When Marcus woke up, the sun was high up in the sky.

Despite his state of exhaustion, he had trouble falling asleep the previous night. Various factors conspired to keep him awake, first of them being the fact that sleeping in a small hole in the ground with insects and spiders crawling all around wasn't exactly a comfy bed.

Second, he was incredibly hungry, and the rumblings of his stomach weren't easy to ignore.

Third, he had been incredibly scared and tense all night. He could hear various creatures moving outside of his temporary shelter, and his imagination pictured all sort of scary predators crawling inside the hole he was hiding in to devour him whole.

Between all that, it took hours for the fatigue to finally overcome him, and even then his sleep had been troubled by blurred, feverish nightmares.

He probably didn't sleep soundly for more than a couple hours, but despite that, he was feeling surprisingly well rested.

He crawled out of the hole, got up and stretched himself.

"Well, good morning Vietnam!" he said while yawning "Let's see what shitty surprise this new day has in store for us!"

His stomach rumbled violently, making Marcus grimace. The hunger was getting unbearable, and he absolutely had to find something to eat. Which, since he was in the middle of a forest, basically meant he had to either find some edible plants or hunt something. And since he wasn't an expert of botany and didn't know which plants were safe to eat and which were not, his only option was to catch some prey.

But even before that, he needed to drink some water. And that meant that he had to visit that gorge again, where that brutal crystal horned deer could attack him again.

Marcus grimaced even harder at the prospect of being chased by that beast again. But then again, maybe if he'd try to be stealthy he wouldn't be found out. It wasn't as if he had been particularly careful before.

Weighting his possibilities, he decided that a visit to the river was worth the risk. After all, he hadn't found any other water source nearby.

As soon as he made this resolution, he picked a broken branch to use as a crutch from the beginning and started walking toward the gorge.

About one hour later, Marcus was scanning the surroundings while hiding in a bush near the river. The deer was nowhere to be seen, but just to be sure he waited for a few minutes before carefully stepping out in the open.

Quickly but trying to be as silent as possible he approached the river, always turning his head left and right to spot any possible danger.

He couldn't see any though, and he couldn't even hear anything besides the water and the birds' singing, so he crouched near the stream and tried to pick up water by making a cup with his hands, but that failed because of the hard chitin armour covering them.

He almost let out a sigh and then just lowered his head into the water, drinking like an animal as he had done the day before.

He really needed to find some kind of cup of container for the water, but for now, he didn't have anything like that.

As soon as his thirst was sated, he carefully started to step back into the woods when he saw a movement to his right.

Marcus froze, fearing that it was the deer, but luckily that wasn't the case. A big, brown snake, almost 2 meters long and with some kind of horns over his eyes and nose, was slithering through the rocks towards the river.

While he was staring at it, the reptile reached the water and started drinking with rapid movements of its forked tongue.

The man looked appraisingly at the animal. It looked quite dangerous, especially if it was venomous, and the sound of a fight could attract the deer. But this point, he was so hungry that even a snake looked positively appetizing, not to mention it was the only animal he had met so far that he thought he had a chance of defeating.

As if it has sensed his ravenous intentions, the reptile raised his head, staring at him with his cold eyes.

Marcus stood still for a few moments, but then his hunger won over his caution and he grabbed the fallen branch he had used as a crutch.

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If things kept going like this, he'd become too weak to fight and die of starvation very soon. Better to take a risk now rather than wait for that.

With caution, he moved a few, tense steps towards the snake, raising the stick over his head, ready to strike. He didn't want to take any chance in case the animal had a venomous bite, so he planned to just smash its head with the branch as soon as it was into striking distance.

But before he could do that, the reptile launched itself at him, his mouth open to show two oversized fangs.

Marcus barely dodged that attack by jumping to his right, then cursed and struck down with his stick, hitting the snake's body.

The animal trembled in pain, but the blow was not enough to kill him, and its head darted again towards the man.

This time he was too slow, and the beast bit his arm, causing him to scream in surprise.

But still there was no pain. He looked at his arm, and saw that the snake's fangs had failed to pierce his chitin armor.

He immediately recovered from the shock, seeing an opportunity to attack. While he was uselessly chewing on his arm the snake was effectively stuck, so he lifted the branch with the other hand and struck its head with all the strength he could muster.

