[Although the first Snakefolk had transformed themselves into Progenitors by brewing secret potions, a substantial portion of their population still came into being through those potions.
But just as snakes laid eggs, they could also produce new offspring through certain methods—and the way snakes reproduced meant they often laid several eggs at once. The infants born in the same clutch naturally became siblings.
These two methods had always operated in parallel, allowing their population to swell in an extremely short time until their resources could no longer support it.
Commonly known as spamming troops.
Yet Snakefolk society did not actually recognize any absolute bonds of kinship.
Their offspring rarely had much contact with their parents, and siblings born together did not consider one another any different from other reptiles.
They only made use of these so-called family ties in one situation—
When they wanted to elicit sympathy.
After all, there were always people foolish and kind enough to listen to tragic memories and feel an inexplicable pity for the storyteller. More often than not, that made them lower their guard and fall into a trap laid by the Snakefolk.
It worked on the same principle as the gambling father, the sick mother, the younger brother still in school, and the broken girl herself in a brothel's sob story.
Now you understand why I always have to go save the girls in those places, right?
Of course, what I mean is that this cold indifference often caused biological siblings to develop completely opposite personalities as a result of their different living environments.]
Bell and Bella before him were one such example.
They were probably brother and sister, weren't they? Their facial shapes and features were fairly similar, after all. Both were striking by human standards, and in the brothels of Wind