Xuelan sat down on a rock for a moment to rest.

Her stomach hurt.

It wasn't quite like period cramps, but she genuinely hadn't eaten anything solid for an entire week. The hunger pangs were constant and ever-present, and they were hard to ignore. Previously, she had been able to distract herself with Kien's presence, and sex was an excellent way to put her mind on something other than her empty stomach.

However, now he was gone.

It had barely been an hour since he left, and Xuelan already missed him.

She didn't like this vague, crampy, and nonspecific pain inside of her.

Razors were nice because they were logical. If you cut yourself, there was a nice line, and it hurt just like the way you expected it to. Being able to see the physical evidence of pain was reassuring, and there was almost some kind of straightforward causality to it. In contrast, there were many other things that hurt — emotional, abstract, or visceral — but Xuelan hated that kind of fuzzy throbbing pain because they was nonsensical and hard to explain. She wanted to point to a wound and say this was the reason why everything hurt, but it was rarely ever that simple.

Xuelan only liked certain types of pain.

Self-harming and masochism was so hard to comprehend.

For that matter, Xuelan was definitely a freak.

Why couldn't she just be a normal person like everyone else?

+ + +

Eventually, Xuelan finished crafting a few nets, and she climbed up some rocky crags. 

The ocean was was murky and opaque, and it was impossible to see what lay underneath the surface of the rolling waves.

Although there was no obvious sign of marine life or vegetation, Xuelan felt like it probably wasn't safe to wander into the water without confirming what laid in its depths. She had a gut feeling that something lived in the water, since there were many seashells on the beach. Seashells were mostly calcium carbonate, and they were the exoskeletons of shellfish. Even though the red-tinted water looked eerie, bare, and smelled foul, the presence of shellfish likely indicated that the strange ocean had its own ecosystem. Since this was Hell... the aquatic wildlife was probably dangerous...

But the mantra was to eat or be eaten, right?

If Xuelan wanted food, then venturing towards the sea was probably her best bet.

The black-haired girl dropped a loose net into the water that was anchored to the rock, and then walked over to a different location and dropped another net. She placed several nets in several different locations because she initially assumed that most of the nets would come up empty. Instead, she was really hoping to see if there was any particular spot along the shoreline that might be better for fishing.

Truthfully, attempting to catch fish from the land wasn't likely to be very effective. Most species of fish did not wander so close to the tidal zone, and most indigenous fishing cultures would take their boats out into the ocean in order to cast their nets in deeper waters. There was one form of beach fishing known as seine fishing, but it typically involved two people, with one party swimming with the a net deep in the water.

Xuelan did not craft her nets in any particular special fashion, and she randomly picked several different widths for the mesh size. Rather than trying to optimize the most efficient net, she was mostly concerned with determining whether anything lived in the ocean, and she could adjust her strategy after characterizing her initial haul. Even if she only picked up seaweed and kelp, it could still be considered a success. After all, seaweed was also edible and nutritious.

After Xuelan made her rounds dropping a half-dozen different nets, she returned to the starting point and was confused to discover that all the nets that she placed were completely gone.

They had basically vanished!

Slightly concerned, Xuelan dropped another net and slowly backed away while cautiously watching the anchor.

At the point she was around 100 meters away, the black net simply disintegrated out of existence. A lightbulb flashed in Xuelan's head, and she belatedly realized that there was a maximum range for the 【 Shadow Cloth 】 ability. While it was possible for her to generate infinite amounts of rope and fabric, it needed to stay within a certain range of herself or else it would disappear. The black shadowy rope was a magical substance, and it naturally had its own rules and limitations.

Xuelan was a little frustrated at herself.

She spent a majority of the day crafting nets that had essentially gone to waste. Thankfully, the raw materials were virtually free, otherwise it would have been an enormous loss to waste hundreds of yards of rope. Ordinarily, it took an incredible amount of effort to extract and process natural fibers into cordage, and a single handmade fishing net was a very expensive product.

It was her own carelessness that led to this outcome.