The reptile let go of his arm, dizzy because of the concussion, but Marcus didn't give it any pause. Grabbing the stick with both hands, he started savagely hitting the beast's head and body.

"Die. You. Stupid. Mother. Fucker!" he grunted, emphasizing every blow with a word.

This went on for a while due to Marcus's low strength and the snake resilience, but finally, with a lucky strike, the man hit the animal right behind the head, breaking its spine with a sound of crumbling bones.

The reptile fell on the ground, writhing in agony, but after a while, it completely stopped moving.

Only then Marcus left himself fall on the ground, breathing heavily. His arms felt like they weighed a ton, and he let go of the stick, just sitting on his knees in front of the lifeless body of his prey.

He won!

He felt a sensation of happiness and triumph coursing through his tired body. He felt incredibly alive, and all of his senses were sharpened: the slight breeze caressing his body felt cold like ice, his sight could see details of his surroundings that he had always ignored before, and the beating of his heart was deafening.

But he didn't have the time to rest on his laurels. He could hear the sound of a big animal galloping in his direction, probably meaning that the deer was coming to investigate the commotion that had happened.

So Marcus forced himself to get on his feet, grabbed the snake's body and dragged it into the forest, hiding among the bushes.

After a few seconds, the majestic deer appeared, raising splashes of water while running in the river.

The huge beast stopped abruptly where the man and the snake had fought, and raised its head while sniffing the air.

Marcus stood still, tension gripping his shoulders.

Then, after what felt like an eternity but were actually a few minutes, the deer sneezed with contempt and walked away, leaving him alone with his prey.

Marcus sighed with relief. He felt incredibly tired right now, and he didn't know if he would have had the energies to run away from the deer this time.

But luckily he hadn't been found out, and now he finally had something to eat.

He looked at the snake's corpse. To his mind it looked incredibly repulsive, but his instincts were urging him to devour it.

He actually started drooling, and he had to use all of his self control to not jump over the carcass right there and now: after all, the deer could come back at any time. Better to consume his meal away from the gorge.

So he grabbed the corpse, lifted it on his shoulders and started dragging it away from the river.

While he was walking, he thought about how he was gonna eat his prey.

"I don't have any tool to skin it. Maybe I could just try to light a fire to roast it whole? But how do I light a fire here in the forest? Could I light it using two sticks? Or maybe two stones?"

While he was walking, he was feeling more and more hungry. The rumbling of his stomach was growing stronger, and he couldn't ignore them anymore.

He looked at the body of the snake.

"Well... maybe... if it's just a bite, I could try to eat it raw... just to stop... this stupid hunger..."

He stopped, and raised the torso of the snake to his mouth.

His reason was screaming at him that it was disgusting and gross, but his hunger was too strong. He opened his mouth and bit down the reptile corpse.

His sharp teeth easily pierced through the hard scales, and cold blood flew into his mouth. It tasted bitter and revolting, but his instincts kicked in and he found himself wolfing down the meat like it was the most delicious thing in the world. He ate meat, scales and bones without distinction, chewing it all down easily.

Finally, after he took the last bite, he realized that he had eaten the whole snake, leaving nothing behind.

"What the hell!?!" he said, surprised and vaguely disgusted, his hunger finally leaving way to his rationality "Did I really eat a raw snake!?! With bones and everything!?!"

He was quite amazed. And to make things weirder, he didn't even feel sick. Actually, he was still a bit peckish.

He stood there in puzzlement, and then sighed.

"Well... that was weird. And gross. And disgusting. And I hope that I'll never have to do something like that ever again... but at least now I'm not that hungry anymore." he sighed "Let's just hope that I won't feel sick later. For now, I just want to lay down and rest for a bit."

And he headed for his shelter, walking out of the valley.

While he was walking, though, he experienced a weird feeling.

He couldn't put it into words, but it was like he was somehow... “memorizing” the snake. Details of the reptile's physiology flashed through his mind. He suddenly was kind of aware of the composition of its scales, the arrangement of the muscles that allowed it to move, and of its venom glands.

He stopped for a second, wondering if overeating raw flesh like that was giving him hallucinations, but he felt fine. He just felt as if those informations were being absorbed into some part of him.

He shrugged. Probably he was just tired. He hoped that a nap would help him recover.

So he kept going until he reached the relative safety of his improvised shelter.