-----???/Our MC-----

I have no idea how long I've been slithering around down here in this wretched place, but it's been quite the grind. More children are being spawned, more Frogs are consumed along with a few of those damn Centipede fuckers, nothing special.

What is special though is the current target before my eyes. An Elroe Fenegrad, aka the T-Rex looking Earth Wyrm.

Damn, so many good Skills to choose from and I can only pick one. Although... if I remember correctly, then I might just be able to score two for one.

Now how to go about felling this mighty beast? My offensive capabilities are largely limited and I'd been hoping to have a chance to hone them gradually later. Just my rotten luck that we'd encounter a fucking Earth Wyrm. That or D is fucking with me.

Honestly, it's probably D's fault.

Fuck it, we ball. "CHARGE!!!!!"

And like that, me and several dozen of my "children" all proceed to bum rush the fucking Earth Wyrm... and we promptly get flattened. No surprise there, though the Wyrm does at least seem to be mildly confused about the whole thing if nothing else.

Then, in spite of my various resistances, the Wyrm deals fatal damage to me... and I feel something happen as some sort of pulse is released from my body.

This causes all of my surviving offspring to go fucking mental... and several loud hisses come echoing down from other passageways before more evolved snake monsters show up and start trying to murder the shit out of the Earth Wyrm. Da fuq?

Wait, did [Revenge] proc from me taking "fatal damage"? Oh that is fucking hilarious. I mean I was hoping it would have that effect, but I wasn't entirely sure it would actually work like this.

The "fight", if you could call it that, devolves into a chaotic mess as this big fucking T-Rex wannabe's absolutely covered by Serpent's who are just going to town on this Earth Wyrm. In the mean time, I've stayed latched onto the fucker and continued pumping my Prismatic Poison into the fucker until he eventually gets ground down from the whole "death of a thousand cuts" strategy. Acting fast, I fire up [Greed] and review my gains.

LET'S FUCKING GOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, this is a thing. Elemental Wyrms automatically get the maxed out version of their respective Element's Elemental Resistance Skill by default. Therefore, since I have the [Earth Wyrm] Skill, then I gain the maxed out version of Earth Resistance, which is [Terrain Nullification].

You know what that means? This little fishy's going on a Wyrm hunt.

...

While continuing my hunt for either a tunnel that leads out to the ocean to find a Water Wyrm or a tunnel to the Middle Layer to find a Fire Wyrm, I find something else entirely. It starts with a distant humming sound. As I get closer it becomes more apparent that rather than "humming", it's better described as a "buzzing" sound. Suspecting I know full well what I'm slithering into, I go to investigate it and sure enough, it's a Hornet nest. Well, Elroe Finjicote's, but it's all the same shit at the end of the day.

After hitting them with a quick [Appraisal], I see that the regulars only have [Night Vision], [Poison Sting], [Flight], and [Poison Resistance]. I have no idea how [Poison Sting] would react with me, but I'm willing to give it a shot. Also it'd be interesting to see what happens if I acquire [Flight].

With that in mind, I manage to lure one down to me using [Charming Evil Eye] and quickly kill it and steal it's [Poison Sting] before repeating the process with a second one to get the [Flight] Skill then I grab a third for the [Night Vision] Skill since that leads to [Vision Expansion] which leads to [Perception Expansion]. At that point I was considering leaving, but I happened to catch a glance of a High Finjicote and noticed it had the [Cooperation] Skill.

With that in mind, I rinsed and repeated my previous strategy for dealing with these fuckers and now I'm the proud owner of the [Cooperation] Skill, which I'm pretty happy about since I think it's supposed to be stupidly expensive in the Skill Shop, like not quite [Immortality]-expensive but not far off either.

Either way, I'm happy with my acquisitions so far.

...

I have no clue how long it's been since the Finjicote Nest attack, but I found something amusing and slightly annoying. The Elroe Basilisk. I quickly ate that fucker's soul and looked upon my newly gained Skill with complicated feelings.

Yep. These damn little petrifying lizards seemingly have [Vision Expansion] as a fucking Racial Skill, which means they come with maxed out [Night Vision] due to it being a prerequisite.

Now I just need to find a little bastard with [Auditory Expansion] and I'll be set.

But that'll have to wait I guess, because I finally hit Level 10 of my current Race, so it's time to evolve. Heeding the words of Administrator S, I try to aim for a decent low-Tier Evolution to start with.

As I said once before, the Serpent Evolution Tree can potentially enable even a First Evolution Serpent such as myself to immediately jump to a Final Evolution if they meet certain requirments and they retain the benefits of all Evolutions they take before that. The problem though is that jumping immediately to a High-Tier or "Final Evolution" prevents you from being able to backtrack to earlier Evolutions with simpler requirements.

For this reason, it's advised to still try to slowly work your way up the tree rather than skip straight to the end. With that in mind, the lowest Tier Evolution I can go for right now is becoming an Elroe Baladorado, which is the same species as the giant snake that Kumoko faces early on in her journey.

Selecting that option to evolve to, I feel myself excreting some sort of muddy liquid that quickly hardens into what I suspect to be an egg as the evolution process begins.

After some time passes, I finally feel sensation return to my body and I crack out of the egg before appraising myself.

Oh yeah, those various Weapon-Manship Skills were an absolute bitch to get with no opposable limbs besides a tail, but all I needed was some degree of proficiency for [Ruler of Instinct] to kick in and start the passive growth.

As you can see, I kinda no-lifed the acquisition of nearly every Skill I could find in the Shop that I could get without purchasing. Most of what I'm missing is either thread-related or involves Wyrms/Dragons. Then of course I still need to actually level everything up.

I wonder what I should do next?