Xuelan felt a swirl of emotions inside of her. Her aching hunger, relationship problems, and generally miserable condition amplified her sense of distress. She missed Kien. He had basically dumped her, right? Xuelan had barely managed to salvage their living arrangement, but otherwise he would have completely washed his hands of her.

Her heart brewing with discontent, she tossed another net into the water.

This time, she held onto it as murky waves crashed against the rocks, while feeling upset and extremely gloomy.

Her thoughts spun in all sorts of negative directions, and her emotions were tumultuous like a raging sea.

She had no choice but to wait in the salty spray of water that smelled like sewage. The rocky shoreline was cold and wet, and Xuelan's mood was sour because she doubted there would be any fish swimming in such rough waves. However, there weren't any better alternatives, and she certainly wasn't about to jump into the water.

After about five minutes of waiting, Xuelan gave the net a tug.

Weirdly, it seemed to be stuck.

She pulled harder, and it didn't budge.

It was almost like there was something on the other end, clinging to the net and refusing to let go.

Adamant, Xuelan pulled as hard as she could, and suddenly it came free. She stumbled backwards, and the net went flying into the air along with all of its contents.

Xuelan only had the time to catch one glimpse, but then she almost immediately screamed.

The net was chock full of wiggling tentacles.

The rope came undone as it flew, and then the sky was raining slimy wriggles and giant alien balls of spaghetti. They went splat against the rock that Xuelan was standing on, and a few of those terrifying little monsters landed directly on the girl's torso. Xuelan struggled to defend herself, but the swarm of those squid-like creatures were relentless with the way that they piled on top of her. They were not particularly large, and they each only had six tentacles with one toothed suction cup on its central body. However, they latched onto each other like daisy chains, and it quickly became a tangled slimy nightmare.

Xuelan could barely see through the cloud of tentacle monsters, but she vaguely became aware that thousands of little tendrils were slithering their way up the tiny rock. It was almost like the entire ocean floor was carpeted with a forest of tentacles, which on second thought made a lot of sense — there wasn't any seaweed or other marine life on the barren beach because the tentacle monsters acted a water filter, trapping any aquatic debris from washing up ashore.

They seemed to have some kind of hive-consciousness, especially with the way they worked seamlessly together.

Presently, they seemed to be attempting to drag her into the water. Various appendages were tightly coiled around her ankles and other limbs, but there were so many of them that Xuelan promptly became claustrophobic with the way they piled over her. A mountain of snakes rapidly formed on the rock, completely blocking out the sunlight, and Xuelan felt like she was buried deep inside of a snake pit with absolutely zero sense of direction.

Her only saving grace was that she had reacted quickly.

As soon as she perceived that the tentacles wanted to drag her into the water, Xuelan promptly used her own 【 Shadow Rope 】 to tie herself to the rock. Thus, it rapidly became a tug-of-war between two sets of tendrils, with Xuelan desperately trying to mentally manipulate her own shadows to prevent herself from being hauled out to sea.

It felt like she was being pulled apart, and Xuelan felt as if she was being constricted by hundreds of powerful serpents pulling in opposite directions. The tentacle battle was relentless, and within seconds, she couldn't move an inch. Soon after, she was strangled so tightly that she couldn't breath, and then Xuelan was struggling to tie herself to the rock with as many shadow knots as possible before she lost consciousness. It was becoming apparent that neither party was winning, and Xuelan knew that she needed to ensure the stalemate would continue even when she passed out.

If the tentacle monsters managed to undo the 【 Shadow Rope 】 that tied her to the land, the unconscious Xuelan would be dragged underwater, and it was doubtful that she'd ever be found again if she washed out far into the open sea.

Of course, the tentacles also attempted to distract her by assaulting her poor genitals, but that was almost a minor detail at this point.

Xuelan single-mindedly focused on tying knot after knot after knot, and her entire brain was filled with a maddening dedication to tie herself more securely. At a certain point, she had no idea what she was tying anymore, but it hardly mattered as long as it connected her to the rock more tightly.

...It was stupidly ironic.

Who would have imagined that self-bondage could have such a ridiculous practical application...

∎