Chapter 195: Chapter 183: Annelise Locke’s Evolutionary Path

With The Crown Prince taking over the cockpit for this leg of the sea journey, Irvin Holden became a mere decoration. They traveled by sea for four days. At one point, they stopped the boat to do some sea fishing and caught a giant octopus. Flora Bloom’s biggest regret was not bringing Ethan Monroe along. Without Ethan Monroe, she could only toss the octopus into her spatial dimension. She’d have Ethan Monroe cook it for her when they got back.

Flora Bloom didn’t hide any of this from Annelise Locke. In the apocalypse, Serpent Women like Annelise Locke were extremely rare. The reason was that their early evolution consumed an extraordinary amount of resources.

First, they needed to absorb the venom of various poisonous snakes. At the same time, they needed the energy from Crystal Cores to cleanse their bodies of the venom’s side effects.

If a Serpent Woman didn’t awaken, she would be no different from an ordinary person. But once awakened, a novice Serpent Woman would need both of these things to evolve. Without them, she would die in agony as foreign scales grew during her body’s transformation.

For a human to grow something on their body that didn’t conform to human genetics, and for their skeleton to slowly transform into that of a snake as their level increased... the process was both bloody and painful.

Furthermore, when a Serpent Woman reached the Middle Level, her legs would disappear entirely, replaced by a snake’s tail. Over eighty percent of the skin on her body would be covered in scales.

Only upon reaching a High-level would they evolve again and transform back into a human.

And for awakened Serpent Women, even if they didn’t absorb Crystal Cores or snake venom, their bodies would still begin to mutate. The evolution would not stop. Without enough snake venom and Crystal Cores, death was the only possible outcome.

When Flora Bloom told Annelise Locke all this, she had no intention of ever letting Annelise leave her team.

’A Beast Type humanoid Serpent Woman... she’ll be too strong once she matures! Call me domineering or selfish, but if Annelise Locke fully develops, or if there’s even a one percent—no, a one-in-a-thousand or one-in-ten-thousand chance—that she becomes my enemy in the future, I can’t let that happen.’

’It’s not just Serpent Women. All humans on the Beast Type humanoid evolutionary path are still fundamentally human. Although they’re terrifyingly rare, as long as they mature, every single one of them has the combat power to take on a hundred superpowered individuals of the same level.’

’After this mission is over, if this Annelise Locke isn’t willing to stay on my team, then I don’t mind crossing my own line and nipping her in the bud.’

The yacht had been traveling for four days. That afternoon, Flora Bloom and the other five suddenly felt the surrounding air and temperature spike by more than ten degrees, a heat so intense it made their chests tighten with panic.

The sea around Morhaven was already no less than thirty degrees Celsius. With this new spike of over ten degrees, you could probably cook a raw egg just by cracking it on the deck.

Among the six of them, only Irvin Holden was not a superpower user. However, as a soldier, and a former squad leader at that, his physical conditioning was excellent.

Therefore, none of the six had trouble adapting to the scorching environment.

However, in this environment, the scales on Annelise Locke’s body began to surface once again. Over the past four days of getting along, she had long since removed the cloth she used to hide the green scales on her body.

She had discovered that Flora Bloom and the others weren’t afraid of her unusual features, nor did they find them disgusting. This made her feel that, for the first time in over a month, someone wasn’t treating her like a freak.

"Flora Bloom, I... I think my body is starting to evolve!"

The green scales all over Annelise Locke’s body flickered in and out of sight. On her forehead, abdomen, and calves—places that were previously scale-less—several green lines suddenly raised up. Upon closer inspection, each one looked like an unopened compound eye.

Flora Bloom took hold of Annelise Locke’s calf and ran her fingers smoothly along the newly grown scales. The sensation was slick and cool, identical to snake scales.

Out of curiosity, she brushed the patch of green scales in the opposite direction. Instantly, Annelise Locke let out a sudden cry. The vertical pupils in her eyes snapped open, and the sound from her mouth was surprisingly like the hiss of a snake.

