Chapter 335 The Golden Vertical Pupil <TOC> Chapter 337 Hippocrates
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Translator: SumTLMan
With a stroke of luck, Angel stood still and watched the giant serpent slither away. However, his good fortune was short-lived, as the serpent soon turned its head to look at him. Although it said nothing, its indifferent gaze seemed to convey a thousand words.
“Alright, alright, you lead the way, and I’ll follow,” Angel sighed. He thought that having the “Grand Novaguard” would protect him, but he had unexpectedly encountered a wizard-level magical beast! Was this a self-fulfilling prophecy?
“Toby, why don’t you go ahead and scout the way for me?” Angel wanted Toby to leave on his own, but Toby remained silent, sitting back in the top of the tall hat without moving.
The serpent moved along the flow of the water. Angel, of course, didn’t truly believe that a magical beast would have any goodwill towards him, so he never put away the Grand Novaguard and kept his eyes moving, constantly searching for a way to break the stalemate.
However, the underground water area was too vast and pitch-black, making it easy to lose one’s bearings. Even with his Light spell, Angel could not illuminate very far, and he didn’t even know if the waterway led up to a cliff or a cavity.
After swimming for a few more minutes, Angel started to doubt whether this water route was the path the villagers had taken to leave.
The dark water passage up ahead could be crossed by holding one’s breath and swimming quickly, which an ordinary person could manage. But this waterway, or rather this underground water area, was it really possible for ordinary people to leave this place with their abilities?
If it wasn’t through here, then why were there corpses all along the way? Angel didn’t quite believe that the serpent had killed them. Regardless of whether the serpent existed a thousand years ago, if it had truly been responsible for the deaths, the skeletons wouldn’t have remained so intact.
Doubts emerged one after another in Angel’s mind. Before he could think it all through, the serpent suddenly swam upwards.
With no other choice, Angel reluctantly followed suit.
Soon, Angel surfaced to find that the space above the water was not large, resembling an upside-down bowl with a diameter of at most ten meters.
However, this “upside-down bowl” had a hole in it, and no one knew what lay within the darkness beyond. The serpent’s enormous head floated on the surface of the water, silently lurking without any movement.
At this moment, Angel was only four or five meters away from it, and he could better appreciate the snake’s immense size.
The serpent didn’t go ashore but kept staring at Angel with its pale golden vertical pupils, the urgency in its eyes evident.
Angel was at a loss for what to do. Continuing to dive in search of an exit seemed somewhat unrealistic, as he couldn’t outrun the serpent, and the location of the exit remained a mystery. But venturing into a dark hole, which could very well be the serpent’s nest, seemed even more dangerous to him.
“What exactly do you want me to do?” Angel asked.
The giant serpent remained silent, its pupils fixed on Angel.
Angel tried a different approach, directly communicating with the serpent using emotions. However, the serpent still showed no response, its gaze cold and unfeeling.
Angel’s eyes continued to dart around, wondering if there were any other items in the bracelet that could help him out of this predicament. He even considered having Toby use the acceleration to sprint for a while before activating Boundless Silence to hide on the side. However, the water currents would easily reveal his position since the invisibility provided by Boundless Silence did not involve phasing into the void, and the water would expose him whenever it flowed past his location.
After some thought, Angel decided to climb ashore. If he wanted to rely on Boundless Silence to hide, he absolutely couldn’t be underwater.
Once he reached the shore, the giant serpent also slowly slithered ashore, its massive body exposed to the air for the first time. The serpent swayed its body as it followed Angel into the cave. As they walked, Angel saw droplets of water rolling off its black scales and falling to the ground, creating a damp atmosphere.
Seeing this, Angel became even more convinced that the wet traces on the floor of the original cave were caused by the serpent’s movements.
So, had this serpent been secretly watching them all along? And in the end, it had opened the passage at the bottom of the lake to lure them in?
The serpent’s actions were very strange. If it really wanted to harm them, why didn’t it attack them at the bottom of the lake? Or was the bottom of the lake too cramped for it to stretch its body? But that didn’t make sense either.
Angel decided to keep quiet for the time being and follow the serpent to see what it was up to.
…
The cave became more and more spacious as they walked further in, and towards the end, it was wide enough to accommodate hundreds of giant serpents without feeling crowded.
Angel was pleased with such terrain. If he really decided to escape, the wider the area, the better the effect of Boundless Silence.
As they ventured deeper, Angel noticed that there were luminescent plants in the cave. However, unlike the plants in the desolate village underworld that grew on the top and absorbed sunlight and moonlight, these plants resembled dandelions, but their fluffy spheres emitted a soft green glow.
From a distance, they looked like clusters of green fireflies.
The glow was not very strong, but there were so many luminescent plants. As a result, the latter part of the journey was illuminated by the soft green light of these glowing dandelions, making the vast underground cave quite bright.
Soon, they reached their destination. Although it seemed like there was more path ahead, the giant serpent did not venture any further.
