Chapter 14: Clutch

After declaring his determination to deal with the deers, the first thing that Matthew does is to quickly turn his body 180 degrees and run into the bushes while changing his skin color back to green.

While Matthew is sure that he can deal with the remaining deers, fighting 3 animals that have a body size that is twice as large as himself head-on will guarantee him getting a quick ticket back to God's dwelling. So he decided to hide in the bushes first to reorganize his strategy and possibly make another sneak attack since Matthew's strongest tool in his arsenal right now is venom, he wanted to utilize it the best he can.

Disappearing into the bush, the deers soon followed after him in revenge for killing one of their kin. Although Matthew hasn't seen if the deers are capable of using an aura ability or how they attacked an enemy in general, he is wary about being kicked by their long legs or getting his body blown away by their sturdy-looking antlers.

Behind the bush are the sea of trees that towers over Matthew and the group of deers, and using his camouflage, Matthew hides behind the trees to try to buy time for himself to make up a strategy on how to deal with the deers.

'I can absolutely run away and they won't even notice where I'm going, but since they dare to disrespect and underestimate me, my pride won't let me do that!' Matthew said to himself to toughen his resolve to kill all of the deers.

'But what should I do?'

Looking at the group of deers who are currently searching for Matthew's whereabouts at the tall patch of grass near them and looking up at the tree branches just in case Matthew did the same thing to sneak attack from above, Matthew knows that he is not in a good position.

He just spent most of his venom on killing that one deer from before, and now the deers are also wary from being attacked from above so Matthew couldn't do the same strategy again. If he is in this position before his evolution, there is a 0% chance that Matthew will succeed in dealing with the deers, but now that he got a stronger body, tough claws that can pierce through the deer's hide, and double venom glands that constantly producing venom for him, Matthew got an idea on how he will succeed.

After Matthew got the venom glands, Matthew not only thought about how potent the venom is, but he is also thinking of ways on how to use them without the traditional animal methods by injecting it into an opponent's body with their fangs. And now, he wanted to try one of the methods that he has been thinking about from the start.

By excreting the venom directly to his mouth and putting both of his front feet into his mouth, his claws are now coated with the deadly spider venom, and by doing this, his claws are now also a deadly weapon that Matthew can use against the deers.

Matthew circled around the group of deers slowly from behind the trees and blending in with the grass, he succeeded in getting behind the group without being noticed. Using his excellent eyes, Matthew located the nearest deer to his location and started inching slowly from behind the deer before dashing at the last moment to get into under the deer's belly and digging his two venom-coated claws into the deer's belly before dashing off again, disappearing into the nearest bush.

The startled deer who just got attacked jumped up abruptly because of the sheer pain that Matthew's claws caused and opened a nasty wound with red blood slowly flowing out of its belly, the other 2 deer became warier and hurriedly came over to protect their wounded friend.

Instead of continuing his attacks, Matthew decided to watch first to see if the venom had any effects on the deer. Although not fast, after about 5 minutes have passed, the deer who was standing tall, now looked weak with its legs slightly shaking and its breathing becoming rougher than ever.

'So it worked, but It can't instantly kill the deer. I don't know how long it will take with only the venom to kill the deer but I won't wait that long.'

Coating his claws with venom again, Matthew started to cautiously circle behind the deer again. Now that the deers are warier than before, Matthew needed to do extra preparations as a precaution. Using his tongue, Matthew grabbed a small branch that had fallen on the ground and threw it up in the opposite direction from him.

The thrown tree branch traveled up in the air before falling on the ground causing a sound that is not too loud, but loud enough to make the paranoid deer look in that direction and prepare themselves to respond to any attack that may come at them. But the expected attack came from an unexpected direction. Without the deers realizing, suddenly one of the deers made a sound that could only be described as a scream, and when the other deer checked to see what happened, the same thing that happened to its first friend reoccurred once again, with its belly cut open and blood dripping down from it. And when it wanted to find the culprit who had done it, Matthew once again disappeared into the bushes.

