Search For The Snake

Even after walking around the area for another hour, Matthew still failed to spot the green-colored snake. He had met deers and boars along the way, but still no snake! He even got close to the monkeys zone, the area where Matthew found a group of monkeys yesterday and he still couldn't find the snake.

Matthew is quite frustrated as he could only walk on the ground circling around the forest to find or bait the snake into coming to him. He just wished that he would be able to at least swing around the trees to find the snake because swinging is much more fun than just walking around.

But Matthew knew he couldn't do that because he knew that he couldn't put much attention on searching for the snake while swinging around from tree to tree. And the scanner function can't be relied on because it only has a radius of 5 meters while Matthew was swinging on the height of 10 to 15 meters up in the air and added with the snake's skin color being green, almost the same as the grasses at the ground, Matthew is quite sure that there is a high chance that he will miss the snake if he passed through it.

After Matthew did another round of circling the forest and he still bore no fruit, Matthew then decided to go back to the last place where he met the snake yesterday. Matthew then went back to the tall patch of grass and tried to remember the direction of where the snake had come from before it crossed its path with Matthew's.

Although Matthew's memory is not the best nor the most accurate, he could remember faintly his position yesterday from looking at the current shape and position of the minimap and synchronizing it with the minimap's position from yesterday.

Matthew's minimap worked just like a game's minimap back on earth. Where the minimap would move along and follow the character if the character moved. And Matthew used that trait to help him guess more accurately his exact position yesterday. Even though the accuracy is not 100% and more like 30%, it's better to have at least some kind of clue rather than nothing at all in Matthew's opinion.

After circling around the tall patch of grass and trying to find a blade of grass that is either crooked or has any traces of Matthew's encounter with the snake yesterday, Matthew finally decided on a direction that he thinks the snake had come from and he proceeded to walk following in that direction.

From the direction of Matthew's nest, Matthew is going slightly to the right side of the forest, which is the part of the forest that he has never been before. So Matthew kept his guard up by camouflaging with the grasses and walked cautiously, but Matthew still didn't activate his aura ability since his goal is not only to explore the area and find the green snake.

Matthew wondered how people or other creatures travel through the forest. No matter where he goes, it is always the same view that greets him. Lush tall green trees were scattered throughout the area with some types of berry bushes appearing every once in a while and tall patches of grasses popped out here and there.

'I could understand how a human will be able to navigate through the forest if they have discovered something like a GPS or at least a compass, but the animals and creatures in this forest?'

'I could only survive in this forest and not get lost every time I venture out because of the minimap function that the system gave me, but these animals didn't have it did they? How could they not get lost in this forest that I haven't even seen the end of it.'

But Matthew only pondered about those questions for a while and didn't think much about it since it doesn't really concern him, and he also has to walk by paying attention to where he is stepping on in case he walked carelessly over dried leaves and made unnecessary noise to his surroundings. And Matthew also has to peel his eyes open to search for the green-colored snake in the sea of green-colored things around him.

After walking for over 30 minutes, Matthe had also met another group of deers and boars, but Matthew already thought of them as the most common animals that lived in the forest and he didn't feel anything when he saw them roaming around the many parts of the forest. But Matthew didn't give up yet and he only planned to go back after he at least reached the one-hour mark and he still couldn't find anything.

Although Matthew felt extremely bored, he still kept his focus and his eyes were searching all over the place for anything that caught his attention, but especially to find the snake.

Matthew's diligence finally paid off when his eyes noticed a large hole on the ground and looked like an oversized burrow about 20 meters away from his current position.

Looking at the anomaly inside the sea of trees, Matthew decided to stop and observe the hole from afar.

'Is it another wolf den? It does look kind of similar to the huge crack on the rock back home, and the large space inside the hole is maybe their living area.'

Realizing that his current position is potentially a dangerous one, Matthew decided to prioritize his safety first before observing the large burrow closer.

Matthew then quickly activated his chameleon's aura ability, but only until the blur stage because he didn't know how long he will be here and what he will find, and preparing for an emergency situation by conserving his aura by only activating the aura ability until the blur stage is a wise thing to do for Matthew.

And if the emergency situation did come, he could activate the aura ability all the way until he's fully invisible and just run away to safety.

