Crack.
Crack, crack.
The crisp sound of scales shattering echoed through the chamber. At first, it was scattered and faint, but soon, like toppled dominoes, the cracking joined together into a continuous chorus of pops and snaps, like surging tides.
The bright color of the Red-scaled Basilisk's scales quickly faded to gray amid those popping sounds, losing all color. Then, piece by piece, they fell away. Yet before they could reach the ground, they had already turned to ash in midair.
Wisps of ash gathered together, rising into a dense gray mist.
A tall, thin figure slowly rose from within the gray fog.
Beneath the dome.
The Magic Moon flickered slightly, and the chamber suddenly grew brighter.
It illuminated the figure more clearly—it was a half-human, half-snake monster, over ten meters long. Its body was completely hairless, and compared to the Red-scaled Basilisk, it was somewhat smaller.
Its upper body was human, with a skeletal, gaunt frame. Its face was pale and covered in fine white scales. Its eyes were crimson, but its pupils were narrow and yellow. Its nose was flat like a snake's, and its nostrils, like its pupils, were two thin slits. Its lower body, meanwhile, was that of a snake—a huge white serpent's body.
The scales on its body were also of different sizes.
The scales on its head were about the size of rice grains, arranged neatly and densely, giving them a delicate appearance. At its neck, they were the size of mung beans, carrying a little more texture. By its chest, they had grown to the size of soybeans. The farther down they went, the larger they became. Below its waist, the scales were already palm-sized, thick and hard. As its body writhed across the chamber floor, they scraped out a piercing screech and