As the man and the unique deer made eye contact, the man grew more confident in his speculation.
'I have hunted a fair amount of deer during my hunting trips back on Earth, but this is truly something else. This creature is different.'
The way this oversized deer was looking at him was as if it was evaluating him from top to bottom.
As soon as he realized what it was doing, he was shocked, a slight surge of anxiety creeping up in his heart.
Suppressing the feeling of anxiety, he did his best to think of something to do. After all, standing still and waiting for it to finish examining him didn't sound like a good idea.
He felt threatened by a deer for the first time in his life, which gave him all the more incentive to get the hell out of here.
On second thought however, maybe if the deer really had human-like intelligence, it would be a good thing for him.
If it were your average run-of-the-mill deer, the fact that a creature like him was present near its children might have been reason enough for it to attack him, and in his current state, he'd be in real trouble if that had happened.
People who haven't hunted much in their life might not feel like a wild deer was dangerous, mostly because of fictional characters like Bambi that spread this harmless deer propaganda, but he wasn't one of those people.
He knew better than that.
The man knew very well that if mama deer thought you posed a threat to her children, well...
There really wasn't too much a human could do in response to a deer running over 60km/h at them, except get impaled by its antlers or get stomped by its hooves and die a very nasty, gruesome death.
He was no exception to that, especially because he was here, in this strange new world, which meant that he didn't have his guns with him.
Luckily for him however, he also wasn't completely defenseless.
After getting out of the water and regaining some feeling in his numb legs, he discovered that he had an unfamiliar looking black knife holstered on his left leg.
He didn't have much time to look at it, however from the brief glance that he did get, he knew it was made of a material he hadn't seen or heard of before.
Regardless of what it was made of however, he doubted that it would be of any significant help should he get attacked by the deer in front of him.
Since he was in an unfamiliar environment and on a completely different planet, something told him that being cautious and playing it safe would be the smart thing to do right now.
The man stared at the deer with a deadpan expression on his face for a couple of seconds, before he slowly retreated backwards in the opposite direction of the deer.
He gambled that if this creature was as intelligent as he gave it credit for, it should be able to understand his intentions.
That, coupled with the fact that there were other creatures nearby, gave him confidence that it would not chase after him if he backed off.
After all, even if it wanted to go after him, it had to take it's children into consideration.
It looked like the deer recognized what he was doing, and it moved itself a bit closer to its children in response to his actions and watched him as he disappeared into the distance.
The man, on the other hand, released a small sigh of relief once he got far enough away.
This was definitely not Earth, that much he was now 100% sure of, and reality set in for him.
Between his body suddenly seeming unfamiliar to him and a deer that he suspected had the intelligence of at least the average adult human, the man got his confirmation that he didn't just go to a different place on Earth.
'Since this is a different planet, I should proceed with caution and try not to take things that are true on Earth for granted.
'Based on what I've seen so far, I doubt the 2 planets share too many similarities.'
If the animals on Earth could have the same amount of intelligence as humans did, life on planet Earth would look a lot different, that was for sure.
In addition to the intelligence of animals however, who knew what else this planet had in store?
And more importantly, were there any humans here, or was the man all alone?
Although from what the man had seen so far, only that one deer seemed to possess intelligence, that didn't mean that it was the only one. And if intelligence wasn't exclusive to humans on this planet, then could the man have arrived on a planet that was ruled by animals?
Aside from animals, what about insects?
'Enough. Now is not the time for this.'
The man shook his head and got rid of the sudden distracting thoughts that popped up in his mind.
'It's pointless to speculate. The focus now is on survival, everything else can be figured out later.'
After clearing his head again, he started making his way towards the smoke's direction, however since he knew it would take him a couple of days to arrive there anyway, he wasn't in a rush.
Walking past tree, after tree, after tree... it was a mind-numbing sight of repetitive scenery.
The only thing he was grateful for was that he didn't have any more encounters with the inhabitants of this seemingly endless forest.
After putting some distance between the body of water and him, he quickly started gathering some wood.
His right arm was still bleeding heavily, but his body wasn't losing as much strength as he thought it would.
With such a big wound you would think he could die of blood loss at any moment, yet the man felt that he had time to spare and even that it was best to get away from that deer first before even addressing the open wound.
He gathered up enough branches and made the fire in just a few minutes.
It wasn't nearly big enough to keep him warm throughout the entire night, but that wasn't its purpose anyway.
It was daytime right now and he wasn't planning on sitting put the whole day, as the night was far more dangerous than the day in his experience.
Then again, this was a different planet, and it might be dangerous to speculate like that.
But the fact that his vision was limited during the night, thus making it more dangerous, still remained true, regardless of where he was.
Still, he warned himself mentally not to speculate like that again and be more cautious, but in this case he had nothing to go off of besides the fact that his own combat effectiveness was limited during the night.
In that case, he could only do what he thought was best.