Underneath a few vines, System saw thousands of densely-packed ants. These ants looked exactly the same as the ones he'd killed that morning and should be from the same nest.

  It seemed that the heavy rain a few days earlier hadn't caused any serious damage to this ant nest.

  As System jumped closer to the vines, the scene in his compound eyes gradually became clear. As it turned out, the ants were dismembering a lizard corpse that was hidden among the branches and leaves covering the ground.

  This lizard might have been drowned in the recent heavy rain. At this time, the ant colony was carrying pieces of lizard meat back to their nest.

  System stared at the lizard corpse and suddenly had an idea. He thought of a simple method of obtaining food, a transaction with no cost.

  Because of [Information Reading], his observation ability was very strong. However, compared to an ant's sense of smell, System's was far inferior.

  Ants could easily search for any food hidden in the decomposing leaves and mud after the rainstorm. As long as he paid attention to the movements of these ant colonies, he could snatch that food from the ants.

  When System encountered smaller pieces of food, he could lure the ants away, then grab the food and leave directly. When he encountered a huge piece of meat like this lizard, he could simply snatch the meat from the mandibles of the worker ants.

  After thinking briefly, System immediately took action. He chose an ant holding a huge piece of meat at the edge of the group of ants and rushed over.

  Practice made perfect. System found that a grasshopper's reflex nerves were much more sensitive than a human's, and he'd become more and more skilled at attacking these ants during his earlier hunts. He could even predict what an ant's reaction would be when it was attacked.

  After easily snatching the meat from the ant's mandibles, System used his hind legs to kick the somewhat dazed ant half a meter away, then repeatedly jumped until he reached a nearby vine.

  Ants were very strong and could lift objects that were dozens of times heavier than themselves, but they usually didn't move such heavy objects.

  The piece of meat System had snatched was a little lighter than the weight of the ant. He quickly pulled the meat up to his mouth and started eating.

  The fvor of this piece of meat was simir to fragrant milk biscuits. It tasted pretty good, but was still a bit worse than the fvor of caterpilr pupae.

  However, after observing his experience bar, System noticed that this food provided nearly twice as much experience as an equal amount of caterpilr pupae.

  This was the first food that had vioted System's deliciousness theory, but as he continued swallowing bites of meat, he couldn't figure out the reason for the abnormal experience gain.

  If he kept eating this kind of highly efficient food, he might be able to reach his maximum level of 15 before his life ended.

  'Could it be that reptiles have a higher degree of evolution than insects? What a pity. If I'd snatched that tadpole corpse this morning, I'd have more results to analyze.'

  System continued eating a few more bites of lizard meat while observing the changes to his experience bar, then threw away what was left of the piece of meat.

  The lizard meat was very helpful for increasing his level, but it had no enhancement effect on [Molting and Growth]. Although increasing his level was very important, his primary goal right now was to improve [Molting and Growth].

  System followed along in the direction the ants were moving. He soon found himself about ten meters away from a half-meter-high mound of dirt. This seemed to be the bck and brown ant colony's nest.

  It was clearly a very rge ant nest. He felt that this ant nest could accommodate at least hundreds of thousands of ants. He just didn't know how much damage the heavy rain had caused to the colony.

  There was an endless stream of ants coming and going. In addition to ordinary worker ants, System also saw some rge ants with bodies three to four centimeters long shuttling back and forth among the worker ants. They should be soldier ants guarding the nest.

  The heads of these soldier ants were massive, occupying a full half of their total body size, and they had huge mandibles. System was sure that these huge mandibles could tear him open in an instant, or even bite off his thick hind legs.

  In addition to that, the abdomens of these soldier ants were somewhat peculiar. Through observation, System found that these soldier ants had stingers on their abdomens, and from time to time, they sprayed out some sort of liquid that allowed them to control the movement of ordinary worker ants.

  As he faced these soldier ants with their huge, sharp mandibles, stingers on their abdomens, and even the ability to spray out a long-range attack, he had no intention of starting a fight. If he was unfortunate enough to get too close to the ant nest, he would quickly find himself drowned under a torrent of ants.

  System continued to hop and jump on his way as he followed the colony's ants around. He began observing the range of activities and the food collected by this group of ants.

  A short while ter, he successfully snatched a half-centimeter-long tadpole corpse.

  Although the forest had suffered a disaster because of the rainstorm, there was also a lot of food avaible now that the water had receded. There was no telling how many of these unfortunate tadpoles there were.

  However, the tadpoles were usually trapped in the mud, and it was difficult for System to find them visually, so he could only snatch them from the mouths of ants.

  Tadpoles tasted pretty good, and weren't much different from lizard meat. Both of them tasted like fragrant, milky biscuits.

  But unlike the huge amount of experience provided by the lizard meat, this tadpole's meat followed System's deliciousness theory as usual, and the experience generated was slightly lower than that of a caterpilr pupa of equivalent weight.

  Lizards were reptiles, while tadpoles were amphibians. The degree of evolution should be simir between the two, so System also decred his previous guess wrong at this time.

  His deliciousness theory should still be correct. The better a food tasted, the more growth it could bring. The lizard must be hiding some unknown secret.

  He thought for a while, but drew a bnk, so he began to concentrate fully on eating the tadpole corpse grasped between his forelegs.

  Tadpoles couldn't metamorphose like insects, but their meat was very effective at improving [Molting and Growth]. It was even better than the meat of ants and crickets.

  It seemed that the transformation of amphibians from aquatic to terrestrial form was simir to the metamorphosis of insects.

  ...

  System kept patrolling near the bck and brown ants' nest. On the one hand, he was observing what food these ants could snatch for him, while on the other, he was looking for a new nest nearby where he could safely rest at night.

  He found a spacious tree hole in a slightly dry tree, but the tree hole was too close to the ant nest, and was often visited by ants. He had no choice but to give up on this nearly ideal nest.

  By the time the sun set, he still hadn't found a suitable pce where he could rest, but he'd managed to snatch a few small tadpole corpses from some ants as a midnight snack.

  Also, during the time when the sun was setting and it wasn't yet fully dark, System had made a new harvest.

  Near a pile of rocks, he'd found a very useful food thanks to the ants—a scorpion corpse about twenty centimeters long.

  The body of this scorpion was pure bck, though its shell was slightly discolored due to having soaked in rainwater. There was a lot of mud on its body, and it was now stuck among the rubble in a pile of rocks.

  The scorpion corpse hadn't yet been discovered by the ant colony. Only an exploration team composed of more than a dozen worker ants was investigating it. If they determined that this scorpion could be eaten, they would leave a scent trail leading here that would attract an army of thousands of ants.

  When System saw these ants constantly wandering around the scorpion, he suddenly had a wonderful idea. If successful, he could take the corpse of this scorpion for himself.

  He pnned to lure these ants away, then use his pungent [Corrosive Mucus] to draw a circle on the ground, creating an ant prison!