The Amazing Tongue

After another round of Matthew losing and regaining his consciousness, Matthew is now finally awake after he finished his second evolution process.

From the light that passed through the gaps at the bone wall that he put up before going into the evolution process, Matthew could tell that it is already daytime again the next day, and since he started his evolution in the afternoon, it is impossible that it only took him a few hours for his second evolution because even the first evolution took him an overnight.

After stretching his new body out, he could now feel the difference compared to his old body pre-evolution. He could see that the uneaten wolf corpses are now not as huge as he remembered them and the wolf den that he thought was so big that he could roll around aimlessly until he got dizzy, now he could only roll about 7 or 8 times before hitting the wall of the den.

Matthew also looked at his new claws that looked longer, tougher, and sharper than his past claws. Wondering how strong they actually are, Matthew could feel that if he coated his new claws with the newly upgraded venom with higher potency from the +1 venom glands, his attacks will be much deadlier, and he probably will be able to deal with a group of deers without breaking much sweat.

His longer claws could penetrate deeper into his enemies while the supposedly upgraded venom, should at least hasten the process of the venom spreading into the enemy's body and the effect will be stronger as well even though Matthew didn't know precisely how large an upgrade it was.

But for now, since his body is twice as big as before and his head is now a wolf's head, he wanted to get used to his new body first before trying to fight anything. So, the first thing that he does is to remove the wall that was made of the wolf's bones from blocking the den's entrance, and then he stepped outside.

Now that Matthew is outside the wolf den, and after seeing the sun position in the sky and the still warm sunlight, Matthew is now sure that it is still in the morning, which means that he got a lot of time to check out and get used to his new body before meeting other creatures.

While he could also encounter another creature if he took a 30-minute walk into the deeper parts of the forest direction, Matthew also knew that for some unknown reasons, the animals didn't venture to this specific part in the forest near the crocodile's lake until the area around the wolf's den at the daytime. So all this area is free for Matthew to try out his new body.

While the potency of his venom and how strong his new claws are, can only be tested by using them on other creatures, for now, Matthew could try out two things, first is his tongue that is supposed to have a 'Massive Increase' after his second evolution and second is the more exciting one which is his aura ability that he had been waiting for since day 1 he has seen the wolves and boars used them.

Since Matthew didn't know how to use the aura ability at all and he needed the system assistance to learn how to use it, Matthew decided that he wanted to test out his tongue muscle first since he already knows his tongue quite well since his first interaction with his tongue is not an unforgettable one.

So far, his tongue is very useful in many situations, especially when he first arrived in this world and fought the spiders. The only things that made him capable of defeating the spiders are the strength and versatility of his tongue.

But now that his tongue got a massive increase in its strength and length, he wondered how significant the upgrade would be and how they would be used in a fight. Although it did help him in fighting the spiders, it didn't really play an important role when he fought the deers or the wolves.

Matthew then opened his wolf's mouth and really slowly started to extend his tongue. Matthew's cautiousness in testing his tongue's strength is not without any base because the first time he just released his tongue without any caution and with maximum speed, Matthew got himself a hit to his head by a pebble.

The tongue then extended slowly out of Matthew's mouth. Matthew expected that the tongue will extend twice or thrice his current body length since his body is now even longer than before, but even after going three times his body length which is about 3 meters long, the tongue is still steadily extending forward not slowing down until it reached 4 and a half his body length and completely stopped when it reached 5 times Matthew's body length.

'Is this really my tongue and not some kind of a sticky snake that is disguising as my tongue right…?'

Matthew then tried moving his tongue vertically, horizontally, diagonally and he also made sure to turn off the sticking feature to not accidentally get his tongue stuck to a tree or worse a giant pebble.

As he played more with his tongue, Matthew realized that his tongue is not only capable of straight movement, he can actually control his tongue to curve mid-air, making the tongue in an S letter or an O Letter shape, and judging his ability to control his tongue to this extend, his tongue just felt like another part of his limbs.

