SSS Evolution: Upgrading My Trash Grade Skeleton to Godhood-Chapter 60: Lightning Serpent (II)

He had sent it in to distract a lightning serpent in an enclosed cave and dropped several hundred kilograms of stone ceiling on top of the situation.

The poor thing had almost certainly not survived.

Well.

He filed that away and kept moving.

Then the hiss came.

It filled the entire cavern — not just loud but physical, reverberating off every wall and surface, pressing against the eardrums with a fury that was as much about intent as it was about volume. The lightning serpent’s body had straightened from its coil, neck raised, scales blazing with electric light, its vertical pupils locked onto Lukas with the particular, focused rage of a creature that has identified exactly which puny, presumptuous thing is responsible for the indignity it just experienced.

It didn’t know the full mechanics of what had happened. But it knew the stones had come from nowhere. It knew the human was connected to them. And it knew — perhaps more urgently than anything else — that the falling rocks had come extremely close to destroying the Moonflower.

Its Moonflower.

The electricity around its form crackled outward in a visible, expanding corona, lighting the cavern walls in sharp, stuttering yellow.

Time had officially run out.

The fusion completed in the final breath before it needed to.

The last bone clicked into place around Lukas’s frame, the exoskeleton sealing itself with the practiced precision of something that had performed this assembly before and knew exactly where each piece belonged. Lukas rolled his shoulders once — feeling the familiar, amplified weight of Tommy’s reinforcement pressing against every surface of his body — and his eyes, hidden behind the mask, hardened into something cold and focused.

End this fast.

The thought arrived clean and without alternatives attached to it. Running was not an option he was entertaining. Not because pride wouldn’t allow it — but because lightning serpents were not Bloodthirsty Boars. Their intelligence sat at roughly the level of an average human, and that made them something considerably more dangerous than a creature running purely on instinct. It would not simply give chase in a straight line. It would anticipate. It would cut off exits. It would make leaving the cave a far more complicated problem than staying and finishing the fight here.

Speed. He ran the inventory of what he knew about the creature while his body settled into the most defensive stance he had at his disposal. Among all First Sequence creatures, lightning serpents are known for it above everything else. One wrong move and it’s over.

He drew the blood-infused copper sword. Took a breath. Held it. Let it settle into the bottom of his lungs and stay there.

The serpent, for its part, was deeply unimpressed by the display of readiness.

The realization that the puny human was not fleeing — was, in fact, planting its feet and raising a weapon — produced a reaction somewhere between fury and contempt. The hissing intensified, low and continuous and reverberating off the cavern walls, and the current discharging from its body climbed sharply in response. The temperature of the enclosed space spiked. The air crackled and popped with a rapid, irregular percussion that echoed from every surface simultaneously — loud, disorienting, filling the cavern with the sound of a storm that had been compressed into a space too small to contain it comfortably.

Then the serpent moved.

Lukas barely processed the shift in position before it was already there — the distance between them collapsing in a fraction of a second that his eyes could not fully track. The tail came around like a whip forged from lightning itself, moving at sonic speed, the arc of it trailing electric discharge that turned the air along its path white-hot.

There was no time to think. Only to act.

Gravity Pressure detonated outward from him in a full, unreserved release — the talent throwing its full weight against the incoming strike, compressing the space around the tail and dragging against its momentum. The slowdown was marginal. But marginal was enough.

The tail brushed past his figure with a proximity that he would not be revisiting in his memory tonight, the displaced air hitting him like a physical push, the heat from the trailing discharge prickling against his skin even through Tommy’s reinforcement.

He didn’t waste the opening.

As the tail flew past, he raised the sword and slashed — channeling every unit of star energy stored within Tommy’s frame directly into the blade’s edge in a single, compressed surge. The contact produced a shower of sparks that lit the cavern in a brief, brilliant burst, the metal screaming against dense, scale-covered hide with the sound of something meeting a surface it was not entirely equipped to handle.

The blade pushed through.

Barely.

A light wound opened along the serpent’s flank — shallow, a technical success by the narrowest possible definition.

How disgustingly tough!

Lukas was already moving backward, the curse grinding through his teeth as he created distance, the retreat instinctive and immediate. A heartbeat after he cleared the zone, an arc of raw lightning discharge cracked outward from the serpent’s body in a wide, wild radius — the creature’s passive electricity venting the creature’s irritation in every direction at once. If he had been a single step slower, the current would have found him, and the conversation would have ended there.

He breathed. Assessed.

Speed — far superior to mine, even fused. Strength — matched. Defense — no laughing matter. And I have nothing in my current arsenal capable of dealing penetrating damage. 𝓯𝓻𝓮𝙚𝙬𝓮𝙗𝒏𝙤𝒗𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝒐𝓶

One exchange. That was all it had taken to sketch the full outline of the problem. The serpent’s scales were built to absorb and deflect exactly the kind of force he was capable of bringing to bear. Chipping away at its exterior with raw star energy infused strikes was going to be a long, expensive, and increasingly dangerous process.

But if he could slow it down enough to find the weak spot—

The idea arrived before he could finish the thought that preceded it.

Gravity Pressure is not enough as it stands. But what if it wasn’t the same Gravity Pressure?

The serpent answered his pause by charging.

It came in low and fast, body unwinding from its reorientation into a full, committed surge — not striking this time, but reaching, the massive coils opening to wrap around his figure and simply crush whatever the scales and lightning failed to handle.

Lukas let it come.

Tommy’s reinforcement would hold the compression for long enough. He trusted the bones. He didn’t waste the seconds on evasion.

His hands moved through the notification windows with rapid, deliberate navigation — finding what he needed, confirming the expenditure before the logical part of his brain could object to the timing.

Ten sacrifice points. Gone.

[-10 Sacrifice Points. Remaining: 30]

[Analyzing strengths and weaknesses of First Sequence Rare-grade talent: Gravity Pressure...]

[Checking all feasible evolution paths for the talent. Listing suitable Epic-grade evolution paths.]

[Please select one of the paths listed below:]

The options waited in front of him, patient and glowing, while the serpent’s coils tightened around Tommy’s frame and the cavern filled with the sound of ancient bone resisting a force measured in tons.

Lukas read fast.