That time I was reincarnated as a snake (Tensura)

As I continue to watch the lively goblin village in panic over my recent actions on a tree branch, I contemplate my next actions.

'It's clear they'll take preventative measures now that a harvesting party has disappeared. They may not know it was me, but if they find me they'll surely attack me on sight.' I try to think of an easy way to hunt them down.

'The biggest problem is that once I attack one of them, the rest will see me and rush to kill me. Although I can run away at that moment, they obviously won't leave my victim for me to eat later.'

As I searched for a way, the goblins seemed to calm down and return to their duties, except for the leader. It seems he sent several groups of goblins in various directions, possibly to search for my trail, after which he returned to his home.

'At least I don't have to worry about him taking action with the rest.'

'I have an idea,' my eyes lit up at the thought.

'With my Adaptable skill I should be able to gain a skill that allows me to hide, the question is, how?' I pondered for a moment on what a good skill for this situation might be.

'While the easiest thing would be the ability to change color to blend in with the surroundings, it's too simple to work in the middle of a quick fight.' I ruled out the chameleons' ability.

'I guess I'll have to learn from the Tyrant and create some kind of invisibility.' I remember that the Incursion armor could give its user that ability.

Now, how does invisibility work?

There may be several types of invisibility in countless works of fiction, but I will focus on two types: the type that bends light around an object so that it cannot be seen, and the type that turns an object transparent, allowing light to pass through it and thus preventing it from being seen.

One can question which one is more powerful than the other, but in my opinion, the most practical is the first one, because, being a cover, anything that enters inside the object will avoid being seen, which does not happen with the second one, as is the case with transparent fish, where you can see what it ate.

Making my decision on which route to take, I begin to try.

As you may know, magicules are a type of spiritual matter that is strongly influenced by the minds of living beings and is capable of adopting many properties depending on the situation.

What I mean is: these are the materials to make a wish come true.

Although it may seem like they can do everything, there is one premise: whoever uses them must have a strong image of what they want to achieve and the steps they must follow to create a phenomenon.

While magicules can in a sense skip steps, this will reduce power.

magic users or wizards are the scientists of this world, because they are the ones who understand natural phenomena the most.

And I, coming from modern society, a highly advanced environment compared to this one, where the most advanced countries are destroyed every 500 years by a bunch of pigeons, have a good advantage.

Where others have to figure out step by step how to achieve something, I alone must stand on the shoulders of the greatest minds humanity has had for millennia.

As in this case, I have a vague idea of how to be invisible.

Getting down to business, I begin by trying to create a thin layer of magicules on the entire surface of my body. It may seem easy, but after multiple attempts, all ending in failure due to the instability of the layer and constant leakage of magicules , I could see that having an idea and carrying it out are two different things.

After several more attempts, over what seemed like hours, I gradually managed to get the layer to stabilize. As the hours passed, I was able to create and remove it quickly.

With that, the first step was ready.

Now I had to imagine how the magicules They redirected the light to avoid my body. This is where you can see the greatness of the magicules , because, although I did not know how to carry out the process, the magicules infused with my will to make the light be redirected little by little succeeded.

After wasting who knows how much time trying, something clicked and I finally did it: my body, which was originally black with blue details, disappeared from my sight. As a second confirmation, I used my thermal vision on myself, and as I anticipated, I could see my heat signature.

That was to be expected. The layer I developed only redirects visible light and does not insulate heat. Being cold-blooded, my body temperature depends on the environment, but I still give off a small amount of heat that can be detected.

'Nothing is perfect.' I shrugged.

Testing out my new invisibility ability, turning it on and off repeatedly to get familiar with it, the long-awaited announcement finally arrived.

Common Skill: Successful acquisition of Invisibility

"Yes, baby." I rejoiced at my first skill acquired through my own efforts, only to have an inexplicable weakness strike me.

I shook my head to compose myself.

'Now I understand why, although there are so many monsters in this world that can become stronger just by consuming others, this world is not filled with super strong monsters.'

'Among those reasons, one is the different amount of magicules contained between monsters of different ranks. That can be seen by comparing the first rabbit I ate with the goblins.'

