WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ I Became the Ophidian of the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 2: Hellish Domestic Violence
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Right after I distributed my stats.
My vision filled with white light.
For a long time, I couldn't see or hear anything.
Then I heard a voice.
*「Your Mental Strength is 20. As a bonus, you have acquired the unique trait ‘Indomitable.’」
*「Your Potential is 20. As a bonus, you have acquired the unique trait ‘Relentless Growth.’」
I cheered inwardly.
Didn't those sound extraordinary just from the names alone?
I'd suspected it ever since I was told to distribute my stats, but maybe I'd been reincarnated into a world with a status window.
I had no idea what effects traits called Indomitable and Relentless Growth had.
Still, if they were unique traits or whatever, they had to be special.
What would happen now?
Would I be born as a baby, like in the web novels I'd read?
Maybe I'd retain my reason and memories, then grow up being called a genius from childhood.
How long did I spend worrying and imagining things like that?
At some point, my body began to form.
Was I inside my mother's womb?
It felt warm.
Time passed, and at last, the moment of my birth arrived.
Light entered my still-undeveloped eyes along with pain.
I was thrown into the world.
I had been born.
Just as I was about to let out a powerful "Waaah!" like I'd prepared for...
"Saaak!"
That was the only sound that came from my mouth.
My vision slowly cleared.
The first thing I saw wasn't my mother's warm smile.
No, it was definitely a woman's face, but she wasn't human.
No person could have such a massive body or smooth scales.
Thousands of eggs surrounded me.
Hatchlings were emerging from them in real time.
Thread snakes slid out of their eggs in streams of mucus.
My body trembled.
Could it be that "Birth Status" hadn't simply meant social standing or what kind of spoon you were born with?
Did it include species too?
It said 10 was an average person.
Then was 1 a snake, while 20 was a dragon?
...Was that how it worked?
Countless hatchlings and that monstrous mother were inside the dark cave.
I looked up at her.
That monster was my mom?
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【Medusa Serpent Lv. 89】
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When I stared at her, that name appeared above the snake's head.
She quietly watched her hatchlings emerge.
Most of them had already broken out of their eggs.
A purple tongue flicked from her lips.
Shiririririt-
The sound of wind passing through a narrow space echoed through the cave.
The instant I heard it, my whole body stiffened.
They said your knees went weak when you stood before a predator. It felt exactly like that.
Not that I had anything like knees now that I was a snake...
Sure enough.
All my siblings, who had been wriggling around like insects, stopped at once.
Some trembled in terror and shit themselves over and over.
And I was so scared that my mind was about to collapse...
*「You have been exposed to the Serpent's Fear. You are protected by the trait ‘Indomitable.’」
I didn't shit myself.
I was scared enough to piss myself, and my body was shaking, but I somehow wasn't about to truly lose my mind.
I was an ordinary nobody who had been reincarnated as a snake, the son or daughter of a human-faced monster.
Wasn't that horrifying enough to drive anyone insane?
Yet somehow, I felt calm.
'Is this the power of 20 Mental Strength?'
There was no other explanation.
It really had been a good choice.
...No, allocating only about 5 points to Birth Status would have been the truly good choice in the first place.
Tsk, tsk!
At that moment, my mother made a strange sound.
Calling her Mother felt awkward, and calling her Mom made me want to die, so I decided to call her Medusa Mom.
The moment I did, my brothers and sisters all began crawling toward Medusa Mom.
It was hard to believe they had been trembling in fear just moments ago.
The baby snakes climbed her huge body and settled across Medusa Mom's scalp.
I had no idea how it worked, but their bodies stuck firmly to her scalp.
After hesitating, I followed them. I had a feeling I shouldn't stay where I was.
And my choice was right.
Medusa Mom's scalp had grooves carved into it, packed so densely they were disgusting.
The moment I inserted my tail into one, my body locked firmly in place.
In other words, thousands of brothers and sisters had become a wig for their bald mother.
Hair that rippled as if it were alive.
No, hair that actually was alive.
It swayed as gorgeously as hair in a shampoo commercial.
Looking satisfied, Mother lifted her head and swept her gaze over the children who remained stiff and frozen.
Children too frightened to obey her command.
Mother raised a loving switch to discipline them.
In other words, she swung her tail.
Thud, thud, thud, thud!
After that enormous tail passed through, nothing remained but blood and chunks of flesh.
Hundreds of my siblings became bloody pulp in an instant.
Medusa Mom seemed extremely strict when it came to raising children.
My fate, being born under such a mother, must have been thanks to my Birth Status of 1.
...I had no idea whether I was insane or perfectly normal right now.
I clung to my mother's head and swayed with the rest of them.
It probably hadn't even been a week since I was born.
Then the armored man called Gunther chopped off Mom's, no, Medusa Mom's head.
My monstrous mother died.
Just as I'd worried while distributing my stats, I became a parentless orphan at an early age.
This, too, must have been thanks to my Birth Status of 1.
* * *
Wow.
I really crawled my tail off.
Medusa Mom's blood covered my body.
I was too frantic to remember exactly how I escaped.
After entering the cave, I turned to look back.
That monstrous knight was gone, but the village farmers were still guarding the entrance.
"Start several fires. Some of them might try to escape!"
"I'll go report this to the castle."
The farmers, who had been shaking in fear until just a moment ago, seemed a little excited now.
