WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: WeTried Translations

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ Ophidian of the Immortal World ◈

Chapter 1: Becoming a Snake

──────

In pitch-black darkness, the loud rustling suddenly stopped.

A large rabbit that had been innocently hopping through the brush stiffened like a log and collapsed. A closer look would reveal a black snake, nearly blended into the darkness, biting the rabbit's neck and coiled tightly around its entire body.

The rabbit convulsed several times before going limp.

Yet the black snake did not move.

Although the rabbit had already stopped moving, the snake did not release it until several minutes later, as though making certain it was dead.

Had anyone witnessed the scene, they might have thought the black snake's expression looked strangely human as it uncoiled, as though it were relieved and sighing.

And that was exactly right.

The black snake was relieved. It sighed.

It just was not human, so that sigh came out as a hiss while it flicked its tongue.

This black snake had emotions like a human's and thought like one.

Because it had once been human.

More precisely, it had been human in its previous life.

That was right. The black snake was a Reincarnator.

Whether it made sense to attach the word “person” to a snake or not, Jegyeong had been reincarnated all the same. He had lived once as a human, died once, then begun a second life as a snake in this unfamiliar, mysterious world.

Jegyeong's second life had not been easy from the start.

The moment he barely managed to break out of his egg and breathe in the air of this new world, a terrible hunger crashed down on him as if it had been waiting.

The hunger was so intense that he nearly lost consciousness. He had no room to think. He frantically chewed and swallowed the shell he had just broken out of, then devoured three or four other eggs scattered nearby.

Only after barely calming his hunger did he realize that he was no longer human.

Accepting his death had not been particularly difficult.

He remembered his previous life. He remembered the final moments, when he had sensed death approaching through the agonizing pain of a disease that had tormented him for far too long.

Accepting his second life as a snake was much harder.

The human identity born from his memories of his former life had nearly driven him mad.

What saved him from that madness was the hunger that returned almost immediately, as though it had never left.

Even while half out of his mind, he could tell at once that this powerful hunger was abnormal.

How long had it even been since he had filled his stomach?

With the pain of his belly seeming ready to stick to his spine, instinct led him toward the remaining eggs. He could not overcome that instinct, nor did he even want to resist it.

Once again, he devoured five or six eggs.

Including the tiny snakes sleeping inside their broken shells, not yet able to open their eyes.

Thinking about it now, they had been his siblings.

More accurately, siblings-to-be. He had devoured both his own kind and his blood relatives...

He did not think much about it.

Even now, the hunger he had felt then was horrifying. It had not been a situation where he could weigh his options.

If he wanted to live, he had to eat, whether they were siblings or not.

Sniff, sniff!

Jegyeong, who had been tearing into the rabbit meat, swallowed the roughly one-third that remained in one bite and pressed his body close to the ground.

Without a sound, he slipped through the brush and climbed a nearby tree that was not particularly large.

A few breaths later, a dark shape appeared.

It was a boar.

But it was no ordinary boar.

Setting aside its size, its entire body was covered in thick hair like a sheep's fleece. When Jegyeong had first seen this “boar” from behind, he had mistaken it for a sheep because of that fur.

‘That damned pig.’

It had an incredible nose for the scent of blood.

Jegyeong had once had prey stolen by that pig. It had sauntered over, snorted as though telling him to get lost, and forced him to retreat.

The thing was a tyrant of this area.

More than one or two unfortunate animals had lost their food to it. A few that had resisted instead of giving up their prey had been badly mauled by the ruthless beast.

‘This isn't enough.’

Up on the branch, Jegyeong regurgitated what he had swallowed in a hurry.

Then he began tearing off and eating the slightly softened meat, little by little.

In his previous life, Jegyeong had not liked snakes.

Still, he had vaguely heard that snakes swallowed prey whole and digested it slowly.

