Sol was still slumped against the cooling, hairy mass of the beast, staring at his blood-slicked hands and contemplating the scam of manhua industry, when a new sound began to ripple through the mist, and whole world literally started vibrating.

It started as a distant, rhythmic crack-thud… the sound of ancient, thick trees being snapped like dry kindling, and then, the heavy, rhythmic thud-slide of something gargantuan moving through the forest.

Slowly, the "hiss-slide" sound grew into a roar of shifting scales, and the smell of sulfur and ancient musk became thick enough to choke.

"Aghhh! You have got to be kidding me," Sol whispered, a dry, hysterical laugh bubbling up. "Not again. Can't I at least get five minutes to fill out my death certificate before the next boss fight?"

Sol stood rooted to the spot for a fraction of a second, the "overdose" of predatory energy in his marrow, which had been fading into a dull ache, suddenly flared back to life like a dying ember doused in gasoline.

He slowly, agonizingly turned his head toward the edge of the clearing, and immediately felt the fine hairs on his neck stand up, and his skin crawled with a primal, electric revulsion.

"Okay," Sol forced out, voice cracked and uneven. "No manual. No grandpa. Just a thousand ways to get poisoned. Message received, universe. You really hate me."

Because emerging from the ferns wasn't just a beast… it was a fucking horde.

A literal river of cold-blooded nightmare. Hundreds… perhaps thousands… of serpents began to spill into the clearing, a true writhing, multi-colored tide of scales, venom, and lidless, predatory eyes.

There were vibrant green vipers with eyes like emeralds, Iron-Scale Vipers with skins that glinted like hammered bronze, bloated anacondas thick as tree trunks, and shimmering boas that seemed to shift color in the moonlight.

And tons of snakes he didn't recognize, prehistoric aberrations that shouldn't exist, all slithering with a singular, terrifying purpose toward the scent of the fallen beast… and the fresh, warm blood of the packet size hairless monkey sitting next to it.

But even this horde paled in comparison to the horror looming in the mist behind them.

Sol's Charcoal eyes mechanically moved further back, past the carpet of lesser serpents, to where the tree line was being physically pushed aside. A massive shadow loomed in the mist, a silhouette so gargantuan it made the previous beast look like a domestic cat.

…

It was a dark blue nightmare, a serpent of such impossible proportions that Sol's brain struggled to calculate the scale. Its head was a massive, triangular skull nearly sixty feet tall, encrusted with jagged, protruding bone plates that looked like a crown of white flint, looked down with the cold indifference of an ancient god.

Its body was a staggering thirty feet thick, filled with a vertical series of bone protrusions that stood up like a forest of sharp ivory spears along its spine. The length was lost in the darkness of the Inner Circle, but its body stretched back hundreds of feet, coiling through the forest like a living mountain range.

The snake's edges glowed with a faint, malevolent red, as if it were filled with internal embers. It didn't hiss; it breathed, and each exhalation sent a cloud of freezing, sulfurous mist into the air.

"Well," Sol wheezed, a dry, hysterical laugh escaping his cracked lips. "I guess I don't need to worry about the walk home anymore. I'm already in Hell."

Sol stared up at the skyscraper-sized predator, and suddenly, something in his brain clicked.

…

"I'm an idiot," Sol muttered, the realization hitting him harder than the fall from the cliff.

It wasn't that he was cursed. It wasn't that he had some "serpent-attracting" pheromone or a magical magnet for scales tucked in his pocket. Nor It was because the universe was specifically picking on him (though it felt like it). The truth was much more mundane and much more insulting.

This entire was this monster's territory. And Sol, the "legendary" transmigrator, had simply waltzed into the literal capital of a serpent empire, because he didn't know how to read the "No Trespassing" signs of the wild.

He looked at the sea of writhing bodies... the vipers, the anacondas, the boas… and realized they weren't just random encounters. Fragments of memories from the original Sol's childhood began to surface, rising like bubbles in a swamp. He remembered the old men of the tribe whispering stories over the cookfires—vague, terrifying tales of a massive snake that lived in the deepest heart of the jungle.

They called it the King of Scales, the Lord of the Ravine. In those stories, the creature's domain stretched from the sun-scorched savannah to the lightless floor of the ravine, and from there to the silver-backed canopy above.

