As the night showed, the inability to hunt effectively enough did not worry the guy much yet.

Now it was morning, all night Ray was moving in what he thought was an easterly direction. Even though he did not eat anything, he could hold out for a while, and the snow covering the entire forest served as an excellent source of water.

It didn't matter which animals to hunt. While curings were the most convenient in terms of production, because he already knew how to find them, but the changed season unexpectedly complicated the task. The cold was also a problem, from which guy, albeit extremely bad, but still saved the feathers of a bird. But he had to look for prey in the form of a man.

Only closer to the middle of the day, luck decided to smile Ray and he managed to find one single nest, tightly covered with snow. The guy was sitting on a branch, trying to make as little noise as possible while moving. He had already fully regained control over his body, but this did not change the fact that it was impossible to move silently along the tree.

But it seems that luck has not turned away from him completely. The nest was already actually a few meters away, and it still hasn't been found. Just as Rei was about to make the next move towards the small animal that was sleeping peacefully inside the nest, he noticed something white moving along the branch. The body of the animal, like a vine, wrapped itself around her and slowly moved towards the curing. The guy froze, not daring to make a single extra gesture.

The creature he saw was an impenetrable white snake. From such a distance, it was not difficult for the guy to see her body in detail.

The gaps between the tiny scales, which completely merged with the color of the snow, were almost invisible. Even the snake's eyes were completely white, except spindle-shaped pupils, which were still black. The snake itself was as thick as a child's leg, and almost a meter and a half long.

Slowly approaching the nest, from a distance of almost half a meter, with a sharp throw, she grabbed the curing with huge front fangs. Let the animal be the size of the head of the snake itself, but she kept him in her mouth without any visible problems. The prey resisted for only a moment before freezing and hanging lifelessly in the predator's mouth.

"Poisonous ..." - Ray reasoned.

Watching the snake he realized that she suits him very well.

Suddenly, a strong and obsessive desire settled in his head. It was impossible to miss such a useful soul.

He was sure that if it were not for luck, he would never have succeeded in finding such an animal in a snowy forest. The snake's camouflage was very suitable for winter conditions, besides, snakes were very fast and agile creatures, and if you take into account the poison ... And he hardly even thought that a snake could be awake in winter. Although, maybe in this world they were not cold-blooded, and did such a restriction even have a place in the game?

The boy no longer hesitated and tensed all his muscles, preparing to attack at the right moment, which was not long in coming. The snake did not seem to be particularly afraid of the attack, so it behaved extremely carelessly, starting to eat the body of the curing without even going down to a safe place.

“There is very little diversity in this part of the forest. You can not consider this predator stupid just because he behaves so confidently. Rather, it should be written off as a kind of lucky coincidence for me, although if I fail, I will most likely die again.

Ray was not surprised that he had ceased to be afraid of death, which in the first days in this world was for him almost the worst of all troubles. In fact, he did not even think about the pain that he would have to endure in case of failure, now before his eyes there was only a snake that almost completely swallowed the body of the animal. When only the tip of his tail was left, Rei began to act. The distance was still quite large, but he had already chosen the trajectory of his attack.

A quick push and the guy's foot was already on the next branch. Ray jumped towards the snake, which had already noticed him, but did not have time to do anything. Right in the air, he grabbed her by the tip of her tail and fell from a height of almost three meters. The snake in his hand tried to bite its offender - she managed to unexpectedly deftly spit out the body of the animal, but the acceleration from the fall did not give the predator to be able to move normally, causing the counterattack to fail.

Landing on the snow, which softened his landing, Rei put all his attention into not falling. A second's delay cost the guy a small scratch on his right thigh, but he was able to stand on his feet. The strongest swing, accompanied by an almost complete turn of the torso, and the upper part of the snake's body crashes into a tree trunk. Ray was sure that the animal would not be able to survive a blow of such force.

Imagine the guy's surprise when the first step he took failed. He clearly felt the numbness rising up the leg, reaching the torso.

But even so, consciousness Rhea was calm, he predicted that he would be injured, but that the snake's venom would be so strong in such a small dose came as an unpleasant surprise to him. Pulling the limp body of the snake closer to him, he fell to his knees. The soul, which slowly began to leave the body, was captured by him only a little bit. By this point, the guy could no longer breathe because of the poison, which apparently turned out to be a nerve agent. Ray blankly watched as the hand that squeezed the body of the snake went limp, because he understood that he had time. In a moment, the guy's body disappeared, and in its place appeared completely white, a little more than a meter, the body of a snake.

Although he expected such strange sensations, at first he still felt as if he had no limbs. His next observation was that the effects of the poison wore off instantly, Rei even returned to human form to test it out, but there was nothing left other than a slight numbness from the paralysis.

An hour later, a small white snake was rushing through the forest at full speed. Ray was right, the snake's body was really agile and allowed him to reach speeds much higher than the one with which he moved through the trees in the body of curing. Now, in between flights, he will be able to simply move in this body. Learning how to move in the body of a snake was much easier than he initially thought. It felt like one solid muscle, which was quite easy to control. Ray hadn’t been able to make precise moves yet, as well as quick throws, but he caught the basics, and that was enough for movement. Rushing forward, he continued to think about the benefits of this almost cold-free body:

"With a poison of this strength, I can hunt virtually any beast, which will provide me with stable food and potential growth of other types of souls, although it is worth saving them only as food for later, because it is unlikely to find a body of this level of practicality."

“By the way, you should see what it’s called…”

It was only now that Rey realized that he had forgotten to look at the Status, but the reason for this was not distraction, but the fact that he was simply not used to perceiving this world as a game. All he learned was the name of his current body - Snow Serpent.

It seems that these snakes really were only winter predators - extraordinary, but obviously not the strangest thing that he happened to meet in this world.

Ray wasn't particularly curious about what happened to them during the rest of the year. Now he was only trying to master as best as possible all the subtleties of controlling this still slightly unusual body.

In addition to the other advantages of the body, there was another one that was in no way inferior to them and it made it possible for Ray to hunt much more efficiently. In fact, in winter, this feature of the snake was revealed in all its glory, but it consisted in a special vision, to which the guy had already gotten used to. At first, it seemed to him more a minus than a plus, because ordinary objects, like trees or snow cover, now seemed to him to be darkened and very indistinct, but living beings... During this hour of the journey, the guy realized that there were many more curings in the forest than he thought. Each nest now shone in his eyes like a small star. Unfortunately, he did not succeed in satisfying his gradually growing hunger. In the body of a snake, he still could not climb the trees due to the lack of the necessary skill and practice, and not all trees were thin enough for the snake to wrap around them. The same was true for the human body. Once, Ray tried to climb up to the nest, but in the end he simply scared away the animal in it, after which he stopped trying. Hunger was nothing to him, and the practice of working with a new body was very important, because it could come in handy in any situation.