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Chapter 2 - The Mushroom Plan

Fast forward a bit and Marlin has died over 50 times. The only thing he died to was those three same demonic wolves. Even if he started running away from the wolves and found a way to hide, he would then eventually be hunted down by the wolves. Marlin didn't know why but these wolves were like some master trackers.

No matter if he was covered in mud and under dirt and inside of bushes he would be found and ripped to pieces. It felt like cheating what these wolves were doing but Marlin knew there was a way to beat them.

And he did. But not for long.

After being reborn once again he travelled west for 2 days and he knew that he would be caught within a couple hours. After being a baby for so long he had learnt how to crawl very efficiently. He had now mastered the way of the crawling. You would have to be a monkey to crawl as good as him at crawling. His life being in danger combined with the fact that he was unwilling to lose to these wolves helped him reach this level of crawling.

In the distance he saw a dilapidated cabin with moss covering it. It looked quite ugly from certain perspectives, but it had its charm. Marlin had accidentally stumbled across this cabin one life ago, but shortly after he was killed by the wolves.

He thought that this was shelter that was used by the tree people. Well that is what Marlin called them. This is because sometimes when he got lost in the forest, he would stumble upon people living in these houses made of wood. He did not understand a thing they would say and whenever he came across the tree people he would run away.

These people were very mean because in the past he had seen them hunting deer and instead of killing it right after hitting it with an arrow to put it out of its misery. They started beating the deer and started shouting at the deer. Marlin thought that these people might have some sort of mental problem or that they worshipped the devil, so Marlin just stayed away from them.

Marlin then stopped reminiscing his past life and looked at a rectangular piece of wood embedded into the cabin.

Marlin then barely managed to drag himself up the stairs of the porch to get a closer look at this embedded piece of wood and saw a tiny little flap in it. Marlin crawled over and pushed this little flap with his tiny hands. He was then surprised to see it open and got a slight glimpse of the inside of this tree people house as he liked to call it.

It was just all wood! He was surprised that even the floor was wood. Marlin the stopped being so easy to surprise and crawled his way into the little flap that would coincidentally be able to fit wolf. Marlin didn't care about this detail because he thought that these wolves were not smart enough to figure out, they could enter using it. Unlike him who thought of himself as quite smart.

Although he had been killed by the wolves over 50 times now, he knew that if he wasn't a baby but his normal self from his past life, he would be able to fight these wolves with his just his bare fists. He didn't even need a weapon to wipe the floor with them. He was very confident in his past life's strength.

Marlin could tell that these wolves were not actually fighters. Although they had pitch black fur. Extremely sharp teeth and blood red eyes and they could track him down from kilometres away and rip him into pieces with their teeth. These wolves did not know how to fight.

They mostly used their greater numbers and intimidating look to scare their prey. Their prey would run away, and the wolves would just run down these animals. They were so scary that their prey would never fight back. They knew how to bite and claw, but they didn't know how to one on one fight.

From previous experience as a hunter and fighter he knew how to fight his enemies. Nobody in his tribe knew but he could tell how someone could fight judging from their muscle structure and stance.

These wolves did not have the stance nor the muscle structure to fight. He knew that over time animals would develop different strategies to hunt or survive. These wolves obviously decided to work in 3-man cells and along with their terrifying look they became very scary.

If it was a normal person, they would most likely be paralysed from fear or run for their life expending all their energy. This will let the wolves then go for easy picking on the opponent that had very little energy.

Effectively getting rid of their need to fight. Over time they had forgotten how to fight. Well this was what Marlin thought. Marlin then put aside this thought and proceeded to crawl around the house. There were 4 rooms. There was a bedroom, and then the other 3 rooms had nothing in them.

Then there was the room that he had first came to through the flap of the door. Overall, this was a pretty big house he thought and then realized for the first time how nice it must be to live in this house.

He usually slept in the dirt and didn't really care either way. But when he saw that elevated piece of wood with all that comfy leather on top he was drooling from the mouth.

He sat there for a bit thinking how nice it would be to sleep on it but was quickly interrupted by a noise that came from the entrance of the house. Marlin then thought to himself,

"Did I really think I was safe?"

Then another two same noises echoed within the house. Marlin then realized that the wolves had been able to fit through that flap of the door. That was because that noise was the noise of the flap opening.

Marlin then quickly crawled under the elevated piece of wood with comfy leather on top. He wanted to come up with a name for it but decided on it later. This elevated piece of wood with comfy leather on top was horizontal to the wall and in the corner of the room so Marlin went to the farthest space from the outside of the bed hoping that he would be harder to catch.

A couple seconds later he heard a whole lot of footsteps coming towards his room. The same footsteps that made the same tapping noise.

*GURRR*

Shortly after he could see multiple pairs of hairy legs walking towards him. These legs then stopped as they came to the outside of what Marlin was hiding under. Marlin breathed out a sigh of relief as he thought they had lost him, but he was wrong.

Suddenly, a pair of claws reached towards him and grabbed him by his arm and dragged him across the floor out of under the bed. Then the last thing Marlin saw was 3 pairs of blood red eyes flood his vision as darkness overcame him.

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After exploring the forest around himself for the past 80 lives he now knew it like the back of his hand and after accidentally stumbling upon the wolf's den a life right before waking up the wolves who were sleeping and being eaten. But besides this he had a plan.

Before being eaten he had gotten a close look of their den and saw a mushroom right in front of their den. This mushroom was bright green, yellow spots on top and a very frail stem which was begging to be plucked. This mushroom had most likely formed due to the dead bodies of the wolves' prey that had not been fully consumed. He could still see remnants from the dead bodies of those prey laying around the mushroom too.

Marlin's plan was to sneak up on the mushroom and consume the mushroom hoping that the poison would permeate through his whole body and making him very toxic to eat. But if it was just a normal mushroom then his plan would be ruined.

His other plan was to strike the wolves when they were weak.

Marlin may not have noticed this if he wasn't very attentive but could see some grey hairs forming on one of the wolves.

That meant that time was passing even when he died. He couldn't tell how much but what mattered was that time was passing. Over his past 80 lives he's observed that all 3 wolves are males. If he kept on dying, then gradually all three wolves would die, and they would have no children, but he knew this would take a very long time. Plus, they could just go on a trip to find a new mate so that was out of the question.

But Marlin plan B was to find poisonous mushrooms in the forest outside of the wolf den to eat and when they ate him, they would hopefully die. But there was nearly zero chance of them dying to the poison in his body due to the mushrooms poison in the forest being too weak. He had seen 5 types of mushrooms in the forest and died to every single one of these mushrooms before the wolves killed him. That was because Marlin is only a baby so whatever poisons they threw at him he would succumb to them almost certainly.

But Marlin knew that these were not enough to kill these wolves. He tested them all individually and the strongest one only killed him after a day and the weakest killed him after 2 days which was half a day before he would be killed by those wolves.

So those mushrooms were no good which meant he had to eat the one in front of the wolf's den which would prove to be very difficult.

Then after all that planning he put his plan into action.