Chapter 2 Reincarnated as a Lizard
This must be a dream.
I tried hard to wake up from the dream by dazzling myself. But I didn’t wake up.
I had no choice but to accept that this was reality.
First of all, I was trapped in some kind of space.
The inside was full of moisture, and solid walls were blocking my movements.
It wasn’t immediately clear what kind of space it was by looking around. However, it wasn’t difficult to figure out what this place was.
【Green Gecko LV1】
HP: 7/7
MP: 3/3
The solid wall blocking me was the egg of a gecko.
I had become a gecko.
It was unbelievable, but I had no choice but to believe it.
Of all the creatures, why did I have to become a lizard?
If it were a dinosaur, it would have been fine.
At least dinosaurs were cooler and I had some basic knowledge about them. I had almost no information about lizards. All I knew was from a few YouTube videos I had seen in passing.
As if it read my mind, something was added to the blue window, which I assumed was a status window.
【Green Gecko LV1】 ▶ View Details
View details?
How do I use this?
‘View details.’
__________________________
【Green Gecko】
A lizard about 15cm in length and weighing around 70g.
Its feet have fine cilia that allow it to easily stick to walls or ceilings.
__________________________
It looked like an explanation that should have a source: Sea Wiki written as a footnote.
My body wasn’t that small. Of course, I was speaking from the perspective of a gecko.
I felt like I was tightly wedged inside the egg. It seemed I was an enormous baby.
Being big meant I was qualified to break the egg and go outside.
Staying in this eggshell any longer wouldn’t be beneficial.
I used my head and hands to push the eggshell away.
There is a saying that an egg is a world.
It was a very appropriate metaphor.
For a gecko like me, the world’s wall was too high.
Even though I knocked with my small hands and pushed with my head, it didn’t budge.
Still, I didn’t give up.
If I showed that I was trying this hard, surely the parent entity would respond.
Crack.
Thank you, Mother.
I squinted at the sudden influx of sunlight and realized reptiles didn’t have eyelids, so I couldn’t blink.
Phew, I finally got out.
Having broken out of the egg, I looked around.
I wasn’t the first to come out, as there were broken eggs around me.
But something was strange.
The eggs were definitely broken, but my siblings were nowhere to be seen.
“Keeek?”
When I heard a sound and looked up, there was a creature so big that it couldn’t be compared to me.
【Oviraptor LV.10】
So, my mother was an Oviraptor.
Hello.
I slightly bowed my head in greeting.
Seeing a dinosaur right in front of me evoked a strange feeling.
My heart pounded.
Was this the emotion called excitement? Seeing a living dinosaur in person was deeply moving.
…But did reptiles have hearts that beat this fast?
At that moment, I vaguely realized why my heart was beating fast.
I wasn’t an Oviraptor.
I was just a gecko.
Then who was the dinosaur in front of me?
Oviraptor, Oviraptor.
It was a familiar name.
‘View details!’
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【Oviraptor】
A dinosaur about 1.6m in length and weighing between 20 to 40kg, discovered in the late Cretaceous period.
They feed on small animals, but their favorite food, matching their nickname of ‘egg thief,’ is the eggs of other animals.
__________________________
It was a creature often featured in popular media.
The nickname ‘egg thief’….
An egg thief?
The way the Oviraptor looked at me seemed strange. It wasn’t the look of a loving mother at her hatchling, but the gaze of a predator at its prey.
Did it help me break the egg just to remove the useless shell and eat the contents?
No way. That can’t be true.
I am the offspring of a magnificent Oviraptor, and that dinosaur is my mother….
“Kieeek!”
Damn.
I needed to escape.
The moment I heard that roar, I realized what had happened to my siblings.
They had ended up in its stomach.
I used my small feet to crawl frantically on the ground.
I thought it would be hard to adapt to my newly born body, but perhaps it was instinct. I could escape faster than I had thought.
“Kieek!”
However, to the Oviraptor, it would have looked like meaningless struggle.
Thwack!
Its claws struck my tail. With my small limbs, I couldn’t shake off its claws. I was stuck, unable to do anything.
[Warning! HP is insufficient!]
Was I going to die like this?
All I could do was wait to become the Oviraptor’s meal.
No, this was too unfair.
What had my guardian been doing while I ended up like this?
Ah, my guardian must be another gecko.
Was my gecko family going to be wiped out like this?
[As a reincarnation perk, a skill is given. Would you like to check it?]
