HOLY SHITTT!!!!
What is that? What the hell is that?! What the fuck is that?!
It's a freaking monster!!! That thing that should be exists in mythology! Not in the modern era! It's twenty feet tall, has two eyes, and the teeth… and that face… and holy shit, look at those feet!
While I'm screaming in my head, the girl looked frightened and confused as she silently watched the creature and muttered. "Cyclopes? Why it is here?"
Cyclopes? Not the Cyclops, but Cyclopes? Well, it has to two eyes after all. So it's definitely a different creature. It's not a Cyclops but something else.
But the girl seems to recognize it.
"Cyclopes? What is that? Your pet's name?" I asked
The girl just snickered. "My pet? Are you an idiot or something? That monster is SS-class level! A Sub-species at that! There is no way I can take it as my pet!"
SS-Class? Sub-species? Sub-species SS class? I will pretend I never heard this part… that SS class thing already scared me to death.
Monster? I refused to call it a monster!! I absolutely won't call it! Yup, it's a creature! Not a monster! AH! It's UMA! I'm pretty sure it's just Bigfoot's true appearance! Or Daddy Bigfoot!
I convince myself of that! But the girl seemed to realize something.
"What, you do know about them, don't you?" The girl was shocked as she looked at me. Her gaze was as if she was looking at a moron.
Irritated by her expression, I said loudly: "What about it? It's just an UMA (Unidentified Mysterious Animal)! You can see those every day in manga and in anime!"
"What is UMA?" She looked at me as she asked that.
"UMA is UMA! A creature like that," I acted smug about it as I pointed at the mon-the creature otherwise known as a UMA.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean!?"
It seemed like she had already put aside what happened a while ago to face the current situation.
Yup, that's good! Thank you, Cyclops-like creature! You indirectly solved my problem!
The girl then sighed and started talking.
"Cyclopes are all very strong monsters. The lowest of them should be between A to S rank monsters. They are a highly intelligent carnivorous! They should be in the forest of death and the unexplored region… Why is it here?"
"What about it? You can kill it right?" I asked the girl
"KILL IT?! YOU EXPECT ME TO KILL IT?"
"You can't?"
"OF COURSE! I CAN'T!!"
I calmly looked at the mons- the creature.
"How can you be so calm right now?!" The girl snarled at me.
"I mean it's just UMA… It-" As I about to said that, she cut me off.
"Are you know how terrible the situation we were currently in?!!" The girl screamed.
"I was calm because you were being calm!" I cried.
"What? When you didn't react to the Cyclopes I thought it was because you had a plan!"
I looked at the monster again then the girl.
"We are in danger?"
"Yes… apparently, a great deal…" The girl grimly nodded.
".... For real?"
The girl nodded again as cold sweat shedding in her body.
"I see, so we are in a very grave situation right now? Hahaha, this forest is really awesome!" I speak in a broken voice.
This must be a dream, right! There was no way it could be true! I mean, come on! There is no way a monster exists!
I was about to say something then finally realized something else was off.
There is a giant tree… I saw a giant tree that I never saw in my life…. It was something that the NEWS would report. A tree that reached the clouds in the middle of a low grassy plain? It's something I would have definitely heard about!
Then my eyes turned from the massive tree whose top I couldn't see over to the sky nearby, there were two moons…
"…"
Where the fuck is this?!
"GroooooaaaarrrrrrrrRRRRRR!!!!"
The giant creature seemed to finally notice us as it altered its path and started walking towards our direction.
"Go! I'll cover you!" She shouted as she took a fighting stance.
"Eh? Why? Can't we defeat it together?"
"Idiot! Although I don't know how strong you are! However, I don't think you can defeat that! I'm a B+ rank Mage Warrior so I can only hold out for a very short time! So leave this to me and go!"
"Hm? I see, that makes sense. Okay then! Good-Bye!" I said calmly then turned around.
"Eeh!?"
"I pray for your safety!" As I started to run away, I heard her screaming behind me.
"Wa, Wa, wait! No matter how you think about it under this situation, the flow should be followed by you saying 'No wait, I'm a man so I will be the one to fight them and hold them off!'!!"
This girl completely destroys her previous cool and calm image. Guess that monster is really dangerous.
Are you a feminist? That doesn't matter.
The serious and serene atmosphere a while ago was replaced by a RomCom atmosphere. I'm too old for RomCom. But since she was willing to sacrifice herself… I could only pray for her.
I can the monster growled behind me, the roar sending a chill down my spine. Right now, despite honing my martial art skills, I don't have superpower to fight that.
Am I being coward? Then what are you, an idiot? Do you expect me to fight monster with bare hand? The girl had magic and sword, so I think she will be fine.
What? Fighting that will wake my cheat skills? No, you idiot!
"Huff…!" I ducked under a tree. Behind me, the monster growled again, I held my breath and pushed myself to run faster.
Then I thought about the Silver haired-girl.
"Silver haired-girl, even I don't know your name! I will never forget about you! You'll always live on in my memory," I muttered without looking back.
"Don't just kill me off like that!" I heard the voice shouting behind me, turning to find the girl was following behind me
"YOU ARE ALIVE?!"
