Half a Year

In the days that followed, Bai Chuan returned to his peaceful life, slowly accumulating points.

His crawling speed had increased, and his digestive ability had improved, so he expanded his territory once again.

Where did he get the extra territory? Of course, by invading the territories of other creatures.

And invading meant fighting. After all, no matter how vast these mountains and forests were, they still couldn't make up for the sheer number of creatures living in them.

Every region had its own Overlord. Before Bai Chuan expanded his territory, the area around it was occupied by a pack of wolves to the east, a herd of wild boars to the west, and a black bear to the south. As for the north?

There was a great river running in all directions. He even suspected that the stream where he'd often gone to drink in his original territory was a tributary of this river.

Once, he'd seen a beautiful feline covered in black spots on the far bank. It was a leopard—perhaps a clouded leopard?

Now, perhaps because he'd slaughtered a pack of wolves earlier, a fair amount of land to the east had been left unclaimed.

And that was the area his expanded territory now occupied.

So he'd been through quite a few battles lately, some of them initiated by him and others forced upon him.

His scales had gained many fresh scars in a short time.

At the same time, after evolving the kind of vision he'd been accustomed to as a human, he no longer suffered from the visual weaknesses of snakes.

So Bai Chuan had begun trying to collect creatures with incredibly powerful traits, ants and the like.

Unfortunately, the ideal was beautiful, but reality was painfully thin.

These little animals were just too tiny. On top of that, Bai Chuan didn't dare eat them recklessly, afraid he might accidentally kill himself.

After all, how many illnesses came from what you ate?

So... collecting models this way proved far too difficult, and he gave up.

The scanning rate was too low. And without hands, Bai Chuan couldn't make any decent tools to preserve ants and other little insects so he could scan them whenever he wanted.

Once, he'd spent all of the previous day staring at a target, scanning until he was nearly done. But he couldn't hold out any longer and took a break. By the next morning—or perhaps it had been that very night—the target had disappeared.

And so, his plan had failed once again.

Fortunately, he hadn't pinned too much hope on it. After all, with such a vast difference in size between them, no one could say whether their ability structures would even be compatible.

Still, he'd gained some insight into compatibility.

He'd noticed that low compatibility in ability structures seemed to occur mostly with traits related to external limbs.

Of course, he wouldn't go into that here.

By now, he seemed to have fallen into a predicament: he was desperately short on points, had no particularly powerful abilities to boost his combat strength, and was surrounded by a bunch of tough nuts to crack.

After realizing this, he spent the whole night thinking it over and concluded that he simply hadn't been evolving for long enough. He lacked a solid foundation.

He'd grown far too quickly.

It seemed he needed to take some time to build himself up and wait for his points to become plentiful.

At the same time, he'd more or less come up with a plan—a plan that would greatly help him in future battles.

But he'd need to think it through carefully.

And that would take time.

Time slipped slowly by.

In the blink of an eye, half a year had passed.

That day, beside the great river,

a few Sika Deer cautiously lowered their heads to drink, keeping watch with their companions on alert.

A pair of bright, jet-black eyes darted around, scanning their surroundings. They were afraid a predator might suddenly spring at them from behind, or some enormous beast might burst out of the water.

However, just then, beneath the surface,

a series of bubbling sounds rose with a stream of bubbles, and a huge shadow swam over from underwater. Its shape was like a snake yet like a dragon, and it moved with astonishing agility.

Soon, it seemed to have spotted its target. Its body abruptly halted, then it swam toward the bank.

At that moment, the Sika Deer were still drinking, completely unaware of the danger closing in.

Boom!

The next moment, a thunderous crash rang out. Sparkling water burst into the air and scattered everywhere, falling over the little patch of land like a fine rain.

As the curtain of water rose, a giant serpent appeared with its jaws wide open. Its back was covered in pitch-black scales that gleamed like metal, making them look incredibly hard.

Only its belly bore several rows of golden scales arranged in mysterious patterns. The golden scales shimmered beneath the sunlight.

The sudden upheaval and the enormous mouth right before them sent the Sika Deer into a panic. They bolted for their lives.

Dust rose everywhere. Even the little rabbits, Little Squirrels, and other animals drinking nearby vanished without a trace.

The one responsible for all this, however, was secretly delighted. It was none other than Bai Chuan, half a year later.

Ever since he'd enhanced his abilities with Diving and Underwater Breathing, he'd loved plunging underwater whenever he had the chance, trying to shake off the psychological shadow left by six months ago.

During this time, after accidentally frightening a group of animals on the bank one day, he'd suddenly found a way to relieve stress: scaring the animals that came to drink, letting him vent some of the pressure that had built up inside.

After admiring the chaos he'd caused, Bai Chuan chuckled to himself for a while before preparing to leave.

Suddenly, he froze. The corner of his eye had caught sight of something on the ground.

He lowered his head and looked. The ground was a mess, covered everywhere in hoofprints and muddy marks.

Yet amid the chaos lay an oddity: a small Sika Deer, collapsed on the ground.

"Hm? What happened?"

A little deer was lying there? Bai Chuan didn't remember attacking it. Could this be an animal-world scam?

Bai Chuan leaned closer and carefully examined the little Sika Deer with his serpent head. Only then did he understand what had happened.

It was probably a young deer that had only recently reached adulthood. This must have been the first time he'd frightened it, and its heart had been so weak that he'd scared it to death.

"Good grief, it's... really that timid."

Once he understood, Bai Chuan was speechless. He hadn't expected that even a bit of harmless fun scaring animals could get him a meal. That was pretty amusing.

After carefully judging the deer's size, he saw that he could swallow it whole, so he didn't hesitate.

It looked like he'd saved himself a day's hunting.

Inside a huge, luxurious cave that Bai Chuan had dug himself,

a giant serpent measuring 5.3 meters in length was coiled up.

That's right, 5.3 meters.

Over the past half year, even without enhancing any abilities that boosted his physical constitution, he had naturally grown to 5.3 meters long, and his girth had increased quite a bit too.