A skill?
Is that even a question?
Check!
「Tail Cutting LV1」
Cut off your tail!
Consumes 1 MP
Is this supposed to be a skill?
The skill description matched its name: pathetic.
It wasn’t like throwing a spear to deal physical damage or anything.
No, this wasn’t the time to complain.
Just being able to do something in a situation where I couldn’t do anything was valuable enough.
‘Tail Cutting!’
The part of my tail under the Oviraptor’s claw was cut off.
And the moment the tail was cut, I gained tremendous speed.
To the extent that I wondered if it was okay for such a small body to gain such speed.
Whiz!
My small claws pounded the ground. For a brief moment, I felt like I was flying. With a leap of formidable strength, I distanced myself from it and crawled at full speed on the ground.
Scramble.
I managed to put quite a distance between myself and the Oviraptor.
This alone made Tail Cutting worth it, but surprisingly, the effect didn’t end.
Wriggle.
My severed tail wriggled as if asserting its presence.
Wriggle wriggle.
It was likely that the stupid dinosaur couldn’t understand the situation with its brain.
But it was too early to be relieved.
My tail wasn’t even a mouthful for it.
It wouldn’t take long for the confusion to wear off.
Once it regained its composure, it would quickly chase me.
Even though I had gotten faster, the basic stride difference was enormous.
My ten steps were not even one step for it.
But there was still a way out.
A path that only a gecko could take.
Whiz!
I climbed towards a tree at high speed.
It was common knowledge that geckos could climb trees.
Still benefiting from the effect of Tail Cutting, I quickly climbed to a height where the Oviraptor couldn’t find me.
The Oviraptor wandered around searching for a bit before giving up and returning to its original spot.
It wasn’t efficient to waste energy looking for small prey like me.
Tail Cutting, I had underestimated you. You turned out to be quite a decent skill.
Though it was regrettable that it was a one-time use, it had saved my life once, so it was worth it.
Thinking this, I looked at my severed tail.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The severed tail was slowly growing back.
So, it wasn’t a one-time skill?
That was good news.
If it weren’t for the message that appeared.
[Warning! HP is insufficient!]
【Green Gecko LV.1】
HP: 1/7
MP: 2/3
Using Tail Cutting didn’t consume HP.
The damage I had taken was solely from being trampled by it.
If I had timed it right and cut off my tail before being stepped on, I wouldn’t have taken damage.
Wild lizards cut off their tails and escape before being attacked.
I gently swung my slowly regrowing tail.
It moved without much trouble.
Judging by the regrowth speed, it looked like it would fully grow back in minutes.
I cautiously looked down from the tree.
It was a dizzying height. I could climb down the wall without much trouble, but I needed to refrain from doing so.
The presence of an Oviraptor meant there were other dinosaurs around.
Though such dinosaurs might not be interested in a small lizard like me, I could die just from being stepped on. I had to stay in the tree until I found a way.
Moreover, I was in a state of HP deficiency.
I decided to focus on my current location.
It was a large tree branch. There weren’t many places to hide, but the height meant I didn’t need to worry about the Oviraptor’s attacks.
The leaves weren’t few, so if I gathered them to make a nest, I could create a decent camouflage.
A plan started to form.
I didn’t know why I had come to this place, but surviving was the top priority.
Yes.
The lizard survival journal in another world begins now.
The start would be the most important part.
I moved between the branches to find a better spot.
I found a fairly satisfactory place. The leaves were densely packed, and the branch was wider than others. If other places were an 18-pyeong apartment, this place felt like a 24-pyeong one.
Being small meant I needed a bigger house.
Just as I was about to settle down here,
I sensed someone’s presence.
I immediately looked up.
Flames blazed. No, it was a fiercely bright red light that looked like flames.
A spider with vivid patterns stared at me with eight red eyes.
Its body was about the same size as mine.
But its legs were abnormally long. And it had not two, but eight legs. The sharp fangs near its mouth also looked very threatening.
At a glance, it resembled a tiger spider.
But it was on a different level from such an ordinary spider.
Why was there such a monster in my cozy tree branch house?
No, it looked scary, but I had overcome an Oviraptor.
Surely I could overcome a mere spider.
I stared at it with determination like I did with the Oviraptor.
Then, things that I couldn’t see before began to appear.
【Nephila Jurassica LV13】
A spider had a higher level than a dinosaur?
Please, just let me live.