Fail Again?

Waiting patiently at his nest, Matthew felt like he already waited for hours. Matthew then tried to do something productive such as expanding his nest even more so that he got more room, snacking on the deer's intestines, and even prepared the other deer body, by separating the hide from the flesh and taking out its innards so that tomorrow morning he didn't need to do the tedious work and just eat straight away.

But even after doing all of that, the wolves still haven't come tonight. Some of the insects tried to take a bite of his deer but Matthew just gave them a few flicks of his tongue and threw rocks at them to keep them away. And after waiting for maybe about another hour, Matthew felt so bored and his tired and slightly wounded body was demanding him for a nice quality sleep, so Matthew decided to just go back inside his nest and leave the deer bodies outside and concluded that the wolves won't come tonight.

'It's not like those insects can eat much, and I think some of them are already traumatized enough getting rocks the same size as their bodies thrown at them.' Matthew thought as he relaxed his body and closed his eyes.

The first thing Matthew does when he opens his eyes in the morning or rather a late afternoon or an early evening is to eat his prepared deer meat. Maybe because his body is healing from the wounds from last night, he is able to eat the deer's meat and intestines all in one go before feeling his stomach is filled up to the brim and also increasing his bionutrients storage into 692 and brown-tailed deer data into 57%.

After taking a drink from the lake to wash his throat down and seeing his reflection on the lake, Matthew is curious if he is able to do something different with his color-changing skin.

So far, Matthew is already able to change his skin color at will without giving it much effort and it proves to be useful in the last fight against the deer where he could change his skin color from wood-brown to grass-green in a moment, helping him hide from the deer and to make the sneak attacks that gave him the win last night. But Matthew wondered, as his body grew bigger and bigger from each evolution, 'Wouldn't it be harder for me to blend in with the environment if my body is as large as the deers, wolves, or even the crocodiles? And will my next evolution give me larger bodies or completely different things altogether?'

Deciding that it won't do him any good by worrying about something that he can't control and also the fact that he doesn't have the ability to predict the future, Matthew decided that it is better for him to make a precaution if his body did grow bigger after each evolution.

Bigger bodies mean that bigger areas to cover, and if Matthew is only able to change his skin color to only one color, then it will be significantly harder for him to find the perfect spot to blend in, in the environment. For example, if his body is even twice as long as his current body if Matthew wanted to hide in an area where there aren't any large bush, but only the smaller one that is connected to a tree, then Matthew needed half of his body to be green like the bushes and the other to be brown like the tree trunks.

And using the lake surface as a mirror, Matthew then started his training session. Since green is his base color and at first, Matthew is only able to change parts of his body, it wasn't difficult for him to change into any color combination using the color of green, but if he wanted to change into a color combination such as yellow and brown, things started to get complicated.

When half of Matthew's body already changed to yellow and he wanted to change the other half to brown, either all of his body turned to brown or he just got confused and all the colors returned back to the base color green. Even after trying and practicing until the sun almost went down, he still failed to do it.

'No need to rush, Matthew.' Matthew comforted himself,

'I still got 2 more levels until I evolve, and it isn't sure if I will be as tall or as long as the deer or wolves by my next evolution, but with my current body size, I still wanted to get bigger. My body is way too fragile for dealing with the bigger animals, and I don't even know if there are even bigger animals deeper in the forest like lions, rhinos, elephants, t-rex, dragons, griffin, phoenix, wait… do such things even exist?' Slowly turning his head into the deeper unknown parts of the forest, gave Matthew the chills just thinking about what kind of things and creatures that may possibly exist out there.

But seeing that it's almost nighttime, Matthew decided to put these thoughts aside and just focus on the things that matter right now, since he got wolves to hunt tonight.

Walking back to his nest, Matthew still got 2 deer corpses left, one untouched and 1 that was covered in venom from the night before is still a distance away from his nest. Looking at their condition, never mind the wolves, even Matthew can tell that they are not fresh anymore, but luckily they still looked edible and did not smell like rotten corpses yet.

Since Matthew's trap last night failed. Today, he tried to do extra preparations and injected his venom into the other deer corpse before dragging them both closer to the other side of the forest where the wolves come from. Although wasting a lot of his venom here and wasting his stamina to drag both of the large deer bodies, Matthew considered it as a worthy investment if his plan worked, and he didn't know how long will it takes for the wolves to come and his double venom glands are working hard to replenish their supplies.

'I hope that the nutrients from eating a whole deer's body are enough to fuel my body for tonight.'

Matthew then once again played the waiting game. He climbed on top of a tree nearby and found a suitable spot for himself to lay low and so that the two deer bodies are visible and Matthew can directly monitor if the wolves have taken the bait or not.

Matthew is prepared to wait for hours again for the wolves to come, but fortunately, he didn't need that much resolve as not long after 30 minutes he waited on top of the tree, the familiar howl that Matthew has heard every time the wolves come to hunt.

When first Matthew heard the howl of the wolves, he was too panicked and didn't know where they would come from, but after seeing them over and over again, he already knew the direction where they would come from and patiently waited for them.

From the depths of the forest, Matthew could see 5 wolves with all kinds of fur colors from black. dark grey, 2 light grey, and white running in the direction of the lake.

'Now it's the time to see if my efforts will be worth it.'

The 5 wolves ran directly into the direction of the lake, precisely where Matthew predicted they would go, and soon the two deer corpses were found by the wolves. One of the wolves with the light grey wolves soon ran straight to the deer's body and wanted to take a bite first to see how it tastes before dragging it back to their den, but as it opened its mouth, the white wolves jumped over and hit the light grey wolves using its paw and growling as if to tell the grey wolf off.

The white wolf, different from the light grey one, sniffed the deers all over their bodies and stopped at certain parts of the body and after spending about 5 minutes sniffing them, the white wolf looked at the other wolves, growled at them, and then left the two deer bodies alone and followed by the other wolves even though the light grey one looked reluctantly at the two deer bodies before also leaving it and continued their hunt onto the other side of the forest.

'Wait what? They know?!'

Remembering that the place where the white wolf gave an extra sniff was the necks, bellies, and the deer's back was the place where Matthew injected his venom the most.

'That white wolf seems to be the most dangerous one, if I get the chance, I will eliminate it first.'

'Does this mean that my plan failed?'

Matthew looked in the lake's direction and didn't see the wolves nor other large animals coming into the lake, only the turtles and the other insect creatures are found there.

'Well, at least I've tried. But I won't accept going back home empty-handed today.'

Matthew then waits for the wolves to come back when they drag their prey back to their nest and he is planning to follow them back to their den.

'But which way are they going earlier?'

Because Matthew is a bit shocked to see that he just wasted all his effort in preparing the deer traps earlier, he forgot to follow where the wolves went, but he still decides to stay where he is just in case they used the same path back home and he doesn't have any other plans to do tonight.

And once again, Matthew waited for about an hour, sitting at the top of the tree doing nothing and he started to get bored and considered just giving up for today and just go to sleep and try again the next day or the day after tomorrow.

But right when he was about to give up, a familiar light grey wolf appeared from the unexplored parts of the forest. The wolf then looked left and right carefully as if checking for something before he went straight to the deer corpses, opened up his mouth then took a big bite.