I Became the Ophidian of the Apocalypse - Chapter 17

WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle

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◈ I Became the Ophidian of the Apocalypse ◈

Chapter 17: Chimera Pafnacha

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After a fulfilling day of work~

Stretch both legs out, and you're in your bedroom back home.

Humming the melody looping in my head, I worked.

Well, I was really just hissing, but still.

The job itself was simple.

I was butchering the Swamp Alligator I caught.

It was far bigger than me. Swallowing it whole was out of the question.

Normally, I would have pierced its soft belly skin, crawled inside, and torn it apart from within.

Today, though, I decided to reward myself for all my hard work.

Several days had passed since I escaped Pelerian's Dungeon. Aside from sleeping, I had focused entirely on raising my skill levels.

At last, after Elementary Elemental Magic: Earth, I had made Elementary Elemental Magic: Fire one of my own skills too.

There were probably water and wind magic skills as well. Hopefully, I could get them someday.

And being able to handle fire meant I could cook.

That's right.

In an act of outrageous luxury, I planned to roast alligator meat.

Call me spoiled because my stomach was full if you wanted. I'd been holding back ever since I first learned to use fire magic.

Didn't I deserve praise at this point?

If anyone was watching over me, I hoped they'd praise me.

I'd even taken special care to make sure no smoke rose from the fire.

After digging a pit, I gathered dry branches and set them alight.

Then I wrapped the severed alligator tail in mud and threw it into the fire pit.

I'd seen this cooking method on YouTube once. It was a video by some foreign YouTuber about surviving in the wilderness.

They had used chicken instead of alligator meat, but wasn't alligator supposed to have a texture just like chicken?

It should be fine.

Drool streamed from my mouth.

Yeah, I should rest until the meat cooked. A quick nap wouldn't hurt either.

My status window had become much fuller over the past few days.

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【White Horn Snake Lv. 10+】

【Traits】

[Indomitable], [Relentless Growth], [Horn]

······.

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Once I reached Level 10, I could no longer level up.

I'd expected it. It was the level cap, so there was nothing I could do until I evolved.

It was a little disappointing after all the hunting I'd done, but I accepted it.

Then, as I kept hunting, a strange message appeared.

*「Unabsorbed Magical Essence is being stored.」

After that message appeared, a plus sign showed up after my level.

It was probably a good thing.

More importantly, though, was my skill window.

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【Skills】

[Billy's Horn Lv. 3]: Cut Lv. 1

[Elementary Elemental Magic: Fire Lv. 3], [Elementary Elemental Magic: Earth Lv. 3], [Poison Fang Lv. 10], [Predation Lv. 7], [Tear Apart Lv. 8], [Stealth Lv. 6]

[Venom Resistance Lv. 5], [Bleeding Resistance Lv. 3], [Pain Resistance Lv. 6], [Heat Resistance Lv. 8], [Petrification Resistance Lv. 1], [Breath Holding Lv. 4], [Survival Instinct Lv. 5], [Leap Lv. 5], [Mana Detection Lv. 2], [Acceleration Lv. 3]

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Wahaha, not only had I gained more skills, but many of them had leveled up too.

The skill I had currently borrowed through Billy's Horn was called Cut.

I learned it from a dog-sized mantis with sickle-like claws.

I didn't have claws of my own, but thanks to Relentless Growth, I was able to learn it anyway.

With a swift swing of my tail, I could cut through soft things.

It was a skill I absolutely had to acquire.

I used it to cut off the alligator's tail too.

There was another reason I needed to keep hunting even if I couldn't level up.

It wasn't just to raise my skill proficiency.

There it was!

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※Evolution Available:

[Poison Fang Lv. 10]

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Quick Crawling had been a somewhat vague skill, but after reaching Lv. 10, it evolved into the incredible skill Acceleration.

Then what would Poison Fang become?

Poison Fang was the alpha and omega of my offensive power.

Surprisingly, Elementary Elemental Magic: Fire wasn't very powerful.

The flame I could produce by consuming a huge amount of mana was probably about as strong as five lighters.

If my opponent moved quickly, it would be hard to even burn them.

That was why evolving Poison Fang had been my highest priority.

And now, the moment had come to savor the results.

First, though, let me taste the alligator meat.

Ohhh, delicious.

It was wonderfully juicy.

All right, shall I evolve?

*「You consume Magical Essence to evolve the skill.」

All that Magical Essence accumulated in place of the levels I couldn't gain.

This was the moment it would shine.

*「Poison Fang Lv. 10 evolves into a higher-tier skill.」

Yeah, let's go!

*「Poison Fang Lv. 10 has become Deadly Venom Lv. 1!」

Yes!

Deadly Venom. What a romantic skill name.

But the romance didn't end there.

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You may select the type of Deadly Venom.

【Neurotoxin】

【Hemotoxic Venom】

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Just looking at the choices made my heart race.

Was it because there weren't many chances in life to choose exactly what I wanted?

Unlike Acceleration, Poison Fang had two evolution paths.

Deadly Venom: Neurotoxin, and Deadly Venom: Hemotoxic Venom.

I roughly knew the difference between neurotoxin and hemotoxic venom.

Not every venomous snake possessed the same type of venom.

Sea snakes and cobras usually had neurotoxin.

As the name suggested, being bitten by a venomous snake with neurotoxin caused the nerve cells to become paralyzed.

If the toxin spread to the central nervous system, the diaphragm would become paralyzed, making breathing impossible.

Your breath would literally leave you.