"OF COURSE, I AM!"
"WHAT ABOUT UMA-SAN?! DID YOU KILLED HIM!? YOU MURDERER!"
"WHO IS THE HELL UMA-SAN?! DID YOU CALL IT HIM? ALSO DID YOU CALL ME A MURDERER?!"
"YOU KILLED HIM, RIGHT?!" I shout as I ran as fast as I could.
"No, I'm not, there is no way for me to kill that Monster with my current level." She calmly said as she ran beside me.
I see, so she can't kill that thing…
"Hah~, useless," I muttered, but the girl seemed to heard that and thrusted her sword in my direction.
"UWAA!! That's dangerous!"
"That's for calling me useless!"
"See?! It's chasing us because you're running!"
"That's your fault for leaving me!"
We keep running as we continue our bickering till we couldn't hear the monster's roar. After a while, we seemed to outrun the monster.
"Hah-hah," Both of us lost our breath.
"Did we lose it?"
"Temporarily…"
I finally collapsed onto my butt, gasping for breath. The girl nods, sitting more reservedly on a nearby stone, her cheeks pink from exhaustion, but desperately not trying to show it on her face. I suddenly let out a laugh of relief, and she started to join me after a moment. Yeah, we just managed escape from dangerous monster, we were both just happy to be alive.
Suddenly, the girl spoke out with a serious face. "….Kyou, are you from the another world?"
When I heard her question, I realized I was right. As I thought, this place… is not Earth. This was where Otakus fulfilled their daydreams… This is an Isekai or should I say, a Parallel World… as the non-geeks would call it. Hell, my younger self definitely will shout "Isekai kitaaaa!!"
"What makes you think that?" I asked her.
"When you glance at the moon and the tree of life, you look surprised."
I see… that giant tree is called the Tree of Life. Just as I was dwelling on this, another roar came from the distance. Shit! He is still following us? I immediately jump to my feet, a look of frustration forming on my face.
"We haven't lost him? How are we going to shake him?" I snapped.
"We can't." The girl sighed miserably. "It is an SS-rank. It could smell us for miles. We either need to distract it or bore it enough till it gives up chasing us!"
"You're telling me that now!"
"I had hoped…look, we have to just keep running."
"Is there anywhere nearby we can hide?"
"The only thing within miles of here is the Tree of Life."
"Damn it!" I cursed, but a moment later, an idea formed. "Wait… the tree of life! Can't we climb up that tree? It's really tall! Maybe we can shake him?"
"You idiot! He can climb it too!" The girl start calling it "he" too…
"No… I mean, we Jack and the Beanstalk that shit. If we climb high enough, maybe we can cut the branches and cause him to fall. The bigger they are, the harder they fall, or something like that!"
"You…" The girl narrowed her eyes. "You want to cut the Tree of Life!?"
"Look, it's either the tree or us? I say if a tree called the Tree of Life can't survive a bit of pruning it has no right to its name!"
"You really do come from another world, don't you…"
"Let's not focus on that right now! Are we doing this?"
"Do I have a choice?"
The Cycolpes was starting to become visible, the vibration of its steps could be felt by the pair of us. Immediately, we started to take off running. However, this time, we were heaving back towards the tree, angling away from the Cycolpes to avoid him. We had only managed to get about halfway when it became clear the Cycolpes caught us and was re-adjusting his steps. However, we still had the speed advantage, and seeing the massive tree getting closer and closer only excited our steps.
Although I was gasping for breath by the time we reached the bottom of the tree, I didn't hesitate to leap on one of the roots, climbing up to the trunk. With a specific goal in mind, we needed to get moving fast. A tree of this size had no branches within the first 100 meters, so we clung to the bark, forcing our way up the trunk. We had only been climbing for a minute when the trunk suddenly shook. It was clear the Cycolpes had reached the trunk.
The pair of us only moved faster. We'd take this one branch at a time. However, as I climbed closer to the branch, I realized my dreams of cutting it down were too optimistic. This branch had the thickness of a tree trunk! Would the girl's magic be sufficient to cut it down?
Unfortunately, we didn't have time to think about such things. We hastily climbed up to the branch, not sparing time to even look back. It was when the girl reached the branch and looked back down that she suddenly heaved a sigh of relief and relaxed. I quickly pulled myself up, my arms starting to feel like Jelly, before I turned and looked down as well.
The Cycolpes hadn't climbed up the tree at all. In fact, he was still trapped at the bottom. His entire height was about a fourth of the distance to the branch, but he just couldn't reach it. Furthermore, when he tried to climb the rough bark, his pudgy fingers and weight prevented him from getting a grip. The few times he got a good grip of bark, it ripped off the trunk and he fell back down with a thud. He roared angrily at the pair of us.
I could only let out a laugh of relief. "He can't climb after all!"
The girl even let out another laugh. Less muscular than me, she really looked like she had no more energy left.
"Yeah, but now we're stuck in this tree." she gave a sigh.
I walked out onto the branch, looking down at the angry Cycolpes glaring at us. "Hey, dumbass, what are you going to do now!"
