Stealing from a regular mercenary is one thing. Stealing from two guys who just robbed a literal goddess with a terrifying aura? That was just good business.
If I played this right, Bae Suzy would owe me big time, and I’d get to keep whatever spilled out of these idiots’ pockets.
Barnaby and the Captain came crashing through the thick weeds, breathing heavily and grinning like they had just won the lottery. Barnaby was clutching Suzy’s glowing runic daggers tightly in his good hand, while the Captain lugged her expensive leather armor over his shoulder.
They were five feet away from my bush.
"System, activate ’Shadow Step’ right under Barnaby’s chin," I commanded mentally, my matte-black coils tensing like a compressed metal spring. "Let’s test out the new fangs."
[System: Giddy up, you sneaky little noodle. Shadow Step engaged. Try not to bite your own lips this time.]
The cold, electric espresso sensation flooded my gut again. My physical shape dissolved into a loose cloud of freezing black smoke, completely vanishing from the grass.
Whoosh.
A split second later, I materialized out of thin air right in front of Barnaby’s chest. Before his tiny brain could even process the sudden cloud of black smoke appearing out of nowhere, I unhinged my jaws, lunged forward, and bit down hard right on the fleshy meat of his neck.
Chomp.
My new hollow fangs pierced his skin easily. A warm, tingling fluid shot out from the roof of my mouth directly into his veins.
[System: PING! ’Petty Venom’ successfully injected. Let the circus begin.]
"Gah! The ghost worm!" Barnaby shrieked, dropping the glowing daggers instantly as he slapped the back of his neck, knocking me loose.
I tumbled safely into the mud, coiling back into a defensive loop.
"What are you screaming about, you idiot? Run!" the Captain yelled, spinning around.
But Barnaby wasn’t running. His eyes suddenly went completely wide, the pupils shrinking to tiny pinpricks. The Petty Venom was hitting his system at maximum speed.
"The... the trees!" Barnaby stammered, his face turning a sickly shade of green. He began to point wildly at a perfectly normal oak tree. "Captain! The trees have giant human teeth! They’re trying to eat my ears! Get them off me!"
"What the hell are you talking about?!" the Captain barked, grabbing Barnaby’s tunic.
"The mud is singing, Captain! It’s singing a song about my mother!" Barnaby screamed in pure terror. He started flailing his arms around like a malfunctioning windmill, completely lost in a horrific hallucination. With a wild swing, he accidentally smacked the Captain right across the nose.
Crack.
"Ow! You crazy bastard!" the Captain roared, clutching his bleeding nose.
While the two human idiots were busy punching each other in a blind panic, I didn’t waste a single second. I slithered forward like a streak of black ink, wrapped the tip of my tail around the leather hilts of Suzy’s two glowing daggers, and dragged them backward into the deep shadows of the bush.
Down by the river, Bae Suzy was still submerged up to her shoulders, watching the absolute circus unfold in the trees. Her deep black eyes blinked in utter confusion as she saw one of her rogue mercenaries screaming at a bush while the other was bleeding from his nose, all while a three-foot-long black snake neatly pulled her family heirlooms into the grass.
"System," I thought, a smug grin forming inside my snake head as I guarded the loot. "Check my status. Are these guys worth any more biomass?"
[System: Honestly? Barnaby is currently trying to fight a patch of clover, and the Captain is crying about his nose. They’re a complete joke, Barry. But look behind you. The boss lady is waiting for her pants.]
I turned my head back toward the river.
Bae Suzy was glaring straight at my bush. The confusion on her gorgeous face had vanished, replaced by that terrifying aura from before.
"You," Suzy called out, her smooth, velvet voice echoing across the water. "The black snake. You aren’t a normal beast, are you? Bring my gear back to the rock, or I swear I will find a way to turn you into a belt."
Gulp.
Even when she was threatening to turn me into a fashion accessory, she looked breathtakingly beautiful. But her aura was no joke. If I tried to run away with her daggers now, she’d probably hunt me down and pop my head like a grape the second she got out of the water.
Time to pull off the ultimate scam: playing the hero.