Yet he buried his head in the food and tore at the meat like a male lion he had once seen in a documentary. He had not consciously decided to do it. It simply came naturally, and Jegyeong found nothing strange about it.

His teeth were not arranged with one each on the top, bottom, left, and right like the snakes from his previous life.

They were packed tightly together by the dozens, like a shark's or crocodile's teeth.

In truth, perhaps he was not a snake at all, but something that only resembled one.

Gulp.

After chewing and swallowing the final piece, Jegyeong raised his head, suppressing a faint sense of regret.

Through the long branches and leaves, he could see a brilliant sky.

The light resembled the auroras of the polar regions he had only seen through television or the internet in his previous life, yet it was different. It was more colorful, more mysterious, and more distant.

When he first saw it, he had been so overwhelmed by its splendor that he could not look away for a long time.

The beautiful, wondrous sky was also filled with numerous moon-like celestial bodies of various sizes, shining brightly.

That part was not terribly surprising.

He had already guessed as much and prepared himself to accept it.

‘Another world...’

Jegyeong had enjoyed genre novels in his previous life.

Especially when his illness had worsened to the point that he could barely leave his bed, he had piled them beside it and read constantly.

Among the countless novels he read were plenty of reincarnation stories, where protagonists died once and were reborn in another world.

He would be lying if he said he had never envied those protagonists, who built wonderful new lives in unfamiliar worlds without worries or hardship.

The more intense his pain became, the closer death came, the more desperate that wish had grown.

Could the wish he had held then, a wish he had made to a god he had never believed in throughout his life, have come true like this?

If so, he should have made that wish a little more specific.

Well, what use was thinking about that now?

After opening his eyes in the new world, Jegyeong repeated the same routine where he had been born. He ate and slept.

Two days? Three days? Maybe longer.

Naturally, his food had been the other eggs.

There had been over several dozen eggs in the nest where he was born. Jegyeong only left the nest after devouring every one of them.

Then he saw it.

A snake far larger than even the anaconda he had once seen on television and thought was monstrously huge.

It could no longer be called a snake.

A dragon? A lesser dragon?

Its full body did not fit within his field of view, so he could not even guess how large it was. All he knew was that its body was thicker than any tree around it.

Whenever it flicked its tongue and breathed, the surroundings seemed to tremble.

Faced with a colossal life-form that looked like it belonged in a monster movie, Jegyeong froze like stone.

It was not fear. It was simply the shock of seeing something so unreal.

Once the shock faded, he felt no fear at all. Instead, he felt familiarity and relief.

The instant he had seen the monster, Jegyeong had instinctively known.

It was his parent.

He did not know whether it was his father or mother, but it was the being that had brought him into this world.

Their first meeting as parent and child should have been touching.

Unfortunately, that warmth did not last long.

Three days? Four days?

Jegyeong had been comfortably tearing apart the food his parent, whether father or mother, brought from somewhere. Then he widened his eyes as two people suddenly descended from the sky.

That was right.

They were humans.

Their skin was not blue. They had no horns on their foreheads, no extra eyes, no tails.

They shared the same human appearance Jegyeong had possessed in his previous life.

Yet only their appearance was the same. What they were inside was entirely different.

The moment they appeared, suffocating pressure rolled over him like a wave.

It was difficult to breathe.

“Grrrrr.”

The enormous black snake, which had been watching its child's meal, sensed the disturbance and growled fiercely.

Its terrifying presence seemed to freeze the air, but the two intruders did not seem bothered in the slightest.

“Lone Ink-Scaled Python. There's no mistake. And it's this large, too.”

“Haha. Senior Brother, at this size, we could make dozens of sets of Treasure Armor.”

Jegyeong could not understand what they were saying.

Still, he understood that they were not afraid of the monster snake, which was larger than most buildings. If anything, they were pleased.

He could not guess the source of their confidence, but their attitude filled him with dread.

Jegyeong quickly hid himself.

He crawled deeper into the cave and forced his body into a small crack in the wall. He could not bring himself to flee outside.