Matthew circled around the burrow and tried to see if seeing it from another direction would give Matthew additional information, but he found none.

Matthew was contemplating if he should just go closer and if he still didn't find anything he should just go inside the hole. But his thought process was suddenly broken by the system's voice in his mind saying,

'A creature has been detected 193 degrees and 5 meters away from host's current position.'

Matthew was startled by the sudden and unexpected voice inside his head and it caused him to reflectively jump backward. When his feet landed on the ground, Matthew accidentally stepped on a twig, snapping it in two causing a loud noise to be dispersed onto the surroundings.

Matthew then quickly turned on the full invisibility just in case the creature behind him noticed his whereabouts or whatever creature inside the burrow decided to come out because of the sound.

With his full invisibility on, Matthew could finally breathe a little and checked to see the creature that the system had detected with the scanner function. He then turned to his back and looked slightly to the right. When Matthew looked at the creature, he finally felt relieved that his journey today wasn't in vain and he wanted to jump in joy after finally meeting the green snake that he had searched for hours.

But as he wanted to walk over to the snake and end his hunt for today as quickly as possible, Matthew's wolf ears caught a sound coming from the burrow's direction. Using his eyes, Matthew split his eyes to see in both directions at once.

Matthew kind of expected that wolves would come out of the burrow, but from the sound he is getting, it doesn't sound like a group of animals is walking out. Only a set of footsteps is heard.

Matthew kept his attention on the entrance of the burrow, and finally, the creature in question slowly walked out of the burrow.

The creature has a huge body, even bigger than the deers, the wolves, and even the crocodiles. Its body is bulky and covered with brown fur all over from the top to bottom. It looked like it walked with four feet and the vibes the creature gave were anything but weak with its big, strong, and sturdy-looking body.

Even if Matthew didn't watch animal shows at all back on earth, he could surely identify the creature in front of him is indeed a bear. Or at least the creature looked very similar to the grizzly bear that he had seen back on earth.

Matthew didn't know anything about the bear in front of him, but one thing he realized after arriving at this world is that the creatures in this world are very similar in appearance, but they are either stronger or more powerful than their counterparts on earth that Matthew knew.

And Matthew's main objective for now, is to only hunt the green snake, so he backed away slowly from his current position and followed the trail of the green snake who also ran away in the other direction after seeing the bear. But luckily, with Matthew's eyes, he still followed the snake's movement and he soon followed after it.

With Matthew's feet able to move faster than the snake who slithers slowly on the ground, Matthew quickly caught up to the snake and went directly to the snake's head and bit its neck from the side using his wolf's mouth as hard as he could.

After the snake stopped moving, Matthew planned on dragging the snake away first to be as far away as possible from the bear, but who would've guessed that before the snake stopped its struggle, it released an ear-splitting hiss that traveled throughout the surrounding area. And the bear who bothers to come out of its den after only hearing a twig breaking, of course, noticed the loud sound coming from near him.

Matthew, who also noticed the bear's growl before hitting a nearby tree, and is now coming in his way, tried to think of ways that the snake wouldn't be stolen again from him. He didn't know if the snake is included in the bear's diet or not, but after getting his prey stolen a few times, Matthew developed a minor trauma of getting his prey stolen from bigger and scary-looking animals.

Matthew then racked his brain to deal with the impending crisis and come up with a solution that seemed to be another gamble. But whether it works or not, the gamble shouldn't be that too high risk for Matthew's well being and he decided to just try it. With that in mind, Matthew walked on top of the dead snake and hugged it as hard as he could, and hoped that his crazy-made up on the spot idea would work.

The bear, who had just heard a potential prey or other predator coming near him, growled loudly and clawed a nearby tree, leaving a deep claw mark on the tree to show his dominance. The claw mark was so deep that if people had seen it, they would wonder how the tree was still standing straight and not bending sideways.

Seeing no follow-up response after his threatening gesture, the bear decided to come closer and look closer to the source of the loud hissing sound that he heard.

He walked closer and closer while being on his guard just in case he was ambushed because the bear who had lived long in the forest of course recognized that the hissing sound was from a snake.

But the bear was left dumbfounded as he still didn't see anything after going in the direction of the sound he heard earlier. He even circled the place twice just to make sure that he didn't miss anything, but he still couldn't find anything in the end and decided to go back into his burrow.