2 The Gift From God

Matthew looked at his new body reflection at the surface of the lake. After the initial shock of seeing his new body, Matthew started to calm down and so did the color on his body returned back to green from yellow.

Matthew now looked like a kind of small lizard with large, bulging eyes and a long tail. His skin is currently green like the grass all around him, when he lay low at the grass, he almost blended in perfectly with the environment and it is hard to spot him.

After admiring his new body for a minute, Matthew then remembered that God also promised him to give him a little hand while he is in this world, but so far he hasn't spotted anything special either in his body or the place around him.

Just as he was about to think that God lied to him, suddenly, in the middle of his vision, appeared a white, rectangular screen, and words can be seen written on the screen.

-God Has Sent You A Message, Do You Want to Hear It?-

'Well of course I want to!'

But the question is still floating in front of him

'I want to hear it!'

'Hear Message!'

'Message Open!'

'Is it broken? How do I use this thing?'

Matthew then tried to think of ways on how to open the message, he remembered that Priests and Pastors usually prayed to God first before talking to God, so Matthew tried to do the same. Matthew then looked at the sky, closed his reptilian eyes, put his front legs together, and then said aloud in his mind,

'O God Almighty, The creator of worlds and all things inside it, I, Matthew, are humbly willing to hear your sacred message, please bestow me the ability to be able to hear your message!'

Matthew waited for quite some time but still, nothing happened. When he was about to curse at the screen in front of him, he finally realized, after looking at the screen close enough, there are two small boxes at the bottom of the screen with the words

-Yes- and -No-

'...'

'Yes'

After saying yes in his mind, the white screen finally disappeared then he heard a voice in his head.

'Hello, Matthew! This is me, God. I am glad that you end up becoming a chameleon instead of a blade of grass or a bacteria. I know that you are not that picky about what you become, but if you are sad that you are not reborn as a human, don't be! A chameleon is one of the most interesting creatures that I created. Their eyesight is way better than humans. They can change their skin color. And they also got a sticky tongue that is longer than their own bodies!'

Matthew then tried to see for himself the god-proclaimed amazing tongue. He tried moving his tongue around his mouth to get a feel for his tongue, but he felt that his current tongue is still the same as the tongue he got when he was still a human. But he was still curious about how long his tongue actually is, so Matthew opened his mouth, then tried moving his tongue forward as far as he could.

Matthew didn't expect that his tongue would be launched so fast with a speed that even got himself, the owner of the tongue, startled. The tongue extended far from his mouth and hit a pebble near the lakeside. The tongue made a whip-like sound when it first hit the pebble. The surprised Matthew quickly pulled back his tongue and forgot about the other fact about his tongue that God just mentioned to him.

The tip of the tongue, which had just made contact with the small pebble, glued the pebble to itself. When Matthew pulled back the tongue, the pebble followed along and went straight hitting Matthew's face.

'Damn it! That hurts!' Matthew said as he used his front leg to rub the part where the pebble just hit his face.

'I believe you have already finished testing out your new tongue, Matthew. And don't worry, you won't get hurt by such a pebble.'

'God…?' Matthew didn't want God to see the stupid thing he just did earlier because it may make god think that he just gave a stupid person a second chance to live.

'And if you want to ask if I can hear you right now, I can't. This is a pre-recorded message.'

Matthew then sighed in relief.

'Before that, I wanted to tell you, the help I will be giving you is a system!'

'All the creatures in this world have levels and they can get stronger each time they reach a higher level. Animals can evolve when reaching a certain threshold, while humans can choose a job. But you, Matthew, I also added special features to you, I gave you the ability to be able to change or upgrade your body parts when you evolve! The system will guide you through the details so please experiment as you like later on. The system also has many other amazing features, so please take your time and explore them.'

'That is all, for now, Matthew, I will keep on watching you and your journey, but remember that I can't interfere directly in worldly matters. So please do your best in your second life. Good luck!'

After saying his goodbye, the voice then completely gone from Matthew's head. Matthew then looked again at his surroundings, the lake was still calm and the surrounding trees and grass swayed a little from the wind. So far, Matthew hadn't seen other living creatures other than himself. But one thing he noticed is that he felt that his stomach was empty and the feeling of hunger started spreading throughout his entire body.

'What does a chameleon eat? Can I eat grass?'

Matthew then tried to eat a blade of grass.

'It tastes like… Nothing...' The blade of grass already entered Matthew's stomach, but it didn't help ease his hunger even a little.

'Should I try eating other animals then? Maybe like insects and stuff?'

But Matthew didn't see any other animal so far, so he needed to move and find the animals for him to eat.

'But where am I in the first place?'

Just then, he heard another voice in his head. It's different from God's voice, this voice seems to belong to a woman, but it has a machine-like, cold tone of speaking. And the voice asked,

-Do you want to enable the map function?-

'Of cour... Yes!' Then at the edge of his vision, Matthew could see a circular window that had the name 'Forest of Firia' at the top of the circle. Inside the circle, a picture of the path of his surroundings, like the minimap he could find in old RPG games appeared.

'This must be the system that God mentioned. It even has a map function. It seems quite useful! Can I zoom in?'

The map then reappeared in the middle of his vision and took about half of his vision. Here, Matthew could see that the area outside his current place is still blank.

'Do I need to explore on my own to fill up the blank area?'

After thinking that he didn't want the map to fill up his vision, the map shrinks again to the top corner of his vision. Matthew also noticed, now that he is a chameleon and his eye placement is different than when he was still human, he could see 180 degrees and cover his whole side and back from both of his eyes, so he pretty much has 360 views of his surroundings.

'Let's go explore this forest then!' Matthew said to hype himself.

Matthew then walked away from the lake and started heading deeper into the sea of trees in front of him. Matthew then climbs up the trees to scout his surroundings and decide where he should go to find food for his starving stomach.

Matthew finds it way easier than when he was still a human to climb trees. Although he didn't have five fingers, his two-toed legs can wrap around the surface a little better. When he reached the top of the tree, he started to scan the area around him. He looked down, left and right, it's all full of trees. With his enhanced vision, he could clearly see individual blades of grass on the ground even if he's on top of a tree. He tried searching for the small insects that are usually on the ground, ants, crickets, worms, or cockroaches, anything that can fill his empty stomach.

But even after looking down for 15 minutes, he still failed to find any of them. He then tried looking at the other trees, and that's where he found it.

He found a spider web at one of the branches of a tree near him.

'I certainly could eat spiders!'

Matthew hurriedly climbed back down to the ground and started to walk to the other tree where he saw the spider web.

Matthew marched happily to the other tree and climbed it, his stomach is already starting to hurt by now, and the idea of finally being able to eat makes him fail to notice that the spider web that he just saw was thrice as big as his body.

When he got to the tree and climbed it, he started to notice that something was unusual about the spider web that was hanging at the top branch of the tree. He climbed closer and closer to the spider web and when he was right beside it, he tried to cut one of the strings in the spider web with one of his front legs. But instead of getting cut, his leg was stuck to it instead.

'What is this? Aren't chameleons supposed to be strong enough to break a spider web? Or is this thing actually able to hold me?'

He then tried again and this time, seriously, he used all his strength and bodyweight to cut through the single piece of string that was attached to his leg. Fortunately, he succeeded this time and he got his leg free.

'Come to think of it, this spider web seems so big.' At that moment, with his 360 degrees vision, he noticed something huge and black at his back. When he looked more closely to see what it was, it turned out to be a huge black spider twice as tall as him. And the spider doesn't look too happy when seeing a chameleon just break its beautifully woven web.

'Ah sh*t.'