He followed instinct's warning.

Boom! Boom!

Soon, terrible roars and thunderous explosions echoed through the cave.

The violent vibrations alone left Jegyeong unable to think clearly. His entire body ached, and his head spun.

If he relaxed even slightly, he felt as though he would pass out.

‘What the hell is going on?!’

Driven by curiosity, that troublesome emotion, he cautiously poked his head out.

Something flashed over and over.

Explosions erupted near the enormous snake's head, while something pale appeared and disappeared repeatedly.

His eyes hurt after watching for only a moment.

‘Ah.’

He did not know exactly what was happening, but he could vaguely sense that his parent was at a disadvantage.

The fierce roar from before now sounded like a scream steeped in pain.

Thud!

Jegyeong's feeling was correct.

The enormous snake, which had been struggling desperately, let out a long, agonized cry and collapsed helplessly.

After seeing that much, Jegyeong wedged himself back into the crack in the cave wall.

He stopped even his breathing and waited as though dead.

Without a doubt, it was the moment he showed the greatest patience in both his previous and current lives.

Until then, Jegyeong had thought he did not feel much attachment to his second life as a snake.

Only now did he realize that had been a mistake.

He wanted to live.

He had wanted to live when he was human, and he wanted to live now that he was a snake.

Human or snake, all living things possessed life, and survival was a living creature's only instinct.

How much time passed as he desperately held his breath?

He briefly dozed off, but he endured, stubbornly holding on to his consciousness.

Fatigue was one thing. There was nothing he could do about the terrible hunger.

In the end, Jegyeong could not endure any longer and cautiously poked his head out.

The devastated entrance of the cave came into view. It had collapsed and cracked as though it had been bombarded.

Neither snake nor humans were anywhere to be seen.

Had the enormous black snake, his parent, died?

The worried thought briefly crossed his mind, but Jegyeong soon crawled desperately across the ground.

His eyes had gone half wild from hunger. The need to fill his stomach immediately consumed his thoughts.

Fortunately, a rat was peacefully digging in the dirt nearby.

Jegyeong silently crawled toward it, then bit the back of its neck in a single strike.

The entire hunting sequence was smooth, as though he had repeated it dozens, hundreds of times.

That was how his second life in another world truly began.

‘Something's strange.’

His unplanned independence and his first hunt.

He did not know how many days had passed since then.

About a month, perhaps? Even if his estimate was off, it could only be by a few days.

It was a long time in one sense and a short time in another, but clearly not enough for a snake that had once been too small to wrap around even a single egg to grow beyond three meters.

‘Or maybe it is? Considering that snake's size...’

Jegyeong thought of the enormous snake that had likely been his biological parent in this life.

When he considered that monstrous size, his own abnormal growth rate seemed somewhat understandable.

‘Will I grow that large too?’

If so, this endless appetite made sense as well.

How much would he need to eat to grow that large? He could not even imagine it.

As he wandered through this vast forest, or perhaps mountain range, Jegyeong had seen all manner of things.

Still, he had never seen a monster that defied common sense like his parent.

In a natural ecosystem, size was almost everything. His parent had likely been a high-ranking, perhaps even top-ranking predator in this region.

If so, Jegyeong was also the seed of a predator.

‘But growing that big isn't necessarily a good thing.’

He had seen it for himself.

Superhumans existed in this world.

His parent, which had seemed capable of wrapping around and crushing a small building, had been taken away by only two people.

He had not directly seen them take it away, but the circumstances made it almost certain.

If superhumans existed among people, perhaps similar beings existed among beasts as well.

That meant this might not be a world like his previous life, where large animals naturally occupied the top of the ecosystem.

If that was the case, a large body might not be an advantage. It could become a weakness.

It would make him easier for those who hunted large prey to notice.

This unfamiliar world was full of the unknown.

