Published at 28th of April 2026 6:27 am

Chapter Interlude Choices III

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Elaine splattering me against a mountain was considerably merciful compared to what she could do to me. Thinking of being stuck in that orb again makes me shudder. Anything is better than that. It's hard to tell what time it is because the moon is out, but that could mean it's been hours since she killed me or days. When I'm resurrecting I have no awareness of my surroundings or how much time has passed. Im alone in a foreign country, without a clue where my quarry lies. Elaines probably already found the giant snake and is waiting for me to show up to kill it. Maybe its overconfidence, but Ouroboros wont be much of a challenge. It cant kill me, not permanently at least. The real challenge is that I have to find the serpent.

His words echo in my head, the programming within my DNA coming to life. Hunt the strong. Feed on the weak. Perish in battle. Grow stronger with every death. The beast's instincts flare up as the realization of the hunt sets in. While being with Elaine, centering myself, and focusing on finding my humanity have been nice, the thought of letting the beast take over is an exhilarating temptation. Giving in, letting go, and embracing the destructive nature I was given is hard to fight, but I need to keep it under control. I can let the beast off the leash once Im fighting, but the beast isnt the one who can track down our target.

To begin the hunt, I need to find Ouroboros trail. But how am I meant to do that? Elaine likely shot me toward the general direction of where the giant creature is. Or did she? The mountain I'm on is surrounded by lush jungle. The air is moist, the stone is warm beneath my claws, and it feels good to breathe in. My compound eyes give me vision in every direction, and then theres the additional sets of reptilian shark eyes that let me see in any light condition. Because of that, Im confident that theres no one around here. There are no signs of people or civilization, which is good. I'm not sure how I'd react to being around normal humans again. Can I control myself? Regular people arent as durable as Elaine; the next person I bite will get chomped in half.

There aren't any landmarks in the area for me to use to figure out my location, but it isn't like I'd even know what they were if there were any. I dont have any memories from before about Chile, beyond the fact that its located in South America somewhere. I don't even know where to begin. The rumbling inside my stomach has been growing steadily; the sea creatures I devoured earlier have already been digested. I'm so hungry. I'm an idiot. I've been thinking of the problem through the lens of a human-centric mindset, when what I need to do is do what the monster would do to find Ouroboros. Bursting out of the craters on my back come my insects, all the aquatic mass I absorbed is transformed into these nightmare bugs.

I continue birthing the insect drones until Ive made a hundred of them. Their wings fluttering fills the air, the sound of the buzzing getting louder and louder as the swarm grows. I give them a simple set of commands: stay high in the sky, spread out, and look for a giant snake. If they have enough biomass, my offspring are capable of propagating infinitely without any action from me. But I need to be careful; if I let them follow their instincts and do whatever they want, they'll end up slaughtering people.

Finding Ouroboros is extremely important to me for several reasons. Itll allow me to secure an enormous supply of food, so I dont have to decimate local ecosystems just to sustain myself. It will free Chile from the decades of fear that the creature has held it in. Elaine mentioned that they have been written off by the rest of the world. Ouroboros is too much of a threat; no one, not the Capes, the Cowls, or the governments of the world, is willing to send any more bodies to this problem. Im the only hope this country has. But the most important reason why I need to succeed is that I need to prove that I can be more than just a monster of gluttony. I need to prove that I can do good. I cant let him be right. If I can do a single act of heroism, if I can be the monster who eats the other monsters, then maybe the violent images of all the people Ive killed will stop haunting me.

Bounding through the jungle, deftly leaping from tree to tree like a creature a tenth of my size. I have incredible strength, dexterity, and speed packed into this form of mine. I move with the grace of a shark swimming in the ocean depths, hunting prey unaware that theyre being stalked. I could become intangible and just fly through the trees instead of all this jumping and dodging. But this feels so good, and I look so cool. I'm faster than you'd think seeing my massive body, and I don't leave a trace of my path behind me.

After sending my bugs out, I pick a random direction to travel. Hours go by as I navigate through the jungle. How haven't I not seen any sight of this big snake? I understand that the country is big, but how have I seen a single scale anywhere? I wish Elaine hadn't disappeared; she could've at least helped me find the oversized serpent. I know it's because she doesn't care about anything but her research. Still, shes so resourceful and powerful. She probably could have handled Ouroboros with a bit of effort. I haven't figured out how to make her take an interest in the rest of the world. She keeps saying that I will grow as detached as she is with enough time, and I don't know if she's right. All I can do is try.

What is that? Through the eyes of one of my spawn, I see that the ground abruptly stops. Its like a dried-out waterfall with a massive pit so deep that it cant see the bottom of it. Its the first clue that Ive found that could be related to my prey. What could have done this besides the snake? I send my bug into the hole, having more of them start to move toward the location of the pit. My spawn lack the ability to see in the dark as I do. I send it flying down into the darkness. Deeper and deeper it falls, with no sense of how far down the hole leads. I really hope this isnt a dead end that leads nowhere. Im growing impatient and hungry. This is taking too fucking long. Still, my spawn continues to plunge further into the cave when my connection is suddenly severed at an unknown depth.

