A Serpent's Tale-Chapter 377: Egg?!

The remaining depictions of the room soon crumbled to dust. The constellations and varying nebulae seeming familiar for some reason. A reason that invoked disgust and something else I couldn’t quite pin down.

I was a little perplexed. I knew something would happen, but this? I didn’t think a mere illusion was the ultimate purpose of this thing.

That was when I heard a small crack. It came from the scale object thingy.

Looking back at it, I could see it separating into layers. It really did look like a flower the more I looked at it. Especially now with the many rings of scales representing the petals on a flower.

For whatever reason, they were splitting apart layer by layer, slowly floating and rising up above and maintaining equal distance from one another.

When they all had risen, they all started to rotate in opposing directions, all excluding the one at the bottom.

A second after that, I felt something. Something from within. Not within my soul or my body, but something within my storage.

I was initially confused. What could possibly be invoking such a feeling? And it hit me immediately.

It was the rock egg thing. It must be part of this... Ritual somehow. I still don’t know what all this is for.

Either way, I took the thing out of my storage and the sensation ceased instantly. But the moment I started to move it to place it upon the ring of scales, the feeling I got when I was debating to put the scale in came back.

Only this time it was much louder.

Part of my instincts fought to not put this rock egg into its rightful place, whilst another part of my instincts fuelled my curiosity further. I was once again torn between two choices.

Do or don’t.

On the one hand, I could simply leave. This is just an illusion after all.

On the other hand, part of me feels like it would regret not doing this one day. Not to mention, I could maybe get something out of this and make all of this worthwhile.

And that notion was what tipped the scales for me and I placed the egg thing onto the bottom of the ring of scales.

The moment it got close, the egg rock was sucked out of my hands and onto the ring of scales. Immediately after, the other rings of scales started to tremble.

Then, each of them split apart and descended, beginning to envelope the egg rock on layer at a time.

Withing just a few seconds, nearly all of them had encapsulated the egg rock and folded upwards, like the reverse of a blooming flower.

And when the last layer connected, the entire thing started to shine brightly. So brightly that even with my skills I had to shield my eyes.

It only lasted a few seconds though, so I was able to see just fine not long after.

And what I saw was... An egg.

An actual egg.

It had an exterior pattern that resembled the scales that had just enveloped it just moments before, with streaks of purple and blue traversing the gaps just between. It seemed to have retained some of the aspects from before I put the rock in, namely, they scales still seemed to have pointy tips, thought not quite as pronounced.

I wasn’t sure what exactly I was supposed to do with this. Or even why this was happening. I wasn’t even really sure WHAT was happening.

Like, why did it suddenly become an actual egg? What is it supposed to even be for? I know it’s supposed to hatch some kind of creature eventually, but what creature the question.

As I pondered all of this, I suddenly felt a pang of hunger. Which was natural given that my body still needed sustenance to heal itself. But looking at the egg just made it more potent.

I’ve heard of Serpentine devouring the eggs of other races, but never actually seen or done it myself. But now that the opportunity to do so was before me, I couldn’t help myself.

Something about this egg compelled me to consume it. It wasn’t the egg itself, more rather what I felt I stood to gain from devouring it.

And so, that’s what I did.

Snaking forward, I grabbed the egg at its sides, feeling the deep and seemingly endless power that radiated from within and gulped.

*Gulp*

My arms trembled slightly as I pointed its bottom side towards my face. I then began to pull it towards my mouth as I opened it.

This was honestly nerve wracking. I’d never done this before. Sure, I’d swallowed entire living beings, but this felt different somehow. It was a life that had yet to have been born. Something about this just felt off to me, but I persevered regardless.

I felt the roughness of the eggs shell press against my lips as I pushed it further into my mouth. And as if sensing the danger I posed now, the egg started to shake. But I held firm and opened my jaw wider to take in more.

The egg tried to fight back even more, using some of its endless power. But how could it? It had just been created.

Plus, I was stronger that it. Both in terms of physical and magical abilities. I sealed it in place with my Mana and moved my hands to the top to push it in further, causing my cheeks to swell as half of it now entered my mouth.

The egg then started to vibrate in an attempt to shake itself out of my mouth, but my grip held strong, disallowing it to shake much as I pushed it in further, the base of the egg now probing my throat.

I continued pushing and soon had to start to flex my throat muscles to swallow the egg down.

*GULP* *GULP*

It shook more violently in an attempt to escape, but it was far too late for that now as my lips started to close around the top of the egg now.

*GULP* *GULP*

Now, the egg was completely sealed off from the outside world as my mouth closed around it, sealing it in to have its essence turned into my own.

I could feel it shaking more, trying to use its points to try and cut my throat, but I just used [Demonic Transformation], making me larger and hence, making it easier for the egg to slide down my throat.

It also strengthened my flesh also, stopping the egg from harming me internally.

Once it had reached my upper stomach though, I cancelled the transformation and felt the egg bulge my stomach outwards slightly with its size and the fact that it was still struggling. But I could tell that it was slowly losing its will to continue.

I took a deep breath and started to move it down into my lower stomach, which caused it to have one last burst of strife as it felt its imminent doom.

A minute later, I had managed to push the egg down, my skin sweating something fierce due to the struggle it put up. At one point it almost managed to pull itself back up into my upper stomach, but I was able to prevent it with a clenching of my abdomen.

Finally, it was sent down into my lower stomach, creating a slightly less obvious bulge along my scales as it descended.

Suddenly, the image of space surrounding me started to shatter like glass and fall. I could tell that I was still in the room, but what replaced all the stars, nebulae and constellations was absolute darkness. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Yet it felt like light still existed somewhere as I could see my body perfectly fine as if a light source existed all around.

Then I realised that I was that source of light.

This was all obviously caused by me consuming the egg, but how and why was beyond my comprehension. At least for now.

And after consuming that arduous meal, I think I want to take a quick rest to kind of get my head wrapped around everything that just happened.

From my impulsive desire to eat the egg, to actually eating it, and to my new visual surroundings.

I leaned down and laid down on my back, looking up and nothing but a pitch-black view and closed my eyes.

_

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When I opened my eyes a few hours later or so, I found myself still within the inky darkness. But this time, I didn’t feel myself lying on the stone floor of the room. Instead, I felt myself floating about inside some kind of dark void.

I panicked, trying to get up before realising that there was no ’up’ here.

This place was different from my internal soul space where Nachash and Ouroboros were, yet it felt somewhat similar to that. It felt like an actual physical plane of existence.

And looking in the directing that be best described as, currently below me, another being was headed towards me.

And it didn’t look friendly.