Chapter 1135 - Yamata No Orochi -unedited
Yamata no Orochi. As the name depicts in eastern oriental has eight heads and each is capable of something magical. Legend has it that the serpent originally only had one head. However, its shrewd tactics to tell lies had enabled it to extort both gods and goddesses to sacrifice their daughters to keep it in check. And each time the god and goddess sacrificed their daughters, the serpent itself grew a head because of their daughter's abilities.
And thus according to the lore, the serpent was killed in the eighth year before the eighth daughter of the minor gods was taken away. The existence of its corpse had been kept a secret so that no one would be able to resurrect such a horrific creature back alive again. But the Gods never know that the one that had been defeated was merely a shadow of its former self and its true form had always been manifest under a giant celestial turtle.
Thus, this evil serpent versus hero story only depicted one side of the story since the God Realms had always been full of themselves. As usual, the lore had been twisted to glorify the God Realms as those minor god families were actually bad news for their own daughters.
Their family allowed their daughters to be abused, tortured and they even forced them to do despicable things that would give most gods a bad rep for their names. Yet, every realm had its underworld dealings and such pleas for help were always ignored. And that was where the story of the serpent story began.
The upstanding society of the God Realm did not know the full story and assumed that these abused daughters went 'missing' after the appearance of the serpent when they were in fact driven to the corner to be offered to the higher ranking gods as tribute in order to gain favour for their minor god families.
But such tributes didn't happen because of the deed of the first woman and a serpent she found.
Remained unnamed in the lore, Ichigo was desperate to run away from the abuse and torture of the higher gods. She had not heard of these in public but personally witnessed the physical and mental abuse of the tributes done by the higher gods since she worked as a servant for them.
Ichigo remained oblivious to the situation because she knew that meddling in the situation the tributes were in would result in severely harsh punishments. But it did not take long for her turn to emerge as the son of this particular Higher God's family she worked for finally to took notice of how Ichigo was becoming a beauty despite her constant efforts to make up herself as an ugly downcasted maiden.
When found out, Ichigo was demanded to be brought into his room, and requested Ichigo to attend to the young master's bodily d.e.s.i.r.e. That was when she realised that this must be the acc.u.mulation of karma for ignoring the past tributes.
However, that did not mean she was going to submit to him. She might be ignorant of the plights of the tributes but that did not mean she was unaware. Unlike the rest who were helpless in their situation, Ichigo knew the insides and out of the house she was serving.
She knew that they have a room filled with exotic animal species and one which she had many affiliations to was the baby serpent rumoured to be the pet of Demonic Headless Knight, Dullahan. As much as the Gods hated the demons, black market trades of their trophies were quite the rage so having a demon pet was nothing blasphemous in the Gods' eyes.
That particular serpent was a nobody, it was nothing special but it had the ability to turn invisible once in a while. Ichigo did not know about its capabilities until she chanced upon it when she was assigned to feed the animals. And it was then she started to have interest in the invisible serpent as it had caused trouble for her a few times, running away, causing her to panic for the loss of their trophy demon pet.
But as time went by, Ichigo also learnt the traits and quirks of the invisible serpent, allowing her to deal with it and at times, play with it. The limbless reptile had also taken a liking for Ichigo for accommodating to its slyness. Thus when Ichigo found out she was being requested into the young master's room, Ichigo used the excuse to clean herself up except she was grabbing the serpent as part of her defence against any potential assault on her.
The serpent, while incapable of intellectual speech, no doubt understood the sense of fear Ichigo was emitting and accompanied her quietly into the young master room. Unfortunately, she was right that the young master wanted her body. Apparently, the young master used a spell to bind her, rendering her immobile and the ability to fight back. She could not even make a noise but all that commotion allowed the serpent to cleverly hide itself and eventually defended her at the apex of the situation when the young master was at its most vulnerable.
It was then the serpent gained sentience when it killed the young master and gave the suggestion that the duo should escape from the house as soon as possible before the guards discovered the young master's rotten poisoned corpse.
Ichigo tried to return to her family, explaining the situation and asked of them to aid her in her time of need. But to her dismay, her family did not protect her and instead only reprimanded her for doing such a disgraceful act. They even wanted to offer her back as a tribute to save their skins. Soon, Ichigo realised the ugliness of her family. She was so disgusted by their behaviour that she requested the serpent to kill them too.
But since the serpent had already done her a favour as well as relishing for more powers of a god, it made its demands too boldy. It told Ichigo that it would be able to do that if she parted her godly powers and transferred them entirely to him. In return, it will continue to save her and bring her somewhere safe while continuing to save people who were 'in need' as well.
Ichigo did not hesitate and immediately agreed to the serpent's plan despite knowing that upon doing so, she would be a regular human with no immortality. Thus, the duo once again managed to escape from the jaws of death from the Higher God Family as well as murdering her parents.
But the surprising thing was that the serpent was happy to take all the blame by himself, which was why Orochi became infamous as the years went by.
Although it was not required, Orochi, who gained godly powers, took the responsibility of ferrying Ichigo from the Gods Realm to one of the human worlds where she could start afresh. And since then, it continued its new 'mission' to save any despondent girls from their fate by offering the very same deal it gave to Ichigo.
Not soon after, the legend of the serpent took ground and incurred the wrath of the majority of the Higher Gods because it stole precious tributes and killed their family members. And thus, they assigned a God Hero to kill it without knowing the deeds it did.
But little did the God Hero Susanoo know that all he killed was merely a shadow of the serpent who ate the godly powers of every girl it saved.
And now Orochi was going to use that very same godly powers against its current opponent.