Choices and Sacrifices

Even after using this panel for half a year, Bai Chuan found that it still managed to surprise him a little every now and then.

For example, if he hadn't been so curious, always wanting to get to the bottom of its secrets, he might never have learned that so much information lay hidden behind ability enhancement.

Still, recovering an ability was a good thing. It saved him two points.

Though it also interrupted his plan to test whether enhancing the same ability a second time would make his body grow explosively again.

Was that a good thing or a bad thing?

Bai Chuan couldn't shake the feeling that he was acting like someone who'd gotten a bargain and was still complaining about it.

He scratched his head, then continued enhancing his abilities.

Coiling Strangle LV2 and Flexible LV2 were the source of a python's strength. They were must-haves.

As for Heat-Sensing Lip Pit LV2, it was a heat-sensing ability similar to a pit viper's loreal pit. Bai Chuan hesitated, then decided to enhance it after all.

His heat-sensing range was still too small, only about twenty or thirty meters in every direction. He hoped a python's range would be greater.

Then Bai Chuan looked at the ability "Energy-Saving Storage LV2." This time, he really hesitated.

He wasn't sure whether he should enhance it. After discovering that he no longer needed to hibernate, he had carefully observed his own condition—and made a startling discovery: at some point, one of his abilities had vanished!

That ability was "Energy-Saving Storage LV1," unique to snakes. It had two parts. The first was energy-saving: the lower the temperature, the slower his metabolism, allowing him to conserve energy.

The storage part weakened his ability to digest and absorb food, letting him keep it in his stomach for a long time.

Together, these traits meant that when the temperature dropped, a snake's metabolism slowed, reducing its need for energy and allowing it to store the energy absorbed from food.

Judging by its function alone, the ability clashed with what Bai Chuan wanted now.

He needed to digest and absorb food quickly to increase his points, but that went against a snake's instincts.

So Bai Chuan suspected that countless enhancements had caused the ability to disappear, leaving him no longer in need of hibernation.

Now that he was seeing the ability again, he couldn't help hesitating.

In theory, the ability's description alone made it clear he should give it up. It seemed to be nothing but a collection of negative buffs.

But no one knew whether losing this snake ability would bring about problems in the future, or whether it might harm him—cause his genes to collapse, become defective, or be incomplete.

That possibility worried him all the more after he learned that some enhanced abilities could conflict with one another.

Besides, during the flood, it had been thanks to this ability that he hadn't needed to risk hunting in the rain.

With this ability, he could face certain survival challenges with calm confidence.

So he really was in a bind.

Bai Chuan stared at the abilities on the panel for a long, long time.

He sighed and finally decided to give up the ability.

He wanted to keep every ability a snake had. After all, people were always afraid of change and the unknown.

But ever since the moment he began evolving, there was no way his future could be spent as a snake forever.

In his previous life, he'd lived in a country that called its people "descendants of the dragon." From childhood onward, he'd been filled with longing for the wondrous creature known as the dragon.

That was why, deep in his subconscious, he had kept evolving in the direction of a dragon. First came the bulges that would one day become dragon horns, then forelimbs like dragon claws, then the lightning that came with a dragon's power to summon wind and rain.

At some point, he had begun unconsciously evolving toward the form of the dragons in mythology. Though for now he was still an imitation—not just in strength, but in appearance too, which was far from complete.

But if he kept evolving, he was sure that one day he would become a true dragon.

And did mythical creatures like dragons need to hibernate?

Of course not.

He also thought of the source of this ability model: a Burmese Python that had been powerful, but whom he'd killed through trickery while it was hibernating.

Would he be willing to let someone kill him the same way someday?

If not, what was there left to hesitate about?

That left the final two abilities: Swimming LV2, which increased his speed in the water, and Saltwater Adaptation LV1, which let him survive in seawater for a limited time.

Not every snake could survive in seawater. Most preferred freshwater, or even relatively dry regions.

From a biological perspective, this ability's essence was the osmotic pressure of his cells.

After enhancing it, Bai Chuan discovered that his body had gained an instinct: it could subtly adjust the osmotic pressure of his cells according to the water around him.

In the end, for this evolution, he chose "Final Growth LV3," "Coiling Strangle LV2," "Flexible LV2," "Heat-Sensing Lip Pit LV2," "Swimming LV2," and "Saltwater Adaptation LV1."

And so, his evolution began.

He believed that after this evolution, he would finally be free of the defects of snakes.

With that thought, Bai Chuan once again fell asleep beneath the familiar drowsiness.

Without him noticing, the panel deducted twelve points.

The familiar viscous secretion appeared once more, wrapping him up like a giant egg.

His evolution began.

This time, he had enhanced an especially large number of abilities. By the time Bai Chuan awoke again, a month and a half had passed.

Perhaps he was lucky. This evolution had gone off without a hitch, and his transformation was complete without the slightest disturbance.

"This is the most wonderful feeling I've ever had!"

With his eyes closed, Bai Chuan carefully sensed his body. He could feel how astonishingly flexible it had become.

Back when he had the body of the Eye King, he'd actually been rather stiff. Most of the time, he could only dodge from side to side or coil along the direction of his bones.

He'd relied on his enormous body and his venom to bully his own kind.

But now, he could clearly feel that he could coil and bend however he wanted.

On top of that, his Heat Sensing Vision now reached an astonishing hundred meters in every direction.

Don't underestimate a mere hundred meters. Before, his Heat Sensing Vision had reached only thirty meters in every direction—and it was merely an auxiliary sense.

His true, powerful vision came from his eyes. No matter how far away something was, as long as it was in the open with no obstacles, he could easily pinpoint its location.

Then, as he drew closer, he could use his heat-sensing organs to approach it silently, without a single mistake along the way.

But enough of that for now. It would be better to shed his old skin.

It was itching him to death.