WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: HidingTurtle
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◈ I Became the Ophidian of the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 3: My So-Called Brother's Repeated Fang Attacks
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003.
I was hungry.
Ridiculously enough, at that life-or-death moment, I felt an overwhelming hunger.
I wasn't human.
I probably wasn't even an ordinary animal, but a monster.
Whether monster or human, you died if you didn't eat.
The difference between humans and monsters was probably how intensely they felt that hunger.
It was a fierce hunger.
An instinct that drove you to hunt with your life on the line.
Looking at the snake in front of me, I felt that kind of hunger.
I wanted to fight and tear him apart.
If I ripped off those scales, there would be sweet blood and flesh underneath.
If I ate and digested it, I would grow stronger.
That was probably why my other siblings were fighting like that too.
But I had reason.
I also had enough Mental Strength to overcome that instinct.
There was nothing to gain by fighting my brother right now.
I slipped past my brother as he lunged at me with a "Saaak!"
Quick Crawling Lv. 2! It really was excellent.
The problem was that my brother's Quick Crawling was also Lv. 2.
I successfully dodged him, but my brother chased after me with terrifying speed.
He was faster than me.
Even if I escaped into a crack between the rocks, my brother was also a snake. He would crawl in after me.
Did that mean I had to fight and win?
For now, I crawled onto a rock in front of me.
Then I saw the sight beyond it.
For a moment, I was stunned, but a sharp pain quickly snapped me back to my senses.
My brother had bitten my butt.
No one had ever bitten my butt before.
I thrashed in pain and surprise.
My butt burned fiercely. It wasn't just the wound. It felt like venom had been injected.
Of course. My brother had Poison Fang too.
As I struggled, I bit into my brother's side.
Something streamed out from the venom glands inside both my cheeks.
A venom attack!
*「The proficiency of Poison Fang Lv. 1 rises sharply. Poison Fang Lv. 1 has become Poison Fang Lv. 2.」
The effect was excellent.
My brother seemed to be in pain much like I was.
The feeling in my butt gradually went numb.
Since I'd bitten my brother's side, I should have the advantage.
Wasn't it about time I could win?
Thud!
No.
My brother flung me away, and I rolled across the ground.
Weight classes mattered this much in a brawl.
Neither of our venoms seemed particularly powerful, so both my brother and I could still move more or less normally.
Still, I didn't run.
I simply watched as my brother raised his head straight up and approached.
Flutter, flutter.
The moment I heard that sound, I looked up once, then quickly hid in a crack between the nearby rocks.
A situation similar to earlier unfolded.
My brother bit my tail. A burning pain surged through me again.
Fortunately, venom wasn't limitless, so I could endure it.
Then someone punished my brother in my place.
It was a bat hanging from the ceiling.
A resident of this cave that normally didn't dare act up because it feared Medusa Mom had seized my brother's body in its jaws.
That was what I had seen beyond the rock.
The bats fluttered down and snatched up snakes that were alone.
One bat had noticed my white body and flown over, but instead of me, who was hidden in the crack, it grabbed my brother.
At that moment, agonizing pain shot through me.
My brother was biting down hard on my tail to keep from being carried away by the bat.
To avoid being dragged along with him, I sank my teeth into the rock crevice.
And then...
Snap.
Damn.
My tail came off.
Fortunately, my vital organs were fine, but a piece of tail about the length of a finger had been torn away.
When I looked up, my brother and the bat were fighting in midair.
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【Bladeclaw Bat Lv. 4】
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True to its name, the bat had claws as sharp as blades.
My brother really was vicious.
The two tumbled to the ground in a tangled heap.
The bat's wings seemed broken as it twitched, while my brother had been reduced to a ragged mess and was drawing his last breaths.
Then I realized what I needed to do.
Blood kept flowing from my severed tail, and unbearable hunger gnawed at my stomach.
I needed to replenish my nutrients.
Being born a snake had one advantage. I didn't have to chew everything thoroughly before eating it.
I opened my mouth wide and swallowed the bat first.
It was only about the size of a baby's fist.
Its claws were sharp enough that they might tear my stomach, so I left only those behind.
Then I tried to eat my brother too, but he was too big.