Angel looked towards the deeper part of the passage, wondering if the end would be an exit.
However, now was not the time to investigate that. Instead, he wanted to know what the giant serpent was planning to do.
As the serpent entered another passage, this passage was truly a sealed one. Although it was quite spacious inside, with the help of the glowing dandelions, Angel could see the end at a glance. – Was this the giant serpent’s lair?
The giant serpent slowly swam to the entrance of a pit,
Angel also walked over, standing at the edge of the pit and looking down.
It was pitch black, and nothing could be seen. Angel speculated that the pit might be the serpent’s lair.
At this moment, the serpent slowly picked up a glowing dandelion with its mouth and dropped it into the pit.
The glistening dandelion, spinning around, drifted leisurely downwards. As the glow illuminated the area, Angel’s eyes widened in shock! The pit was not the serpent’s dwelling as he had imagined because, under the glow, the pit’s bottom was filled with countless bones!
The glow could only light up a small area, but judging by the density of the bones at the bottom, one could imagine just how many skeletons there were!
At least several hundred, or even thousands!
As Angel was astonished, he noticed something else: the skeletons at the bottom were complete, and most of them had… medical kits beside them.
The familiar medical kits immediately confirmed for Angel that these skeletons were likely the villagers from the desolate village.
Could it be that the villagers he thought had escaped from the village were actually all here?
None of them had escaped; they all died here?
Who killed them? Was it the serpent? The answer should be negative. With the serpent’s size, crushing them would be an effortless task, but the skeletons here were intact to the extreme.
Angel turned his head to look at the giant serpent beside him, and he faintly saw a sorrowful emotion in the serpent’s golden eyes.
Sorrow? Would a giant serpent grieve for humans?
Could it be that there was some special connection between this serpent and these skeletons?
“…A special connection?” As Angel thought of this, he suddenly remembered something. He took out the medical kit he had found at the bottom of the lake from his bracelet and retrieved a medicine bottle from inside. On the outside of the bottle was an engraved, peculiar symbol, depicting a snake with black scales coiled around a silver-white ring-shaped cone.
Looking at the symbol, Angel glanced at the black giant serpent beside him.
“Could this snake be you?” Angel asked in a low voice, looking at the continuously sorrowful serpent.
The serpent turned its head to look, slightly lowered its head without speaking, and slid down along the pit wall.
Although the serpent remained silent, it did not deny Angel’s question. And judging from its behavior, perhaps this giant serpent was indeed the snake in the symbol.
Using a real snake as the emblem’s representation, Angel squinted his eyes, thinking of some sinister religions.
However, as a doctor, from the day of taking the oath for doctors, they were destined to oppose such sinister beliefs. Since doctors choose to use a snake as their symbol, does it mean there is a story behind this snake, or does it represent a spiritual belief?
As Angel was pondering, the serpent slowly crawled up again, but this time it brought something with it.
Angel had noticed earlier that the serpent seemed to be searching for something among the pile of bones, and now that it had found it, it brought it up.
When Angel saw what the serpent had brought, a hint of surprise flashed in his eyes.
It was actually a coffin?!
The coffin was made of Black Oil Wood, a material that was extremely rare. It would not rot for ten thousand years in a damp environment, and in the mundane world, it was often used to make coffins. In the Wizarding World, it was considered a low-level magical plant and an excellent alternative for making rotary bearings in mechanical alchemy.
The coffin body was black, while the lid was pure white. On the lid, there was also a mark of a “snake coiling around a long awl.”
After bringing up the coffin, the serpent gently nudged it to Angel’s side with its skull.
Having done all this, the serpent quietly stared at Angel. In the vertical pupils of what should have been a cold-blooded creature, there was a subtle hint of pleading.
“Did you bring me here to help you bury this coffin?” Angel asked, looking at the coffin beside his feet with curiosity.
As Angel asked, he gently placed his hand on the coffin.
The moment Angel’s hand touched the coffin, a bizarre change occurred—
The coffin suddenly shook violently, swaying from side to side. The lid also bounced up and down as if something inside was desperately trying to get out.
“A corpse transformation?” Angel withdrew his hand, with a hint of solemnity in his eyes.
If the soul does not leave a body after death, through special means, the corpse can exist as a “corpse demon.” If the soul leaves the body, there is also a chance it can form a “walking corpse.”
Both walking corpses and corpse demons are very low-level magical creatures, and wizards generally disdain to refine them. Instead of tampering with the dead, wizards prefer to refine living people into puppets. For example, the famous “Puppet Master” Bogula in the Southern Region is fond of refining beautiful puppets, all of which are **refined.
After saying the words “corpse transformation,” Angel furrowed his brows: “That’s not right either. If it’s a corpse transformation, the body should at least be mostly intact. If it has been dead for a thousand years, could it be a skeletal spirit inside?”
Chapter 335 The Golden Vertical Pupil <TOC> Chapter 337 Hippocrates