After almost the exact same amount of time as System's estimate, just as the sun was setting, he successfully finished slurping up the two caterpilr pupae and began the return trip to his stuck-leaf nest on the pine tree.

  Because of his body's growth, the originally spacious leaf nest now seemed a little tight. He estimated that after he gained another two levels, it would no longer be able to accommodate him.

  He hadn't given up on his pn to go out foraging that night. He just wanted to take a short rest first before heading out.

  He pnned to rest until his food was mostly digested, as his swollen abdomen was currently reducing his flexibility. Once his body was restored to its peak state, he would leave the nest and carry out his first nighttime hunting mission.

  After five days of heavy rain, there were very few creatures moving around in the forest that System could hunt.

  Most of the insects he could find after the heavy rain were cicadas due to their loud chirping, but he wasn't sure that he could hunt them, because cicadas would fly away as soon as they sensed danger.

  Moreover, the activities of these cicadas were very irregur. Although they often chirped, it would still be difficult for System to track them down.

  However, there were actually some prey with very consistent behavior patterns that were easy to find. In that category, System knew the locations of two spiders.

  The rger spider, which was six centimeters long, was bck and brown, while the slightly smaller spider, only three centimeters long, had yellow and white patterns all over its body.

  After the rainstorm ended, the two spiders had rewoven their webs. They always sat in the center of their webs at night, and they stayed in a temporary nest in the corner of their webs to rest during the day.

  However, for System, these two spiders were closer to hunters than they were to prey. He felt that challenging the spiders was no different from sending himself off to die, as he would be easily killed by the spiders' chelicerae. [TL Note: Chelicerae are the spider version of mandibles.]

  After considering his options, System finally chose a target, which was that chirping cricket.

  Crickets were also an insect with a fixed nest. System had already explored the location of the cricket's nest two days earlier. It was a narrow hole in a tree.

  It was because of this tree hole that the cricket had been fortunate enough to escape the natural disaster brought about by the rainstorm.

  System had only been a grasshopper rva when he'd discovered the cricket's nest, so he'd cked any obvious advantages over the three-centimeter-long and very aggressive male cricket. It would have been easy for him to get injured or fall into the water during a fight, so he'd decided against attacking the cricket at that time.

  Now that he was an adult grasshopper, System's strength had increased, and it was obviously no longer a problem for him to deal with the cricket.

  However, after his metamorphosis, System's body had become much rger and could no longer fit into the cricket's tree hole. He could only hide nearby and wait to ambush the cricket when it crawled out at night for another chirping session.

  ...

  The food in System's stomach had already been digested by the time the sky grew completely dark.

  After getting everything ready, he performed a brief series of jumps, eventually stopping on a branch near the cricket's tree hole.

  The tree hole the cricket lived in was actually very close to System's nest, only five or six meters away.

  [Green Camoufge] activated!

  The patterns and colors on System's body slowly changed to match those of the nearby tree leaves.

  Due to the limitations of this Derived Skill, he could only adjust his color to shades simir to green, and his body shape couldn't change to match the branch, which could be said to be major fws.

  However, if he chose a more distant branch where he could hide more easily, he wasn't sure that his attack on the cricket would succeed. He could only hope that the darkness of night would prevent the cricket from detecting him.

  System entered a dormant state and sat motionlessly, waiting for the cricket to go out and chirp like it did every night at eight or nine o'clock.

  At this moment, System was like a viper twitching its tail, patiently waiting for its prey to take the bait, as he quietly waited for the cricket to make its appearance.

  Snakes were one of the best hunters in nature. When food was scarce, they would even go several days without eating or drinking while waiting for prey to appear.

  It could be said that certain reptiles and insects had taken the idiom 'waiting for the rabbit by the tree' to the extreme.

  Whether it was snakes and crocodiles in the reptile css or most mantises and katydids in the insect css, their hunting method was to wait for the rabbit by the tree—that is, to stay in one pce, wait for the prey to enter their attack range, then suddenly unch a fatal attack.

  Compared to these hunters with low intelligence, although System was also waiting for the rabbit by the tree, his purpose was clearer and more efficient. He had a solid grasp on the time and pce of his prey's appearance.

  As System had expected, when the pale-yellow moon was a little more than forty-five degrees from the ground, the cricket climbed out of the tree hole right on time and jumped onto a nearby branch.

  This male cricket seeking a mate obviously didn't notice System hiding above it. It fluttered its wings on the branch and began to chirp.

  System's strong hind legs began accumuting strength, and the tendons connected to his wings were ready to go. In his mind, he kept simuting the hunting maneuvers he would perform after rushing over.

  As a cool breeze blew gently through the air, System suddenly attacked. His wings made a snapping sound, which further increased his speed.

  In a fsh, System's hunt failed...

  Compared to those hunters who were low in intelligence and could only wait for rabbits to hop close, System's hunting skills were far too immature.

  The first half of his ambush had been perfect. Perhaps if he was a mantis or a katydid, he would have succeeded this time, but as a somewhat small green-tailed grasshopper, there were no hunting instincts in his blood. He could only make a hunting pn according to his own understanding.

  His pn, which was very simple, was to control the cricket with his four forelegs, then bite off its head with his mandibles.

  The pn was actually fine. It's just that his movements were overly rough and his luck was somewhat poor.

  His sudden attack was very fast, and the cricket wasn't able to react in time, but System's first two forelegs only pressed down on the cricket's smooth wings.

  With a sudden tremor from the cricket's wings, the cws at the tips of System's forelegs could no longer exert force. Combined with his attack being a little unstable due to his bad nding, the cricket managed to escape from System's grasp like a loach.

  ...

  System made a quick decision the moment the cricket broke free from his arms, and immediately stood up and crawled backwards to block the cricket's hole.

  There were still several centimeters of water on the forest floor. It was impossible for the cricket to escape on the ground. The only pce where the cricket could find safety was the tree hole.

  However, when System quickly blocked the hole, he suddenly found that the cricket had disappeared.

  Because of his [Information Reading] ability, the outlines of all things within one meter glowed in System's eyes, and there were no ripples on the water surface beneath the tree branches. Obviously, the cricket hadn't jumped into the water to escape.

  'Did it hide behind the leaves?'

  Thinking back to the direction the cricket had jumped after escaping from his grasp, System stared at the leaves growing from the nearby branches and fell into thought.

  The leaves of this tree were simir in shape and size to maple leaves, with short stems, making it easy to hide behind them.

  System hesitated and began moving toward the leaves, but not long after, his antennae sensed a slight vibration, and he quickly retreated to the tree hole.

  But it was too te, and the cricket had already escaped back into its home.

  The cricket had been hiding right under the branch.

  Because of his human thinking habits, System had forgotten that insects generally have the ability to hang upside down...