The Cycolpes could only roar angrily. Had a woman not been present, I might have even mooned the Cycolpes. Instead, I gave him the finger. In the last few minutes of running for my life, I felt a lot of animosity towards this thing. After all, I was a skilled combatant, and it was rare on Earth that I ever felt my life threatened. Then again, I guess I'm not on Earth anymore. I looked back at The girl. Her face was bright pink, her clothing disarrayed, and her chest heaving, but it was undeniable she was a sexy woman. I suddenly found myself remembering her naked body just moments prior. Fortunately, she was too tired to notice the lewd looking i was giving her.
Suddenly, her eyes locked on mine widely. "Watch out!"
"Huh?" I looked down, and noticed that the Cycolpes was lowered down, his hand held in a strange motion like he was going to karate chop the air.
"Move!" She jumped back, but it was already too late.
The monster's hand chopped, and there seemed to be some kind of otherworldly glow as it moved. Something… seemed to fly out from his hand. My instincts kicked in, and I could only jump away, narrowly dodge what appeared to be air, but air that could cut threw my body if I was struck with it. I took a deep breath of relief seeing the blade of air fly up harmlessly into the sky. However, the horrified look on the girl's face immediately caught me off guard, and it was when the branch started falling that i realized I was really in deep crap.
The damned creature had used the same trick on me I planned to use on it. I heard a roar as the branch under me gave out. I fell to the ground and grabbed the branch with all my might. Soon, the branch was no longer horizontal, but vertical, and I was falling straight towards the ground below. It was then that my combat senses started to kick in. The branch started to move as if it was in slow motion. I looked down and saw the Cycolpes below, looking up eagerly at me. As is, the branch would strike the ground in front of the Cycolpes, and he's immediately grabbing me.
Without any time to think, I pushed my feet against the lifesaving branch and kicked. I shoved away from the branch but the branch also was pushed away from me… and towards the Cycolpes. The Cycolpes couldn't even react as the rip of the branch ended up striking him right in the face. In particular, his eyes were slammed with the trunk like tree. Dazed and blinded, the monster stumbled back and fell to the ground, roaring and rolling on the ground with pain.
Meanwhile, I was in free fall, the ground getting closer and closer. A moment before hitting the ground, I suddenly felt like i was wrapped in a marshmallow. Air seemed to wrap around and protect me. It wasn't until my feet were on the ground and the air had dissipated that I realized The girl above me seemed to be chanting with some kind of glow coming from her palms. On pure instinct, the woman who had recently wanted to kill me had saved my life.
I gave out a laugh. "The Cycolpes is blinded, let's get out of here quickly!"
The girl gave a nod, and lept from the stump branch she was still standing on. She immediately held her hands to either side, looking somewhat like ironman as she floated gently down, pushing up with wind magic as she balanced herself. I became stunned at the sight. First, I could see up her dress, which gave me a splendid reminder of the goods I had witness not much before. Furthermore, as she descended, her hands glowing and her hair waving in the wind, I began to realize just how beautiful this woman was. She really was way outside of my league.
"No! Watch out you idiot!"
My eyes were too caught up on her, that I hadn't been paying attention to the Cycolpes, whom hadn't been moving much as he cringed in pain and held his eye. The Cycolpes had thrown a hand out in a wave, desperately trying to strike where he had heard me shout. Since I hadn't moved, that was directly where I was standing.
The girl immediately moved one of her hands, trying to shove me out of the way. A puff of air hit me in the stomach, and I flew just out of the raging Cycolpes reach. However, moving her hand caused the girl to lose her balance, she struck into trunk of the tree and then bounced off, falling down at an alarming rate. I let out a shout, but could do nothing as she spiraled to the ground. As if to add insult to injury, the cyclop's raging hands clipped her on the way down. The girl spiraled off fifty meters before landing hard against the ground.
My face went white. "No!"
I immediately started running, dodging the blind Cycolpes easily as I raced over to The girl's side. I immediately fell to my knees. Her face and body were bloody. Blood was leaking out of her mouth and there appeared to be a wound on her back leaking blood to boot. This was bad. Really bad.
"Y-you… killed me…. You… idiot…" The girl coughed out some blood.
"No… no… we can fix this. Healing magic… right! You can use magic, right! We'll just heal."
The girl shook her head with some difficulty. "The Cycolpes used a curse on me during that blow. C-conventional healing… won't work."
"Th-that's ridiculous!" I snapped.
It can curse?!
Just how many lives did this stupid Cycolpes have! Well, he was a SS-class monster, I suppose having one or two tricks up its sleeve.
"I'm sorry… I tried to kill you." The girl moaned. "Just… burn my body… after…"
"No… no, you're not dying. Ah… if this was Earth, I'd have the medical capabilities to help you. Curse or not, doctors can do some amazing things!"
Suddenly, the only thing I wanted more was to return to Earth. Had I known this world was more technologically advanced than my own, perhaps those thoughts never would have occurred. However, at this exact second, returning home permeated my mind.
"What the-"
The same light that brought me here appeared again…
This time, it covered me like an aura…
And with that, my view became completely shrouded in light.