System had encountered ants many times since first waking up in this world. Every time he saw ants, they seemed to be a different type—solid bck, bck and red, bck and brown, each different in color and size.

  Obviously, these different poputions of ants were breeding well in the forest.

  His many encounters with ants that kept ending with him hopping away in fear made him feel resentful, and he wanted to take revenge on the ants immediately. However, after calming down, he knew that doing so would be difficult.

  Even if he grew up to be a big grasshopper, it would be tough for him to defeat an ant colony head-on. Moreover, there were too many types of ants in the forest, and he might not be able to find the correct target for revenge even if he wanted to.

  ...

  After a brief series of jumps, System returned to the tree with the caterpilr pupae attached to it.

  As it had been a few hours, the corpses of the unlucky insects that had been in the fming boar's path were likely to have already been scavenged by other creatures, so System had decided not to waste time continuing to search for them.

  For him, the most stable food source was still these caterpilr pupae, which were enough food to st for at least ten days.

  As long as he found a way to break open these chrysalides, he wouldn't have to worry about finding meat for the next ten days. He could also safely molt and undergo his second metamorphosis into an adult grasshopper. It might even be possible to complete a third metamorphosis after consuming all of the pupae.

  System flexed his mandibles and aimed them at the silk threads binding a chrysalis to the bark. With a bit of effort, he soon managed to successfully detach it, after which the chrysalis bounced its way down the tree and onto the ground.

  He obviously wasn't expecting to break open the butterfly chrysalis just by knocking it down to the ground. He only wanted to test whether he could cut these chrysalides down from the tree.

  The shell of the chrysalis was even tougher than the strong exoskeleton that had covered the katydid corpse's head. Even though System's mandibles had grown stronger during his recent level up, there was still no way for him to break open the chrysalis.

  But it wasn't like System had no ideas at all. He'd actually thought of a very insidious method that would allow him to easily gain access to these securely armored insects. Relying on this tactic, he wouldn't even need to break open these chrysalides himself.

  The method he'd thought of was to bury the fallen chrysalides beneath branches, leaves, and soil, just like burying seeds in the ground.

  Bury a chrysalis in spring, and you would harvest a butterfly in autumn.

  His idea seemed naive, stupid, and ridiculous, but it would actually be fatal for these pupae. The butterflies that emerged from the chrysalides would be very fragile in their first few minutes. The consequences of their sticky, unstretched wings encountering soil and leaves could be imagined.

  There was a nearly ninety percent chance that their wings would become deformed due to the blockage of soil and leaves after they emerged from their chrysalides, thus completely removing any possibility of the butterflies' continued survival.

  However, this insidious method was obviously harmful to others while not being beneficial to oneself. Burying these chrysalides would clearly waste a lot of System's time, and waiting for the pupae to emerge as butterflies would also bring the problem back to square one.

  Did he really have to wait several months for the butterflies to emerge from their chrysalides?

  After System made several unsuccessful attempts to break open the chrysalis using a wooden thorn that he found nearby, the sun began to set. He finally gave up and jumped back to the hiding pce he'd used during his metamorphosis.

  As night approached, System saw bats, another insect hunter, flying rapidly through the dense forest.

  The sudden appearance of bats made System decisively give up on any pns of foraging at night. Although he had [Dark Vision] and [Information Reading] to assist him, his vision was still much more limited at night than it was during the day, and his mental power had already been heavily consumed. In his current state, [Information Reading] couldn't be used for very long.

  Facing the dangerous night, going out to forage was not a wise choice.

  ...

  In the few days since System had first woken up as a grasshopper, he'd become more and more familiar with controlling his body. He easily put himself into a dormant state, his mind quickly entering a special state where he was half-asleep and half-awake.

  The night was unusually hot and humid. System, who had entered into a dormant state in the first half of the night, was awakened three or four times because of the heat.

  After waking up, his breathing slowly accelerated until it finally returned to its normal rate. His antennae sensed that the air around him had grown hot and moist.

  'Low pressure and a stifling heat...'

  'Is a rainstorm coming?'

  In line with System's guess, it didn't take long before sporadic raindrops started to fall. The raindrops began falling faster and faster, and the steamy weather quickly turned cold and gloomy.

  System's shelter was being pounded by the rain, and the leaf was shaking from the impact of each rain drop. Fortunately, the wind wasn't too strong on this rainy night, and the fallen leaf was stuck firmly in the cracks between sections of tree bark, so his shelter wasn't in immediate danger of colpse.

  After inspecting the firmly-stuck leaf above his head, System gradually rexed, and he soon re-entered a dormant state.

  However, as time went by, his insect face slowly revealed a grave expression.

  Faint light shone through the gaps around the leaf. It was daybreak, but the rainstorm showed no sign of stopping...

  Although System wasn't directly exposed to the rainstorm, the rain still managed to spsh under the leaf and get him wet. In the violently raging rainstorm, he could hear the sound of water flowing below.

  The water from the fierce rainstorm had gathered together, forming a flowing stream. Although he couldn't see it with his own eyes from his hiding pce beneath the leaf, he could easily imagine the scene of the rain flooding the ground outside.

  System was very gd that his current shelter was up in a tree instead of down on the ground like it had been on his first night in this world. If he was still down on the ground, he would most likely be washed away by the rain, and his life and death would be at the mercy of the heavens.

  ...

  On the second day after the rain started, the rainstorm continued, but there were signs of it gradually weakening. However, near dusk, the rainstorm intensified again, as if it was pying a joke on System, who was still hiding under the leaf.

  As time went on, he could no longer hear the sound of rain hitting the ground, only the sound of rain spshing on the branches and leaves of trees. Apart from the sound of rain hitting trees, he could only hear the endless sound of dripping water.

  By this time, the watery area beneath System's tree had expanded into a small ke, and the sound of rushing water had completely disappeared.

  Usually, strong rainstorms only sted for a short time, ending within a few hours, but the rain in System's forest had been pouring down for three days without any signs of stopping.

  ...

  On the third day of the rainstorm, his hunger had reached extreme levels, and because of the non-stop rain and low temperature, he felt that his body had become very stiff.

  He could only force himself to exercise a bit in order to prevent his blood from coaguting due to the low temperature, which would cause necrosis and disability.

  However, moving his body resulted in System growing even hungrier. In order to relieve his hunger, he needed to keep his body still in order to reduce his energy consumption...

  The cold brought by the rain and the inability to go out to find food had undoubtedly put System into an unimaginably vicious cycle.

  The hunger in his stomach drove him to use his mandibles to try biting off the bark that had become softer after being soaked in the rain, but it was useless. Even if the bark was soaking wet, his mandibles still couldn't bite through it.

  ...

  On the fourth day of the heavy rain, System, who was still hiding under the leaf, finally decided to head out to find food.

  With the current state of his body, he might be able to hold on for another day or two, but by then, his physical strength would no longer be able to support him going out to find food. At that time, he could only passively wait beneath the leaf for the heavy rain to end.

  System wasn't willing to leave his life up to the mercy of the heavens...