Courtesy and morality had hit rock bottom in this world.
Otherwise, one wouldn’t hurl insults about someone’s appearance upon first meeting them.
Even so, I might have been able to overlook that with my broad snake’s heart.
But wasn’t it too much to fire a crossbow without hesitation?
If I hadn’t been a supreme swordsman capable of catching a hundred arrows, I would have died here with my head pierced.
The opponent was undoubtedly a psychopath.
So it was only natural that I swung a dagger to punish him.
Also, just cutting off the fingers holding the crossbow was my Buddha-like mercy that even Buddha himself would applaud.
But perhaps those knothole-like eyes couldn’t recognize such great compassion.
“Aaaargh, you snake bastard, aagh!”
The old man clutching his hand spewed curses wildly.
He mentioned Chugota earlier, and honestly, comparing me to that wyvern is an insult to me too.
I decided I should take two more fingers.
“Step back, Doctor!”
The large man beside him kicked at me.
Though I have reflexes quick enough to twist my head and catch arrows in my mouth, in truth only my head and neck can move that swiftly.
The man’s kick was quite fast and not easy to dodge.
If I had to take a hit, I should take something in return.
The moment his foot touched my body, I bit his shin.
Crunch!
My teeth didn’t sink in easily.
This bastard was wearing greaves.
I bounced off and regained my balance in mid-air before landing.
“What the…!”
Though I couldn’t inject poison through the greaves, I succeeded in breaking them.
When the man shook his leg, broken wooden pieces fell from his trouser leg.
“You peanut-sized thing!”
I’m wronged — I was the one who got insulted and attacked first.
When the man pulled his hand from his clothes, there were handleless blade daggers between his fingers.
They could be called leaf blades.
Whoosh!
When the man swung his hand through the air, five daggers were fired.
Retreating here would be amateur.
Calmly dodging without fear would be first-class.
Since I’m supreme, I move forward instead.
Clang!
Ack!
I almost got hit by the daggers.
Strangely, the daggers drew weird trajectories as they curved through the air.
The blades grazed my scales as they passed.
If my scales weren’t so hard, I probably would have been wounded.
But I’d already dodged two.
「Using Heart-eating Leap lv4」
I accelerate sharply to dodge the remaining three at once.
Intending to steal his heart, I bit at his chest.
Ugh-
But this time too, my teeth felt different.
He clearly wore thin chain mail under his clothes.
Moreover, it wasn’t ordinary steel. Even though my teeth caught it, it was unscathed.
‘Good, now I’ll climb up to his nape…’
That’s what I tried to do.
I was going to bite hard at his exposed nape.
But reflexively, I started retching.
“Sauk!”
I made that sound when I tried to roar but ended up retching instead.
I had smelled something fishy.
It was coming from that human…
“Ah, right!”
The man smiled brightly with joy.
“How’s the taste of the ampoule, you bastard!”
“Sauuk!”
“Damn it, getting scared by such a small snake. Take my punch!”
Crazy.
The human threw a punch at me.
I spun once in the air and bounced away.
The smell was truly horrible enough to make my head spin.
Though I took the punch, getting far away actually made me feel better.
Finally, I threw up.
Whew, I feel a bit better now.
“This is really annoying.”
The human who had been jumping around yelling “Take my punch!” just moments ago tried to act serious again.
Then he suddenly ripped his cloak forward.
Wondering what he was doing, I saw him spread the cloak into something like a net.
“Since this small thing seems to have special abilities… I’ll capture it.”
Quite often, humans I’ve met showed similar reactions.
I must look like a very rare and precious monster to poachers.
Like a red Gyarados that’s a different color from the others.
But I had no intention of letting myself be caught in a net.
I was also tired of hearing comments about being small.
“Huup!”
The human threw the net.
I lightly swung Dawn that I had drawn at the incoming net.
Slash!
The net split in two and rolled pathetically on the floor.
The sword continued flying and stuck into the shoulder of the shocked opponent.
“Kuk!”
Indeed, the chain mail he wore was clearly not ordinary material.
Dawn, forged by a dwarf meister, only sank in about an inch.
The human gritted his teeth.
“How could I, Zhanil Fezhe, suffer such humiliation…!”
At that moment, smoke burst from the human’s body.
He set off a smoke bomb like some ninja.
When the smoke cleared, only Dawn lay fallen there.
The guy had fled in a hurry without any apparent shame.
“Saak!”
I was about to chase after him yelling “Come here!”
If Pelerian hadn’t screamed.
“Kyaaaaaaah!”
Since I’ve known him.
This was the first time I’d seen Pelerian scream so undignifiedly.
Even before, when I fed his ring to a beast, he didn’t act like this.
Could there be something more terrifying than being buried forever as excrement?
Looking at Pelerian’s face, it seemed so.
“No, no, nooo!”
‘What, what’s wrong?’
“This is a dream, this can’t be!”
‘First try to calm down.’
I quickly tried to calm him, worried that Pelerian might burst into tears.
“Calm, y-yes, I need to calm down.”
‘Take a deep breath.’
“G-go that way. Slowly.”
That way meant the opposite direction from where the humans had fled.
Why would someone who would normally yell “Snake, tear those rat bastards to pieces!”?
Though I didn’t understand, I moved in the direction he wanted.
I had already glimpsed it when entering this room, but strange tanks were installed on the walls.
Very bizarre creatures were floating in the tanks.
Whether they were alive or dead was unclear.
“They’re all in hibernation.”
