit she had to find was a source of water. She still needed to find more food, but her spoils would last her until lunch so it was no longer that big of an issue. Besides, she could probably last a few days without more. If she could find a stream or something bigger then that would be perfect. Or at least, any kind of fresh water she could plunge in. Fortunately she already knew where to find one.

When she went down the mountain earlier, a lake caught her eye. It was conveniently nearby and not towards where she saw the giant tentacles and gigantic jellyfish, but there was a sudden change in the elevation of the trees between where she was and where the lake was. A cliff, perhaps?

Surely enough, it was.

Elaine looked down the hundred-foot drop and cringed. She’s had a lot of problems already, and the encouragement from easily finding food quickly wore out. She could always just walk around the cliff. But as luck would have it the ground leveled out at the exact opposite of where she stood. The lake was decently large, and she estimated that she had to limp for over ten kilometers just to reach passable ground.

Well, ropes and vines wouldn’t be of help anyway; she wouldn’t be able to go down with them with her legs and feet being what they were.

Accepting defeat graciously was her only choice. It probably wasn’t but she preferred to just get on with the long walk instead of wasting time thinking of a solution that might not exist.

Along the way she caught the eyes of many animals, which all strangely ran away from her at first sight. She thought it was strange and jokingly told herself that it must have been because of her stench. The joke did a number on her self-esteem but it was better than being some monster’s value meal. At some point though it had started to cause some concern for her since even predatory beasts turned tail and ran upon seeing her.

“... Hey, I don't smell that bad, right?”

It continued until she arrived at the lake. It was a hotbed of activity as animals of all shapes and sizes and dietary needs made peace with each other to drink. She thought the animals would all run away from her like they did earlier, but they didn’t.

How extremely strange. Fortunately for her, upon reaching the lake she became part of the crowd of animals partaking in its use. Even the carnivores started to ignore her. That definitely removed stench issues from the suspect reasons.

After finding a relatively open spot, she made a metaphorical camp and laid herself down on a patch of soft grass. As much as she wanted to immediately jump into the pristine-looking waters of the lake, she felt like holding herself back for just a little bit more to make the experience more satisfying. Well, not really. She just felt more exhausted than dirty.

As she took a breather from the extensive time and effort she had spent to get there, she observed the local fauna congregating on the lake edge.

None of them looked like the animals she knew back home. Though some of them came close, there was always one or two glaring differences that set them apart. For one, she saw a wolf-like animal with its pups. By all accounts, it looked like a wolf – but it was the size of a horse and had antlers on its head. Then there were those who had insanely... novel appearances – a floating ball of tendrils and tentacles drinking water using a trunk, for example.

She tried to not let their appearances affect her too much, but some of them genuinely gave her the creeps. Thankfully they were about equal in number to the majestic and cute-looking ones. And the most absurd ones were, ironically, the plainest.

“Are those slimes?”

Rolling around the edge of the lake were transparent balls of sentient goo. Elaine couldn’t describe them with anything other than the word ‘slime’. And it was obvious where they were located in the food chain.

If everyone ignored each other in the lake, the slimes were thought to not exist at all.

While the slimes were busy frolicking with each other, a giraffe-like animal with scales for skin and spikes growing out of its back lumbered through them, stepping on a few as a result. Being at quite a distance from the event, Elaine couldn’t hear the disaster that unfolded before her eye, but considering the slimes didn’t react either and continued as if nothing happened, she assumed it was a regular occurrence.

Anyway, at the very least she was safe from where she sat. She should be safe taking a bath as well, since a lot of the animals were also submerging themselves without issue. She hasn’t seen anything with the role of a crocodile yet at least.

She glanced around one more time. Just in case. Good, there was no human in sight.

After eating the last of the bitter fruits she had, she stood up and walked towards the lake. Holding herself back proved to be quite effective as by the time she had reached the water’s edge she was already literally shaking in excitement.

“Ow! Ahh...”

The water was numbingly cold. At first it shocked the wounds on her feet, but almost immediately after it felt really good. She hoped that it wouldn't cause an infection, but considering she’d been walking – limping through the forest barefoot all that time then it wouldn’t be a mystery to her at all if it happened.

Whatever.

