Sol stood on the ridge, his chest heaving like a broken bellows, staring down at the writhing pit of vipers he had just escaped.

He was covered in slime, blood… red, black and countless other colors… and of course, the pulverized remains of snakes.

"I made it," he wheezed, a hysterical laugh bubbling up in his throat. "I actually made it."

…

While Sol was wading through the horde of the foot soldiers, a broken machine of muscle and spite, the Sovereign of the Gorge simply watched. It had remained a static monument of dark blue scales and ivory bone, its head hovering at the height of a watchtower. It hadn't needed to move. To a god of the Inner Circle, this wasn't a battle; it was a microscopic event. It was watching its immune system deal with a particularly stubborn virus.

But even a god has a limit for noise.

Seeing the"hairless monkey" survive for so long, seeing him scramble up the embankment like a stubborn cockroach... the landlord decided that the noise complaint had gone on long enough.

The Sovereign of the Gorge moved.

It wasn't a fast, striking movement like its lesser kin. It was the movement of a tectonic plate shifting. The skyscraper-sized, dark blue serpent uncoiled from the deep shadows of the canyon floor where it had been resting, wrapped around the roots of the world. It was a slow, majestic slither, but it crossed the distance of a hundred human strides in a single, fluid contraction.

As it slithered forward, the ancient iron-wood trees of the Inner Circle… massive growths that had stood for centuries, their wood harder than bronze… were snapped like dry toothpicks under its bulk.

CRACK. BOOM.

The sound was deafening, a commotion of splintering wood and crashing timber that echoed off the ravine walls. Dirt, moss, and shattered wood were kicked into the air, creating a cloud of debris that tasted of ancient loam and sulfur. Even the ground shook with a localized earthquake, nearly knocking Sol off his feet again.

Sol mechanically looked back over his shoulder, and his heart didn't just skip a beat, it felt as if a cold, heavy hand had reached into his chest and squeezed his life-force to a standstill.

The Sovereign's head was hovering just a hundred meters away, level with the canopy, blocking out the twilight sky.

It was a monstrosity of evolution. Its scales were the color of a bruised night sky, absorbing what little light remained of the pale yellow moon, creating a void in the green. Its vertical-slit pupils, each as large as windows, glowing with a bioluminescent malice, reflecting the dying orange of the sun and the rising pale moon simultaneously, making it look like the beast carried two different worlds in its eyes.

It was a creature that belonged in a myth, not in a biological ecosystem.

It looked down at the pile of dead snakes Sol had left in his wake… a graveyard of segmented bodies and burst venom sacs. Then, it looked at the insignificant, two-legged insect panting in the mud, covered in slime and defiance.

And for the first time, it made a sound.

HUMMMMMMM.

It wasn't a hiss or a roar. It was a low-frequency bio-resonance… a psychic weight that slammed into Sol's consciousness. It vibrated the very marrow of his bones. His ears popped, a warm trickle of blood beginning to run down the side of his neck. His vision flickered like a dying bulb, the world losing its color for a heartbeat.

It was the sound of a god clearing its throat.

The hum acted like a command and the effect on the horde below was instantaneous and terrifying.

The smaller snakes… the thousands of smaller snakes… the vipers, the kraits, the constrictors… that had been a bit wary of Sol's "hardened" skin… immediately went into a suicidal frenzy. The Sovereign's vibration overrode their individual self-preservation. It rewired their brains from hunt to destroy, turning the horde into a single, unified weapon of mass destruction.

They surged up the embankment like a rising tide of black water.

"Oh, come on!" Sol yelled, raising his hands like a martial art practitioner.

They launched themselves in an all-out assault. Ten, twenty snakes were in the air at once. A living wave of scales and fangs crashed over him.

Even with the "overdose" of the Monitor lizard's vitality and his newly hardened skin, Sol was instantly overwhelmed. He was a tank being swarmed by a million ants. He stomped a skull into paste. He punched a viper mid-air, feeling its ribs crack under his reinforced knuckles.

But there were simply too many. It was like trying to fight the rain.

Chomp.

A sharp pain flared in his shoulder. He hadn't been fast enough to shrug off a King-Krait. Another puncture on his forearm.

"F-fuck..."

Sol stumbled, his knees buckling.

The fangs of the lesser snakes were still struggling to pierce his "Monitor-hide," but the sheer volume of attacks meant that eventually, some found the soft spots… the area near joints, the creases of his skin.

The venom hit his bloodstream. It wasn't the single, clean toxin of the Cobra. It was a cocktail of hemotoxins, neurotoxins, and acids. It began to war with the Charcoal energy in his blood, creating a sensation that was simultaneously freezing and burning. It felt like his veins were filled with liquid glass.

His knees shook uncontrollably. His vision blurred at the edges, the world narrowing to a tunnel of teeth and scales.

He punched and kicked blindly at an unknown serpent that tried to latch onto his thigh, crushing it instantly. His hands, slick with gore, sweat, and reptilian slime, continued to operate as a serpent-crushing machine by sheer muscle memory, but his mind was lagging behind. He felt like he was moving through deep water, his movements heavy and sluggish as the Monitor's essence began to settle into a permanent, leaden exhaustion.

He continuously retreated, step by agonizing step, his shoes sliding in the mud.

He was boxed in, trapped between the sheer wall of the embankment and a sea of fangs, and he was royally fucked.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.