Exploring The New Body

As Matthew regained his consciousness again, the very first thing that he noticed was that he wasn't able to move his body.

'Oh come on, what happened to me this time!'

Matthew then opened his eyes, he could see that he was currently inside some kind of tunnel, with a light coming from the end of the tunnel. Although Matthew is currently unable to move his body, after the various not so relaxing situations he is encountering each day in this new world, being in this weird condition didn't make him go into panic mode right away.

Matthew then tried to assess his current situation first before deciding to do anything. First, he tried to remember what just happened, and he could still remember clearly the memory of him going into his consciousness and choosing to add the spider body parts into his body for the special evolution. Matthew then tried feeling his body, and from the feelings of his tail still curling up behind him and his unique two-toed chameleon feet, he is sure that he is still a chameleon.

'But why am I stuck in this hole? Or tunnel?'

Matthew then looked at the light coming from the end of the tunnel and he wondered how far he is from the light, and as any curious chameleons would do, not that Matthew knows if there are such terms, he opened his mouth and tried to extend his tongue as far as he could to try and reach the light. When his tongue started to move out from his mouth, Matthew could feel something is different from his tongue,

'Are my tongue supposed to be this long? Or I just never tried to extend them to their maximum length before?'

The tongue then keeps on extending forward, toward the light, and apparently, Matthew's tongue is long enough to reach the light source. When the tongue finally touches the light, Matthew could feel that there is a slight wind blowing from his tongue's sense. He then tried checking the area using his tongue and he could feel that his tongue is currently at the opening of the hole or tunnel or wherever Matthew is right now.

'Did I sleepwalk and accidentally went into a hole somewhere last night? Where exactly am I?'

After being touched by the light for some time, Matthew could also feel there is a slight heat coming from the light. 'Is it the sun then? It must already be morning out there since I slept and evolved last night.'

'Alright then let's try going out of this place first.'

Matthew then latches his sticky tongue to one the side of the opening of the hole and then using his tongue muscle, he pulls himself out of the hole.

When Matthew got out of the hole, he was expecting the warm morning sunlight, accompanied by the slight cold morning breeze to hit hind, but what he got instead is the hot sunlight that will make his former human body sweat and the slightly cold wind breeze also didn't come to him.

'Wait what? Is the morning theme broken in this world?'

Matthew then looked up to the sky and saw that the sun, who he thought supposed to be just risen up to the sky, is already directly above his head and even starts to fall back into the horizon.

'Ah, it's already almost evening, the morning is not broken, my sleeping schedule is apparently the one that needs fixing.'

After talking to himself some more, Matthew then finally checked to see where he just came out from.

'This place looks really familiar, but it seems a bit different, where am I?'

Matthew then looked at his surroundings and still saw the usual sea of trees and the lake. He checked on the minimap at the edge of his vision that he is still indeed at the usual place, and he is now right beside his nest.

'Wait, my nest?'

Matthew then looked at the small hole where he just came out from and then realized something.

'My body is now twice as large as before! That's why I'm stuck earlier. How did I forget about it!' Matthew said as he slapped himself on the head with one of his front feet.

'Ouch! That hurts!'

Matthew then looked at his feet to see if he accidentally got pebbles stuck on them or something, but it turns out that his claws now looked more firm, stronger, and sharper than before.

Matthew then remembered all the cool additions to his body that he gets from the evolution, except for his claws and the doubling of his body size he still has other upgrades from the evolution that excites him,

'Now, let's begin checking myself out!'

The first thing that Matthew wanted to see is if his body had become stronger and faster than before since he remembered seeing his muscles are more defined in the 3D hologram, so he decided to do the most basic ability test, which is running.

Matthew tried running from his nest all the way to the lake, it used to take him about 30 seconds to travel the distance between the lake and his nest, but now after his evolution, he is able to cut the time as much to only about 15 seconds.

As he already seen his tongue grow longer and bigger following the increase of his body size, the only thing he didn't know yet is how strong his tongue muscle is right now, but since he didn't want to hunt any spiders to compare how easy it is to tear their legs compared to before, Matthew decided to check his other initial body parts who used to be not quite as useful in fights, which is his claws.

His claws initially only can be used for climbing up trees and not slashing at the enemies, but after the evolution, they looked more formidable and since a light tap to his head could give him a slight sting now, Matthew wondered how strong they really are.

There are two things that Matthew wanted to check about his new claws, the first is its sharpness and the second is its toughness. Depending on how it turned out, Matthew may have to reconsider using them as a weapon if they are sharp but fragile. And if they are not that sharp, Matthew might have to treat it as a blunt weapon instead of clawing the enemies with the intention of slashing them.

For the sharpness test, Matthew searched for a tall patch of grass then slashed his claws horizontally to cut the grass in two. And the result was not too bad. It surely wasn't as sharp as the mantis' scythe-like hand, but it did succeed in cutting the patch of grass in two although not as clean as when the mantis did it.

As for the toughness test, Matthew first tried to hit a nearby tree not too hard since he doesn't know if it will hurt him or not, just imagine if he did this using human nails, the nails will surely break and harm him in the process. But fortunately, a beast's claw is not that weak compared to the frail human. Although because he didn't use any strength that his claws just bounced off the tree trunk, Matthew didn't feel any pain from his claws being knocked against a large tree trunk.

Filled with curiosity, Matthew tries to slash his claws again to the tree, but this time using 70% of his strength. And the result surprised him since he could clearly see claw marks on the tree trunks and it's not a shallow one. And looking at his claws, he couldn't see any scratch or damage to them.

'With this, I think I can pierce through the crocodile's under scales.' Matthew said as he grinned in his mind and clenching his claws.

Matthew then played around more with his new and stronger body and find out that he could also hang himself upside down on a tree branch using his tail and the venom glands can also directly excrete venoms to his mouth without going through the fangs and it gave him a few ideas that he would like to try later tonight when other creatures appear.

Besides his physical changes, Matthew also noticed that his minimap is now more detailed than before, if before he could only see rough and vague drawings about his current area and the places he's been, now he is able to see a more detailed 2D view of the surrounding area from above. Looking at his improved map, Matthew also wondered if there are any new functions that the system has post-evolution.

'And there is no better way of knowing that except for…'

'System, Do you have any new features you are willing to share with me?'

The usual machine-like voice appeared again on his mind, and Matthew is actually getting used to the monotone voice that helped him so far. The voice said, 'The Host is now able to access the basic info tab.'

'System, can I see the basic info tab?'

-----

Name: Matthew

Race : Altered Veiled Chameleons

Level : 8

Bionutrients : 48

Monster Data Collected:

-Common Wandering Spider (100%)

-----

'So now I can see the bionutrients I have and the monster data, well that's convenient.'

'My race is normally supposed to be only Veiled Chameleons but because of the special evolution it added the 'Altered' then?'

Matthew also noticed that his current level is level 8.

'System, aren't I supposed to be level 5 or 6 after the evolution?'

'Host is supposed to be one level above the level when host undergoes the evolution, but there is remaining experience from killing the crocodile and it is added to the total level when host finishes the evolution process.'

'I see, thank you for the explanation!'

Now that Matthew already knew the system, he didn't expect any reply from the voice inside his head.

After Matthew finished his introduction with his new body, he then waited until nighttime, as there is some fun and interesting experiment he wanted to try.