"NIBO!" Seth shouted, starting to run toward him.

"Stay back!" Akhil commanded, dodging another snap of those terrible jaws. "It'll attack you too!"

Seth froze, torn between helping his friend and staying out of the way. He clenched his fists in frustration, hating his own lack of combat ability.

The Serpent focused entirely on Akhil now, recognizing him as the primary threat. It attacked in a flurry of strikes—biting, lunging, using its body to try to coil around him. Each attack came faster than the last, giving Akhil no time to counter, only to evade.

He enhanced his speed with blood manipulation, pushing his limits. The world slowed slightly, giving him precious fractions of seconds to react. Dodge left. Duck under. Jump back. His blade flashed out when he saw openings, but the scales were too hard—his strikes glanced off harmlessly.

'Can't keep this up forever,' Akhil thought, feeling his blood essence depleting with each enhancement. 'Need to find a weakness. Need to—'

The Serpent's tail caught him mid-dodge, slamming into his side. Pain exploded through his ribs as he was thrown sideways, tumbling across the ground before sliding to a stop near the water's edge.

His vision swam. At least two ribs were cracked, maybe broken. Every breath hurt.

The Serpent rose to its full height, looming over him. Water still dripped from its scales, catching the fading sunlight. Its jaws opened wide, showing rows of teeth designed to tear and swallow.

This close, Akhil could see the softer scales beneath its jaw—the weak point he'd been looking for. But he was too hurt to move fast enough. Too depleted to enhance his speed again.

'This is bad,' he thought, staring up at the descending jaws. 'This is really bad.'

Nibo was struggling to his feet in the distance, too far to help. Seth stood frozen, useless in a fight like this.

The Serpent's maw descended, and Akhil knew with crystalline certainty that he had maybe one chance. One desperate, probably suicidal chance to turn this around.

He gripped his blade tighter, ignoring the screaming pain in his ribs, and prepared to make it count.

'This is going to be tough,' he thought as the jaws came down.

Then everything happened at once.

The jaws snapped shut.

For one horrifying moment, everything went dark. The sound of the world outside became muffled, distant. Akhil felt the Serpent's throat muscles contracting, pulling him deeper, trying to swallow him whole.

Seth watched in frozen horror as Akhil disappeared into the creature's maw. His friend. His comrade. Just... gone.

The Serpent's head rose triumphantly, its meal secured. Then its burning eyes fixed on Seth, and a different kind of hunger gleamed in those reptilian pupils.

Fresh prey.

The creature's massive body coiled, preparing to lunge. Seth was alone, unarmed, an easier target than the warrior it had just consumed.

But Seth didn't run.

His hands came forward, fingers spread wide, stance dropping into something solid and practiced. His eyes began to glow with faint blue light—not bright, not flashy, but steady. Controlled.

The air around him shimmered.

The Serpent lunged, jaws opening wide to swallow this prey as easily as the last.

Then it stopped.

Mid-lunge, mid-strike, the creature's entire body seized. Its eyes went wide—not with hunger anymore, but with sudden, sharp confusion. Then pain.

Something was wrong. Something inside.

The Serpent's body convulsed, twisting violently. It thrashed, slamming its tail against the ground, whipping its head side to side as if trying to dislodge something. A keening sound emerged from its throat—high-pitched, agonized.

Seth lowered his hands slightly, the blue glow fading from his eyes. A grim smile touched his lips.

"Shouldn't have eaten him," he muttered.

---

Inside the Serpent, in the suffocating darkness of its gullet, Akhil was very much alive.

And very, very angry.

The moment the jaws had closed, cutting off light and air, his instincts had screamed at him to panic. But panic got you killed. Panic made you weak.

So instead, he'd done what he did best.

He'd adapted.

His blade was still in his hand—he'd never let go, even as he was swallowed. The inside of the Serpent was hot, dark, already starting to burn where stomach acids touched his skin. He could feel the muscles around him contracting, trying to pull him deeper into the digestive tract.

But there was something else here too.

Blood.

So much blood. The Serpent's own life force, pumping through vessels and arteries that surrounded him. Rich, powerful, intoxicating in its potency.

