Greetings, people, monsters and eldritch horrors of the ocean! Your lovely host [I can't fucking remember my name] is here to eat you all with her new and improved snek form.

Jokes aside, waking up with my new, glorious adult form must have been one of the single greatest moments in this new life of mine. Right after surviving that impossibly strong being, of course.

Congratulations on your evolution! You are now a Snakeling Adult. New paths have been opened, please visit the evolution menu for more information.

I ignored the pop-up (for now) in favor of examining my new glorious form. I must have grown quite a bit because my sufficiently spacious throne now looked just a tad bit small.

It didn't take long for me to determine that I was now around 6 meters long, double from my previous form. Furthermore, although my stats hadn't changed, I felt a lot stronger and more durable, although that might just be my ego speaking.

And man did I feel great. I almost wanted to rush back to the Killzone to try my luck at murdering some high-level open ocean scum.

Key word being almost. I was not in a rush to kill myself.

Still... I was happy, or at least my logical mind felt I should be happy. It must have been only around a month since I was reborn in this world, and my living prospects looked pretty good now.

... Okay, that's a lie. I was still very likely to die within the next year, but at least I wouldn't die to fucking herrings. Seriously, fuck those bastards.

Now in a much worse mood than before, I left my little hiding spot to go on a stroll through the safer yet beautiful areas of the reef, snatching up some small snacks on the way.

As I was doing such, I busied myself by exploring the evolution menu. It wasn't anything impressive, to be honest, but I was still plenty happy with what it said.

In short, it gave me a list of all races I could evolve into, including the requirements for certain evolutions. There weren't many options as of right now, only a few, but they did sort of set down a path for further evolutions.

I dully read through each one of them during my stroll, but I was only half-heartedly reading them. I really didn't care all that much right now about evolutions, since I still needed at least around 5 levels before evolving.

Instead, I focused on enjoying the little things this life had to offer me. For example, I easily caught one of those horny fish, my first real prey in this world, just for nostalgia's sake.

It tasted mediocre compared to some of the bigger and higher-leveled fish I ate at the Killzone. Still, it tasted like memories, so I ignored the real taste and instead focused on telling myself how better-off I would be if I gathered my courage and went back to that hellhole for some more experience.

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Yes. It was very, very hard to convince myself to throw myself into the meatgrinder yet again. While I was stronger than before, I was also much more of a target, and that didn't sit well with me.

Still, there was little I could do about it. I needed to become stronger if I wanted to survive, and god damn it, I want to live. I don't want to merely survive, just barely scraping by each day, trying to survive till the next dawn. No, I wanted to live as I pleased.

It might be arrogant of me to say that, but I felt as though I at least had a shot at achieving such a goal. Still, I needed to walk small steps and not get lost in the bigger picture.

And the first step to achieving this was by using my veteran point. I spent several hours mulling over where to spend it, but eventually, the solution was quite clear.

While venom was a powerful tool, it wasn't my main damage-dealer. To me, it was more of a way to soften my target. Biting was a reliable attack, but it wasn't powerful, and it carried a certain risk to it by exposing my head to an enemy. Furthermore, it's damage wasn't particularly high anyways.

No, my main power came from crushing my prey underneath my coils. Hence, constriction was the obvious answer.

Thankfully, it'd leveled up to 20 during my mad dash for adulthood, hence, it was possible for me to evolve the skill as of right now.

I mentally clicked on the skill and dumped the veteran point on it, and immediately, several options popped up.

(Sword-Serpent) - Gives a razor-sharp edge to user's coils, allowing for the user to cut their enemies and prey to pieces. Possible to turn on and off.

(Extreme Constriction) - Multiplies strength of normal constriction by a factor 5, and makes it much harder for captured targets to escape

(Magical Tomb) - Allows user to imbue magical properties to their coils. Power depending on mana used and magical ability.

Immediately, I crossed off Magical Tomb. It sounded good on paper, but... I had no idea how to do magic! How the hell am I supposed to use such an attack?

Thus, only the other two options remained. Sword-serpent sounded good, but I had little need for sharpness when I much preferred turning my enemies into paste, hence, I 'happily' clicked on extreme constriction.

A rush of information rushed into my mind the moment I did so, and my very body seemed to have ants crawling all around it for a split second. When it was over, I was half-stunned by the weirdness of what just happened, but I still dully went through the information I just received.

It was akin to receiving years upon years of serpentine knowledge of how to best use your coils to strange and murder enemies. Furthermore, my whole body felt as though it could easily wrap around anything and crush it with ease. I don't know, it's weird. Don't judge me, inner conscience!

Pretty happy with what I just received, I sniffed out a larger-than-average silver barracuda-monster for testing. It was all too easy sneaking up behind it and using my newly gained knowledge, I had my whole body wrapped around it in less than a second.

Then, I squeezed.

The damned thing literally exploded. I'm serious, it literally blew up in a shower of blood and gore.

I was very quick to flee from the scene and rub off any and all bloody smell off of my body on some algae. I had absolutely no intention of attracting piranhas, or worse, sharks to me.

Well, lesson learned. Be careful of how much pressure I use on weak little snacks like that. At least I didn't attempt this in the Killzone, or I'm sure I would have been in a lot more trouble.

Happy enough with my testing for the day and deciding that I deserved a break, I headed back to my throne and promptly sat my serpentine ass down on the brightest spot of the rock, and promptly dozed off.