Sorry, brother. My other brothers and sisters will take care of the rest for me.
Ah, my head was spinning.
I must have lost too much blood.
Dragging my much heavier body, I hid in the crack between the rocks.
I scattered as much dirt as I could over myself to hide my body.
To hell with everything else. I needed to recover first.
*「You have defeated Little Green Snake Lv. 3 and Bladeclaw Bat Lv. 4.」
Huh? Did that count as me defeating them?
*「Your level has increased.」
*「Your level has increased.」
Hehe, what a crazy level-up spree.
I closed my eyes for a moment.
Soon, an irresistible wave of sleep came over me.
* * *
Gasp! I fell asleep.
How many opportunities had I missed because of sleep?
I had actually overslept on the day of the college entrance exam and had to spend another year preparing.
Naturally, my father beat the living daylights out of me. That was probably fifth among the ten things I regretted most in my life.
So had I made the same mistake in this new life?
If you asked whether I had sprawled out and slept while the villagers were talking about wiping out the snakes, I had an excuse.
It was sleep I simply couldn't resist.
My body had probably taken a certain amount of damage, and I had swallowed an entire bat.
Now, I felt refreshed.
My dizzy mind had cleared, and my body felt light.
My stomach was comfortably full, but I had no problem moving.
Before leaving the rock crevice, I checked the important things first.
I had definitely heard the voice say that my level increased.
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【Little White Snake Lv. 3】
【Skills】
[Poison Fang Lv. 2], [Quick Crawling Lv. 3], [Tear Apart Lv. 1], [Venom Resistance Lv. 1], [Bleeding Resistance Lv. 1]
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Wow!
My once-empty skill window had filled up with all sorts of things.
Predation, Tear Apart, Venom Resistance, and Bleeding Resistance. I had gained several skills I didn't have before all at once.
There was something else that stood out too. My skills had leveled up quite a bit.
I probably gained Venom Resistance and Bleeding Resistance while I slept, since I hadn't heard any voice announcing that I acquired them.
It wasn't the strong who survived. It was the survivors who became strong.
I might have been the smallest one here, but I would survive to the end.
I had no intention of giving up.
With my resolve hardened, I emerged from the crack between the rocks.
Ah, I wanted to give up.
There were so many people outside the cave.
Some soldiers were holding torches. They looked ready to enter the cave at any moment.
Steeling myself, I slowly approached the cave entrance.
The one thing that made me superior to my siblings, and even to dead Medusa Mom, was that I could understand human speech.
I could eavesdrop on the soldiers' conversation.
"Wouldn't they all die if we just set a fire and smoke them out?"
One soldier asked reluctantly.
A person wearing armor, probably the guard captain, pointed at the torch with an irritated look.
The torch flame flickered to one side in the wind.
"The wind's blowing from inside to outside. Do you think that would work? And even if you try to choke them with smoke, snakes stay pressed to the ground, so it won't."
"Yeees..."
"Don't be scared. The mother was dangerous, but the hatchlings aren't even proper monsters. They're no different from ordinary snakes. Fasten your gaiters properly and put on your gambesons."
The guard captain reassured his subordinates.
He and the soldiers wore quilted armor called gambesons.
They were like coats made with thick, sturdy linen padding. With something like that on, even Poison Fang wouldn't be able to pierce through.
No matter how many siblings I had, they would be exterminated before long.
"We enter at dawn."
As I was about to retreat deeper into the cave, a question occurred to me.
Could I inspect a human's stats too?
I focused my eyes and tried to analyze the guard captain.
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【Guard Captain Lv. 23】
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Was Guard Captain the name of its species?
That wasn't funny at all.
After confirming that much, I gave up on trying to learn more.
All I could see was the name and level.
It was the same as when I tried to inspect Mom's stats.
It seemed I couldn't properly analyze opponents much stronger than me.
I stopped wasting time and headed inside.
The cave interior was a mess.
The siblings who had filled their bellies had stopped killing one another.
The bats must have realized that our snakes weren't easy prey, because they only went after scraps of corpses.
At a glance, my siblings had dwindled to fewer than a thousand.
"I wish I could give a speech like, 'We all run at once before those bastards enter! The lucky ones will surely survive. Let's meet again someday, alive!'"