'Then there is the expense of hunting. In order to maintain their existence, monsters must obtain magiculas, although they can do so with the magiculas in the environment around them, that takes too much time, so they must hunt, but that entails a consumption of their own magiculas for battle.'

'If they lose, they die, and if they win, a portion of the loser's magiculas will be needed to recover to the state before the battle, leaving few to become stronger. Not to mention that in converting magiculas to oneself, there must be wasted magiculas; it cannot be completely efficient.'

'And after all of the above, what just happened to me, the acquisition of a skill.'

'Although I knew it would happen because skills can be considered as magic circuits, and to acquire them, in essence, it is the voice of the world that helps create and record the skill in our bodies or souls, consuming magiculas to carry out the process, I didn't think there were so many.' I complain as I notice that my magiculas are almost empty again.

'To be honest, I thought it would be harder for me to get the skill. While I have a general idea of how it works, as well as a strong will and desire to acquire it, it shouldn't be that easy.' I pondered for a while about why.

'At the moment I can only assume that it's because of Adaptable, which helped me instinctively control my magiculas to become invisible and the voice of the world recognized it.'

'That could open up a lot of possibilities, like breathing underwater, flying, breathing fire, etc., but I think I'll hold off on that for now. Even though I got invisibility, I completely emptied my tank, considering it's a support skill and doesn't consume as much as a fireball would.'

'And if I remember correctly, although it is not noticeable, each acquired skill consumes a certain "infos" capacity of our soul, which can be understood as the capacity of our soul to accommodate the skills, and when it reaches its limit, acquiring more would destabilize the soul and cause it to collapse. That is equivalent to dying.'

'I will wisely consider which skills to acquire, so that I can later obtain stronger skills.'

Having achieved my goal, I prepared to begin Operation Goblin Slayer.

Because I was so absorbed, night had fallen over the forest at some point, which, while disconcerting, would help me with the next operation.

Using my thermal vision, I observed the goblin village in the distance. I could see that the number of heat signatures had skyrocketed. I didn't know precisely how many there were, but there were at least hundreds.

That made me realize that their leader was quite competent to command so many goblins and get enough supplies to sustain this village.

I waited for a while, waiting for everyone to rest so I could sneak into the outskirts and begin my massacre.

Two hours later...

Most of them were resting in their houses. In each one he could see several goblins huddled together, but some of them continued to stand guard with lit torches and ready for action if an attack occurred, something normal to prevent predators from killing them while they slept.

I slowly crept down from the tree I was standing on, trying not to make any noise. I approached the outskirts of the village. Although there were several guards monitoring the perimeter, they didn't notice my approach due to my invisibility. Even with it, I wasn't confident. When a goblin looked in my direction, I would stop to avoid disturbing the grass beneath me. Although they can't see me, they can see the trail I leave behind. So I entered the village from the direction with the tallest grass, so that it would cover my trail.

I slowly approached a small house. I could see that there were three goblins inside, but they were very close together. Killing one would alert the rest and they might attract the attention of the guards, so I decided to look for other prey.

I slipped through several houses, looking for one with few goblins and somewhat separated so I could kill them without making noise, always paying attention to the guards.

To conserve magiculas, I turned off invisibility and only turned it on when someone got close.

I continued like this for a few minutes until I found the perfect target. Inside a house I only saw two goblins, one on each side of the simple skin house.

'I carefully enter, kill the one closest to the door and then quickly kill the remaining one.' I carefully slipped through the door.

When I was just a few centimeters away from my target, something unexpected happened.

The other goblin woke up. I quickly activated my invisibility hoping he hadn't seen me.

The goblin proceeded to stand up and scratch his belly, oblivious to my presence.

He headed for the door. I moved silently, opening the way for him. After leaving the house, I could see him looking for a secluded spot where he began to urinate.

To avoid possible complications, I decided to wait for him to return.

After a few minutes, the goblin returned to its spot and continued sleeping. I waited another ten minutes to make sure.

When it seemed like he wouldn't wake up, I proceeded to approach him. Since he's the one who can wake up first, he'll be the first target.

I approached him invisibly and with a practiced movement, I enveloped him. His limbs and mouth were trapped by me, preventing him from waking the other.

My sudden movement woke him up, but he was unable to call for help. As usual, I ended up with a venomous bite on his neck, while I continued to hold him, preventing him from moving.

