So I'm a Snake, Who Cares?

Cough!

I coughed.

Cough, hack!

Something dark, either ash or dirt, spewed from my mouth and nostrils.

After coughing for a while, clear mucus finally dripped out.

I thought I was going to die.

'How long was I unconscious?'

"About three days."

I was startled, "Saaaah!"

Pelerian laughed.

"Just kidding. It was about three minutes."

Oh, you scared me.

Making unfunny jokes and all that.

But I didn't feel bad about it.

I did survive, after all.

I quickly checked if my body was okay.

And I was horrified.

Aack.

My body...!

My beautiful crystal scales were tattered like rags.

Blood was oozing out, of course.

"Calm down, it's just your skin peeling off."

Ah, I see.

I was thinking it was about time to shed my skin anyway.

The explosion's impact blew away the partially separated molts.

'Still, it hurts a lot.'

But there were indeed injuries.

It was a big enough explosion that I was lucky to end up like this.

I guess raising my heat resistance a lot until now was effective.

I heard a message saying the skill's proficiency increased...

──────────────

...

▸ Survival

[Resistance]: Poison lv7, Bleeding lv4, Pain lv8, Heat lv12, Cold lv1, Petrification lv1, Electric lv1, Impact lv2

[Survival Instinct lv7], [Black Scales lv3], [Swimming lv1], [Breath Holding lv10], [Stealth lv10]

──────────────

Wow.

Bleeding resistance level increased by 1, heat resistance also increased by 1, and impact resistance lv2 was newly created.

The levels of survival instinct and black scales skills, which rarely increased, also went up by one each.

Come to think of it, survival instinct didn't give me a warning this time either. Is this skill completely useless?

"But you're still alive, aren't you?"

Pelerian defended the survival instinct.

His tone was incredibly kind.

I know why this old man is suddenly acting like this.

'Ah, you want me to use magic, right?'

"Yes! Thanks to that, we easily caught them all at once!"

But I didn't expect to almost become grilled snake myself.

I had no idea that the stench in this cave was the smell of flammable gas.

Well, I think I've seen in a science comic before that gas explosions often occur in mines.

"Ahem..."

'Sigh.'

Anyway, the mole rats that were threatening this place were now roasted to death.

The bone crystals were fine, of course, being originally metal.

The savory smell made me hungry, but.

I first took out the seedling chimera snake.

'So, did you want to come here because of these?'

The chimera snake danced shakily as soon as it came out.

I thought it was reacting to the mole rats gathered here, but that didn't seem to be the case.

I took out the mana stone of the mole rat queen, but there was no reaction.

Last time it was so greedy for mana stones, why now?

Instead, I gobbled up the mana stone myself.

「You consume a 4th-grade mana stone.」

By the way, the mana stone the mole rat queen had was a 4th-grade one.

After chewing and swallowing the mana stone, something interesting happened.

New buds started to sprout from the seedling chimera snake's body.

A light green tentacle-like thing grew visibly.

That's technically called a tendril. The thin stem that grows as ivy climbs.

It extends that to me.

'You want me to hold your hand? Okay.'

I didn't have hands, but I offered my tail instead.

Then the seedling chimera snake's small tendril grabbed my tail.

「Seedling Chimera lv3 uses 'Empathy lv1'.」

Oh!

The tip of my tail felt ticklish.

I was a bit tense, but I let the chimera snake do what it wanted.

Empathy, that's a skill it didn't have before.

I focused my eyes and examined the chimera snake.

──────────────

[Seedling Chimera lv3]

[Skills]

[Sixth Sense lv1], [Perception Expansion lv2], [Absorption Growth lv1], [Leaf Shaking lv4], [Tendril lv1], [Empathy lv1]

──────────────

Its level had gone up by one again, and skills like tendril and empathy had appeared.

And I heard a message that I originally couldn't hear.

「Using Perception Expansion lv2.」

「Detecting surrounding magical energy and ore veins.」

This message wasn't meant for me.

It must have been a message the chimera snake should have heard.

From what I've seen, other people don't hear kind messages like I do.

Maybe it's because I empathized with the chimera snake.

I couldn't be sure.

Anyway, I shared the chimera snake's senses.

I was curious about what kind of skill perception expansion was.

It's as if my senses have become incredibly keen.

I could feel all the magical energy and unique mana contained in the surrounding bone crystals.

「Using Tendril lv1.」

「Using Absorption Growth lv1.」

And the chimera snake brought its tendril to the bone crystal.

It started absorbing the magical energy contained in that bone crystal.

「The proficiency of Absorption Growth is rising rapidly.」

「Absorption Growth lv1 has become Absorption Growth lv2.」

「The proficiency of Absorption Growth is rising rapidly.」

「Absorption Growth lv2 has become Absorption Growth lv3.」

Aaaagh.

The magical energy from the bone crystal rushed in like a flood.

「Your level has increased.」

The seedling chimera snake's level went up again.

The level of absorption growth also increases along with it.

The speed of absorbing magical energy became even faster.

「Your level has increased.」

「Your level has increased.」

「Your level has increased.」

The bone crystal veins that were beautifully shining all around.

All those bone crystals lost their light and turned gray in an instant.

Chimera! What if you eat everything!

「You are receiving shared magical energy through Empathy lv1.」

「Seedling Chimera lv7 uses Healing lv1.」

Quite a lot of magical energy was transferred through the seedling chimera snake's tendril.

Moreover, my body's wounds were healed in a different way from potions.

Could it be that you ate up the bone crystals' magical energy to help me?

If so, I guess I should understand.

「Seedling Chimera lv7 has gained the trait 'Bone'.」

I don't know what it is, but it got a cool trait on its own.

But, it seems like a trait a plant shouldn't have...

The chimera snake's body had grown a lot.

Now it had more than five leaves.

I gently stroked its leaves.

I put the chimera snake back into the subspace.

I looked around.

'This is a big problem.'

All these bone crystals have become unusable.

I'll have to keep it a secret that the chimera snake ate them all.

After rummaging around for a while, I finally found the tunnel I came through.

The initial part had completely collapsed, but when I dug in a bit, I found the original tunnel still intact.

It's amazing that it didn't completely collapse.

The mole rats were masters of tunnel digging.

I crawled through the tunnel diligently.

Soon I came to where Dunkel and Manjin were.

"Huh, huuuuh!"

I'm back!

But the dwarves flipped over in surprise as soon as I appeared.

Some even tried to swing their pickaxes at me.

"W-what kind of state is that!"

Dunkel shouted at me like that.

What's wrong with my appearance?

But it seemed he wasn't trying to point out my looks.

"Are you okay? Your injuries are serious, potion, we need a potion..."

Ah, I see.

My body was burnt all over and had blood clots stuck to it, so I must have looked seriously injured.

I raised my tail to stop the fussing Dunkel.

Manjin carefully asked.

"Was there... a nest?"

I nodded.

"Then, don't tell me you got hurt like that... fighting?"

I nodded again.

The dwarves gaped in astonishment.

"We thought there was an earthquake. It was that chaotic. What kind of fight did you have?"

I took out paper and a pen.

I was about to write in detail about my amazing feats, but suddenly remembered that the chimera snake had made all the bone crystals unusable.

After thinking for a moment, I wrote.

'Nothing happened.'

"Huh!"

Did I gloss over it too much?

'The nest is gone now. I took care of everything.'

I carefully looked at Manjin's face.

"Huh, well. Huh!"

His eyes trembled as if moved.

"...Thank you."

Why are you thanking me so much?

I took the chimera snake out of the subspace.

'Chimera, can you heal this injured young dwarf too?'

The chimera snake nodded its leaves.

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