He had initially dismissed them as mere stories to frighten the kids, just like the ghost stories or urban legends of his previous world. But looking at the reality with his own 999k titanium dog eyes, he realized that every whispered word was true. He finally understood why the Inner Area was considered a forbidden zone. It wasn't just about "dangerous beasts"; it was about an entire kingdom that didn't tolerate trespassers.

And that the Obsidian Cobra he had killed earlier? That wasn't a "boss." It was a border patrol. The snakes he'd been bumping into back-to-back weren't "unlucky spawns"; they were the common citizens of a kingdom ruled by this blue behemoth, where he was an illegal, loud-mouthed alien.

As for why he was the only one encountering them? Why weren't the tribesmen being turned into snacks every other Tuesday? it wasn't that they were luckier than him or had some special blessing.

The answer was a bitter pill: Experience.

They were simply much more experienced. They followed strict tracks that avoided the territory of the serpents. They knew exactly where the Sovereign's scent-markers began. They knew which trees were claimed by the King's children and which clearings were silent because they were used as nesting grounds. They moved through the Eastern Zone like mice in a lion's den, sticking to the shadows and respecting the borders.

But Sol? Sol had waltzed in with the unearned confidence of a transmigrator who thought the world revolved around his "protagonist" status. He had ignored the subtle shifts in the wind, the eerie silences, and the specific types of flora. He had strayed off the invisible path almost immediately, guided only by his own ego and a "vitality overdose" that had blinded him to the basics of primitive survival.

Combined with his impressive, bottom-tier luck, he had effectively taken a shortcut through the monster's private bedroom. He hadn't just stumbled into a fight; he had had the distinct honor of meeting the kingdom's entire military force, back to back, in a one-man parade of stupidity.

And he had essentially invited himself to a dinner party where he was the main course.

"Well," Sol wheezed, his hand instinctively reaching for the Pale Moon Flower in his pouch. "At least the 'Realistic Survival' mode is consistent."

…

The horde of "little" snakes didn't wait for a formal introduction. Seeing Sol, their eyes… thousands of tiny, lidless gems… locked onto his scent. To them, he was a wounded, bleeding, hairless monkey, a high-protein appetizer before the final dish.

Sol didn't think. He didn't plan. He simply reacted.

He didn't care about his creaking bones, his shredded skin, or the fact that his left arm felt like a heavy, useless log strapped to his shoulder. He knew that if he stayed on the "bed" of the beast for one more second, he'd have the honour of becoming fertilizer by midnight.

With a roar that was more of a desperate, bloody wheeze, Sol sprang up to his feet. His ribs ground together with a sound like a bag of dry branches snapping, a white-hot spike of agony that nearly turned his vision black. With a grunt of pure, unadulterated willpower, he ran.

"Doctor said cardio is good for the heart," Sol gasped, his shoe splashing through a puddle of Ursus blood as he bolted. "But I think he meant on a treadmill, not a goddamn snake-pit!"

He didn't look back. He simply ran for his dear life.

…

Seeing their "appetizers" running away, the horde was obviously not happy. To them, he was a fleeing calorie, a twitching morsel that had dared to enter the King's larder. The horde reacted with terrifying synchronicity. The clearing became a chaos of rustling scales. They didn't just follow him; they flowed. But no matter how fast he pushed, he couldn't outrun them. His broken body was a faulty machine that was leaking everywhere, his legs felt like they were filled with wet sand, and his center of gravity was wobbling from the internal injuries.

He could feel them gaining. The sound of their bellies over the moss was like a thousand whispers promising a cold, slow end.

Soon, the fastest of the pack… a Shadow-Dart Viper… caught up. It was a blur of black and grey, and with a sudden, explosive contraction, it launched itself from a rotting log, but It didn't aim for his throat, it seemed to have some weird fetish, it thrusted forward for a precision strike aimed right at his ass.

Sol didn't see it, but his heightened, predatory senses… the gift of the Dagger-Mouths… flared a warning. He suddenly felt a phantom tingle on his backside, a premonition of fangs sinking into his backyard.

"NOT THE CHEEKS!"

In a moment of pure, manic desperation, Sol clenched his butt with enough force to crack a nut and simulated the Charcoal energy residing in his chest. He didn't just feel it, he commanded it., and exploded it outward. Instantly, the dark, oily fire of the Charcoal power surged through his veins, numbing the pain in his ribs and flooding his legs with a corrosive, explosive strength.

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