It was terrifying venom.

Hemotoxic venom was just as horrible.

If you were bitten by a venomous snake with hemotoxic venom, you could consider that body part completely fucked.

I'd seen it on YouTube too...

...Honestly, about thirty percent of my knowledge came from YouTube.

Anyway, I once watched an experiment where they mixed a single drop of viper hemotoxic venom into human blood.

They mixed only one drop into a generous amount of blood, yet the thin blood solidified like jelly.

Imagine that happening inside a bite wound.

The instant you were bitten, it would feel like the wound was on fire.

That was because the hemotoxic venom destroyed and dissolved cell membranes.

Then the skin would turn purple and begin to necrotize.

Of course, the venom could spread through the blood vessels and kill its victim as well.

When it came to pain, it would surpass neurotoxin.

Loud and agonizing hemotoxic venom, deadly and relatively quiet neurotoxin.

So my choice was...

*「You have selected Neurotoxin.」

*「Poison Fang Lv. 10 has become Deadly Venom: Neurotoxin Lv. 1.」

I didn't have a sadistic streak that made me enjoy other people's pain.

Of course, hemotoxic venom probably had advantages of its own.

Still, neurotoxin seemed more useful to me right now.

It would be best if I could possess both hemotoxic venom and neurotoxin, like some venomous snakes.

Could that happen someday?

Who knew.

All right, now that I'd evolved Poison Fang, should I finish today's to-do list?

I had a task I performed every day lately.

It was observing a monster.

I didn't have some creepy voyeuristic habit, but I couldn't help it.

That monster was incredibly interesting.

It was a Chimera made by a fairy Archmage, after all.

I'd already encountered it once.

That was when I fell into this basin along with the Horn Jaguar.

I ran away back then and couldn't even check its name, but after learning about it, I wanted to meet it again.

Actually finding it wasn't easy, though.

How was I supposed to find something that crawled underground in this vast basin?

I thought about it for a long time, but the clue was surprisingly close.

The place where I first found it. In other words, I just had to search the edge of the basin.

I found the spot where the Horn Jaguar had fallen.

It brought back memories, but there wasn't a single trace left to remind me of that incident.

There was only the cliff and bare ground where neither trees nor grass grew.

Wow, that cliff was really high.

The angle was nearly vertical too, so it looked impossible to climb.

Even if I borrowed Flight, my mana would probably run out first.

Come to think of it, did that mean I had to live in this basin forever?

...Ah, whatever. Things would work out somehow.

All right, let's get ready.

* * *

I hid in a large tree.

Before, I had perched on a boulder, but that felt unsafe somehow, so I climbed up here instead.

At the spot where the Horn Jaguar had been, a large wild boar lay dead.

My work.

Of course, I didn't drop it from the cliff. I hunted it.

It was easy, actually. I quietly approached with Stealth and bit its ass. It got furious and jumped around like crazy.

I lured it all the way here, in front of the cliff.

It huffed and puffed on its own, then couldn't breathe and dropped dead.

Wasn't it underestimating venomous snakes a little too much?

It wasn't even a monster, just an ordinary wild boar.

Someone might think that was cruel.

Still, I did one thing to the dead boar's body.

Before it cooled, I tore open its carotid artery.

It was possible thanks to my improved Tear Apart skill.

Blood gushed from the dead boar's neck.

The blood formed a puddle, then slowly soaked into the ground.

These were the exact same conditions as with the Horn Jaguar.

Just because I recreated the conditions didn't mean it would definitely come, but it worked yesterday.

And it worked today too.

Thudududum-

It was coming.

Did it smell the blood that had seeped into the ground?

What was it, a shark?

Thududududum-

One thing was certain. It was approaching fast enough to shake the ground.

Yeah, it must be hungry.

Looking at its size, that wild boar would probably be nothing more than a single bite.

Come on. Come eat the boar.

It's a feast I set out just for you.

Thududududududum-

Ah, it passed near the tree.

The tree shook heavily enough that I nearly got flung off.

Then, at last, it burst from the ground.

Kwang!

It was so strong that it practically smashed its way out of the earth.

The first thing to appear was its eight legs.

Maybe because it had been made by mixing in some tarantula-type monster, it looked somewhat like a spider.

Several sharp spines protruded from its carapace-covered legs.

It wrapped those legs around the boar's corpse.

What a thrilling way to hug something.

There were things I could see now that I hadn't seen before.

The way it moved resembled an upside-down spider.

But spiders had heads with mouths on them. This thing's maw was in the center of its body.

Like a starfish, it swallowed the boar whole with the enormous mouth attached to its torso.

Then it crawled back underground.

Nice.

It had taken the wild boar I worked hard to catch, swallowed it in one bite, and gone back underground, but I wasn't mad.

That was because I had prepared the boar's body.

With the same spirit as mixing laxatives into frozen food to punish a thief stealing food from the dorm kitchen, I injected the boar full of Neurotoxin.

My venom glands were so empty that my head hurt, so unless it was especially tough, it would suffer badly.

Sure enough, it didn't disappear right away.

Instead, it remained aboveground, twitching.

Did the venom work? It looked poisoned.

Then it began spewing something from its mouth.

“Kwaeek! Kwek!”

It would have been nice if it were coughing blood, but it wasn't.

Bones sprayed from its mouth like a fountain.

“Geurk.”

Then, after letting out a thunderous burp, it vanished underground.

It looked like it was saying, “Thanks for the meal~”

Apparently, it hadn't been poisoned after all.