After waiting for about another 5 minutes, the first deer who was limping earlier is already down at the ground with its four legs folded and eyes closed, but it is still breathing, while the second deer is already starting to show the same symptoms as the first one 5 minutes ago because of the venom that keeps on spreading throughout their bodies. And the last healthy deer who hasn't been injected by the venom, seeing two of his kin getting weaker by the time and slowly dying, let out a grunt that Matthew felt is not a plea for its life, but rather a death threat that is directed at him.

Matthew, who didn't feel bad at all for using sneak attacks and taking out his opponents one by one, now has two options. One is to keep doing things just like earlier and sneak up to kill the last deer or to come out of his hiding place and fight the deer directly without petty tricks.

And of course, Matthew being a decent human being and respected other creatures decided to,

'Run away… is not an option, I mean, I don't think using any tricks or misdirection will work well against an opponent who has already given up on running away and is determined to kill me. Besides, I need to see for myself how tough my body is post-evolution.'

After deciding his next course of action, Matthew came out of his hiding place and stood directly in front of the angry deer.

Exchanging eye contact with each other, the deer is the first one who started sprinting towards Matthew with all of its might. Since Matthew wanted to gauge his body strength, instead of getting out of the way, Matthew decided to do something dangerous for his small chameleon body. Matthew once again coated his front claws with the spider venom and welcomed the deer's rush with open claws.

When the deer leg is about to kick Matthew with its full strength and added with all the momentum from the sprint it will surely break Matthew's bones and puncture his internal organs if Matthew wanted to go against that, so what Matthew did is, he jumped up and followed the momentum of the kick so that his body didn't take the full force of the kick. And to lessen the speed of his body flying, using his claws, Matthew tried to grab onto the deer's leg, but the force was just too strong and his claws aren't fast enough to dug deep into the flesh to get a proper grip and only left the deer with a 3cm deep cut on its left leg.

Matthew's body flew from the kick and then landed on the ground below. Although Matthew didn't take too much damage from the kick since he followed the kick's momentum, he can't do anything about falling down from a high altitude. He is only fortunate since his chameleon body is not that big and doesn't pressure his body so much and he crashed onto the softer dirt ground instead of a stone or a tree trunk, so the fall only gave his spine and leg joints a bearable pain that Matthew can still tolerate.

Even though Matthew failed to significantly damage the deer's leg with his last-second claw attack, a slight cut is all it takes for the spider venom to be injected into the deer and start spreading all over its body and Matthew's claw attacks did more than just a slight cut, it succeeded in damaging the muscles making the deer incapable of using one of its legs properly.

The deer knows what is coming to him since he has seen what happened to his other kin when being damaged by the little chameleon. Knowing that his time was ticking, the deer decided to ignore his wounded leg and started sprinting once again to quickly end this fight before his body went limp.

Matthew, who is now clearly sure that he won't come out unscathed or he could even take permanent damage to his body if he took another blow like that, needed to avoid the kick at all cost. Thinking about what he should do, Matthew decided to try something.

When the deer was already about 2 meters away from him, Matthew launched his tongue and aimed at the deer's wounded left leg, and yanked it to his right. The deer who just got pulled hard to the side where its legs were wounded, couldn't regain its balance and was forced to change the direction of the sprint.

If this happens in an open field or a clearing in the forest, then it's not a huge problem where the deer can just slowly stop and redirect its sprint, but unfortunately, this happened on a forest that is packed full of trees all over and with the deer's momentum who put his all into the sprint, the deer wasn't able to slow down and stop before hitting its antlers hard onto a tree trunk and the shock traveled from its antlers directly onto its head, giving the deer a concussion for a moment.

Matthew seized the opportunity to run and quickly climbed on top of the deer's body before piercing the deer's neck with his claws causing blood to burst out of its neck. And soon, the deer's body went limp on the ground on top of a pool of its own blood.

-Level 9 Brown-Tailed Deer Killed-

'1 V 4 CLUTCH BABY!' Matthew shouted aloud in his mind.