Chapter 5: The Cloud
Most Chinese web novel authors abide to a set of golden rules when writing their stories. The protagonist is OP (overpowered), the heroines are gorgeous, there is always measurable growth, something like that. Among these rules, there was one that was consistent even in web novels from other languages and cultures, and that was the isekai protagonist always gets some sort of unique ability when they appear in another world. It could be an item, a skill, a superpower, a cheat, magic and anything that would allow them to break the common sense of said world. Just to be clear, I had never thought of myself as a protagonist and I never would, but the fact that I had arrived at this world with four unusual items—the belt, the bag, the dagger and the notebook—meant that I was probably in the same boat as those protagonists. Even if these items weren’t ground-breaking stuff that absolutely breaks the rules of this world with impunity, I had good reason to believe that retrieving them would greatly improve my chances of survival.
First things first, the belt was made of some sort of otherworldly material that was super effective as a makeshift bandage. It also didn’t get dirty easily; I tried to give it a wash earlier only to find that it was in pristine condition. It was awesome. On the other hand, its sibling the bag was considerably less awesome because I just could not see how it was functionally different from an ordinary bag. The first thing I checked when inspecting the bag was to see if it was a Bag of Holding, a subspace artifact or something similar. If it was, I would have brought it with me even if it meant delaying my treatment. Perhaps I could cut one of its shoulder straps to use as an emergency bandage—the belt was admittedly a little too narrow for larger wounds—but otherwise, it was easily the least exciting of all the otherworldly items I had received.
The dagger, ugh. Frankly, I wanted it as far away from me as possible, but if I ever had to fight an enemy, even a cursed-as-fuck weapon was better than no weapon at all. Plus, fighting was hardly the only thing I could do with a dagger. I could use it as a cooking knife, a wood carver, a better-than-nothing jungle machete, a skinning knife and more. It was the general-purpose tool that offered the highest amount of utility, and since the entity possessing it had already migrated into my body it should just be a normal dagger now. If I was wrong, and the dagger turned out to be worse than I thought, well, I could always introduce it to my new friend at the creek, Mr. Bottomless Sinkhole.
The notebook, on the other hand, was still a complete mystery. I had thought it to be an ordinary notebook at the beginning, but now I realized that couldn’t possibly be the case. The other items all possessed some sort of unique quality, so why would it be the odd one out that does nothing? I would have to find out once I had retrieved everything and returned to the cottage.
The trip across the hilly meadows was totally uneventful, which was… not unexpected, to be honest. If nothing had happened to me when I was bleeding like a pig yesterday, then it made sense that nothing was going to happen now. Still, I kept my mouth perfectly zipped. I hadn’t succumbed to the temptation before, and I wasn’t going to start now. The very idea of self-jinxing was antithesis to my way of living.
On a related note, Miss Plant was following behind me like a shadow, though she kept a respectful distance away almost like a mother hen watching over her chick. I tried beckoning her to walk with me a couple of times, but she either did not understand my gestures or saw no point in it, so I gave up. One thing I realized after a while was that there were two reasons that could explain why this place was so peaceful. Either predators simply did not exist in this corner of the world—which was incredibly unlikely and unnatural—or there was one big bad that scared all the lesser predators away. No prizes for guessing the obvious answer.
Anyway, it took me only fifteen minutes to follow my crawl trail back to the meadow where I came from. It felt a bit embarrassing for some reason, but I shook off the weird feeling and focused on what was in front of me. I was happy to see that my items were exactly where I had left them. For obvious reasons, I went to the bag first and gave it a lookover. A sigh of relief escaped my lips when I confirmed that both the bag and the notebook were in perfect condition. I wasted no time in hoisting it over my back and making sure that everything was comfortable. It almost felt like I was back in school again, except my school, no, the entire country could never a scenic spot as beautiful as this. No, this is not an attack against my country, Equatorial rainforests were just naturally uglier than their seasonal counterpart for some reason. Though, what does it matter? I’m not even on fucking Earth anymore. I can say and do whatever I want! Fuck you, Earth!
