Forsyx slithered in his green hook snake form as he moved across the forest.
All the excitement he had at the start died down as he focused only on the surrounding vibrations, scanning every inch of the rightmost part of the forest.
That's right—he was not on the left side.
It had already been around half an hour since the Hibiki snake's entry.
Like everyone else, he had rushed to the left side first, but he noticed Elish, Luka, and Danish were actually heading in the opposite direction.
So halfway through, he just took a random direction away from the others and switched back to human form to blend in with the noob players.
He rushed toward the Hibiki direction, switching back to snake form along the way and making his way to this side.
But even after scanning the entire area for so long, he hadn't found anything.
With each passing second, he felt his chance of finding the nest first diminishing.
However, with how quiet this area of the forest was, he was sure something was different here.
As he placed his jaw on the ground, he could not sense any nearby vibrations, like there were no big-to mid-sized beasts in this area.
The only vibrations he felt were from the war massacre happening at the center.
He flickered his forked tongue, and the green-and-blue world around him expanded.
Snake's senses were bad for wide searches. But he could still sense the vibrations of insects crawling or digging around him.
It was much better in terms of death search and point precision.
He continued to flicker, but now he started to have doubts.
First, the size of the Hibiki snake was abnormal.
Even for a boss monster, it was twenty meters longer than he had imagined.
It made no sense at all. And then, those three running in this direction—did they already know the location of the nest? Then, was this whole quest just meant to call out that behemoth?
He looked toward the center. All he saw was a massive, bluish snake flailing around, with another massive creature jumping on it.
Even the elite Red Fox boss had come out to deal with the Hibiki snake. That thing was the only one holding it back.
He started hissing in tension. Suddenly, he paused. He placed his jaw on the ground and heard the vibration there.
It was like something was constantly moving through the ground.
He slithered in that direction in confusion and found himself next to a tree.
He placed his jaw near the tree roots and felt the same constant vibration, alongside the moisture on the ground.
Wasting no more time, he started digging. The wet soil made it a bit easier for him, and soon he fell into a water channel.
Before he could do much, the current swept him down the channel, deeper into the canal.
Fck, he desperately tried to breathe as this water channel made no sense.
He had heard of water coming out of the ground through channels, but why was it the opposite here?
Thankfully, his barely centimeter-wide thickness helped him roll around in the channel, but he was helpless against the water flow. It continued to drag him deeper and deeper.
Well, too bad the green hook snake had round grass snake eyes—not those slit viper eyes—so he couldn't see much in the darkness.
In this form, it was also hard to tell how deep he had gone. But then he saw a bright light coming from below.
The next second, he fell from the channel into a big pond.
Plop!
Fck, he didn't know how to swim as a snake, and he sank deeper into the pond.
A few feet down, he felt a hard rock beneath him. Not caring about anything, he just started slithering across toward the edge as fast as possible.
This situation was bizarre, and he didn't dare change forms here. After all, as long as he didn't use his mana, he was nothing but a normal grass snake.
Thankfully, the pond sides weren't too steep.
Within a minute, he made it out of the water.
After coming out, he rolled over and took some deep breaths to calm himself.
Holding his breath in such a small body was much harder than in his human form.
After a few seconds, he came back to his senses.
The cold nature of the snake helped him manage his heartbeat.
As he looked around, his eyes expanded in shock to see this underground cave was full of bright blue light that was coming from these shining mana crystals embedded into the walls.
The light from all those crystals gave this underground cave a surreal feeling.
Then he saw these two massive statues of snakes coiled around before the opening to another cave that went deeper into the ground.
There was another massive cave in front of them that went up to the surface.
'Wait… is this the nest?' He looked at the cave going deeper and shook his head.
He wasn't sure, but the moment he placed his jaw on the ground, he almost hissed in fear.
He barely managed to control himself as he almost coiled into a ball.
This was his mechanism to deal with fear.
All of this was because he felt vibrations from those two stone snake statues.
It was faint, but he was sure those things were breathing.
Not only that, his snake instincts were screaming at him to run away.
They were far more powerful than his current form. Likely elite—or possibly even unique-grade monsters.
'Just what the fck is going on around this village?' He couldn't understand why so many powerful beasts were present around this place.
He stared at them… and then at the cave that went below.
It looked like they were guarding the Hibiki nest. Hundreds of questions came to his mind, but he suppressed them.
There was no time for that. He carefully looked at them and decided to take the risk.
This entire setup screamed that something was wrong in this place.
This time, with extra care, he started slithering—ever so slowly—toward the cave.
He slithered at a snail's speed, focusing entirely on not making a sound.
As he reached the mouth of the cave, his entire instinct screamed at him to run—but suppressing them, he kept moving deeper and deeper.
Before he knew it, he was far past the cave mouth—and none of the stone snakes had reacted.
Still, he didn't dare relax. He even controlled himself from flicking out his forked tongue.
He just relied on his crappy eyes and moved deeper into the cave.
As he continued, the cave started to expand more and more.
Finally, he saw it. A massive, massive nest in the center of the deepest part of the cave.