I start killin’. After an hour or so, my flesh has recovered enough to where I can go into fetal position blowover if I want to, but I choose not to. This way, the snakes will go for me. Some of them have really annoying effects, and it’s starting to remind me of floor two and the ladies all over again, but none of them cause vivid hallucinations strong enough to penetrate my hallucination protection, so I should be fine.
<05:00:02
Day 182>
28:18:59:58> <[Help will arrive in 23:18:59:58]> At least, that’s what I assumed just moments ago. That’s changed a little now that I’m looking at a certain, uh, lady stepping out of a tapestry. Her skin is snow WHITE, and she isn’t dressed in anything, but as she steps out of the tapestry, she’s thankfully wrapping it around herself. Once she’s emerged enough for me to get a grip on what in the world she’s supposed to be, I find that she actually has long pointed ears like a goblin, and a bald head, too. But the most interesting part is undoubtedly the snakes she’s got wrapped around her throat. Or maybe they’re growing out of her neck? I genuinely have no clue here. She meets my gaze and I feel a shiver creep down the hunch of my back. “Foolish mortal, you dare invade this sacred sanctum of—” Her eyes fall on the literal hundreds of dead snakes littering the ground, and then the dog-sized serpent in my hand that I was using as a paintbrush on the wall until around four seconds ago. “Wh—wh—what—” Her eyes dart up to the ceiling, where I’ve thrown headless snake corpses onto the chandelier in an attempt to paint the ceiling, and at the splattered walls, and every other nice RED place. “What in the Gods have you…” Only now do I notice the status message I get for her. And, more importantly, her level. …Fifteen? That—that has to be a mistake, right? There’s just no way that what is clearly a mid-boss would be this weak, right? “N—nonetheless!” she says loudly, almost hysterically, pointing her finger at me. I hunch down, expecting a spell to come, but nothing happens, so it must just have been an ordinary accusation. Weird. “For the crime of intruding, I shall smite thee with my gaze of petrification!” Oh, right, the snakes. Gorgon… that’s, like, a medusa, right? Her eyes stare intently at me. She looks really mad. To avoid losing this battle of attrition, I make an equally mad face right back at her. It makes her flinch. Acting on the small opening, I fly at her and she doesn’t even have time to react before my claws slice through her throat and neck like a hot knife through butter, and without giving any other sort of fight, she just drops to the ground, completely anticlimactically. …Huh? Wait, was that it? That was clearly supposed to be some sort of mid-boss, so how come she just… died? Wasn’t she supposed to block me, or petrify me limb by limb, or something else? This just felt wrong. As I stare at her corpse, her death is quantified by the standard pop-up message. I didn’t even level up. Was that really it? Well, uh, not like I have anything else to do, so I guess there’s nothing better for me to do than to properly disassemble the body. I’m actually really curious about the snakes… Disassemble Lv.7> If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. Just to ensure that there’s nothing weird about these here snakes, I do a little taste test and compare their flavour to that of the regular snakes. Hmmm. Chomp chomp nom nom. Paralysis Resistance Lv.4> Petrification Tolerance Lv.1> In conclusion, the flavour and texture is almost exactly the same, but the ones from the gorgon have the added effect of making my joints feel crusty. So this is what arthritis feels like, huh? Very interesting. I have henceforth decided that I want to die young. The remainder of the gorgon meat tastes very supple and gentle, with a delicate aftertaste. I was thinking of using the meat as snake bait, but it is way too delicious for that. High fat content, relaxed musculature… Oh, it’s good alright. Petrification Tolerance Lv.4> Petrification Tolerance Lv.5> And it grants me tolerance levels! How much better can it get? As I sit chewing and chomping down on the meat, I feel a snake bite into my back. Almost casually, I reach back and bite its head off before slurping it down whole. —See? Even a regular snake has a higher level than she did! This is way too weird. It takes me a few hours to finish eating it, which I only did because it really was that yummy, and once I’m done, I use the skeleton left behind as snake bait. The plan is simple. Since the snakes have terrible vision, they rely mainly on my scent and heat. So, if I just pour a bunch of my blood onto this skeleton and then go into fetal position blowover, the