They were the first people I'd encountered since being born here.
For some reason, I could understand the language they spoke.
Part of me wanted to go over there and at least try talking to them.
I was actually a person, not a snake... Please help me out a little here. My body's like this now.
Of course, the only sounds I could make were things like "Saaak!" and "Shirit, shirit," so that was impossible.
"We need to wipe them all out."
"We have to kill them while they're still immature. They could become dangerous if they grow up."
It was clear those farmers intended to kill me and my siblings.
As far as I knew, there was no way out from inside the cave...
This was bad.
Right. There was no way I could escape on my own right now.
I needed to assess my situation more objectively.
I hid behind a rock and closed my eyes.
When I squeezed them shut and focused, something interesting appeared.
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【Little White Snake Lv. 1】
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That's right! I wasn't a Medusa Serpent Lv. 1.
I was a different species from my mother.
It made sense. None of my siblings had human faces, either.
They also couldn't shoot rays from their eyes to turn prey into stone.
If I had to guess, perhaps I could evolve someday once my level increased.
Or maybe something would change when I shed my skin, since snakes did that.
My species wasn't the only thing I could see.
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【Traits】
[Indomitable], [Relentless Growth]
【Skills】
[Poison Fang Lv. 1], [Quick Crawling Lv. 1 (new!)]
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Those were the resources I had.
Indomitable was related to Mental Strength. I wasn't sure what Relentless Growth did.
The skills I could actually use were things like Quick Crawling and Poison Fang.
It wasn't listed as a skill, but perhaps because I was born in a cave, I could see clearly even in the pitch-black interior.
Otherwise, I would've died long ago.
Since I had something called Poison Fang, I seemed to be a venomous snake.
Still, I honestly had no idea how useful they would be or how potent the venom was.
They probably wouldn't help me survive just yet.
Quick Crawling was the skill I'd acquired this time.
I'd gotten it when I crawled with every ounce of strength I had earlier.
The name was lame, but it seemed important.
Even when I shouted, 'Quick Crawling!' in my mind, the skill didn't activate.
'Do I use it like this...?'
So I crawled with every ounce of strength I had.
Slither, my body moved.
...I thought I might've gotten a little faster.
Honestly, though, it wasn't dramatically faster.
Medusa Mom used to let her children roam free whenever she rested in the cave.
I'd crawled around diligently back then, but I'd never gained a skill like this.
So why had I gained it this time?
Wasn't it because I'd crawled as fast as I possibly could?
That was the only thing that came to mind.
So I crawled with all my heart once more.
Slither, slither.
Slither, slither, slither.
I couldn't sweat because I was cold-blooded, but I crawled like my life depended on it.
Then something changed.
*「Due to your tremendous Potential, your skill proficiency rises rapidly.」
*「Quick Crawling Lv. 1 has become Quick Crawling Lv. 2.」
Quick Crawling rose to Lv. 2.
I could feel that I was a little faster now.
I was still far slower than a person running.
Even so, if I trained hard and got it up to Lv. 10, maybe I could somehow survive.
Nope, not happening~
I couldn't do that.
After crawling with every ounce of strength I had, my entire body was exhausted.
Wasn't it impressive enough for a one-week-old to babble, let alone crawl?
Long live Potential 20.
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【Status】 Hunger, Exhausted
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Damn, I was hungry.
Medusa Mom fed her hatchlings prey she had caught herself, regurgitating it from her mouth.
It was half-digested and disgustingly vile, but I used my strong will to eat that mushy meat every day.
I was in my growing phase, getting bigger by the day.
But now I'd gone an entire day without food, so I had no energy left at all.
Crawling so much only made my hunger worse.
For now, I should head deeper into the cave, where my brothers and sisters were.
If I moved together with thousands of snakes, my odds of survival would surely be better.
I had been an only child in my previous life.
Now, I had a whole lot of reliable siblings.
That naive expectation soon shattered.
My brothers and sisters were tangled together in the dark interior of the cave.
They weren't embracing passionately to get through this difficult time.
Amazingly, they were biting and tearing at one another.
The moment Medusa Mom disappeared, they acted on instinct.
You pathetic bastards!
Snakes normally swallowed and digested their prey whole.
But the teeth of my siblings and me were packed together and pointed, like a shark's. They seemed to have evolved to tear apart prey.
And they were using those teeth to rip chunks of flesh from one another.
Change of plans.
It seemed best to wait until those bastards had satisfied their hunger first.
Just as I turned to hide in a crevice between the rocks...
"Shirit."
A snake larger than me blocked my path, flicking its tongue.
Uh, big brother, could you move aside?
I flicked my tongue too, but he didn't look like he had any intention of moving.
I focused my eyes and inspected my vicious big brother.
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【Little Green Snake Lv. 3】
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Come to think of it, I was the only white one, so I was bound to stand out.
My big brother's level was two higher than mine.
Had he secretly eaten bugs or bats while Mom wasn't looking?
No, judging by the blood around his mouth, it looked like he had just eaten another younger sibling.
I checked the traits and skills of this domestic abuser.
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【Traits】
[Ferocity]
【Skills】
[Poison Fang Lv. 2], [Quick Crawling Lv. 2], [Tear Apart Lv. 1]
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His skills were better than mine.
Did my big brother have Potential 20 too?
Instead of answering, he launched himself at me with a "Saaak!"
Footnotes:
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