Heat Sensor

The snake's body is about 3 and a half meters long and though the thickness of the body is not that big, a snake can easily open up its mouth and stretch its jaws and it could easily swallow Matthew's body whole. And that snake is currently slithering towards Matthew's direction and seems to have its eyes locked onto Matthew.

Matthew didn't know what caused the snake to suddenly notice his presence. Because a moment ago, the snake was passing through near him and it didn't notice Matthew standing still not far besides it.

'Was it because of the aura ability?'

The moment Matthew turned off his aura ability that made his body a blur, the snake suddenly was aware of his presence and started moving towards him.

'But the snake has already gone past me and its eyes shouldn't be able to see me even if the snake had a very good eyesight that was able to see through my camouflage because it wasn't even looking in this direction before!'

Matthew wondered about what methods the snake used to suddenly detect his presence. But because the snake was currently getting closer and closer to Matthew, he decided to shelve the thought first and deal with the potential impending danger caused by the snake before figuring out the finer details later.

Matthew didn't know if the snake is venomous or not and he also didn't have the information if the snake would be immune to the spider's venom that he got. But according to Matthew's shallow knowledge about snakes, he remembered that someone on the internet said that venomous snake tends to be colorful, and the light green snake in front of him right now is clearly looked colorful to him, so he would just assume that the snake is venomous and he should be careful not to get bitten by it.

As Matthew is currently standing at the tall patch of grass, he decided to get out of it first because he knew that he would be in a disadvantageous position. Although he has excellent eyesight that is able to look in all directions from his body, Matthew wasn't able to see through objects. But the snake, on the other hand, seems to have something that is able to determine Matthew's whereabouts even when he was covered by tall grasses and his skin color is still the same tone of green as the grass. So for now, Matthew once again assumed that his camouflage without his aura ability would be useless against the snake.

Matthew then did a 180-degree turn and ran in the opposite direction of the snake. Because he knew that the aura ability is capable of hiding himself from the snake, Matthew knew that he already had a surefire way of defeating the snake. But because he is curious about the snake's abilities, he wanted to do some testing since he didn't know when he would have another chance of meeting another snake.

Matthew then ran towards a tree as fast as he could. Using his 360 eyes, he noticed that the snake is also starting to pick up its speed to catch up to Matthew. Right before Matthew started to climb the tree trunks, he changed his skin color to wood-like brown to camouflage with the tree trunks.

The snake is still a few meters away, slithering on the ground towards the trees, and by the time the snake was about to also climb the tree by coiling its long body around the thick tree trunks, Matthew already reached halfway towards the top of the tree, and he used his tongue to coil to one of the tree branches up high and used the tongue to swiftly pull himself upwards.

Matthew soon found himself sitting on the tree branch that he used as the pivot point for his tongue, and he is currently looking down at the green snake that has its body circling around the tree trunk. Matthew expected the snake to quickly follow him up to the tree branch that he was sitting on, but after looking closely at the snake, Matthew noticed that the snake is neither quickening his pace nor moving in Matthew's direction. Instead, it stayed still in place and moved its head around left and right, up and down as if it had suddenly lost track of Matthew.

'Did it really didn't see me swinging with my tongue?'

Although Matthew changed his skin color to be the same as the tree trunk, when he pulled himself upwards with his tongue, his position should be cleared as day to someone with normal eyesight, not to mention if the snake has an excellent vision that can see through objects like the tall grasses.

'So does it mean that the snake didn't have excellent eyesight? If it really didn't notice me swinging that widely then its vision shouldn't even be considered good.'

'But then, what does it use to detect me earlier? Does it have some kind of sensor to detect other animals? Wait, isn't the system's scanner function is able to do that too? But God said that the system is his gift to me and other creatures in this world shouldn't have had it. Then that means that the snake got something that is able to do a similar function with the system's scanner.'

'If it's similar to the scanner function, then that means that it has its effective range! And that will also explain why that snake is currently searching for me, I'm currently outside of its effective range!'

The tree that Matthew and the snake are currently on is about 15 meters tall. Matthew is sitting at one of the branches near the top of the tree while the snake is still about a quarter way up the tree.

'Having a ruler or something to accurately measure a distance will be very handy right now, system do you have something like that?'

But after waiting for a while and he still didn't get the answer, Matthew assumed that the system didn't have them, so he could only guess the effective range of the snake's sensor.

Rather than walking down the trunks slowly to check the snake's sensor range, Matthew coiled his tongue again to the tree branch that he is currently sitting on, then he started to slowly lower his body closer to the snake's height.

Matthew kept his eyes locked onto the snake's body and particularly its head, the moment the snake's head was looking at him, Matthew would quickly pull himself back to the tree branch on top.

Matthew's tongue length is about thrice longer than his body which means that his tongue is around 3 meters long. Matthew already used half of his tongue length and if the snake didn't notice him even if he used all his tongue, then Matthew has to do it the laborious way by using his limbs to test out the snake's sensor, which is also more dangerous for him since his four chameleon feet are not the best when it comes to speed.

'If it's too troublesome, then I will have to give up on the testing since my life is not worth the price of satisfying my curiosity.'

But fortunately, Matthew didn't have to do that because when he was only using about 2 meters of his tongue, the snake's head suddenly turned sharp towards Matthew's direction and its eyes were staring right at Matthew's body.

Matthew who is observing the snake intently, of course, noticed the snake's gesture and he rapidly pulled himself back up.

'Wow, that's quite a distance it got there! It must have been more than the scanner's 5-meter effective area, maybe double? So maybe about 10 meters? Maybe I should get it to compliment the scanner function? Maybe I should check how the scanner function worked.'

Matthew was about to ask the system to turn on the scanner function, but luckily, his eyes noticed that the snake is not staying still like before, but it climbed upward the tree and it's getting closer to Matthew.

'I guess I will deal with you first.' Matthew said as he postponed his request to the system and turned his attention back to the snake.

Matthew would've used his tongue to swing to another tree branch if he hadn't finished his experiment on the snake. But because he already got what he wanted, he didn't need to run away from the snake anymore.

Matthew then quickly connected to his aura center, which only took him a few seconds after Matthew had already got used to it, then he quickly controlled the aura to activate his aura ability fully, and soon his body turned completely invisible both to the snake's eyes and to the snake's sensor.

The first time Matthew disappeared from the snake's sensor, the snake was being cautious and searched around his surroundings because he thought that the prey that he was catching was afraid of him and succeeded in getting away from him. But after the prey appeared the second time before disappearing again, the snake paid attention to the direction where his prey had disappeared from his heat sensor and gave chase to the prey that was running away.

But the snake wouldn't have guessed that his prey would suddenly disappear again. And this time, his prey disappeared into thin air and not moving in any direction before disappearing from his heat sensor.

The snake felt that something was wrong, and his animal instinct that formed through living in the forest for a long time is telling him that he needs to get away from his current place. The snake, of course, trusted its instinct and started descending the tree, but before the snake was able to move even 30cm away from its current place, the snake suddenly felt a sharp pain on its body, right below its head, and the next moment the snake suddenly felt his body is very light and he had gone to sleep.

-Level 13 Boa Dendroaspis Killed-