Though he was not completely satisfied with it, Jegyeong did not want to lose the second life he had gained so pointlessly. That was why he had tried to move farther from the cave.

Those beings who looked human but were nothing like humans, those “aliens” by his standards, had instilled extreme fear and caution in him.

* * *

At times, Jegyeong gave in to instinct, usually hunger, but he tried to think and judge rationally.

That was one of his greatest strengths.

His competitors were animals by default, and animals hardly thought at all.

Perhaps not all of them were like that, but the animals he had seen and encountered so far were slaves to instinct.

They ate when hungry and slept when tired.

Of course, they possessed their own form of caution, but it was only basic.

Crack!

The animal with the broken neck went limp.

It basically looked like a lizard, but had a short body, long legs, and three joints on each limb. It was quick, especially when jumping.

If Jegyeong had not lured it with the red grass it liked and drawn it into lowering its guard, he would not have hunted it so easily.

‘Will this be enough?’

Jegyeong held it in his mouth and headed for his temporary nest.

It was located high in a thick tree and had originally belonged to a small family of birds.

Two days ago, Jegyeong had driven out the bird family and made it his temporary nest.

It was high enough that creatures unable to climb trees could not reach it. Branches and leaves hung thickly overhead, keeping it from becoming a target for birds of prey.

The only possible threats were birds that did not fly high, but none of them could match him in size, so they rarely dared to attack.

‘This is only a temporary measure too.’

It was a good nest, but he could not use it for long.

His body grew larger every day, and naturally heavier as well.

A branch that did not shake yesterday would shake today, then crack tomorrow.

There was a little exaggeration in that, but Jegyeong truly had to change nests several times for that reason.

The tree he currently used as a nest was the largest in the area.

When even this place could no longer support him, he would have to travel far again.

Based on his experiences so far, that moment was sure to come soon.

‘Can it last two more days?’

In the middle of the tree was a hole, neither large nor small.

It was probably a remnant of another animal's home. Jegyeong stored the prey he had partially eaten, or had not touched yet, inside it.

It was a reserve for days when he came back empty-handed or failed to eat enough. Even though he had stored quite a lot, it looked insufficient to Jegyeong.

The amount he ate was increasing every day.

‘Should I start targeting bigger prey?’

Until now, Jegyeong had followed one rule above all else.

Safety.

Even if something seemed like an opportunity, he never tried if he thought he might be injured.

He only targeted easy prey he could catch without being hurt.

That was also the habit of most animals, but Jegyeong was even more cautious than that.

Thanks to it, he had survived and grown safely until now.

But that approach seemed to have reached its limit.

Everything he could safely hunt was a small animal, and those animals were no longer enough to fill his stomach.

If he truly wanted to satisfy his hunger with only creatures like that, he would have to catch ten a day.

His hunting skills had reached a mature level, but that did not mean he succeeded every time.

Hunting required luck as well as skill.

No matter how skilled he was, if he could not even find prey, he would be left sucking his fingers.

Of course, he did not have fingers anymore.

‘It can't be helped.’

As he tore into the meat of the animal he had hunted yesterday, Jegyeong made up his mind.

Starting tomorrow, he would target creatures a little larger.

‘It's a shame I don't have venom. Does that mean I'm a python after all?’

Since beginning life on his own, Jegyeong had been learning about himself.

What he could and could not do.

Whether he had any useful weapons.

Through that process, he learned that his only weapon was his large, sturdy body.

He was a snake, but not a venomous one.

‘Maybe snakes in this world don't have venom.’

Jegyeong reflected once more.

He needed to forget the knowledge from his previous life. He could not fall into any fixed assumptions.

Over the past month or so, that knowledge had sometimes helped him, but it had also become a trap.

After several experiences, Jegyeong tried to discard the knowledge of his previous life.

Yet he had not fully let it go, and that knowledge had turned into preconceived notions that repeatedly caused him problems, large and small.

Footnotes:

Join our discord at https://dsc.gg/wetried