The night wasn't a peaceful one; I felt many tremors while hiding in my hole. Strange sounds kept appearing, even while underground, I could still feel the vibrations.
But even with all the sounds and tremors, I was still able to get some rest, which I really needed after the other day's many experiences.
And compared to the other nights, this one was particularly dangerous since I was in a deeper part of the forest and my body had grown much more, which attracted more attention from normal and magical beasts.
When I was still 17cm long, it was easy to get ignored by most large animals and magical beasts, but now, with a 1m long body, I was categorized as a good snack for most powerful animals and even some magical beasts like the green frog.
But thankfully, my luck seemed to have improved a bit since no creature found my hiding spot, or maybe they did but couldn't be bothered to dig me out.
Whatever the reason may be, the first night after discovering my heavenly devouring ability went by peacefully.
After the sounds started to decrease in intensity and tremors became more scarce, I knew dawn was about to arrive. So, I waited for a few more hours and started digging myself out.
First, I moved the soil from the entrance of the cave, then pushed through the leaves I had put on the top of the hole. After all that, I was out.
Looking around, all I could see was darkness, with only a few signs of light here and there. The sun hadn't risen high enough to pierce through the canopy of the trees, so it was still a bit dark. Not as dark as nighttime, but still pretty dark. Anyways, this wasn't a big problem for me. I could see fairly well at night, even though my vision wasn't perfect; I could still manage moving around.
But first, I had to decide what to do for today. My main agenda right now is to grow stronger, and for that, I need to eat many creatures. So today's main objective will be hunting for prey and of course, survive, since this proved to be quite hard for me before.
After deciding on my course of actions, I decided to head towards the strange tree. As I was moving, I started thinking.
Right now, I only have knowledge about the yellow lizards, plus they are also the easiest prey to hunt. So, I should go and eat a few of them today. But sadly, those lizards are pretty small, and in just a few meals, I will grow way too big to be satisfied with just those small lizards.
It seems I'll have to continue looking for bigger and bigger prey in the future. For now, it's still easy, but I really worry for the future. After I grow to the size of mountains, what would I even be satisfied with?
Anyways, those are worries for the future me. Right now, I need to get some yellow lizards for breakfast.
After a few minutes of moving, the strange tree with lizards for fruits appeared in my vision. And after getting closer, I was surprised to see exactly four lizards munching on the yellow rocks sticking out from the tree.
Did those two little lizards grow up so quick in only one night? They were already as big as those other lizards. I am really interested to see what's hidden in that hole at the base of the tree.
Sadly, I can't do anything to that tree right now, and who knows if this tree can attack; it's too strange, which makes it dangerous for me to try anything. That's a risk I don't need to take right now.
Since I had decided to hunt these lizards for breakfast, I didn't idle much and immediately startd hunting.
After one hour of chasing, killing, and waiting for the other lizards to return, I repeated the process twice in total. And after that, I was faced with two dead yellow lizards sitting in front of me on the tree branch from before. Upon arriving, I noticed the blood from my last meal was missing. Clearly, a lot of creatures had passed through here last night, showing that sleeping on a tree branch for the night was a bad idea.
Now that one hour had passed, the forest was brighter, with a lot of sunlight appearing here and there, lighting up the dark forest.
Feeling more at peace with the lit surroundings, I decided to enjoy my meal after a good hunting session.
Two more hours went by in a flash. After eating the two lizards, I had grown by only one time instead of the 1 and a half times from before by eating just one lizard. But still, this had brought my length to a whole 3.7 meters and my height to 1.5 meters!!
I was already a giant from just consuming two 30 cm long lizards, which was absurd. But after thinking about it, I discovered that it wasn't the lizards' meat that made me grow this much, but instead, something I had found inside the brains of these yellow lizards before.
As I had guessed, these fruit yellow lizards had some kind of seed inside their brains which glowed a slight green color. So, I suspect that these seeds have a lot of energy inside of them, well, at least way more than just two little lizards.
This would at least explain why I had grown so much from eating these little lizards. But sadly, the effects seemed to be getting weaker and weaker with each one I eat. I have the feeling that even if I eat 10 more lizards, I would at most grow by just half, which would not be worth it to spend all that time for just that. And since I was way bigger now, it was time to hunt bigger and stronger animals. The day was still long; I had enough time to find my next prey and observe it carefully.
And so It was time to move once more, but this time I wasn't a small fry anymore. I had some confidence now, but even with that, I knew not to drop my guard since I could easily die in the mouth of a small worm if it was a magical beast. With that, I started descending down the tree.