Limitless Evolution As a Snake

There it is, my window.

I don’t waste it. I launch myself up its front leg, fast, faster than something my size should move, and I sink my fangs straight into the soft exposed skin of its throat where the crystals haven’t grown in yet. [Ouroboros Thrall-Bite] fires the second my fangs connect, dumping cursed snake vampire juice straight into its bloodstream, and a new, cold awareness blooms in my mind, a direct line to the creature’s will. It’s mine now.

The capybara’s eyes go milky white, that toxic green just washing right out of them like someone poured bleach into a fish tank, and its whole huge body drops straight down onto its front knees. Just like that, one second it’s a rampaging crystal bulldozer trying to end my life, next second it’s kneeling in the dirt looking lost and empty, and I actually stumble on my own tail a bit because I wasn’t ready for it to work that fast.

Holy shit, it worked.

[System: Of course it worked!]

I mean I knew it would work, but there’s a difference between knowing something and watching a golf-cart sized monster fold over because I bit it on the neck. My whole body is buzzing, this hot electric feeling running up through my scales, and I can’t stop the grin from happening even though I don’t technically have lips to grin with.

Then the thing starts twisting.

Its back end swings around slow, jerky, like it’s fighting itself for control, and its head dips down toward its own hind leg. It bites. Actually bites down on its own leg, tears a chunk out, and starts chewing, and I just stand there watching a five hundred pound radioactive rodent eat itself alive because I told it to, sort of, in a roundabout cursed-vampire-juice kind of way.

Somebody in the stands makes a noise like they’re about to throw up.

The whole pit goes dead quiet. Not scared quiet, not impressed quiet, just that thick silent kind where a few hundred people are all thinking the exact same thought at once and none of them wants to say it out loud, and I don’t blame them honestly. If I still had a working stomach, I’d probably be doing the same thing.

I take my sweet time backing off to a safe distance, watching the timer tick down in the corner of my vision, and the capybara keeps at it, twisting, gnawing, dragging itself around in a slow, horrible circle like a dog chasing a tail that’s actually a meal. Five minutes of that. Five whole minutes of watching my own kill eat itself down to nothing.

The high hits somewhere around minute two.

It’s not guilt. I keep waiting for guilt, and it doesn’t show up; what shows up instead is this buzzing, humming, can’t-sit-still feeling that gets louder the longer I watch. I did that, I slithered in here small and stupid, and I made a five hundred pound monster fold like a lawn chair, and something in the back of my head that used to be a normal guy with normal reactions to things is just gone quiet, replaced with something a lot more interested in how easy that actually was.

I start humming again, louder this time, and hell, I don’t even try to stop it.

By minute four, the capybara stops moving entirely, slumped over half-eaten and twitching, and the timer blinks out. Whatever’s left of it just goes still. I slide over, calm as anything, and give the knife on my tail a couple of lazy drags through the dirt to scrape the blood off, methodical, unbothered, like I’m cleaning my shoes after stepping in something instead of standing next to the thing I just made cannibalise itself for sport.

That’s when the stands lose their minds.

The silence cracks wide open into cheering, actual cheering, some big rolling wave of noise that hits me from every direction at once, and mixed in under it there’s a chorus of groans from people who clearly had money on the capybara and just watched it eat its own leg instead of winning them anything.

[System: Ohhh, come on.]

What.

[System: Nothing, nothing. Just, y’know. Lost a bit of coin there.]

Wait. Hang on, you bet against me?

[System: I bet on the capybara, technically, which is different from betting against you.]

That’s the same thing, Old Mate, that’s the same bet doing a little twirl and calling itself something else.

[System: Look, the odds were good, alright? Fifteen to one. A bloke’s gotta diversify.]

You thought I was going to die.

[System: ...Maybe a little bit, yeah.]

There’s a moment where I just lay there in the dirt, dripping capybara blood, staring at absolutely nothing because the System doesn’t have a face to glare at, and something about the whole thing is so stupid it almost knocks the manic buzz right out of me, almost.

[System: In my defence, you did save the [Blood Venom] cooldown. Smart of you. Keep that in the chamber for when you’re actually, properly, well and truly fucked. This one wasn’t that fight.]

Yeah. Real vote of confidence there, big guy.

[System: Hey, you’re alive, the crowd loves you, and I’m only out a bit of pocket change. Everyone wins. Except the capybara, and the other blokes who bet with me.]

The cheering keeps rolling, and I let it, coiled up in the middle of the pit with capybara blood drying on my scales, not moving toward the gate yet, just existing in it for a second. The announcer’s already running his mouth about the next one. I catch a word or two. Something big. I flick my tongue out, taste the crowd’s sweat and adrenaline hanging thick in the air, and feel that hum still going in my chest like a second heartbeat I didn’t have this morning, alright then. What’s next?

There’s this soft crunching sound in my head, wet and buttery, and it takes me a second to realise what it actually is.

[System: You want some? No, wait, you can’t eat, you’re a snake with no hands. Never mind.]

You’re eating popcorn, in my head. Right now, and of course I can eat it, what the hell.

[System: Micro-popcorn. Tiny kernels for a tiny brain, anyway, chin up, mate, round two’s about to kick off, and your cooldown’s not gonna be done for a bit yet.]

Wait, what cooldown?