The Author Reincarnated As An Extra-Chapter 41: • The One Who Fought a Squid (1)

Huffs of heavy breaths kept pushing out of his lungs, his boots stomping on damp patches of moss, while his wielding hand pulled the corrupted sword alongside him.

Deremiah sprinted up the hill like a mad man. He pushed his way past the giant glowing mushrooms, their lights blurred his peripheral vision, but he sped through like he was unable to stop.

He ignored the heavy pounding of his heart, all he could think of was that Elora had been taken. If she was going to die, it wasn’t going to be by some monster. It would be by his hand, nothing else.

Brushing past glowing ferns and thick clusters of luminescent stalks, he was forced to a sudden halt. Deremiah’s eyes widened as he took one step backwards, staring at the sight above.

Elora was suspended in the air, high above him with the NeonSquid’s translucent tentacle wrapped tightly around her waist, dangling her body like a marionette as she groaned angrily.

His throat tightened, thinking of what to do. Knowing that he had to keep his abilities a secret from her, his options drastically reduced.

Thankfully, he saw that Elora wasn’t completely defenseless. From the ground, two dark green vines with thorns erupted upward, coiling around the tentacle that held her captive.

They pulled from both sides, straining against the beast’s grip, trying to free her. Elora also added some force as she kept expanding her body, using her arms to push the thick tentacle away from her.

As though he was the one controlling the vines, Deremiah’s face squeezed, urging it to pull harder. Then a loud monstrous yell caught his attention.

He looked behind Elora and saw the NeonSquid not too far in the distance. The blobby monster loomed over the hill, staying at a single position but using all of its strength to keep Elora restrained.

He also noticed that the spores inside the beast were glowing dull red, which meant the monster was in attack mode. He gritted his teeth, glancing between Elora and the Paragon Beast.

The Dawn descendant let out a loud cry and the vines yanked with a final, powerful pull, successfully dragging the tentacles away.

She dropped down like a stone, landing on one of her vines which had lowered itself toward her, catching her mid-air. She slid down its shaft and landed in a cat pose, one hand pressed firmly against the earth, her head tilted down as her hair fell over her face.

Blast!

Suddenly, multiple ropes of plants shot out of the earth in her command and headed towards the giant beast. Deremiah watched with exhilaration as she rose slowly, brushing her hair out of her face, and turned to glance at him.

"Are you okay?" he asked breathlessly.

"I’m fine," she said flatly, her gaze shifting back to the beast. "But keep your distance from the Paragon Beast. Do not engage unless you have to."

Deremiah nodded silently, knowing better than to argue. He flexed his fingers nervously around the hilt of his sword and saw her withdraw her own blade from the swordhold on her back.

Not hesitating to say anything else, she joined her plants and stormed forward, pushing Aether to her legs and leaping high into the air.

Deremiah quickly hurried to the back of a giant mushroom, peeking from the side to witness the battle. He saw the beast’s red glow abruptly shifted to orange, signaling its defensive stance as it prepared for her assault.

Elora’s vines lashed towards the beast like serpents, aiming for the center of its face.

The NeonSquid moaned unhappily, but it used its translucent tentacles to protect itself, shooting out smaller tentacles like whips and blocking Elora’s vines from hitting it.

She twisted in the air, narrowly avoiding one that snapped inches from her side. Landing on one of her vines, she used it as a springboard to launch herself toward the beast’s core.

Seeing this, the NeonSquid tried using a tentacle to block her, but her blade sliced through the tentacle, severing it cleanly.

The creature emitted a deeper and more disturbing cry, it sounded like a muffled shriek or an alien ship. Deremiah could tell it was terrified. Not just because of that cry but because he saw that the colors had shifted to purple. It felt threatened.

Elora made it to its chest region and tried to stab her blade right into it, but the skin was even thicker than it used to be, and even though her greatsword left a big gash, it wasn’t enough to pierce right through.

The NeonSquid struck her with another tentacle, causing her to hurl towards the ground.

The leaf of a nearby vine quickly enlarged and caught her in the air. Elora was quick to get up and get into the action once again.

She summoned more vines, commanding them to coil around the NeonSquid’s tentacles and bind them in place. The vines that sprouted out also had thorns jagging out of them. As the vines coiled around the creature, the thorns dug into its blobby skin, although not as deep as Elora would have wanted.

Crying and thrashing, the NeonSquid retaliated with its colors shifting to blue. Then, the colors turned red. Following that, the beast released a cloud of neon spores into the air.

Deremiah’s eyes widened and so did Elora’s. Quickly, he used his collar to cover his nose and mouth and Elora did the same, covering her mouth with her free hand then leaping backwards to the ground.

The spores settled on her vines, causing them to shrivel and rot within seconds.

"By the Dawn," she muttered behind her palm. "How is it still so powerful by this time of the day? It usually can not summon those venom clouds in sunlight."

She dodged a tentacle that crashed towards her, rolling to the side before slicing upward with her blade, cutting deep into the beast’s gelatinous skin.

It yelled once again and the red glow got even brighter. Then it unleashed upon her a flurry of multiple attacks, extending its tentacles to smash her to a pulp.

Thankfully, Elora was impossible to hit. She used her vines as both weapons and shields, blocking the attacks, swinging through tentacles and stabbing the beast with razor-sharp thorns.

Everytime she found an opening, she exploited it to its fullest, pushing Aether into her sword as well to sharpen the blade and increase the damage.

But the longer the fight went, the more she felt something was wrong. She could feel the strain, and she could sense that the NeonSquid was just as strong as it had been last night. Perhaps even stronger.

Each attack she landed seemed to do less damage than it should, and her Aether reserves were dwindling.

Behind the giant mushroom, Deremiah noticed this, and he also saw when one of the beast’s tentacles finally caught Elora off-guard.

She had just jumped down from its body, after attempting to Aether-blast right through it, but once she somersaulted down to the ground, a tentacle slammed into her side and sent her crashing through another hill before slamming on a mushroom and falling flat on the ground.

Deremiah’s heart dropped, praying she wasn’t dead. "Elora!" he yelled. "Elora!"

When he heard groaning and coughing, a sigh of relief left him and thanked the Trials that her life was still his to take.

His eyes moved to the beast, whose spores were now glowing yellow, showing that it was preparing to retreat.

But because of his earlier yells, it noticed him as well. Deremiah’s eyes stretched wide and he began to move away from the mushroom.

The NeonSquid’s body moved, the tentacles slithering beneath it like ten snakes until it was completely facing him. Then, the yellow color of retreat disappeared and the spores glowed red once more.

Deremiah gulped. He just realized he was now alone with the monster.

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