Since he didn't make much noise, his partner didn't wake up, which made my job easier. Repeating the above actions, I finished the remaining one. He didn't even wake up until he stopped breathing; he was a deep sleeper.

'Two in the bag, I'll eat them first so I don't leave any traces.'

I quickly swallowed both bodies. After digesting, I continued with my night.

I crept around looking for another easy target, which didn't take long. I found a house with three goblins, though more than before, they were spaced out enough that the movements of one wouldn't alert the rest.

I went in and repeated my previous actions. This time it took longer because there were more of them, but everything went well.

I continued moving between houses, looking for easy targets of maximum three goblins. Then I killed and ate them.

I repeated this process until my count reached ten kills.

Not wanting to gamble on not being discovered, I decided to get out of there.

I slipped back close to the guards unnoticed and looked for a tall tree to hide and rest under.

'Although the magicules act as a panacea, eliminating my physical fatigue, they do not restore my mental fatigue. Being under the pressure of being discovered at any moment and surrounded by hundreds of goblins is not nice.' I rest my head on a tree branch overlooking the village.

As I relaxed, I could see a commotion brewing. Apparently some guard was looking for one of my victims and when he didn't find her he searched other shops, accidentally coming across some of the ones I visited, which triggered panic over the disappearance of so many goblins.

The commotion woke up their leader, who immediately woke everyone up and reinforced the perimeter guard to prevent anyone from entering or leaving. He led everyone to search inside the village for several hours. Only when it seemed that the sun would rise on the horizon did they stop the fruitless search, but to be safe they did not relax the perimeter guard.

'Looks like I won't be able to repeat this night anytime soon,' I shrug.

'I don't need to be as careful as before anymore. From how I felt during the operation, I can feel that I'm twice as strong as before, that's four times stronger than before I ate the first goblin.' I get excited thinking about how strong I'll become after I'm done with this village.

You know, the first goblin village saved by Rimuru only had about thirty and a pack of direwolves wanted to eat them to evolve, and if you remember how their pack works, when the leader gets stronger the rest do too. That means that with only thirty goblins the direwolf leader expected to evolve. While it may be because he was already close to evolution, that number of goblins was nothing to sneeze at for him.

Now compare the one in front of me to hundreds of them, saliva pouring from my mouth with excitement.

But I must not let pride get to my head; I must be careful of being killed by them.

As one goblin-killing expert said:

"Goblins are weak, incredibly weak, but cunning."

__________________________________

Author's notes:

Here again with a new chapter for you.

This time there are two chapters published in one day, due to the related topic and the fact that I was inspired to write. Also, I wouldn't like to leave you hanging waiting three days to see this chapter.

Thanks to:

Nyx_Lucifer_Anime

Ronin46

Damian_Gold

tin_can_man

lex_rei

Axer17

Ars_Abeddd

Oussama_Mimi

SKL_MeCHaG

The_Best_3329

Romance_guy

Dominic_Smith_7238

I_dont_believe_it

nachodragon888

Thanks for commenting on the chapters, it makes me want to keep writing, not just to amuse myself in my free time, but because someone follows my work and waits for the next chapter. Plus, I find people who share my tastes. Yes, I'm talking about you, you know who I'm talking about.

I welcome suggestions that you would like to see in my work. Even if I don't implement them right away, I'll keep them in mind for later, like the one about the companion who hopes our protagonist will be with Velzard, Velgrynd, and even Milim. It may take a long time if it ever happens, after all, interacting with them is creating countless butterfly effects that, personally, I wouldn't like to happen.

I'm looking to create an adventure of my own for our protagonist that, while it may be intertwined with plots from the original work, doesn't focus on them, as well as on existing characters. I want to give myself the freedom to create some of my own.

After all, I want to write the adventure of a guy who goes to that world, who, although he may have a unique ability, there are many in that world with them and that doesn't make him special, so he has to fend for himself. He may be my protagonist, but I won't make his life easy for him; only the roulette wheel can do that.

If you're wondering why things went so well for the protagonist in the last few chapters when I said they weren't in his favor, it's the roulette wheel's fault. Seriously, the bastard was too lucky on every roll, the only thing he failed at was whether he could ambush the losing bear.