But I couldn't.
I passed the siblings looking at me and went deeper into the cave.
The cave Mom chose as her home wasn't especially large or deep.
At its very end, though, there was a fairly spacious hollow.
That was where Mom slept. You could call it her bedroom.
Haa, returning here did not bring back memories of my deceased mother...
All I could smell was the disgusting stench of filth scattered everywhere. Traces of Medusa Mom.
Still, I thought these things could be the key to escaping alive.
I didn't know whether my plan would work, but... ah, there they were.
What I found were animal statues.
Of course, Mom didn't have a hobby of collecting art. They were lunchboxes she had petrified and stored away.
Medusa Mom had a bad habit of keeping food near where she slept and lying down to snack on it.
Petrification was an amazing ability.
Even jaguars with terrifying fangs and boars with absurdly long snouts froze solid the moment they met Mom's eyes.
They didn't rot. Once their petrification was undone, they returned to being fresh, living food.
That was why Mom had displayed so many monsters here.
I strained my eyes and checked their names.
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【Horn Jaguar Lv. 33 (Petrified)】
【Geiger Hog Lv. 29 (Petrified)】
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These two looked the strongest.
That was obvious even without looking at their names or levels. I had seen Mom hunt them.
If these guys were freed, even the guard captain and soldiers outside would have trouble dealing with them.
It would be great if I could escape amid that chaos.
I had watched and remembered how to undo these monsters' petrification.
Was it like this?
I climbed onto the two monsters' heads and squeezed out as much venom as I could.
It seemed I could unleash a full dose of venom from my fangs about twice.
I couldn't pierce the rock with my teeth, so all I could do was coat it.
Still, this should be enough. Mom had only licked each statue once with her venom-coated tongue.
Even then, their color quickly returned and the petrification came undone.
Ah, I really was Medusa Mom's child.
When I sprayed venom on them, the monsters' petrification gradually began to lift, just as it had when Mom did it.
Color slowly returned to their bodies.
Once they regained consciousness, the monsters would immediately try to leave the cave. I could use the chaos then to escape...!
"Let's go in!"
At that moment, a shout came from the cave entrance.
Was dawn already here? The entrance was extremely noisy.
What about the petrification?
It hadn't lifted yet!
Color was slowly returning to the two monsters, but they hadn't even twitched yet.
For now, I looked toward the entrance to see what was happening.
The soldiers were entering.
They stood in two lines, holding torches.
"Check the gaps between the rocks carefully! One stab with your spears is all it takes!"
The guard captain really was dangerous.
I had considered hiding in a crack and slipping out later, but I was glad I gave up on that idea.
The soldiers thoroughly stabbed to death my siblings hiding in the crevices.
"Leave the ones that get away! We've got people waiting outside too!"
One or two snakes broke through the encirclement and escaped, but it seemed they had prepared for even that.
How could soldiers in such a backwater village be so thorough?
Most of my siblings acted on instinct.
In other words, they began fleeing deeper into the cave to avoid the soldiers.
The soldiers didn't rush. They slowly advanced inward.
Mom's bedroom was by no means small.
But with nearly a thousand snakes covering the floor, it looked cramped enough that there wasn't even room to step.
Even the soldiers who reached this place didn't dare move farther in.
"What do we do?"
"I don't really want to go in there..."
The soldiers looked uncertain.
I felt relieved.
It seemed they still hadn't noticed the petrified monsters hidden in the corner.
For me, who needed time until the monsters woke up, that was an opportunity.
"Hmm."
But the guard captain was truly vicious.
He raised his torch and watched the direction the flame flickered.
"So there was a ventilation shaft after all. Now that dawn has come, the wind direction has changed."
"Then..."
"Bring out the oil bottles!"
The soldiers grinned and pulled out the brown glass bottles hanging from their waists.
My siblings didn't understand the situation, but I immediately realized what was happening.
"Once they're lit, retreat at once. Throw them!"
Dozens of brown bottles flew through the air at once.
They crashed loudly, scattering foul-smelling oil everywhere.
The snakes recoiled from the smell, but the smell was not what they should have feared.
"Light it up!"
Several soldiers threw their torches.
Flames roared to life.
My home was burning.
Footnotes:
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