Chapter 8 – The Path of the Pink Mist
They returned to the cave with the boars.
The smell of fresh blood still clung to his skin when the serpent coiled around his body. The intention was clear and urgent. Lust would not wait.
The wide mouth opened and swallowed his cock in one motion. The throat descended to the base, tight, hot, hungry. He gripped the blue horns and thrust hard, his body still charged with the adrenaline of the hunt. Each stroke made the serpent hiss and swallow deeper. When he came, she drank everything with enthusiasm, her tongue gathering every drop that tried to escape. His taste seemed to addict her more and more.
Then came the pussy.
He pushed her against the cave wall and buried all twenty-two centimeters to the hilt. Her flexible body twisted, taking everything. The inner walls clenched and released in a wild rhythm. He came deep twice in a row, filling the white belly while the serpent hissed in pleasure. The floor grew wet. The air grew heavy.
Only afterward, panting and cleaned by her tongue, did he notice the time.
One week.
It had been exactly one week since the changes in his body had stopped.
At first he found them strange. The white hair, the pink viper eyes, the fangs, the claws, the tongue that was too long… everything felt wrong. There were nights when he looked at his reflection in the water and felt disgust at himself. But as the days passed, as power stabilized and hunting became easy, the disgust was slowly replaced by something else. Quiet acceptance. Then quiet pleasure. The metamorphosis had made him stronger. More complete. He began to delight in it.
Now his routine was simple.
Exercises inside the cave — using knowledge from Earth to work every muscle at the same time — and long hours meditating in the white-water pool. The body responded. It grew denser, more resistant. Yet a constant frustration remained. The sensation of gaining power through the pink snake's meat had been intoxicating. Every piece brought a wave of strength and desire that no training could match. He was cautious, however. He had never heard of a human surviving the consumption of a monster core, let alone inheriting its traits. It had been luck. Or something more.
He knew exactly what had saved him.
The pool.
Every time he entered the white water, the body found balance. Lust lessened enough to allow thought. The transformation did not kill him. He gave silent thanks every time.
It was during one of those meditations that the reflection came.
This world was fantasy. Magic. Beasts. Exactly like the anime he used to watch as a young man on Earth. Worlds where ordinary people could become something more. Where mana cores were forged, where mages shaped the energy of the environment.
He looked at the white water around him.
The serpent was feared throughout the forest. No one approached her territory. Perhaps the pool was the reason. Perhaps that water was the source of her strength.
He took the risk.
He scooped a little water with his hands and drank a small sip.
The overload was immediate.
An electric current ran through his entire body, as if he had been flooded with pure energy. Muscles tensed. Vision became too sharp for a few seconds. Breathing caught. Then the sensation faded, leaving behind a pleasant tingling and greater mental clarity.
He drank another sip. Then another.
With a sharper mind, he began to reason about magic.
In every fantasy world he remembered, the first step of a mage was to form a magic core. Absorb ambient energy and condense it inside the body. When he had first arrived at the cave, still an ordinary thief, he would have laughed at the idea. Now, however, he could see particles of light floating in the air. Tiny, almost invisible, yet present. The highest concentration was exactly in the pool.
He assumed that was mana.
He closed his eyes and tried.
First he attempted to pull the energy from outside inward. He failed. The external mana slipped through his mental fingers like water. Then he tried only to feel the energy that already existed inside his own body — the same energy the pink snake's core had left behind. This time it worked. He managed to move a small, warm, pink internal flow.
He concentrated.
The flow grew.
When he opened his eyes, a fine pink mist rose from his skin, hovering around the body for a few seconds before dissipating.
He did not know what it did.
But instinct told him it was linked to lust. To the same force the Love Snake carried.
He smiled for the first time in a long while.
The path of magic had begun.
And he was going to combine everything he knew — knowledge from Earth, the stories of drunk beggars, the experience of having become something no longer human — to move forward.
The serpent watched from the edge of the pool, blue eyes gleaming.
The intention that arrived was simple and curious:
Continue.