'At this point, I can even use this tongue as a rope…Wait, can I really?' Matthew said as he tried climbing a tree before he stopped halfway toward the top of the tree and then extended his tongue toward one of the lowest branches of the tree and coiled the tip of his tongue at the branch.

After repeating in his mind 7 times hoping that his tongue muscle won't be torn for the stupid thing he's about to try, Matthew then slowly loosens his grip on the tree trunks. Then using his legs to jump and launch himself off the tree and by relying on his tongue to hold his whole body weight, Matthew succeeded in successfully swinging his body on the tree branch using his tongue.

Seeing that his tongue is fully intact, and in fact, he didn't feel any pain at all from having all his whole body weight hanging down from them. Seeing this, one thought appeared on Matthew's mind,

'With this, I can finally do that…'

Matthew began to swing his body forward and backward respectively to gain more momentum, and when he felt that he already reached the peak momentum, Matthew went backward once again before going forward with even an extra push. And when his body started going forward and up with maximum speed, Matthew let out his best impression of a 'Tarzan' scream and at the same time let go of his tongue.

Without the tongue as the pivot point that keeps the swinging motion, Matthew's body launched forward, and with all the momentum he gathered from swinging his body before the release, Matthew was launched far up even higher than the lowest tree branch, but it still didn't go high enough to go past the treetop and Matthew wasn't able to see how the forest looked liked from above.

Fortunately, that was not his goal, so he didn't feel sad at all, what he really wanted to do was,

'Come on tongue you can do this!'

When Matthew's upward momentum was about to end and he started falling downward, Matthew searched for another tree branch, and in this sea of trees that Matthew is currently in, it is not a difficult task at all.

He soon located the nearest tree branch near him and with his excellent body control and depth perception, Matthew was able to launch his tongue precisely to one of the branches of a tree and coiled his tongue around the branch making another pivot point for him to use the downward momentum to swing upward before letting go of his tongue once more to launch himself to another tree then repeat the process again.

Matthew swung from a tree to another tree for a whole 30 minutes before he was satisfied playing with it and he started to feel his tongue muscle was so tired that it started to feel sore. But alas, it was worth it for him since he always wanted to try doing that as a kid only to realize that it was actually impossible after knowing the fact that vines in the real world aren't strong enough to hold a fully grown adult human body.

But now that Matthew is living in another world, with another body, he was able to tick one of the items from his bucket list when he was a kid, and the feeling of it is very satisfying and made him feel somewhat happy.

'Being reborn into a chameleon is not bad at all…' Matthew thought in his mind.

After Matthew finished his 'testing' session for his tongue, he now got a more proper understanding of his tongue's new strength. First is that 'Massive Increase' is not a joke and it really increases his tongue strength and length very significantly.

He was able to swing around for a full 30 minutes and he still didn't feel pain on his tongue, only soreness. And it's length is now 5 times his current post-evolution body and he now could use his tongue to choke his enemy or disrupt their movement by tying their limbs with this strength and length.

In the testing session, Matthew also tested if he could become spideymen by only sticking his tongue using the sticky enzyme that his mouth produced, but the sticky properties are not strong enough to hold his full body weight thus Matthew's plan to become a knockoff superhero failed.

After all that testing, Matthew decided to rest first and eat the leftover wolf corpses back at the den. Before eating them, Matthew tried to sniff them and looked at the meat condition to see if it had gone bad or not. And with his now enhanced smelling sense, Matthew could 100% tell that the meat is way past its prime and it won't taste good, but it is still edible and Matthew couldn't smell anything dangerous from his animal instinct.

Knowing how precious and useful bionutrients are, Matthew refused to waste all the bionutrients source in front of him and decided to just ignore the taste and start eating them. And now with his mouth that was built to eat meat and his larger body size, eating one whole wolf only took him about 30 minutes. And along with the increase of his body size, his appetite also rose and now he could easily eat two wolves in one sitting.

After finishing his breakfast, Matthew finally called out to the system.

'System, you still remember your promise right?'

'Please teach me how to use my aura ability!'