This human-faced green snake was Isrig.
All those years ago, while he was attending school at the Academic Capital, he wandered into a certain great library.
There, he obtained the Book of Snakes.
The book detailed the Ritual of the snakes, which allowed the transmutation of humans into demi-human snakes, to which he was initially uninterested in.
However, as he returned to Lohr and lived his life, he slowly became tired and lost.
Just as he said, living a monotonous life of a thousand repeats singing a single tune, he couldn't find the meaning of his life.
So, he began to study the Book of Snakes that he had buried away in his collection and started to experiment with the Ritual of the snakes within it.
He needed to slowly shed his skin layer by layer through the use of potions and the rituals written on it, finally transforming into a demi-human snake after shedding the last of his humanity. During this period, he would become extremely weakened, so he created two snake retinues to protect himself.
What he didn't consider was that he had made mistakes during his experiments, leaking the potions he created into the sewers; which led to the creation of quite a few half-mutated snake creatures and exposed his actions.
One of the responsibilities of the Night Watchers was the periodic patrol of the sewers. This was done to ensure that the number of species native to Lohr would not unnaturally increase, during which they discovered the strange snake creatures.
Without the ritual to help them, the half-mutated snake creatures couldn't fully absorb the potion, which led to their bodies creating 'snake lump'.
It was through these lumps that the Sun Shadow church managed to discover the active ingredient of Green-scaled snake hide, which Isrig's pharmaceutical company had been buying in large quantities. This ultimately ended in Isrig being completely exposed during the previous Spirit Cleansing day.
『 If it wasn't for the leak that time…』Isrig silently thought. Although he had completed the ritual of snakes, it was done in a hurried manner due to fear of being discovered. This led to him appearing malnourished and the power he obtained to be incomplete.
『 If that's the case, I'll need to complete several more rounds of the ritual of the snakes in order to obtain all of the Snake God's powers 』
As written, when the ritual of the snakes was completed, the human-faced snake should be a lot larger than his human form, as well as capable of wielding various spells.
And yet, not only was his current self a lot smaller compared to before, he still hadn't inherited many of the magic spells that he was supposed to, he only had the Snake God's powerful defenses and its toxic poison abilities.
Isrig was nimbly zipping around the secret room, occasionally sneaking an attack against his pursuers. His small stature had instead become an advantage, as the sharp blades and swords slashed his body but couldn't break through his scales.
At the same time, beside the one attack that managed to incapacitate and almost kill a Night Watcher from poison, Isrig had fallen into a dangerous situation after he accomplished his goal of completing the ritual of the snake.
These Night Watchers and Red Sun Knights were highly experienced in combat, so they quickly adapted to his meagerly few means of attack. He had no choice but to admit that while he was surrounded by these seven people, he couldn't escape even if he tried to.
He was merely taking advantage of his hard scales to endure the attacks, whenever he tried to run, the seven people would immediately act to prevent his escape. One of the Night Watchers even had enough leisure to pour a bottle of antidote down the initially fallen Night Watcher's mouth.
Knowing that their enemies were either snake monsters or snake-type supernatural lifeforms, the Night Watchers all carried snake venom antidotes with them. Although the antidotes weren't necessarily the one for his type of venom, the Night Watchers' constitutions were also supernatural to a certain degree, so this man would most likely return from the verge of death very soon.
On the other hand, since Isrig was stuck here, sooner or later his defenses would be broken through and he would be subjected to the so-called purification by God.
『 I will not accept this! 』the human-faced snake Isrig hissed in his frenzy: 『 It took me so much effort to escape from that maddening monotonous life, I still haven't found the answer to the meaning of living, I will not die in this place! 』
"Has the forbidden knowledge already caused his mind to crumble?" Reid swung his sword once again to push the human-faced snake back into their encirclement. Such a thing wouldn't be uncommon, as most magical rituals had side effects, either because they borrowed power from an Evil God, or because they turned themselves into aberrations through such rituals.
This led to the natural result that many of these monsters lost their minds, resorting to measures or actions that normal humans would not.
"We shall purify you like this" Reid's group had the human-faced snake tightly surrounded, some of his scales were already breaking off; as long as they kept this up for a bit longer, they would be able to break through the snake's defenses and kill him.
…
〖 The eight people's positions, as well as that snake monster 〗Negary's hands were pressed against a wall, constantly monitoring the positions and state of the people in the secret room, using echolocation to manifest a constantly moving picture of what was occurring on the other side.
〖 It's time 〗Negary's body shifted abruptly from extreme stillness to extreme motion. His viral body exerted strength that far surpassed that of a human, both of the bone blades on his arms vibrated at high frequencies while he swung them at his target.
…
"O' lost black sheep, may you find your path to salvation within the Unrepenting Abyss" the group had pushed the human-faced snake into a dead end, and a sword thrust straight at the head of the creature without hesitation.
The Unrepenting Abyss was the afterlife described in the bibles for non-believers of Gods. In this place, these souls are said to regret and repent for not placing their faith in God for eternity, but ironically, it was named the Unrepenting Abyss.
However, in this split second, several flashes of light flickered at unbelievable speed, followed by the collapse of several corpses and the sound of spurting blood.
Negary lightly touched the wall, causing it to crumble and reveal the situation at the scene to him.
The corpses of three Night Watchers had a small opening in different parts of their bodies, the two Red Sun Knights each also had a single hole that went through their armor where blood was flowing out from.
〖 So some people still managed to evade, huh? 〗Negary lightly sighed. He only performed his ambush after extremely careful calculations and while the attention of everyone should have been focused on the human-faced snake, and yet two people still managed to evade his attack.
The original group of three Red Sun Knights and five Night Watchers was now instantly reduced to a total of three survivors, one of them only managed to escape death because he was laying on the ground from being poisoned, which was outside of Negary's range of attack.
Negary slowly pulled his hands that only had half of a bone blade back. It was only now that Reid and the only Night Watcher who remained standing realized who, or what, had ambushed them.
In that split second just now, the 'person' standing in front of them had cut through the wall with his bone blades, then violently broke them off. The broken fragments of the bone blades became the most terrifying projectiles that killed off most of the people here who couldn't react in time.
Negary's gaze focused on the two lucky survivors. There was a large hole in the middle of Reid's sword, he had only managed to notice the attack at the very last second, during which he used the sword to block and parried the broken bone blade fragment.
While the Night Watcher had various broken gems falling off from inside his cloak, this was most likely a life-saving magical tool; without it, he might not have been able to survive the earlier attack at all.
〖 Didn't you say you wanted to know the meaning of living? 〗Negary stepped on a pebble, a bone blade shot out from the sole of his foot and accurately pierced through the body of the human-faced snake that was trying to run away and restrained him.
〖 Then let me tell you! 〗
