Boom-
Before the two elders could make sense of what was happening, they heard a brief explosion.
The giant snake's ruined body, wrapped in strands of silver lightning, burst apart.
"...I have to say, your queen has some real guts."
Sun Buxiao glanced back at the exploding remains and could not help remarking on it.
Medusa's method of evolution was actually brutally cruel-to the point that she was staking her life on a gamble.
A gamble with nine chances of death and only one of survival, at that.
Members of the Snake-People Tribe could form a symbiotic bond with the souls of powerful Snake-Type Magical Beasts. The magical beast Medusa had previously bonded with was that enormous purple snake, but-as they had just witnessed, the giant snake had exploded.
It had been scorched by Heavenly Flames, struck by lightning, and finally blown apart.
In truth, however, Medusa had cast both her original body and her entire soul into the Heavenly Flames, using their terrifying power to undergo a round of "purification."
Purification of her bloodline.
The bloodline of the sixth-rank Purple Nether Flame Snake contained a trace of an Ancient Beast's bloodline. Medusa intended to extract that trace with the Heavenly Flames, then cast her soul into it and use it to forge a new body for herself.
In other words, she had to shatter before she could rebuild, abandoning everything she originally possessed and retaining only her most fundamental soul so she could transform into an entirely new, higher form of life.
The chances of this method succeeding were definitely less than one in ten, yet Medusa had taken the gamble anyway.
There was a reason she was the queen.
Meanwhile, the two Snake-People elders still stood with their mouths hanging open, staring blankly at the Purple Nether Flame