Reincarnated As A Chameleon And Eating Everything To Evolve

Wearing light chainmail armor that covered the front and back of their bodies with a sword hanging on their waists, three humans can be seen walking casually in the forest.

With 2 humans in the front and 1 in the back, they kept on walking towards the bear's burrow while keeping their eyes on the surroundings, scanning it just in case they found anything that caught their attention.

The three humans looked calm as they talked leisurely with each other, on the contrary, questions started to pop up inside Matthew's head.

'Why are the humans here?'

'What are they doing here…?'

But looking at the three humans who don't even wear full body armor a thought suddenly appeared in his head,

'No matter what they are doing here or why they are here, I can kill them easily.'

Matthew's pupil started to widen as he focused on the humans some distance away from him, with their current gear and their nonchalant attitude that wasn't wary of their surroundings, it would be a piece of cake for him to kill the three humans.

But just when he wanted to launch his body forward to another tree, Matthew suddenly calmed himself down and retracted his intent to kill the humans.

'Use your d*mned Matthew!' He thought while knocking on his temple a few times.

'Remember that your enemy now is not just a couple of creatures that live inside the forest. Your enemy now is a whole army. You can't just do anything without thinking about the consequences!'

Matthew realized that none of the three humans in front of him look like someone important and killing them won't bring him any good other than alerting the humans that there's a dangerous beast that lives near them.

The three humans finally arrived at the bear's burrow and when they saw that there's a huge mound on the ground with a large hole leading towards the ground, they stopped chatting and investigated the bear's burrow carefully.

They tried throwing stuff into the hole and when there's no response, one of them decided to crawl and go straight into the hole with the 2 other humans keeping watch at the entrance of the hole.

"Is this one of those animals' nests? This one looked slightly different from the ones we found at the outskirts of the forest." One of the humans that stayed by the entrance of the nest suddenly talked.

"Yes, this looked too big for a boar's nest, are there other animals here than the boars and the deer?" The other one replied.

"There's a high chance that it is the case, this forest was unexplored before because the danger of traveling inside the forest will increase the more you go deeper towards its center. And his highness, the second prince, was the first one that dared to do an expedition towards the forest."

"They certainly didn't lie when they said that the animals got stronger the more we went deeper. I used to be able to kill the group of deer and the boars myself when we were still on the outskirts, but a team of at least 5 people is needed to deal with them. I'm afraid that we wouldn't be able to keep up with the increase in the animals' strength if we continued going towards the center of the forest."

"And those kobolds are really putting up a fight aren't they? I didn't expect General Dio to die in this siege."

"Hush, don't say that. We still can't find his body yet, there's a chance that he is still alive somewhere. His contribution is not neglectable in being the spearhead of the expedition."

"The goblin settlements that General Dio had conquered were easy to manage as the goblins obeyed us and they even had become a significant workforce for us."

"But those kobolds were really stubborn and won't yield until the very end. Now look at them, heck we can't even look at them since they're all dead."

"That is what they get when they only have half a brain. They can think, but they're not smart enough to realize that their life was in our hands." 

The two humans suddenly heard a wood creaking sound right after one of the humans said that. But they looked everywhere and they couldn't find anything, so they continued their conversation.

"What is the prince trying to do though? Is it to expand the kingdom's land?" 

"We don't exactly know what he was doing, but the rumors said that he was searching for something here."

"Something?" One of the humans asked curiously

"This is only a rumor, but don't spread this further." The other human said, half whispering.

The human then nodded his head and listened closely to what the other human was about to say.

"Do you know the undead queen in the west?"

The human nodded.

"There are rumors saying that there's something in this forest that rivaled the undead queen's power. And it is said that the prince was trying to find that power and bring it back for the kingdom."

The other human who was listening closely, had his hands covering his agape mouth and his eyes were wide open when he heard the rumor.

But when he was about to ask further about it, the other human who was crawling into the hole shouted,

"There's nothing here, let's continue scouting the area further."

The two men then stopped talking about the rumors and helped pull the crawling man out of the bear's burrow before continuing to walk past the area.

While Matthew can't just kill the defenseless humans in front of his eyes, it doesn't mean that he didn't need to do anything. He still wanted to know why he could see humans roaming around near the bear's burrow. 

And the fact that he had just gotten what might be valuable information about what is the army's goal from going into the forest from not killing the humans right away, is a sign that he really needs to be thoughtful about his every action and decision from now on.

And if the rumor was true, Matthew needed to stop the prince from getting what he wanted. He had to kill him before he got stronger than before.

'I need to investigate this further…' 

Matthew waited until the three humans walked past him before he went into the direction where the humans had come from, which is in the same direction of the kobold village.

Matthew had climbed down from the tree as jumping from one tree to another created a loud noise that might alert the humans, and as he walked cautiously towards what was supposed to be the remains of the kobold village. 

As Matthew got closer and closer towards the kobold village, his scanner function had been ringing a few times, telling him there were creatures near him. His eyes saw the humans were patrolling around the area and his heat sense saw many silhouettes of humans that were either behind bushes or trees. Enabling Matthew to avoid places that were cramped with humans and keeping his existence hidden from any of the humans.

However, it doesn't mean that he was careless. He knew what it meant if he met more and more humans as he got closer towards the kobold village. But he kept his thoughts to himself before confirming the truth by looking at the kobold village on his own.

Treading carefully, Matthew looked at his own feet whenever he walked. The moment he sees a magic symbol on the ground, he will leave the place immediately. As he didn't know what kind of traps or tricks the humans had set up for him.

After several turns and a slight detour to avoid the humans, Matthew finally saw the kobold village, or at least what was supposed to be the remains of the village that was filled with debris and rubbles.

However, there's none of that.

Tents were everywhere, replacing the wooden houses that used to be the kobold's house.

But tents are not the only thing that was plenty on top of the land that used to be the kobold village.

Humans.

Humans were everywhere going in and out of the tents. Walking here and there as if they were already used to living there for years.

Matthew didn't see any kobolds or the goblins that the humans mentioned before. He could only see humans were clearing more areas by cutting more trees and building more tents.

Matthew's guess earlier was correct. The kobold village had been turned into the human's new basecamp.

'You killed them all, doing whatever you want to them. And now that they're all dead you also take their home away and just do whatever you want with it…'

'Just wait for me… It won't be long until you realize the consequences of your actions and I ȧssure you that you will definitely regret it.'

Matthew then rushed towards the place that Nass had pointed out before. The place where there was supposed to be another bear to complete his monster data.

—-------------

The last thing that the general remembered was his hands were cut off before his world suddenly turned upside down and he saw his body fall down before everything turned to darkness.

Later, he felt his body was floating in a thick liquid and it was hard for him to move his body. He tried opening his eyes, but there was nothing but complete darkness and a very small light shining at a distance. His body just silently floats slowly towards that light.

He started to understand what just happened to him and he was about to accept the fact that he had indeed just died when fighting the weird-looking kobold.

But out of nowhere when he was only about to reach the light, the general suddenly heard a deep and enigmatic voice in his head saying,

"Do you want to live, human?"