Chapter 370: Chapter 40: Righteous God or Evil God? The Giant Serpent God ’Kukudar

What is the true meaning of life? Why do we exist in this world?

These are deeply philosophical questions, and the answers vary greatly among different people and creatures.

But for Kukudar, it was obvious: His entire life was for eating and playing.

At first, He ate to be full. Later, He ate to enjoy good food.

At first, He played out of loneliness. Later, He played simply out of boredom.

Later, once He felt powerful enough that He no longer had to worry about His own safety, He began to spend most of His time sleeping.

So, whenever He awoke, He would feast extravagantly. He would also make countless weaker creatures perform for His amusement.

But regardless of whether He was pleased, He would eventually eat all these lesser creatures.

This included even those who called themselves His subjects, the ones who had sprouted Snake Heads.

After all, how could a being as powerful and long-lived as Him have such weak subjects?

Besides, even if a few of them were of a decent size and strength, that only made them taste all the more delicious to Kukudar.

So, what reason was there not to eat them?

As for whether a serpent like Him needed friends in His life, Kukudar’s stance was clear.

He didn’t need friends.

Because friends often just meant suffering for Him.

When He was weak, He might take a nap, only to wake up and find His so-called friends had all long since died.

When He was powerful, His friends were... tolerable. But they either feared Him or bore Him ill will.

Even when He gave His all, the only result was betrayal.

In fact, before His most recent slumber, Kukudar had been betrayed by a friend, severely wounded, and exiled to the Star Sea beyond the world.

But His friend had clearly underestimated His regenerative capabilities and growth Potential.

And so, in the dark Star Sea, Kukudar became a monster, quietly waiting for an opportunity.

He lost track of how much time had passed. After many periods of slumber, He awoke to find He had grown larger than a planet.

That was when He finally exacted His revenge on that world.

He devoured that friend, along with every last one of their subordinates.

Finally, in a blind rage, He smashed into the planet at any cost, utterly destroying the very world that had birthed Him—a world He had come to hate!

Destroying the world was cathartic, to be sure.

But without the world that had raised Him, Kukudar was lost.

’Where should I go?’

’What should I do now?’

The Star Sea was vast, but at that moment, Kukudar felt more lost and alone than ever before.

At that moment, Kukudar was even overcome with an impulse for self-destruction.

But for a Deity as powerful as Him...

...He discovered He was no longer even capable of suicide.

No one could kill Him.

The world itself was destroyed, after all.

He truly wanted to kill Himself, even trying to tear at His own body with His fangs.

’But it hurt too much!’

’So that method was out of the question.’

He was, admittedly, a walking contradiction: He wanted to die, but He was afraid of the pain.

So, in the end?

He knocked Himself out with a slap of His own serpentine tail.

Yes.

He was the terrifying Giant Serpent God, lurking outside the Square World.

As an Ancient Deity who controlled the Darkness and Venom Law.

He had no idea how He had ended up here.

But He knew one thing.

He had appeared in the orbit of a Life Planet.

This was not His home world; after all, He had already destroyed that Himself.

Therefore, He had no particular feelings about this world.

Especially now that He knew He wasn’t dead.

He became like a recluse, observing everything in this new world in a half-awake, half-asleep state.

As for the attacks from this world’s Deities?

Or their attempts to drive Him away?

To Kukudar, none of it mattered anymore.

He was like a shut-in ensconced in a fortress, remaining utterly unmoved by the clamor of the outside world.

In fact, His attention was never on the Deities attacking Him.

That’s right.

From the very beginning, He had been staring at the interior of the Life Planet below.

He watched the countless tiny lives bustling about, struggling to survive.

During this time, He even began to experience things through certain individuals, observing their entire lives from start to finish.

It was, for lack of a better word, like playing a game.

He would fix His will upon a single individual, using their senses to see and experience the life of a lesser being.

It was an experience unlike any He’d ever had.

He found it utterly fascinating.

As for why He did this?

It was simply because He wanted to understand lesser creatures, to experience what it felt like to be weak.

He was searching for answers.

Answers as to why His friends had always treated Him so poorly, and why they had ultimately betrayed Him.

The answer, it turned out, was easy to find.

Take the Human Race, for example.

They had their own cultural understanding; for instance, cannibalism, or devouring one’s own subordinates and subjects, was considered an evil and unacceptable act.

True friends weren’t beings you could summon and dismiss at will.

Nor were they beings who existed only to gain benefits from you.

Friendship was about equality, about being able to laugh and cry together.