The scales on her calf that Flora Bloom had brushed backward now resembled a set of open demonic eyes, glinting with a sinister light under the harsh sun.

Flora Bloom smoothed the scales on Annelise Locke’s calf back down and handed her a Crystal Core to absorb.

For the past four days, whenever something unusual happened, absorbing a Crystal Core would alleviate the side effects of her evolution.

But to truly complete the evolution, she still needed the venom of a poisonous snake.

The day they brought Annelise Locke back to the villa, Caleb had told Flora Bloom that Annelise was lying. But Annelise had just stammered and hadn’t said anything concrete.

Now, Flora Bloom gave Annelise a few Crystal Cores. After absorbing them, her painful symptoms didn’t ease as they had before. Instead, her body’s reaction became even more violent.

"Annelise, I know you weren’t telling the truth that day. We still haven’t reached the natural thermal baths with the warm currents. If we rashly go into the sea now to find a venomous Sea Serpent for you, I’m afraid you won’t be able to hold on."

"I... am... Chi... HSSSSS." The flesh around Annelise Locke’s eyes was pushed aside by a new set of green scales, bursting into droplets of reddish-green blood. Her pupils transformed into vertical slits, and her eyes lost all focus.

"AHH!"

She thrashed on the ground, a jagged ridge of bone-like spurs arching from her spine and lifting her limbs off the deck.

At this moment, Annelise Locke’s clothes began to be torn apart by the newly emerging scales, the fabric soaked in her blood.

"There’s no time! She’s evolving right now. If she can’t complete the evolution without snake venom, she’ll die for sure."

Cynthia Grant covered her mouth as she watched Annelise Locke, who was covered in blood but still holding on. Though her serpentine eyes had lost their focus, you could still see her tenacious will to live.

Suddenly, a snake as thick as an arm appeared in Flora Bloom’s hand.

This was the snake she had obtained in the mountains by the racecourse in Janton. When this snake first entered her spatial dimension, it was brown all over. Its head was an inverted triangle with two black dots, and from behind those dots, two red lines extended all the way down to the tip of its tail.

Two perfectly ordinary grasshoppers had entered her dimension along with the snake. Those two grasshoppers hadn’t changed much, aside from growing larger and darker in color.

But the venomous snake had undergone a massive transformation. First, its once-brown body had turned dark gray, and a thin golden line had appeared next to the two blood-red lines behind its eyes.

Its size had also changed. When she first put it in her dimension, it was only as thick as an adult man’s finger and a little over a meter long.

But now, it was nearly as thick as her arm and roughly five or six meters long, coiled several times around her forearm.

A life was on the line. Flora Bloom decided to take a gamble!

She had never asked Caleb what Annelise Locke had lied about. ’But, in this whole mission, if the reward is real, then there’s only one thing she could have lied about.’

’The part where she said she needed a venomous Sea Serpent—that was the lie. However, as a Serpent Woman, she definitely needs the venom of a poisonous snake to evolve. That much is certain. But what if a Sea Serpent isn’t what she needs? What if the one who needs the Sea Serpent is actually someone else?’

Flora Bloom clutched the venomous snake in her hand and squatted down beside Annelise Locke.

"Annelise, I have a venomous snake right here. But it’s not a venomous Sea Serpent. I know you’ve been hiding something from me, but you’re on the verge of evolution right now. If you fail, you will die!"

Upon hearing Flora Bloom’s words, Annelise Locke’s mutated snake-like eyes suddenly froze. Amidst her painful and violent struggles, a sliver of focus slowly returned to them.

"Snake... hsss... snake... hssssss."

"How do I help you?" Seeing Annelise Locke staring at the snake in her hand, a look of hope appearing in her serpentine eyes, Flora Bloom already knew the answer.

Annelise Locke struggled to extend her arm toward Flora Bloom’s feet. Looking at the snake in Flora’s hand, a pair of sharp fangs was revealed in her delicate mouth as she forced out the words with great difficulty.

"Bite... hsssss... bite... me."