When Matthew finally regained his consciousness and opened his eyes, he found himself laying on the ground, belly side down and his face was half-planted on the ground.
Matthew quickly brought his head back up, spit out the dirt that got into his mouth then wiped the rest of the dirt away using his tongue.
'Why is my head suddenly in a half-buried state when I just woke up!' He complained.
Matthew then tried to get up, but then he suddenly felt his head hitting the ceilings.
'And why is the ceiling had suddenly becoming shorter! What the h*ll is going on with this place!'
Matthew then brought up his hands and rubbed the part of his head that had just hit the ceiling. But when his hand is going back and forth on his head, he feels something is different from his hand. Matthew then brought down his hands to the front of his face to see if there's anything wrong with it. When his eyes finally landed on his hands, he finally remembered what had just happened.
Looking at his ex-feet, now turned hands, it's no longer the double-toed structure, but rather, it was the five fingers structure that he was very familiar with. Matthew also looked down to see that he was currently standing on his own 2 legs and not 4.
Matthew also now realized why his head was half planted on the ground and why his head hit the ceiling earlier. His head used to be parallel with his tail and they were positioned 180 degrees with the ground, but after his skeletal adjustments to fit his new biped body, his head are now positioned 90 degrees from the ground and his body position before going into the evolution is basically proning on the ground which makes his new head formed downward straight to the ground.
And the reason why his head hit the ceiling, it was actually quite self-explanatory when the nest is meant for quadruped and the nest ceiling was not designed for creatures that walked on two legs.
Matthew was currently feeling quite cramped in his nest, so he quickly went to the nest entrance, removed the crocodile bones that he used for protection while he was unconscious, and headed outside to try out and get a feel for his new body.
When removing the crocodile bones, Matthew already felt the difference with his new body since he used his 2 hands and 10 fingers to easily remove the crocodile bones to the side. Matthew used to struggle a lot to do fine-controlled movements with his two-toed chameleon fingers, and while he was starting to get the hang of them, it was still very far away compared to his hands' coordination using the 10 fingers. Especially after he spent at least thousands of hours practicing the guitar with them.
Putting the last crocodile bone aside, Matthew finally got out of his nest and stretched his body with both of his hands up in the air, and stretched his back left and right.
It was the first time Matthew got to stretch like this ever since he first arrived in this world, and Matthew was so satisfied with the feeling that he even heard a few cracks from his back when he stretched them.
Matthew then took a deep breath and let the fresh morning air enter his lungs and exhaled the air back out. Matthew then closed his eyes and just let himself to be in the moment and feel his surroundings.
'This feeling feels too familiar, just like a normal peaceful morning back on earth. This is maybe bad for me since I will probably miss earth a lot more with this.'
The air that Matthew breathed was actually far fresher compared to the air that he breathed back on earth, and being in the middle of the woods right after opening his eyes, is nowhere a familiar feeling for Matthew.
But taking a deep breath, stretching his body by bringing up both of his hands and bending his back left and right, and the sound of joints popping when you stretch them is a very familiar feeling for Matthew. Rather than feeling familiar with his environment, Matthew had gotten the familiar feeling from being a human.
But of course, Matthew didn't think much about all of this and he just stood there completely enjoying the moment without thinking about anything else.
After Matthew felt that his body had relaxed for a while, he finally opened his eyes again. And now with renewed spirit, Matthew is ready to continue on his journey exploring the vast forest.
'But as per our usual protocol after my evolution, before doing anything else, let's go test out this new body!'
And with that, Matthew started running to one of the trees before gathering all the strength on his legs and jumping upwards.
When Matthew was still using his chameleon legs, his jumping was considered quite pathetic and thus he never really used it. But the monkey's legs are different. Matthew remembered the first time he saw the monkeys, there were a lot of them jumping a 10 meter long distance with just a casual jump.
While the 10-meter distance is measured horizontally and Matthew didn't know how high the monkey legs can jump vertically, it is quite logical to assume that although the vertical jump won't be as far as the horizontal jump, it would at least reach a fifth or a sixth the distance of the long jump.
And what Matthew is doing right now is to see for himself, how high his vertical jump really is.
With the momentum Matthew gained from running, Matthew pushed his legs down against the ground as hard as he could and leaped up towards a tree.
The moment his feet left the ground, Matthew's body didn't stop traveling upward until it was about 3 meters above the ground and still slowly gaining height, but before it was able to reach its maximum height, the tree was already directly in front of Matthew's face and if he wanted to prevent his face from bashing onto a tree, Matthew needed to do something.
With the impact only a second away, Matthew couldn't do much to prevent himself from diving into the tree headfirst except by using his hands to take the brunt of the impact. Matthew was actually quite worried that he may break his claws or even hurt his joints that had just been made by the system, but when Matthew got no time before the impact, using his hand as a buffer is the best solution he could think up for now.
But Matthew's worry turned to be useless since when his hands made impact with the tree, his sharp claws easily penetrated into the tree and planted it inside the tree trunk. And the joint paint that he thought he would get from doing such a rash and sudden movement right after he finished evolution didn't come at all. His hands were solid and all the bones and muscles in his hands took the brunt of the impact effortlessly and his joints didn't even feel slight discomfort when the impact traveled to his body.
Matthew stayed silent for a while before silently screaming inside his head,
'THIS NEW BODY IS WAY MORE AWESOME THAN I THOUGHT IT WOULD BE!'
Following the excitement inside his heart, Matthew used his hands that were planted onto the trunk to swiftly pull himself upward, or more exactly, launch himself up upwards and his legs also used its claws to get a grip on the tree and boost his hands, as if he was running vertically on the tree.
And with the combination of his hands and legs working together, it only takes a few movements before Matthew passed the halfway mark of the tree. Matthew looked up to one of the tree branches and an idea popped up in his head.
This time, when Matthew launched himself, he directed his body diagonally and aimed straight to the tree branch. His body then flew off the tree, and if Matthew didn't do anything, his body would soon fall to the ground from 8 meters up in the air and he might get the joint pain that he expected if he really fell this time.
But of course, Matthew's plan was not to deliberately experience joint pain. After his body detached from the tree trunk, Matthew aimed his face up and launched his 6-meter long tongue to coil around the tree branch, and following along the momentum, he started swinging his body from the tree to another tree.
'WOO HOO! IT WORKED!'
While Matthew was in the middle of swinging, he thought up new swinging variations that he wanted to try, and so he did!
He would pull himself up in the middle of the swing to launch his body directly upwards before letting his tongue off of the tree branch just to catch it again with his hands and swung using his hands as the pivot point and then using his legs as the propeller to launch himself to another tree, and then using his tongue again to reach further tree branches. Matthew repeated the action again and again, and after a while, his movement looked like he was a professional circus acrobat performing on a circus stage and just enjoying his time.
Matthew spent some more time playing around with his newfound agility and finally settled down after he felt quite tired. But he didn't have any plan to rest soon,
'Let's go do some real target practice!'