The giant serpent looked at us, its cold gaze alternating between Briar and myself, seemingly evaluating the situation.
"Sso be it," the oversized snake remarked with a hiss. "If you would not leave, then I only have one choice," it added, opening its maw and spitting a green liquid at us.
Briar and I immediately reacted, jumping to the right and left, respectively, to avoid the attack. "Oh, wow, big surprise," I dryly remarked while looking at the green liquid corrode the sand where it landed.
"A giant snake that shoots corrosive acid. How original!" I added while heaving a sigh of frustration as Briar charged towards the serpent.
"Will you stop complaining and help!" Briar exclaimed as she jumped upwards to dodge a swipe of the serpent's tail after the monster came out of the water, now attacking us from the lake's shore.
I shrugged my shoulders as I took aim with Snow white, firing energy bullets that impacted the serpents' seemingly metallic scales without leaving a scratch.
Still, my shots did distract the monster long enough for Briar to maneuver herself close enough to lunge at it, and that she did, jumping forward with her arm blades crossed in front of her as she flew towards the giant viper.
The serpent noticed the approaching Briar and reacted quickly, raising its tail and swinging it downwards in an attempt to crush the crazy blonde under its weight.
Briar reacted just as quickly, sprouting a pair of fleshy wings and dodging to the side with a single flap of her wings, still flying towards the monster's face.
I, myself, kept firing while charging towards the snake, and I reached it precisely the same time Briar's arm blades made contact with the monster's scales, scraping against their metallic surface and causing sparks to fly.
Briar frowned and gritted her teeth, putting more strength into her arms and only stopping when she saw blood, kicking the wounded area and using it as a launchpad to jump away.
The monster turned to look at Briar, intending to chase after her as it seemed unphased by the wound, which Briar created in its abdomen.
I took advantage of that momentary distraction, transforming snowwhite into a notably big, great sword as I jumped towards the monster, burying my blade into the very same wound Briar created.
The snake turned to glare at me, and I smirked in response as my attack was far from over. I channeled a good chunk of my energy through Snowwhite and into the snake's body, altering it to match the properties of fire.
I was technically injecting fire into the serpent's wound, and the pained hiss it made would definitely suggest that the giant snake felt it. And with that in mind, I quickly turned Snowwhite into a pair of wings, flying away as the monster began violently thrashing.
"You will regret thisss, humansss," the serpent exclaimed as it turned to look at me with what I could only assume as hate in its serpentine, yellow eyes.
The serpent then issued a strange hissing sound that differed notably from the ones it produced earlier. "Well, that can't be good, can it?" Briar asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Well, do you consider countless snakes creeping out from the sand ground or bad?" I asked with twitching eyes as I turned to look to the ground, noticing serpents of various sizes coming out of the lake and the sand around the oasis.
"Wait, you don't mean...?" Briar remarked with a frown as she turned to look at the ground below her, losing several shades of color as she saw the countless number of snakes below.
"I'm too exhausted to deal with this shit," I remarked with a tired sigh, shaking my head. "I always have enough energy to kill some creepy crawlers...," Briar commented, trailing at the end of her sentence.
"But yeah, this is too much for me right now, too," she added while shaking her head as she turned to look at me.
We exchanged glances for the briefest of seconds, only for both of us to turn around and fly away to the east at precisely the same time, trying to avoid this unfavorable fight.
I would have been more than willing to stay and fight to secure that oasis as a temporary base, but an entire day of constant exploration and fighting has left me with a limited amount of energy.
If it were the giant serpent alone, I would have been able to defeat it somehow, but it's nigh impossible for me to defeat so many monsters in such an exhausted state, even with Briar's help, who was more than likely just as weary.
"Came back, filthy humansss," the giant serpent exclaimed with a loud hiss as it watched us get further and further away from the oasis, and I saw Briar turn around, giving the monster her middle finger.
"Would snake even understand that gesture?" I asked, chuckling lightly as the serpent began hissing even more angrily and loudly. "This one seems to understand it just fine," Briar replied with a smirk, shrugging her shoulders.
...
"This looks far enough," I remarked with a sigh, finally feeling the day's exhaustion catching up to me. "We can set up camp and call it a day here," I added as I landed on the ground and immediately began checking the surroundings for possible dangers.
"Looks fairly safe, too," I said while tiredly stretching my limbs as I retrieved a sleeping bag out from the backpack we received from Dido.
"So, you want me to take the first-night watch shift?" Briar asked with a raised eyebrow, looking at me with an expression that was a mixture of surprise and amusement.
"Nope," I replied with a deadpan as I used half of what limited aura I had to create an aura clone. "This guy will take care of the night watch," I added with a yawn.
"You can leave the night shit to it or stay up all night," I remarked as I entered the sleeping bag, closing my eyes. "Your choice," I added, going quiet as my brain immediately began overthinking like usual.
"Awe, and here I thought we were finally making progress," Briar remarked with a smirk, curiously alternating her gaze between my clone and myself.
...
"Did anything happen?" I asked my aura clone with a yawn, stretching my limbs as I woke up, and it shook its head, showing that nothing happened indeed.
I turned to look at Briar and was surprised that she was sound asleep with a careless expression. "Did she actually sleep the entire night?" I asked as I turned to look at my aura clone again.
Why am I asking the clone about what happened at night instead of just rummaging through its memory, despite being able to control it with my mind, you might ask?
The answer is that I can't, as the clone is an energy construct that doesn't have a memory in the first place. I am perfectly capable of seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling everything that it feels when I'm actively controlling it.
But the same can not be said when I'm asleep, as my conscious mind isn't active at that time, and it falls into my subconscious mind to control the clone's actions.
So, in conclusion, the memory of what happened last night wasn't in the clone's mind because it doesn't have one. It's actually inside my own subconscious mind, which humans usually can't access by themselves.
However, I can do that easily through my clone, which has a connection to my subconscious mind, but I digress.
"Yes. Slept like a baby, too," the clone replied, causing me to raise an eyebrow in genuine surprise at the stupidity of Briar trusting me with her life.
I Don't have any bad intentions towards her as we're both on the same boat at the moment, sure, but she doesn't know what's happening inside my head, does she?
'This makes little sense.' I frowned as I materialized, a small aura knife in my hand, promptly throwing it towards the sleeping Briar.
Briar's hand moved incredibly quickly and caught the small aura knife just an inch away from burying itself in the blonde's head. "Talk about a rude wake-up call," Briar said as she raised her head, sending me a bemused look.
'Sure enough, she has a way to keep herself safe.' I merely shrugged, providing no explanation as I retrieved my backpack to take out a simple breakfast.
'It probably has something to do with her ability to shape-shift.' Briar went on to grumble about this and that, but I ignored her as I slowly ate my breakfast.
'She was able to grow a pair of wings, so maybe she can also produce a sort of sensory organs that would alert her if something attacks her...?'
And just like that, I ate my breakfast in silence while overthinking as I usually do, while Briar continued to grumble about my unprovoked attack.