What was that? What just happened? I instruct the closest insects to discover what happened as I turn around to start running toward the pit. Something killed my creation, and it died inside the gigantic snake-sized hole. It has to be Ouroboros. Its way too big a coincidence to not be related. My hunger is becoming increasingly more painful, so I activate my ghostly ability and dash straight to the location, ignoring every solid object in my way. I cant help but open my jaws, letting my forked tongue hang out the side of my mouth as I gallop toward my meal. Im salivating, my blood bubbling and boiling inside me as the thrill of finally finding a clue to where my prey is.

As I get closer to my destination, my spawn continues to enter the black chasm, and just like the original explorer, they die when they reach a certain depth. After I lose a quarter of them to the black void, I stop them from diving in and have them wait for me to arrive. I push my body harder, trying to get there as fast as I can. Wait for me, monster, Im coming to kill and eat you. It isn't like I'm mourning the loss of the insects, but they do represent all of my current resources. I haven't found a single animal or group of animals that would be large enough to even count as a snack. The bigger predators all vacate the area as I approach. Same with the birds and pack herbivores. My monstrous form inflicts instinctual fear into sentient and sapient minds. I represent danger and death.

However, the manin black turned me into this; he made sure that I would be deeply unsettling to look at. People can find scary predators cute or cuddly, like lions, tigers, and bears, but I am not like them. I'm not friend-shaped, I'm a nightmare insectoid reptile wolf shark thing. He called me an apocalyptic beast and made me in his idea of what that looked like. That bastard nailed it right on the head. Just wait. I'll kill Ouroboros, or maybe it'll kill me, but then I'll rise stronger. I'll repeat the cycle for however long it takes until I'm strong enough to rid Chile of the plague that's kept them isolated and afraid. Then I'm coming for the man in black. The one who did this to me. On the off chance that he's planning to do this to anyone else, or he already has, I need to kill him.

I hear the sound of seventy-five sets of wings beating in unison before I catch sight of the pit. The remaining members of my brood are hovering in place, forming a perimeter around the hole. Arriving in front of it, I finally get a true sense of the scale of what I'm hunting. I am big, but I'm a drop of water in the well that this hole is. Holy hell, this snake is huge. I have my insects start to web up the opening; it probably won't be able to stop it from escaping, but it might delay it for a minute or two. Now that I'm here, I can smell and taste death and blood in the air. There is definitely someone who's Worthy down there.

I should set a trap or investigate carefully. But human Six has no place here. It's time to unleash the beast. Turning corporeal, I take off running toward the hole and jump straight into it. I retract my insectoid appendages, keeping them pressed against my body, and plummet headfirst with my tails helping me steer my descent. Exhilaration fills every crevice of my body, from the tip of my snout to the end of my tails. I start chomping at the bit as wind assaults me from all sides. Soon. I am fulfilling my purpose, even if it isn't the way he expected. Hunt the strong. Feed on the weak. Perish in battle. Grow stronger with every death.

The ravenous desire to feed and eat battles against the happiness I feel from free-falling into a monster's lair. This is my first real hunt. Six, the Monster Killer has quite a nice ring to it. My thoughts about being more than just a monster are dashed as I cross the invisible threshold that my spawnlings did, and then the inside of my skull is put into a blender. Pain unlike any I've felt before explodes inside my head. I haven't been aware of myself for very long, but this is the worst thing I have ever felt. It only grows stronger the deeper I fall, and my limbs start spasming. My tails flail wildly as I spin out of control. Smashing into the side of the hole sends me tumbling as I lose track of which way is up and down.

Red liquid leaks from all my eyes and nose, and the pressure in my head worsens. I can feel the blood vessels burst inside my brain, the capillaries that connect the veins and arteries rupturing like taut wires failing to hold up a collapsing bridge. Then my regeneration kicks in, and the destroyed connections reach for each other, trying to reform, snapping together like a handshake from a friend. The pain continues to grow far past what I can take, but the actual damage doesn't. Ouroboros mental attack makes me wish for the orb prison, to be deprived of all senses again, if only to end the torture. But my regeneration is keeping the physical harm from progressing past a certain point. I continue to free-fall in agony, unable to control my limbs to potentially kill myself with a claw through my brain. I retreat deep into my mind, trying to fight through the unpleasant sensations, but it doesn't do anything. Nothing makes the pain stop, nothing except the ground.

SPLAT!

That makes the second time I've met the same fate as a housefly in the last however many hours it's been since we left the island. Holy fuck, that sucked. Worst than becoming paste was the mental anguish inflicted on me. Wait, the pain's gone. Why's the pain gone? Standing on all fours, I soak in my surroundings and see rock and dirt. Just rock and dirt. I went from a gigantic snake-shaped pit to a gigantic snake-shaped cave. Behind me, I see that a couple of hundred feet away, the cave turns upward. My corpse must've rolled after I died, evident by the carpet of blood leading to me.

I stretch out my limbs and appendages, shaking my neck and tails as well. I'm always stiff right after I resurrect, must be because of the new muscles and joints never being used before. My rumbling, aching stomach reminds me of my mission and the task at hand. Floating off the floor of the cave, I start to fly down the massive tunnel. As always, every part of me is a tiny bit better after I've died. My sights slightly clearer, my body a smidge more durable, my flight a little easier and smoother. I don't know how many deaths it's going to take for me to be able to kill this serpentine motherfucker, but I'll eventually get it done. I'm going to make the world better, even if it kills me.

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