Chapter 81

Snake Report: Life as a Wanted Criminal, Day 5/ Life as a False God, Day 1

When I was a kid, I remember people telling me I could grow up to be anything I wanted.

Maybe a firefighter, or a policeman.

An astronaut, or a Scientist, or a doctor.

An engineer or businessman- maybe even a Project Manager!

Never did they say I could be a tiny snake- but they did say "anything" without clarifying, so I suppose it was somewhere in the mix.

Hisss...

If only they could see me now.

I have become a worshiped god of brutal carnage.

Respected, beloved, and feared equally by my followers. Praise be to me.

As always with these circumstances in my life, it was terrifying. I wish never to repeat it, and I truly thought I was going to die.

A theme?

Yes, that's the theme.

I've been flirting with death so much recently, you'd think we would just seal the deal already: get hitched and pop-out a couple of kids. Maybe build a nice white-picket, Gothic themed fence and adopt a dog named Cerberus.

And yet... I think perhaps it's time death and I started seeing other people.

The spark is just lost, you know? It's not them, it's me- being worshiped like a god.

Hiss...

Where do I even start with this one?

I'm not sure exactly how to explain in a linear sort of way. A lot has happened, snowballing rather quickly onto itself.

Going off towards the relative and arbitrary East on that Forest Trail, winding in along confusing paths for a few miles...

Losing track of direction, becoming hopelessly lost, eating some mushrooms- almost getting eaten by something that "looked" like it was mushrooms...

Getting more lost, giving up hope on ever finding my way out of this god-forsaken subterranean nightmare of glowing plants and weird roots as the growing sensation of someone watching me seemed to grow at an exponential rate...

All that happened, and probably some extra bits I've overlooked, but I'll just skip ahead to the feeling I was being watched. It was like a chill down my spine, only it wouldn't go away.

It was enough to send instinct into [Statue] mode.

Everywhere I had the guts to slowly turn my head, I thought I could make out creepy eyes. Wide and feral, they were staring at me, lurking within the forest beneath the forest.

They never blinked.

That made it so much worse.

Hunted: I was being hunted. Absolutely not a good feeling even when you manage to recognize it- but by the time I realized this: no matter where I turned to look- something was looking back at me.

Yeah.

Goblins.

A metric-butt-load of Goblins.

Goblins, Goblins, Goblins: everywhere.

I really don't know what I was expecting.

In retrospect, this was probably the extra reason that the humans went West and not East.

They were smarter than me: they clearly recognized this way was a bad plan.

This area is called this place the "Gob-Zone" for a reason. If even that OP-sword-wielding Zane thought it was a good idea to go the long-way round... even half-listening from a distance to the human conversation, I should have put two and two together and guessed that there were going to be full-on hordes of them.

But I guess I'm just a bit off my game recently.

So... yeah. Hundreds upon hundreds of Goblins. A breed that's apparently smarter than your average monster, and capable of pack-hunting. Capable of rudimentary tool use. Capable of staring for a really really long time without blinking.

It didn't help that they're also really good at creeping around, or that I don't even physically have ears, but I went and slithered right on into enemy territory.

Just minding my own business, wandering straight into a trap. One second it's a happy sort of wilderness hike, and the next it's like that scene from the hills-have-eyes.

One second everything is still, and then it's complete and utter madness: being abruptly surrounded by Goblins waiting-in-ambush is a bit frightening, but having no clear escape path is even more so.

The ground- well it wasn't ground. I was on top of a root or something by them time I realized, so no immediate downward escape could be performed (Not that I could focus on much of that after a crude looking arrow "twacked" right in front of my head) so human-side really just fell apart.

Hands off the control, Instinct-override went straight into [Terror mode] and from there, things might have gone a bit haywire.

I might have taken a walk on the wild-side, in all the worst ways.

[Terror Mode] is not a joke.

