“This was messy”

Even though she was completely confused, the lizard-thing was still a much stronger monster than me. Even my drunken snout wasn’t enough to immediately kill her, and not wanting to risk her snapping to jump on me, I bit her a few more times, before moving to a safe distance, waiting for her to die of venom/bleeding out/shame. And believe me, there was a lot of blood. It reminded me of one of those blood-shooting lizards from earth (“Possible new secret art?!”)

Now that I’ve calmed down… It seems the chase took me about half of the way back to the nest.  Surprising that mother didn’t notice the fight yet. Just to be safe I moved closer to home, but still observed the lizard. 

Her movement was getting slower and slower. (“Poor gecko :(“) (“Serves it right!”). My soul sight could see the fire inside her, slowly changing color, becoming redder and redder. On closer inspection, she even seemed to have some mana… though it was connected to her shadow? I couldn’t locate any mana core. What was easily visible, was the storm of panicky red thoughts, slowly losing energy. 

Whoosh! As if a powerful gust of wind blew, her mind-sea got more energetic! I could barely see, but something changed about the soul as well. She seems to have woken up from.. Whatever my skills did to her. Still lying down, the lizard looked around, and noticed me. Her soul flared up! A feeling of pressure came off her, making me move back in fear. She took one step towards me and another and...

And that’s all her body could do in this state. Paralysed, bloodied, too weak. I could see hatred in her eyes, she tried to screech something at me, but she didn’t have enough strength even for that. Soul fire, slowly disintegrating into separate extinguishing coals.

Mind, no longer a raging ocean, but a single repeating wave, getting weaker and weaker.

And now, just a body.

(“I’m gonna eat that!”) (“I’m gonna eat that?”) (“I’m vegetarian starting today… oh wait, I’m snake now”)

“Snek yeah!”

Nooooo! Damn you!. I mean it’ still better than before but.. But.. my fear conqueror :( . Well, all's well that ends well.

(“Oh no”) (“Oh no no”) (“NoooOOoo!”)

“SSSSSSSssssssSssssSSsss”!

The aftereffects from when I bit the gecko while still “connected”  assaulted me. (“Ouchh”)

As expected, only the times when I was delaying hijackers thoughts through meditation cause delayed side effects. (“The painnnn”) (“I’m suffocating!”). Why is the snake life tormenting me so… 

Finally, everything over,  the combined effects of sleep deprivation, relief, and adrenaline crash, made me pass out.

***

Mother snake was shocked to see her snakeling lying outside of the nest, next to a sneaky gecko, a natural enemy of all young. She activated rush, thunder-slither, and in a blink appeared next to the child- safe, only passed out. Somehow it’s a gecko that was defeated. But how? In the jungle you win if you are stronger, there are more of you, or you are better prepared. Only 2 animals are here, the gecko being the ambush predator, so how could this…. She sensed something watching. Multiple somethings. It seemed to be coming from the lakes waters but nothing was there?

Doesn’t matter. She gently grabbed her son… moved up. Something was wrong, was it the unknown? A kind of illusion attack?... nothing happened… also it seemed to come out of her child. She carefully picked him up, feeling her mind slightly emptier, sleepier, and thinking slightly harder. 

It felt kind of nice after a while. It helped her forget the pain from the wounds from tonight's fight.

Reisinling

10k views! Yey! A thank you thingy with an updated map later today I guess? Multiple chapters today, multiple chapters tomorrow, we are sprinting to the finish of arc I! 

There are no vegetarian snakes. According to google it’s a result of their body shape (their intestines can’t be long enough to do it effectively) but who knows