snakes will all go into the skeleton. And then I can just pick them off one by one, eating them as I do. Very effective! I feel so full. This might be too much food. Ah, I want to read my book. I need to read it, but if I bring it out now, it might get splashed by the snakes’ acid and melt. Sure, it’s going to get sold in about a month anyways, but at least that’s part of Moleman’s calculations. Me being a ditz and getting it destroyed certainly isn’t. All and all, though, the floor is simple. Small and medium-sized snakes spawn in every minute and every second. I cannot physically kill more than the amount that constantly pops in, but there is a cap to it, so it’s not like the room is actually capable of being completely flooded with snakes. Large snakes, like the ones that have jello-ified me, spawn once every hour. And, as I discovered with the third one—no, they do not necessarily need to be defeated from the inside. Sure, their flesh is weaker than their scales, but my claws and teeth are actually really strong. As long as I attack in a surprising manner and as long as I aim for one of its softer parts, there isn’t any problem. The main issue is that it’s very easy for me to get crowded by the snakes. If I get hit by one particularly strong paralysing bite, or necrotic bite, or acidic bite, or bacteria-infected bite, then the weakness that single bite grants me is enough to assure that a second bite—usually of a different status condition than the first—will follow. This can very easily lead into a downward spiral where every step I take earns me another bite and splash and I just get worse and worse and worse and worse until I want nothing better than to die down and let it all end. But I don’t because that would be weak, and I’m a gamer, which means I can’t be weak. And so, with all of this, a full day somehow passes. I can’t relax for a second or else I’ll get bitten. I can’t allow myself to die. <07:00:07 Day 183> 27:16:59:53> <[Help will arrive in 22:16:59:53]> And on the seventh hour of the second day, another gorgon appears. Unlike the first one, this one appears by pulling herself out of a painting. Her neck snakes are wrapped up and around her head, covering most of her face apart from her right eye, which is very clearly crying. Another super low-levelled one, huh? I’m starting to think that these mid-bosses aren’t actually scaled to the challenger but rather to the difficulty, or something like that. No idea. She was already crying when she exited the painting, but as her one visible eye slowly moves across the room, it somehow, against all laws of anatomy, starts crying even harder. “Y-, you, um,” she says through heaving sobs, “this—hic—um, you will, uh…” She brings up her hand and points at me, but, again, there’s no magic behind it, so I don’t get the point of it. “Y—you will face m—my wrath!” Ah, yes, such a classic line. However, there’s a very simple way to counter this. Right the second she starts glaring at me like a wronged toddler, I leap across the floor, grab her neck with both hands, snaking my hands beneath her serpent hood, and then I just break it. It didn’t even take all that much effort. It was just slim, and frail, and with only the slightest effort, it went cra—ack! Another mid-boss, down for the count. What’s even the point of these if I can beat them this easily? I feel kind of confused. Anyway, more delicious meat! I am so happy. I hunker down beside the body and start removing the skin, but a snake approaches and tries to bite her foot. Hey, get out of here! She’s mine! Grabbing it, I swallow it whole and without even killing it first. Ah, revenge. It tastes slippery and an awful lot like my stomach is being bitten from the inside. Anyways, bottom’s up! I bite into the yummy yummy yummy yummy gorgon flesh and when that’s all run out I continue with the snakes. I really do think they’re endless. This means that my best course of action right now is, simply put, to kill as many snakes as I possibly can. I mean, it’s unlimited free exp! And, to boot, if I just also eat the dead snakes left over, I can also upgrade a lot of my tolerances and resistances. Neat! The only downside is that I can’t read while doing this. Even when I kill snakes at my maximum output, which usually nets me a lot of bites and a lost limb or two, I still can’t kill more than the amount that spawns in every minute. Maybe if I could learn some AOE spell or skill I might have been able to instantly kill a bunch of snakes and do it that way, but there’s nothing like that. I only have two arms and one mouth, and that just isn’t enough. But it will have to be enough because until help arrives, there is nothing else I can do.