บท 43: The Scanner

After finally getting a proper good night's sleep, Matthew woke up early in the morning not long before sunrise instead of waking up in the late afternoon or early evening.

Matthew then walked outside of his nest to catch a breath of the fresh early morning air and at the same time throwing out the crocodile's bone from the remains of his meals last night.

After eating his second crocodile, Matthew gained 67% of the crocodile's monster data and to complete the monster data to 100% in one go, Matthew decided that for today, he will eat the big crocodile that is currently still sitting comfortably outside of his nest.

'But before that…'

Instead of doing his usual morning habit of stretching his whole body the first thing when he woke up. For today, Matthew decided that he wanted to go directly to the new area to search for the same type of snake that he met yesterday because he is quite interested in getting the heat sensor that the snake got. And Matthew is also planning to add the heat sensor to his body in his next evolution along with the crocodile's body parts.

And to do that, he needed to also complete the snake's monster data. Luckily, the snake consists of a lot of edible parts other than the spine and head part of the snake which is contaminated by the snake's venom. With a lot of edible parts, Matthew could gather 52% of the snake's monster data with only one snake, which means that he only needed to kill and eat one other snake to complete the snake's monster data to 100%.

With that objective in mind, Matthew started to climb a nearby tree and start swinging towards the new area. Matthew swung past the area where met the boars last time and did not stop until he finally arrived near the area where he met the snake yesterday.

After Matthew landed on the ground, Matthew didn't immediately activate his chameleon aura ability, instead, he activated the scanner function from the system.

Ever since seeing the snake's heat sensor, Matthew has gotten curious about how his scanner system works. At first, Matthew didn't even bother to use it other than for being his alarm system while he was sleeping because of the small radius of the scanner function's effective area.

With Matthew's excellent chameleon's eyesight, he could see in all directions and with amazing clarity that enabled him to spot his potential prey or predators even from about 20 or 25 meters away clearly. While the scanner function that the system has only had a radius of 5 meters and Matthew didn't think much about it.

But now that he had seen how useful the snake's heat sensor was, Matthew began to think about the advantages of having some type of sensor that can alert him if it detects something in particular. In the snake's case, the heat sensor is able to detect other creatures from the heat that said creatures released from their bodies and alert the snake of their existence despite the snake not directly seeing them.

Matthew then realized that even though he has 360 degrees vision with his eyes, if he wanted to search or look for something, he still had to actually focus and put attention on his eyes to look out for the things or creatures that he was searching for. But if he used the scanner function that the system has, according to the system, it will notify Matthew if the scanner has found anything. And his eyes, despite being very sharp, aren't capable of seeing through objects, while the scanner system is able to detect any creatures inside the 5 meters area of its effective area even though there are walls or something obstructing Matthew's view.

And that means Matthew didn't have to put his full attention or any attention at all when using the scanner function and as long as another creature has entered the scanner function effective area, the system will notice Matthew even if Matthew wasn't taking notice of his surroundings.

But of course, Matthew didn't plan on just relying on the scanner function 100% and didn't do his own effort when he was searching for the snake. Matthew just wanted to know first-hand what will happen when a creature is inside the scanner's function effective area.

Because so far, he only knew that the system would notice him. But how will the system notice him? Matthew didn't know about it. And are there any limitations to the scanner's function? Such as the inability of the snake's heat sensor to detect Matthew while he is using his aura ability, does his scanner have these kinds of limitations?

With those questions in mind, Matthew now decided to just let the scanner function on 24/7 just like the map function that's always on and give him a minimap on the right center of his vision.

Matthew is currently walking around the area and proceeds to move forward after failing to find anything with both his scanner and his eyes. Matthew didn't bother to activate his aura ability despite the snake's ability to detect him with its heat sensor because that is exactly what Matthew wanted.

Matthew knew from his encounter with the snake yesterday that the snake will actively hunt him and come to him on their own when they see him and that's exactly what Mattew needed, a snake to eat. But he also made sure to use his skin color to try and blend in as best as he could to the surrounding environment just in case there are other creatures that Matthew didn't know that is dangerous to him, Matthew won't be exposed immediately and he got himself some time to assess what he should do. Either to fight or to run away.

Matthew has been walking for about 15 minutes but he hasn't met other creatures yet. Matthew then continued moving forward, but he took a slightly different course from yesterday because he didn't want to have any business with the monkeys yet.

Matthew didn't want to mess with a group of 10 or even 20 monkeys that he didn't know anything about either their strength or their aura abilities or their habits, the only information Matthew knew about them is only their appearance and their slightly abnormal strength compared to other monkeys back on earth when he saw them yesterday.

So instead of following the path that had been recorded in his minimap, Matthew deviated slightly to the left and then continued going straight in that direction in search of other animals so that Matthew could test out his scanner.

It didn't take long after Matthew threaded the new path, his eyes soon noticed something familiar. An animal with a long and thick wood-like bone sticking out its head then branched out, Matthew could surely identify the deers even from 50 meters away.

Although Matthew didn't want to hurt the deers or hunt them, he still went up to them slowly to experiment with his scanner function. Matthew moved his feet carefully and tried his best to avoid stepping on fallen branches or dried leaves to avoid alerting the deer, and he continued proceeding cautiously until he finally reached 5 meters away from the nearest deer and the scanner gave him the notification that he was waiting for.

The scanner neither gives Matthew a visual notice by outlining the deers on his eyes nor gives a pin above the deer's head for Matthew to see. Instead, the system gave Matthew a notice by alerting his mind,

'A creature has been detected in the direction of 13 degrees and 5 meters away from host's current position.'

And visually, Matthew noticed that in the minimap, inside the circle around the white dot that represents him, appeared a red-colored dot in the same direction that the system had notified him earlier. Matthew double-checked the direction the system gave him using his real eyes and although he didn't have a proper tool to measure distance and angle, Matthew could approximately guess how far is a 15 degrees angle.

'I see, so that's how it works. It's not as useful as I wanted it to be, but It's still how I expected it would work.'

Now that Matthew has learned how the scanner functions, he left the deers alone and continued his journey in search of the snake.