Isaak awoke with a start. He remembered the crushing black of the abyss. He remembered how the world had shook with the big-breasted Goddess' wroth. And worst of all he remembered that he had been summoned to another world.

"Just t-terrific," he said as he looked around with a nervous snarl.

Tall soldier oaks towered over him like an impenetrable wall of lushest green. There was nothing about the trees to suggest that they belonged to another world, though he had never seen a forest so tightly packed.

"Not that I ever hiked much," Isaak said. He sat up and stared at the misery that surrounded him.

He could hear distant animal sounds, the coo of birds and the soft skitter of squirrels. At least they sounded like birds and squirrels. For all Isaak knew the familiar sounds belonged to fire-breathing dragons and territorial unicorns and aroused orcs.

"Fuck me," Isaak said, and his eyes started to burn with frustration. "It isn't bad enough that I was summoned to another world..."

The Goddess had summoned him to Her world in his underwear. He was in the middle of dense woods, and all he had on his feet were a pair of uncomfortable slip-on sandals.

Isaak perked up suddenly at the sound of a distant cry. It cut through the dense rows of trees like a hot knife through butter. It was unmistakably human, and in distress.

"Why am I n-not surprised?" Isaak said. "I'm plopped into this fantasy world and pooof. Someone needs help. I suppose I should, should rush over to their aid like some sort of hero. Never mind that I lose my breath walking up the stairs at my apartment."

The cries continued. They were certainly human, and feminine.

"My first love interest, no doubt," Isaak said with scorn. He stood up, though without a hint of heroic intent. "But this... this could be good."

The Goddess had mentioned another guy. She had sent two people into her world, and from what she had said, that other loser had fallen hook, line, and sinker for this isekai drek.

"I'm sure he'll rush to help that hapless maiden," Isaak said with the beginnings of a smile. "And then... then I'll kick him in the crotch until I can think of what to do."

The distant cries were full of panic and hurt, but Isaak felt only relief and hope as he started to weave through the dense canopy of soldier pines towards the melodic distress.

"Those are straight up demon dogs."

He had followed the girl's frantic cries to a small clearing in the otherwise dense woods. His sandals had proven absolutely useless when it came to trekking through thorny bushes and over misshapen lumps of moss-covered dirt. Wading through the fantasy forest, Isaak realized just how hard it was to trek through untamed nature.

"They make it look so easy on television," Isaak said as he tried to catch his breath, and he studied the ill situation before him.

Three hounds stalked around a hapless maiden. The hounds seemed to come straight out of a Christian hell, their bodies covered in impractical and uncomfortable looking horns. Red fur pressed tight against lean bodies that rippled with a bestial muscle.

The young girl was, obviously, an elf. At least her ears suggested elven ancestry. Maybe an orc or two further up the family tree if the kind of smut Isaak read on the internet could be trusted. The young elf's hair fell in braided locks of gold. Her hair was also full of clumps of dirt and snatches of pine. The same mess marred her otherwise fanciful jade-colored vest.

"Someone! Please!" the young girl called out in English because, obviously, she could speak English.

"These isekai worlds are so lazy," Isaak said from where he watched. "Probably writes in English, too."

"Get b-back!" the young elf whimpered said as one of the hellhounds snapped at her with a mouth full of menace. "S-sister... Please..."

"And now we wait," Isaak said. He wiped away the sweat from his palms as he cast his gaze around the dense forest. If he knew his isekai, the other guy would arrive at any moment.

The largest of the hellhounds, its fangs a veritable misshapen crown of twisted tooth, threw back its red mane and loosed a haunting wail. The two smaller hellhounds stomped closer and closer and clooooser to where the elvish maiden wept and trembled.

The tall soldier pines shook with movement, and Isaak whirled to face the arrival of the loser who had accepted the Goddess' boon without even a whine. Isaak would kick him hard in the nuts. It would be important to establish dominance.

But the explosion of sound turned out to be a few odd looking birds, no human at all.

"SISTEEEEEER!"

The young girl cried out and the three hellhounds pounced.

"Jesus Christ!" Isaak exclaimed as the hellhounds ripped and tore and chewed and crunched. "Holy shit! That is not good!"

He covered his face with his hands as the hellhounds continued to gobble up the hapless maiden. He watched the horror unfold between the cracks of his fingers. He did not think the other guy was going to show up anytime soon.

"Well... That was unexpected," Isaak said after the three hellhounds had wandered off, their bellies full.

They had not left much of the elf behind.

"What sort of rotten hero doesn't show up in a situation like this," he muttered to himself, still flabbergasted that the other guy had ignored the hapless maiden's cries for help. "He must a real scumbag."

Isaak just stared at the red mess the hellhounds had left behind.

"Just awful," he said with a mournful shake of his head, and then his eyes fell upon a pair of unworn leather shoes. The young elf had kicked them off her feet in her violent struggle.

Isaak looked down at his own feet and the useless sandals that adorned them.

"Just awful what happened to her..." he said as he entered the small clearing. "But, I mean, I really need proper shoes. And I... I don't think... she needs them anymore."

Isaak looked around at the soldier pines that flanked the clearing, but he did not see anyone. That scumbag had probably ran off in the opposite direction when he had heard the maiden's cries for help.

"Just dreadful," Isaak said, but his face brightened as he tried to slip his feet into the discarded shoes. "These feel fantastic. Like silken underwear for my toes."

He tossed his old sandals into the woods and took a few tentative steps around the clearing with his new elven shoes. They were, without a doubt, fantasy. They felt like expensive hiking boots with how they gripped the earth, but at the same time they offered the utmost comfort.

"First good thing to happen to me today," Isaak said brightly, but then one of the elvish girl's bones shifted, and he frowned. "I should... probably leave."

He had no destination in mind as he tiptoed away from the forest clearing. He had planned to follow the other guy wherever his loser isekai senses directed him. Isaak himself could only wander aimlessly and hope that he did not trigger another event. Because this was, without a doubt, an awful isekai world.

The last thing he wanted was to be found near the hapless maiden's chewed bones.

"Hold there, human!"

"Really?" Isaak shouted, but the rasp of steel shut-up his tongue.

"I have little patience for you and yours, human," and the voice revealed itself to be a stunning beauty adorned in arcane armor that clung to her supple body in a grey metallic embrace.

"Who are you?" the beautiful woman asked, her narrowed blue eyes matching the icy disdain of her expression. "How did you enter our woods?"

"I don't mean any harm!" Isaak said, his hands in the air. He could not be sure if the woman was another elf because of how thick and wavy her golden hair was, but it seemed only too likely.

"You? Harm?" the woman, clearly a warrior, asked in mock. She carried a small round shield trimmed with gold in her right hand and an ornate spear in the left. "You will answer my questions or I will- "

The elf stopped suddenly, and Isaak followed the confusion of her gaze to his feet.

"Those shoes..." the woman said, her blue eyes narrowed, and then they exploded with realization.

The lithe warrior lunged at Isaak in a massive tackle of steel. The air was blasted out of his lungs as he collapsed onto the forest floor. The elf planted a mailed foot on top of his chest.

"Where is Anthea?!" the icy woman shouted over him. "What have you done to my sister!?"