Akhil's eyes snapped open in the darkness, and they were crimson.

His ability activated automatically, desperately, drinking in the blood that saturated the flesh around him. The Serpent's own essence became fuel, replenishing what Akhil had depleted, then surging beyond—filling him with more power than he'd had in hours.

Level 40 blood. Advanced beast vitality. Pure, concentrated life force.

It was like drinking lightning.

His blood essence meter didn't just refill—it overflowed. Power coursed through his veins, enhancing his strength, his speed, his durability. The burns from stomach acid closed almost as fast as they formed. His cracked ribs knitted back together.

And with that power came rage.

Akhil's blade flashed in the darkness, cutting through soft internal tissue. The Serpent's insides weren't protected by those obsidian scales. In here, everything was vulnerable. Exposed. Weak.

He carved through flesh and muscle with systematic brutality. Each strike drew more blood, which he absorbed, which gave him more strength to strike again. A cycle of destruction feeding on itself.

The Serpent felt every cut. Every slice. Every violation of its body from within.

It thrashed harder, trying desperately to expel the predator it had mistakenly swallowed. But there was no way to vomit up prey already in your stomach. No way to fight an enemy attacking from inside your own body.

Akhil didn't stop. Couldn't stop. He was operating on pure survival instinct now, enhanced by the overwhelming rush of absorbed blood essence. His blade found organs—liver, intestines, something that might have been a second heart. He destroyed them all without mercy.

The Serpent's movements became more erratic. More desperate. It slammed itself against trees, against rocks, trying to crush the thing inside it through blunt force.

But Akhil braced himself against the muscular walls, using the Serpent's own structure to anchor himself. Every impact made him cut deeper, carve wider, absorb more.

Then he found what he was looking for.

The main artery. The massive blood vessel that fed the creature's entire body. It pulsed against his hand, thick as his arm, carrying the Serpent's life force in powerful surges.

Akhil's blade plunged into it.

Blood exploded outward in a torrent. Hot, rich, overwhelming. Akhil opened himself to it completely, drinking in the flood of essence. His body couldn't contain it all—power leaked from him in crimson mist, saturating the air.

The Serpent's movements became sluggish. Weak. Its massive body was bleeding out from the inside, life draining away faster than its advanced physiology could compensate.

Akhil didn't wait for it to die naturally.

He turned his blade toward the belly, toward where he could sense the thinnest layer of flesh between him and the outside world.

Then he started cutting.

Not random slashes. Systematic incisions. Creating a line, a seam, an exit.

"Let's see how tough you are here!" Akhil roared as he plunged the blade deeper.

The Serpent tried to thrash again, but it was too weak now. Too much blood lost. Too much damage to its internal organs.

Akhil's blade punched through the final layer of tissue.

Light flooded in. Fresh air. The smell of the river and trees instead of bile and blood.

He widened the cut with both hands, tearing through muscle and scale from the inside where they were weakest. The Serpent's body convulsed one final time, then went still.

Akhil pulled himself out of the gaping wound in the creature's belly.

He emerged completely covered in blood—the Serpent's and his own mixed together into a crimson coating that dripped from every inch of his body. His clothes were dissolved in places from stomach acid, his skin showing burns that were already healing. His eyes still glowed faintly red from the massive amount of blood essence he'd absorbed.

He looked like something from a nightmare. A blood-soaked demon crawling out of a corpse.

"Your tough on the outside," Akhil said, his voice hoarse from breathing toxic air. He looked down at the Serpent's massive, still form. "Can't say the same on the inside."

Then his legs gave out.

He fell backward, landing hard on his butt in the grass beside the dead beast. The adrenaline was fading, exhaustion rushing in to replace it. He tilted his head back, taking in deep, desperate breaths of fresh air.

Gods, the air was sweet. Clean. Not thick with the stench of digestive fluids and internal organs.

He'd spent what felt like hours in there—though it had probably only been a few minutes—breathing nothing but toxic fumes. His lungs burned. His throat was raw.

But he was alive.

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.