Arrows and stuff coming down at me, human-mind shut-down right into the pitiful state of "NONONONONONONO-" sort of panic where you just do whatever it is you can do without much of a plan.

I imagine we've all seen it.

An emergency of some kind and people just flail around: running back the wrong way, ignore the clearly labelled exit signs or just do something uselessly stupid.

But, I'm not really a human anymore.

I'm not even close to a human.

Terror Mode, in my case, was no longer curling into a ball and screaming while I waited to die. I'm a monster: an animal, and I was backed into a corner.

You don't back an animal into a corner.

Bad things happen.

Hiss...

Yeah: it was like a full-on conversion of every bit of mana I had, turned into Green-Fire to be thrown about every plausible direction.

Like one of those light up spinning toys you see in amusement parks.

Just twirling around in a panicked circle.

You can imagine it, I'm sure. Around and around, like someone going full-tilt voms off the hurl-a-wurl at the county fair. Like when the silly orange-fish uses flail, only it's super-effective: that was me.

And in the fire... well that was all the Gobs.

...

Yeah, no real points were earned here. I'll start with that, I got maybe... 10 points... Ten lousy for killing a few Dozen unfortunate Goblins, and maybe their chief. I leveled up once, so really I think I only got 5 points.

Which is sort of a bad-trade, when risking death.

I don't know.

I mean, I should have figured getting points wasn't going to be easy, but I'm actually wondering if those 5 might just be some form of pity "style" points, and not really something I can count on reproducing. Maybe it was the Goblin Chief, but I'm leaning towards one of those "bonus-points" options like when you hear the announcer shout "double kill" or something and the game gives you a little medal as if to say "Great job, have a sticker!"

Ug.

Really though, I never want to experience that again.

The [Leviathan Breath] twirl-a-whirl is no joke, but it's also horrible. Besides the constant urge to vomit, it comes standard with flaming mushrooms, flaming roots, and flaming Goblins.

All-around nightmare fuel, even without the screams.

Oh the screams... straight to the vault with those.

100% repressed.

Anyways, for some obvious reasons: not too many survivors came out of that mess, and as the smoke cleared away it all settled down quickly enough.

It was a bit embarrassing.

Outside of the blast-radius, there were still dozens more even after that crazy-spinning. I could see them, weird eyes all staring and looking scary.

I can't keep up [Leviathan Breath] magic for a super long time. It has a cool-down of sorts depending on how much I use, and I'm not a big snake. My lung capacity is lacking a bit, and [Leviathan Breath] seems to put an emphasis on the "breath" part.

End of the day, even with magic I'm just a snake.

A small snake, with fangs that fail to puncture mushrooms 9/10 times I try and practice my [Super Deadly Bite] attack.

So there I am, looking for any swath of ground not covered in plant-matter: mind set completely on escaping my inevitable doom, still wriggling and spinning around to try and face all my enemies at once in an effort to look dangerous. I was completely ready to spit fire balls in vain as I pissed myself to the early grave...

and I basically missed the fact that none of the Goblins were even making a single effort to try and attack me again.

It took me a full minute of doing the [Special worm roll] and waiting for the next round of arrows, or swords, (or axes and sick-looking spears) before I noticed that instead of another assault, they had all thrown down their weapons and bowed.

Bowing, to me.

Not just ordinary prostrating: they were legitimately heads-on-the-ground-style grovelling.

Their ambush had failed so badly, that they were actually begging me for forgiveness.

Hisss...

So, I thought maybe I'd gotten a bit stronger after the Megalodon.

But it's more than a bit, I think.

I've also been travelling up. In every game I've ever-played, "up" in a dungeon typically means weaker enemies.

I don't think a magical serpant from the depths of hell was something they expected.

Hiss...

Well, anyways: that's more or less how I became worshiped.

As of this moment, I am the Tiny-Snake God's Mortal instrument. May all tremble at the force of reckoning beneath his name.

I'm a bonafide Divine Being.

Praise the Snake.