D.E.M.O.N.S: Getting Summoned Weekly isn't so Bad Chapter 2344 Sleepy Snek

--- Lily ---

Lily was, very carefully, floating around the snake looking for scars. She was already finding a couple. A few bent or chipped scales here and there, and a notable few spots that indicated the snake had endured a... perhaps not tough fight but at least one where it’s prey had a chance to bite. Lily did have to make sure she wasn’t too low, nor too high. The clouds weren’t too thick here, and it meant she could float rather high up and still see everything. At the same time, she couldn’t float too because while they weren’t as thick they were still present. Of course, flying too low would be much worse.

Lily was being very careful not to set the thing off. She was keeping her shadow stretched out and up behind her to swap with if the snake looked like it was going to attack. Keeping her shadow primed and ready for a swap was somewhat difficult. She couldn’t cast any other spells, couldn’t do it too fast, and obviously her shadows had to be in place and properly primed. It was also burning a bit of mana to keep active, not to mention the mental toll...

But at the end of the day, the snake looked like it could swallow a house and Lily was the size of a kitten. She was not in any way a threat to that thing... or at least, not that it could tell. The snake slept through the entire scouting venture. Perhaps if it was more sensitive to mana, or maybe if Lily was more actively using that mana to do stuff with it might have taken notice due to her Rank 3 status, but then again, it was a giant snake. It might have killed rank 3’s before.

It also had two heads. Lily wasn’t sure how important or noteworthy that was, but the fact that it did made the plan to simply drop poison into its one brain much harder. Though, Lily supposed this did also imply that it had two brains... unless it actually meant that the brain for the entire body and heads was actually somewhere else, like the join where the two heads emerged from? *

Lily lapped the thing a few more times... and had an idea. It was quite possible, truthfully, to just drop down through the portal. Sure the snake was stacked up around it... but there was a good deal of space around it, and Lily wasn’t sure the snake could easily attack them if they just dropped into the middle of it. The heads were both on the outside of the ring, just hidden from where Appoline and Wiggles were set up. Was that going to be important?

Lily didn’t know. However, she had gathered what she thought to be most of the info she could from her inexperienced glances. If she was Hunter, perhaps she could tell exactly what had attacked the snake each time just by looking over its wounds, or determine that one of those cracked scales was actually from when it tossed and turned in its sleep or something. At the end of the day though, she wasn’t Hunter, and what she had was all she could get.

It didn’t take too long to relay all of that to Appoline, who was nodding along the entire time. "Alright in that case I see two paths forward. The first is a I make a necrotic or acidic poison that we drop on the place the heads split. The snake likely won’t be able to remove it, and it should take out both heads, presumably where a brain is. Or, if your second idea of the brain being at the split is true, get it that way. I don’t really think there’s another spot the brain could be, unless it has another hidden head in at the tail end? Did you see the tail?"

"Um..." Lily flicked through her mental records. "Not exactly. I did see the snake getting smaller, and I think I know roughly where the tail would be, but I don’t think I spotted the tail itself."

"Hmm... might be a brain in the tail then..." grumbled Appoline. "Still, it will likely take a good deal of damage from plan A) regardless so that might still be enough. My other plan would be to just spread as much poison across its body as you can and then run away, letting it seep into the bloodstream and take out the organs because of its movement around the place. Though I will need to make up a batch for both of those options, it won’t take long."

Lily gave the go ahead and decided to take a bit of a nap. It was a little risky, but she trusted Wiggles instincts and the fact that the giant snake would probably scare away a lot of the lesser predators. Though Lily was admitting that to the risk... she was just kind of tired and needed the break.

Luckily, however long later it was when Appoline woke her up, nothing catastrophic had happened. Kat was still flying a long, long way, the potions were ready, and Wiggles had also woken up. She quickly relayed the plan to him... after confirming which one they were doing. The answer it turned out, was the plan to attack it at the split of its heads. Apparently this was better for some reason Lily didn’t fully understand.

Still, back up into the air she went, while Appoline and Wiggles got ready to cover her retreat. Lily carefully lined herself up, which wasn’t THAT hard considering the size of the thing... and then let the three potions bottles Appoline had handed to her drop down. Lily swiftly booked it away from the snake as soon as the bottles left her grasp just in case. Lily was already a good distance away when they shattered.

The snake didn’t scream. It was a snake, but the sound of it unravelling was like a sandpaper belt on high, alongside a small rockslide as the ground underneath shook from its tantrum. Its heads were thrashing around, but as Lily glanced back it didn’t seem to be looking towards her. She was already a good distance away, nearly back to Appoline when the snake stilled.

Lily continued her descent until she was just above Appoline, hovering for a few moments. Just as she was about to ask if that had taken it out... the snake exploded. Lily flinched back, and was going to change her question when a second smaller, if still exceptionally large snake forced its way out of the original. Still with two heads.

"SHIT! Wrong kind of regeneration!" hissed Appoline as she started to book it. Wiggles too, and Lily followed after. She used her shadows to spell out ’What does that mean’ which Appoline was able to read, well that or she had a good guess as to what Lily was saying. "It doesn’t regenerate like a normal monster, it essentially has super moulting.

"I’m not sure if it just builds new layers of snake on top of each other with a spatial component and this is actually a younger version of it that was still healthy, or if its just a supercharged moult but both of those things are bad for us. It probably has no poison at all in its system now and might even have some resistance to it now. That could be temporary but obviously we don’t have the time to wait it out if it is..."

Lily glanced back at the snake, and wasn’t surprised nor pleased to see that it had locked onto them after scenting the air a bit with its tongues. Apparently it had worked out who dumped the poison on it, and it was NOT happy about that fact. The snake then shot off towards them and was faster then Appoline. It was catching up.

Lily flew a bit ahead of the group to transform for just a moment, "What do we do?"

"Run!" insisted Appoline. "As it gets closer I can try some more potions. See if poison still works and then try some of my alternatives. If it’s not lightning resistant I’ve got a few things that should deal good damage but I’m going to need you to try and finish it off. Just be ready and don’t let your guard down. Even if it’s like, half the size it was before, that’s still a massive snake. It’s entirely possible it can perform that trick again, though I would guess, looking at its current size, three more time will be its limit, maybe only two."

Even still, Lily sent a thumbs up and started to send paper spells at the thing to see if they’d do much damage. Lily tried her paper storm spell and it was... alright. Chipped some scales, but not much more than that. Lily sent a single larger paper plane and that was simply dodged. Annoying.