As with all attempts to delay inevitable, it always sooner than you’d like. I grimaced as I walked up to the spot where I had collapsed to the ground and dropped the dagger. I was going to pick it up immediately when suddenly, an idea entered my mind. I unclasped my belt and looped it around my hand, taking it slow to make sure that not even an inch of my skin would be exposed. This way, I could avoid making direct contact with the dagger. This was not a long-term solution as a matter of course, but if I was going to have a ghost-induced seizure again I’d rather it happen in the cottage than anywhere else. After I was ready, I held my breath and picked up the dagger. Nothing happened. There was no inhuman throbbing that felt like the pulse of a giant heart, no new ethereal presence crawling into my body and taking residence god-knows-where. When my brain finally realized that the experience wasn’t going to repeat itself, I sagged with more relief than I cared to admit and dropped it inside one of the bag’s exterior pockets. Allowing my breath to escape through my nose, I admired the beautiful scenery one last time before slowly turned around. It was time to—
“Jesus!” I jumped a foot into the air and nearly sprained my knee from the sheer suddenness of the movement. It was because Miss Plant was standing just a few paces away from me, her hollow face seemingly staring into my soul. I hadn’t heard her approach at all. How the hell was she so silent? Even if she was gliding via seeming physics-defying means, I should be able to hear her branch-like feet brushing against the grass, right? More importantly, what caused her to change from “mother hen” mode to “deathstalker” mode all of a sudden? She… she couldn’t be coveting my items, could she?
“H-hey,” I stuttered despite myself, “What’s up? Do you need something?”
Silence. While I was relieved that she didn’t seem to be coveting my items after all, I must admit that her lack of response or even a reaction was starting to grate on my nerves. I squashed the feeling as quickly as it had appeared though. Getting annoyed with an alien entity’s inexplicable behavior was like getting angry at your mother for trampling over your wishes and doing whatever the hell she wanted; pointless and a complete waste of energy. I sucked in a deep breath and stepped beside her. Then, I said while making elaborate hand gestures,
“I don’t know what you’re doing, but I’m ready to leave. If you still have business here then I’m going first. Is that okay with you?”
Not even a twitch. It was at this moment I realized something though. Her head wasn’t facing toward me. Usually, her gaze would chase me like there was a physical link between the two of us, which almost made me want to play a prank on her but was ultimately too chicken to try. What is she doing? It’s almost like she’s… I slapped my forehead hard. How did I not notice this sooner? She hadn’t crept up to me to stare at me point blank, she was looking at something further away in the distance. I had misunderstood her because I misjudged her expression, or rather lack thereof. Now I was curious though. Since the moment I met her, her gaze had not left me even once. What on earth could have drawn her attention away from me? I tried following her gaze as best I could while asking, “What are you looking at? Is there… huh?”
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I mentioned this before, but there was a range of mountains to my six o’clock when I first appeared in this idyllic world. That was the direction we were facing toward right now, but the mountains were nowhere to be seen. More accurately, they had been engulfed by what looked the biggest cloud I had ever seen in my life. I remembered seeing something similar in a Youtube video—someone had recorded a tsunami of a cloud rolling over their city little by little—but this cloud dwarfed even that. It was an impossibly huge canvas of polygonal white that stretched as far as the eye could see; an all-encompassing, omnipresent entity that seemed capable of consuming everything and anything in its path.
And it was headed straight toward us.
To be completely honest, I did not realize that it was a deadly threat at first. Like I said, I had seen this phenomenon in a Youtube video before, and despite its ominous appearance I knew it to be about as harmless as a heavy downpour—or so I thought until something wrapped around my waist without warning, lifted me from the ground, and pressed me against a mass of vines and branches that smelled of nature and dew water. It took me an entire second to realize that Miss Plant had swept me off my feet and tucked me under one arm.
“Hey! What are you doing?” I protested instinctively. I would have struggled too if a sudden burst of speed hadn’t stolen my breath away. One second we were still, and the next we were gliding soundlessly across the meadow like a race car. It was terrifying as a matter of course. My bones strained from the sudden g-force, the grassland was rolling forward at incredible speed—I was still facing toward the mountains—and my organs felt like they were jumping all over inside the meat bag that was my body. I had to keep my mouth shut or risk emptying all of my stomach’s contents.
On the way to the cottage—I assumed we were because there was literally nowhere else to go—I strained to lift my neck even though I knew I was a jostle away from pulling a muscle. At this point, I still had no idea that the clouds were the thing that scared Miss Plant, and I thought that maybe she spotted a demon or something. This was a magical fantasy after all. What I actually saw though? I wouldn’t go so far as to say I would rather erase my memory, but I could certainly drink several pints to blur out the details. For starters, the cloud tsunami was moving a hell lot faster than I had expected, like way faster than any cloud should conceivably be able to travel. Just a few seconds ago, it seemed like it would take at least half an hour to get to our position. But now? Now I wasn’t nearly as sure. Even as I watched, it seemed to be accelerating more and more with every passing second, and for the first time alarm bells started to ring inside my head. Then, I saw it happen. I saw a lone boulder minding its own business at the foot of a hill when suddenly, the cloud rolled over it like a murderous trucker. Remember what I said about the clouds of this world looking rather polygonal, and that some of the edges looked sharp enough to cut stuff? It turned out I was more right than I could possibly imagine. The second the boulder made contact with the cloud, it exploded into a million pieces. Just, boom! Crack! Then nothing at all. At first, I could not believe my own eyes and blinked them with a vengeance. When I recovered enough energy to look up again, I was just in time to see a poor tree suffering more or less the same fate. I’m no cloud expert, but I was pretty damn sure that clouds shouldn’t be solid enough to crush an ant, much less a tree or an entire boulder. A cloud tsunami? No, this was an honest-to-god cloud avalanche!