She headed deeper into the lake until the water went up right above her knees. There she knelt and went to work getting rid of all the undesirables stuck to her skin.

The dirt and dried blood went away easily enough. She purposely avoided cleaning her face until the last moment, instead electing to remove her underwear first so she could give herself a good, thorough washdown.

Then finally, the moment of truth; clutching her washed, yet still bloodstained underwear to her chest, she leaned backwards slowly until she was at the cusp of being supported entirely by water. She stopped, took a deep breath to prepare herself, and then in one courageous moment dropped her weight into the water.

As expected of cold water, it felt absolutely heavenly on her burn. It also hurt like hell. Becoming entirely submerged in water also felt quite different from simply scooping it up and rubbing herself with it.

That was the second time that day she managed to get some rest. But somehow the feeling of being completely embraced by water felt... different. Unlike the wind’s indifference, the water was more personal. The cold soothed her aching body, comforted her wounds and caressed her burnt face like a mother’s love. As much as she tried, she couldn’t stop herself from dozing off, despite knowing full well she might drown. She wouldn’t, of course. She was just trying to enjoy the feeling of weightlessness as much as she could.

To any outsider’s perspective she might have looked like a floating corpse. She spent most of her time there motionless, with her head turned to her right so that her burn was submerged underwater. The fact that she was naked as the day she was born completely slipped from her mind.

When the water's temperature had dropped her own body to shivering, she estimated that almost half an hour had already passed. She couldn’t help it; the water felt too good. But she knew she had to get out sooner or later, else die from hypothermia. So for her last trick, she was going to disappear underwater.

She submerged herself slowly, relishing the feeling of the cold water crawling over her body. But quickly she realized something was wrong.

She felt something different. Slowly she peeked out from underwater, mostly thinking nothing about the change in sensations.

“----- ----, ----- ----- -- ----- - ---- ---- ----.”

Sounds are muffled underwater. She thought she must be dreaming. But a quick assessment of her sensations told her she wasn’t. Despite being distorted by the water over her eye and its own shadow, the silhouette of a man clearly made itself out. As her brain slowly caught up, she realized that the new sensation was something wrapped around her wrist.

Her returning consciousness came with a rising sense of panic. The moment she realized that someone was standing beside her naked form, she snapped. Without even having time to wipe her eye, she flailed her limbs to get away from – whatever the hell it was. In the process her leg hit... something. Had she been so engrossed with pretending to be a piece of driftwood that she didn’t notice someone sneaking up to her?

When she did manage to put some distance between where she started, the water in her eye had gone enough for her to open them. Strangely enough there was nobody there. She seriously considered that she had been hallucinating, but she doubted she was that mentally skewed to be suffering from it. The sensation and the sight had been all too real. It didn’t go underwater, did it?

She swallowed a mouthful of saliva. The water was clear, so it would not be hard to see if any human-shaped creature was swimming towards her. There were none. All she saw were a bunk of snakes swimming at random, but none of which were headed towards her.

Strange. Very strange.

Maybe she really was becoming paranoid. But the sensation of something hitting her foot was so real...

She sighed heavily. Snakes were the least of her problems if they didn't even notice her. Either way, at least that jump-scare gave her the impetus to get out of the lake.

Well she could always just get back in...

“Bleh. Must resist.”

She had already done what she needed to do on the lake anyway; her body was as clean as it could be, and her underwear was free of the uncomfortable dirt it had on undesirable places. It would have been perfect if she had some soap or shampoo, but it was unreasonable to ask for any more in that world.

Next, she had to secure more food –

“Huh...? Is that... food?”

Lo and behold, she wished for food and food came to be, piled on top of the grass.

Could this be her power?!

Quickly she closed her eye and wished hard for a modern house. It was a long shot, but maybe it was finally her big break. After spending a minute of chanting a sutra of the amenities she wanted it to have, she opened her eyes to find...

“Nothing. Damn.”

Maybe it didn’t work on large objects? Or maybe not on complex wishes? She then tried to wish for soap; simple enough. Lo and behold, upon opening her eye she saw –

“Still nothing.”

She tried to wish for more fruits to appear, just in case her newfound ability was something as disappointing as creating bitter delights out of thin air. Of course that also ended in failure.

