Reign of Villainy | Ch. 40

At that moment, frozen by fear, she was struck by the most humiliating thought imaginable.

There is no way I’m suffering the same fate as a fucking chicken.

She clambered back onto the window sill. If she couldn’t see the snake, there was no way she was engaging it, even if she was theoretically stronger. Life on a farm taught her one thing about serpents: keep your distance.

Her knees cramped as she squatted on the sill, pressing one hand to the water wheel for balance. She tried her hardest not to look down.

It’s fine, she reasoned. Just focus. She had dealt with dozens of snakes before. This was nothing new. Sure, it could be a magical snake—but she didn’t see it floating or shooting lasers out of its eyes—so it couldn’t be all that different from a regular farm viper.

I’ll just wait for it to come to me.

It was easier said than done; she was sitting on her very tippy toes trying to avoid the nails shooting out of the window sill. The wood creaked every time she fidgeted, and it felt at any moment that it might split from the structure completely.

Then, she saw it: the snake slithered into the one moonlight-illuminated section of the attic. She swallowed, sweat prickling at her forehead. It may not have been a magical snake, but it was a large snake. Nearly the size of a motorcycle, thick and black and spotted. Two small horns protruded from its head, and its tongue dashed out of its mouth, hungry.

It reared back its neck, hovering high in the air.

It’s about to strike.

She jumped to her feet, casting the orb and firing it straight ahead. The hornets caught the snake’s head just as it thrust forward, interrupting its attack. The ferocious insects tore the snake apart scale by scale, devouring its head within seconds, leaving only a shell of mangled snakeskin drooping on the floor.

She inhaled sharply. It was over.

Or at least—she thought it was. It looked dead, but she hadn’t received any notification in the combat log. She held her breath for several more seconds until she finally dispersed the hornets. Then, she double-checked her System.

There was nothing there.

What the hell?

She waited another twenty seconds, but balancing on the window sill was becoming unbearable. I shouldn’t have dispelled the orb so quickly. Using the last of her Mana, she brought the insects back and used them to eat away at the ceiling of the attic, creating several large holes. Moonlight slipped through them, shining halos of faint, blue light into the rest of the room. She saw the viper’s endlessly long tail culminate in the far corner of the room, the only part left unshredded by the hornets.

It was twitching, ever-slightly.

Taking a deep breath in, she stepped inside. The snakeskin on the floor did not move. That part of it was dead, at the very least. Slowly and quietly, she stepped around the circles of light, until she was close enough that she could see what was left.

The snake had another head protruding from the end of its tail. A smaller one, but just as feisty. It reared up, baring its fangs.

Just as she was about to slam down the orb and free it of its misery, a glob of purple something escaped its mouth, shooting directly at her thigh. She screamed, collapsing onto the hardwood floor as a sharp, ice-icicle cold pain ran up her leg.

“Damn it,” she hissed, slamming the hornets down. They devoured their way through the snake, and then—accidentally—through the floorboards, leaving a giant, gaping maw in the attic.

*You have defeated a level 13 livestock double-headed viper - 700xp gained*

Akemi groaned, her head pulsing. The snake was dead, but the venom was still leaking into her leg like a chemical burn. An intense, nauseating pain washed over her as she ripped her pants off, getting the hot liquid as far away from her as possible.

Still, enough had seeped through; all she could do was lay her head on the floor and wait for it to pass. One, two, three, four. She counted mindlessly, waiting for it to abate. Only, it didn’t abate. The nausea turned to chills, and the chills to a low, aching pain in her stomach.

Damn it. She coughed, and, with a trembling finger, brought up her Health panel.

HP: 19/100

Wonderful.

This was a cruel punishment for suddenly wanting to live, she supposed.

To die like a chicken.

In her deliriousness, she searched for any way out—and remembered, faintly, the potions she found in that container with the chimeras’ robes. There had been two bottles there. She had chucked them mindlessly into her inventory, thinking nothing of them. But now…

They were … they were antivenoms.

Protections against the venomous vermin in the sewers, most likely. But would they work against snakes?

As a rim of black began to encroach on her vision, she decided she didn’t care.

She dragged open her inventory panel, shakily removed the two antivenoms, and unplugged the cork on each, one by one, gulping them down in full. The liquid was bitter and terrible, but the relief was sweet. She could feel it dragging her off the cliff of death by the ankles. Her entire body trembled and seized before it quieted, leaving her cold, half-naked, but alive.

“God bless this unscientific magical world,” she groaned, feeling as the thrumming in her skull lessened. “Generic, all-purpose antivenom. Fucking amazing.”

Villainous Achievement Unlocked! [One Man’s Pet is Another Man’s…]

You killed another person’s treasured companion! How cruel. Even if it did try to kill you. Twice. With two different heads. But hey, it was still someone’s pet.

Off topic, but: is this guy a collector of multi-headed animals, or something? So weird.

[+500 XP] [ -100 Reputation]

She muttered a curse on Frank’s family as she raised herself to her feet. Newly pantless and physically exhausted, she was eager to find that runic gem and get the hell out of there.

A cupboard sat in the middle of the room. The snake’s limp body was still wrapped around it, but it was easy enough for her to shuck the skin off with her [Knife Fingers]. It fell to the floor in unmajestic clumps.

I wonder if this could be useful for something, she thought, looking at the enormous amount of black and white snake flesh dotting the floor. Maybe as a crafting material?

She took it into her inventory.

You have acquired [Skin of a Livestock Viper x 10]

Then she gripped her hand around the knob on the newly freed cupboard. With a hard yank, it opened, revealing several jars of dead vermin and other small mammals. Gross. She scowled, pushing the snake feed away until she found a small, glowing egg.

The egg had etchings engraved in patterns along the shell; runic etchings, by the look of it.

She took it in her hand. It was surprisingly heavy, like holding an egg made of pure gold.

I wonder how much this is worth? She wondered idly, pocketing it.

You have acquired a [Runic Gem].

A shiver ran through her as a gust of wind blew through the holes in the ceiling. Even on a summer night, standing in just a shirt and underwear was enough to make her want to curl up in a blanket back in the inn. It was time for this little farm-razing escapade to come to an end.

As she slowly descended the ladder, she took one last look over the farm from above. Almost none of the chickens were left; the only sign that they had existed there at all was a few remaining feathers, spilled chaotically over the grass. Not to mention that her combat log was basically a chicken memoriam. Courtesy of none other than Mutt, who stood there in the field, licking his tiny, unassuming paws.

She sighed.

Enough games. Time to pull a Pyre and torch this place.