Father, how has the Polaris Serpent lived?
Was he also born as a small Little Green Snake?
Or was he born white like me?
It’s impossible to imagine his larval stage from that massive and majestic form.
Being a snake, he probably didn’t start out grand.
There’s a high chance he started as a small, weak thread snake.
After birth, he likely competed with his siblings for food.
Maybe he even killed a few uncles or aunts to survive. I’ve seen the ferocity of baby snakes myself.
After surviving that, he would have left his parents’ side.
According to Pelerian, there aren’t many snakes with strong paternal or maternal instincts.
It’s different from centipedes that carry their young.
Even Medusa Mom didn’t do much beyond minimal nurturing.
If Gunter hadn’t come looking, and if we had grown too big to cling to our mother’s scalp,
Mother would have sent us out into the wild and returned to being bald.
Father would have grown.
Most snakes end their lives no differently from ordinary wild animals.
It’s no exaggeration to say that the Giant Green Snake is the final evolution that ordinary snake monsters experience.
But at some point, Father must have taken a different path.
White scales stand out in the great forest.
For such a monster to survive, it must be strong.
When that body became as massive as it is now,
And when he could spew beams from his mouth to burn enemies,
He probably became the strongest monster ruling over a forest.
And then he met Mother.
I tried to imagine what that romance was like.
The romance of snakes.
My parents’ romance.
‘Hmm…’
Actually, I don’t know anything about romance.
How did my parents from my previous life meet again?
Ah, I remember.
Father had a complex.
He was missing the index and middle fingers of his left hand.
To me, it didn’t seem like something to be so ashamed of, but Father was always embarrassed by this disability.
He always wore fake fingers made of silicon, called ‘prosthetics’.
When he first met Mother and was building a good relationship,
Father said he was inwardly rotting away.
Even by the third date, he still hadn’t told her about his fingers.
He really liked the bold and pretty Mother.
He was afraid of what expression she would make if she found out he was missing his index and middle fingers.
So Father always walked only on Mother’s left side.
Only holding hands with his right hand, hiding his left hand in his chest when sitting opposite her, keeping it in a fist.
Somehow, he wasn’t found out.
No, that’s just what he thought.
Mother sensed the awkwardness in Father’s behavior.
Even as she grew older, she was originally the type to be a strong woman.
The moment she stood on Father’s left side, Father awkwardly moved to Mother’s left side again.
When this was repeated, Mother boldly grabbed Father’s left hand.
Busted.
Instead of shouting “What’s this!”, Mother laughed.
‘What? I thought you were actually married and hiding a wedding ring or something.’
‘Ah, hahaha…’
‘If you hide anything from me in the future, you’re dead.’
I’m not sure what lovable quality he found in that line.
Father fell in love with Mother, and they eventually got married.
Instead, Mother’s personality was extraordinary, so Father ended up living a tightly controlled life.
The fiery love eventually led to fiery discord.
Perhaps (current) Father had a similar romance.
When Medusa Mom said she fell head over heels for a human hero, Father let out a long sigh.
I’m not sure if that was a sigh of relief.
Of course, he shed icy tears right after.
Since they fought and broke up, there must be some backstory.
Anyway, after exchanging one taming skill each with Father, we seem to have come to an understanding.
Father came back with me riding on his back.
That feeling was really amazing.
The sensation of looking down on everything on the ground.
It was a completely different dimension from flying. The massive Father supported me firmly.
Since Father couldn’t enter the indoor zoo, he stayed outside the house on the cliff.
And I discovered an amazing fact.
Father disappeared somewhere every time he went to sleep.
It wasn’t teleportation or invisibility.
I would go to sleep and come out the next morning to find Father had returned.
Spending time with Father was added to my daily routine.
Of course, we weren’t having cheerful father-son chats.
I was being taught snake combat techniques.
‘Like this?’
I whipped my tail in the air.
It was practice for ‘tail whipping’.
Considering that ordinary snakes don’t use a ‘tail whipping’ technique, this must be a skill unique to monsters.
‘Is this right?’
I looked up at Father.
Father shook his head.
It seemed that wasn’t quite it.
He was the taciturn type and rarely spoke.
Instead, he demonstrated.
He raises his large tail.
Then, as if riding a wave from his spine, he moves with a fluid motion and whips the air with his tail.
As that wave continues to the tip of his tail, it accelerates like a whip for an instant.
Boom!
It was no different from the sound of thunder.
At the moment the tail tip bent at the impact point, there was clearly a sonic boom breaking the speed of sound.
An incredible technique.
It seems he didn’t become a Polaris Serpent just because of his looks.
I repeated the technique Father showed me several times.
I seem to be gradually getting the hang of it.
And finally, when I whipped my tail in the air, I heard the sound I wanted.
Whack!
As expected, the important thing is to give a wave to the body.
I needed a technique to use my tail like a whip.
Whack! Crack!
I happily made cracking sounds.
Father watched me intently.
And these actions were not in vain.
Because…
「You have acquired the skill ‘Tail Whip lv1’.」
What I learned from Father actually formed into real skills.
Not everything you learn automatically creates a skill.
But seeing skills like tail whipping being created one after another, I wonder if this is because it’s an easy skill for snakes to learn.
In other words, I’m being taught snake techniques by a snake who has been through thick and thin.
This tail whipping is not a skill to be taken lightly.
「Using Poison Scales lv2.」
「Using Tail Whip lv1.」
Whack!
It’s like wielding a whip with sharp glass shards attached, and even coated with poison.
I now have an excellent close-combat attack method besides biting.
The next thing to learn is…
Of course, the destruction beam.