There was nothing else she could do after that. Special ability or not, the only thing that came out of that exercise was a pile of fruits untouched for far longer than her stomach had wanted it to be.

She almost felt like crying. Almost.

Admittedly she was still hoping that she had unlocked some sort of power when she had passed through worlds. It would make her life there at least marginally easier if she had one, unless it was something like making her head explode. She was basically the protagonist of an isekai story after all. Surely the author wasn’t so cruel as to throw her in the middle of the wilderness without anything to help her with...

Right?

But judging by her life story, the author was probably as cruel as she had imagined he would be. In the end all she could do was shrug and accept the generosity of whatever had given her food at the time. Fortunately, after eating more than ten of those bitter things she was able to get herself excited for the next one. Again, it was just like eating coffee-flavored apples. So she delightfully reached down to grab one from the pile to eat.

“Huh?”

She found that she couldn’t lift her head afterwards. It was bound by something sticky and strong. It came out of the ground, from the grass around her, and wrapped over her head like a restraint. A gurgling sound grated at her ears and saw-like teeth popped out of the ground in rings – and around those teeth, eyes.

Her eye widened. She remembered. It was the answer to her question as to why an obvious carnivore gathered fruit.

It was a bait.

For a second she hoped that what happened earlier would occur again; that the monster would suddenly be terrified and run away. Yet the ground rose without stopping in a circle around her and continued closing in. In a last ditch effort she exerted as much force as she could in a vain attempt to escape, but the webbing she had gotten caught in proved too strong for her.

“Ah—“

She closed her eyes and hoped that there would be no pain. Her entire body clenched in preparation for her demise. Shit, she thought, it wasn’t even a few hours since her last escapade with death. It was as if she was a magnet for tragedy. They said that the brain went into overdrive during imminent danger, which possibly allowed people to react better and save themselves. But she was so tired at that point that her brain simply stopped functioning.

One second, two seconds, three seconds, four seconds; time stretched onwards and Elaine started to wonder if she was swallowed instead of bitten. Without opening her eyes she felt around her neck and chest just to see if her head was still attached to her shoulders. Finally she felt the locket.

She was alive.

And the thing was – she opened her eye – dead.

She laughed. Broken at first, but eventually it picked up speed. Soon she was laughing uncontrollably. It was her third brush with death and she was getting quite fed up with it. Sure the other world was dangerous, but was there a reason for everything?

But this time, it wasn’t dumb luck or mysterious occurrences that saved her life. She clearly saw the reason why she was still in that world:

There was a spear stuck to the center of the fruit pile, which was essentially where the ‘main body’ of the monster was. That means it was killed – by someone.

Upon the monster’s death came the unbinding of the web. With her head free, she searched frantically for her mystery savior and possible assailant number four. But there was nothing around her capable of throwing or even using a spear. What she did find was a bunch of snakes grouped together in a pile. She’d seen National Geographic documentaries of snakes gathering in massive numbers for mating season or something, so it wasn’t a particularly surprising sight for her. But when that gathering of snakes started to rise and take on a vaguely humanoid form, that was when she knew something was up.

Elaine really didn’t like snakes. Seeing a humanoid made of snakes only made her impression of them worse. A scream threatened to escape her throat. It was cut short of being able to, however, when the figure held its ‘hands’, which were essentially just snakes forming vague body parts, up as if to calm her down.

“---- ----.”

A strange string of sounds escaped from... wherever it came from. The snakes were still in constant motion around its body, making it almost impossible to make a distinction as to which snake – or which snakes acted as its mouth...s.

It slowly approached her with measured, slithering footsteps. It looked as if it was taking great care to not make any sudden movements. Then it stopped a decent distance away before a few of the snakes reached out and pried the spear from the dead carpet-creature’s body. The sight of such a monster with a weapon in hand only further encouraged her to run the hell away.

“----?”

It made another sound. Strange, it had the tone of a question.

“Wait, is it... talking?”

“--- --- -------?”

It was definitely asking a question. Regardless of the language, the tone of voice for inquiries is usually the same. Or something. She felt it in her gut, that’s what she meant.

That meant it was intelligent; capable of communication. That meant she didn’t meet something – she met someone. And that meant –

“Ah. I’m naked. Right.”