The wise serpent removed the pipe from her mouth with her tail and exhaled a dense smoke that quickly spread through the chamber, enveloping Noah before he could react.
—Let's see how you do in this test, boy.
The last image Noah saw before everything went dark was the wise serpent's tail slowly coiling around her pipe, while the smoke continued to drift out.
---
When consciousness returned, it was like emerging from a well filled with black water.
Noah was deeply confused. He didn't remember how he had gotten there. He didn't remember what he had been doing before. He didn't even remember who he was.
He opened his eyes in a land where the sky was a ceiling of rock and everything around him was dark. His surroundings were simply the black stones that covered the sky. He immediately understood that he was in some kind of immense underground cave.
Suddenly he felt an enormous presence pass by him, and when he turned his head, he froze at the sight of a massive red snake over twenty meters long radiating a sinister aura.
Noah felt a primal fear, the kind prey feels when its predator draws near, forcing it to hide in the cracks of the rocks.
Noah stayed where he was, trembling.
His body shook. His breathing was rapid and shallow, like that of a wounded hare that has just seen a wolf and knows it cannot run. Fear wrapped around him like a blanket soaked in ice water, clinging to his skin, impossible to shake off.
Yet the creature didn't even bother to look at him and continued on its way as if he didn't exist.
Confusion and fear seized him. His body felt foreign, more unbalanced. The fear induced by the serpent's aura gnawed at him as he looked down… and he froze at the sight of his body.
It was small.
Ridiculously small.
He had turned into an incredibly tiny black snake, barely the size of a worm.
He was no longer human.
—Human… Human? What is that?
Even the notion that he had once been human faded from his mind.
Now he had truly become a snake, with no memory of his two lives as a human. Within seconds of his arrival in this cave, Noah's thoughts began to fracture under his new instincts, distorted by their pressure.
Hunger and bloodlust were consuming him. A savage will inside him demanded he hunt, devour, survive.
Every snake in this place was a predator, driven by primordial instincts to hunt and kill anything it encountered.
There was no compassion.
No reason.
Only the law of the strong.
Even the air was charged with a strange energy that eroded the mind and fueled aggression.
The weak perished quickly.
The strong… became monsters.
To the other snakes, Noah was nothing more than a tiny worm, flesh to be devoured even though he was of the same species.
But even under such an illusion, Noah did not completely lose himself. Logic regained its balance, and his mind asserted itself over his serpent instincts. His innate superior intelligence helped him devise efficient strategies to survive the countless dangers ahead.
What followed was an eternity of slaughter and struggle.
That seemingly endless cave was an unending battlefield, and Noah adapted to it with ruthless efficiency.
Time lost its meaning.
Noah hunted, fought, fled when necessary, and struck when he saw an opportunity.
At first, he barely managed to stay alive. But little by little, his body grew, his strength increased, and his movements became more efficient.
He stopped hiding.
He became a hunter.
And over the years, he slowly climbed the food chain of that endless cave.
No matter how many fierce or horrible creatures were out there, they could only accept death before him as he swallowed them down.
One day, he reached a deeper zone.
There, the pressure was different.
Giant snakes occupied the place, each radiating an aura strong enough to make him feel suffocated.
Deep in his heart, a feeling of longing arose, urging him to press forward and climb deeper, drool dripping from his monstrous mouth.
Finally he reached the cave's core and saw that in the center there was a small flower of pearly white color, emanating a scent that made all the surrounding snakes drool intensely.
Noah's senses overwhelmed him, telling him that if he consumed that small plant, his power would grow even more.
Noah was already a snake over a hundred meters long, but around him were a dozen snakes even longer than he was, snakes that would not hesitate to devour him if he dared compete with them for the prey. So, resisting with all his strength, he turned around and left the place.
One of the snakes snorted fiercely when it saw him retreat and focused again on its rivals. The accumulated tension exploded and a ferocious battle began around the flower.
After half an hour, only one snake remained alive. It withdrew its jaws from the head of a dead green snake and slithered slowly toward the small white flower, ready to devour it. But suddenly an intense hiss rang out and a whip-like strike hit its head.
Noah coiled around the snake—larger than him but wounded—and without hesitation sank his fangs into the enemy's eyes and clamped his jaw with all his might, dislocating it but crushing the enemy's skull in the process.
Noah spat out the snake's head and approached the small flower intending to devour it.
His instincts roared.
They demanded he devour it immediately.
But something… didn't fit.
Noah decisively crushed the flower with his tail and roared at the sky, because his mind had warned him that if he consumed it, he would die miserably.
—Well done, boy. You have passed the test. If you had consumed that flower, you would have turned to stone, your body overwhelmed by natural energy.
The illusion dissipated, and Noah found himself once again in the stone hall before the immense wise serpent.
—I remember now —he thought—. I am Noah. I was about to take the test to learn senjutsu.
The life in his dream, which had seemed to be reality, appeared in Noah's mind. For a moment it made him think he was no longer human.
It was as if his reality had been shrouded by a veil; nothing could be seen clearly.
—Congratulations, boy. You have passed the trials of Ryūchi Cave. You are now worthy to learn Senjutsu.
The wise serpent exhaled a thick smoke and spoke while removing the pipe from her mouth.