We returned to the cottage in just under a minute. Under any other circumstances, I would complain about her treating me like a ragdoll, throw up in the creek, then getting distracted by the physics behind her impossible movement or the items I had retrieved from the short trip. As it was, the moment she put me back down on the ground, I immediately lurched toward the back door and slammed it shut with a bang. I also shut all the wooden panes of the windows and would’ve done the same to the front door, if Miss Plant was standing right in the middle of the threshold doing god-knows-what.
It was around this time my rational mind finally caught up to my brain. What the hell was I thinking? If that cloud can crush a boulder to smithereens, what can a cottage possibly do against it? I immediately sprinted back to the back door and attempted to get the hell out, but once again I found that a tendril had wrapped around my waist and nearly caused me to trip and fall flat on my face. An angry, desperate scream threatened to burst out of my lungs then, but I forced myself to calm down. At the rate the cloud was accelerating, I could be Eliud Kipchoge with a a full day’s lead and still be caught up eventually. Since Miss Plant didn’t look like an eldritch horror with a death wish, it could only mean that the cottage was actually capable of protecting us against the incoming avalanche, even if every cell in my body was screaming how nonsensical that was. I gave myself a solid slap to the face to quiet my instincts. I had to believe in her judgment. I had to believe that the cottage was the immovable object that would allow us to survive the unstoppable force.
Still, I felt that my faith would be so much stronger if she would just come inside and shut the damn door already, so I pleaded, “What are you waiting for? Get in already! That thing is going to hit us any minute now!”
It wasn’t an exaggeration. The cloud was almost at my starting spot and showing no signs of stopping. To clarify, it had crossed what had to be at least tens of kilometers in just a couple of minutes. I don’t care if this is a magic fantasy world, no cloud that could destroy everything it touches should ever be traveling at supersonic speeds, and I knew because the sonic booms had been assaulting my eardrums for a while now. Miss Plant was still standing at the threshold though. I could not understand why she was still standing there and doing nothing. What was it about the cloud that she liked so damn much that she would risk her life to stare at it for even a second longer??
Maybe it’s not curiosity, I suddenly realized. Maybe it’s hatred.
After shouting for Miss Plant to come inside a couple more times to no avail—I couldn’t gesture at her because she was facing outside this whole time, and the tendril kept me rooted in place—I plugged my ears and braced for the worst. The moment of truth was upon us.
Thirty seconds passed, and I saw the giant cloud engulfing my starting spot and annihilating every blade of grass in its path. Another second passed, and it was right in front of the cottage. This time, I did scream. Just when I thought I had misjudged Miss Plant after all, she finally slipped back inside and shut the door at the last possible moment.
GROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNNNNNNN.
THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK THUNK!
BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM!
I imagined this was how it felt like to be sieged from every direction. The cloud crashed into the wooden structure so powerfully and loudly that I instinctively curled into a ball on the floor. The entire cottage groaned, and the ground shook like an earthquake. At the same time, darkness descended so quickly and abruptly that one second I was staring at the front door, and the next I couldn’t see anything at all. I felt—felt, because the sonic booms were beyond deafening at this point, and I couldn’t hear anything else—a wooden board snapping right beside me and jumped away from it like it was the Devil. I prayed to every god I ever knew and held myself tighter.
I mentioned earlier that this was going to be over shortly, but I was wrong. The sonic booms ended rather quickly, but the shaking and pounding and groaning kept going on and on for what felt like a few years, and even after the tremors had subsided, the darkness remained. I had no doubt it was because the outside was completely covered in cloud, and barely any sunlight could reach us. When the cottage returned to reasonable silence once more, Miss Plant finally glided to a chair and took a seat. I myself moved to my mattress and lay on my side, shaking. It was the single most terrifying moment of my life, but there was nothing I or Miss Plant could do to change this. All we could do was wait.
We waited in darkness.