Old Druid

With white blood splashing everywhere, System easily crushed the molting insect's head with his mandibles.

Seeing the folded wings on the insect's corpse that had yet to unfurl after molting, System finally knew what kind of insect he had killed.

It was a giant dragonfly nymph. In their larval stage, they lived in water and fed on mosquito larvae, tadpoles, and small fish. They were ferocious aquatic insects.

And the insect formed after a dragonfly nymph underwent its final molt was something everyone knew well: a dragonfly.

System had killed a dragonfly just about to emerge.

The dragonfly nymph's exoskeleton had completely softened during its molt, making it easy for System to suck dry and devour. This food, rich in softened exoskeleton, tasted like compressed milk chocolate. After only four or five mouthfuls, System's abdomen began to feel bloated.

Feeling the fullness in his belly, System sucked down the flesh even more vigorously. Having endured hunger for five whole days, he would rather eat until he burst than suffer hunger again.

Two hours later, System had eaten and digested nearly a quarter of the dragonfly's corpse. A tingling, aching sensation spread through his body once more, and he successfully rose to level 7.

His body grew from 3.4 centimeters to 4.1 centimeters. The wing buds on his back had grown halfway out, and System could even control these newly grown wings to give slight tremors.

After this level-up, System's talents, Metamorphic Growth and Insect Adaptation, strengthened slightly, but both remained at level 11 and failed to advance. It seemed his earlier deduction had been correct: skill level 11 was a new threshold.

Because of the ordeal of hunger and cold he had suffered in the days before this level-up, System gained another derived ability: [Hunger Resistance].

[Hunger Resistance] (5/11): Obtained from the talent Insect Adaptation. The stomach can store more food, food utilization efficiency increases, and the body's energy consumption decreases.

Besides the newly acquired [Hunger Resistance], this level-up also raised System's [Foul-Smelling Mucus] (3/7) to [Foul-Smelling Mucus] (4/7). The pungent mucus he could secrete from his mouth became even fouler, and also gained a faint corrosive quality.

Perhaps because of [Hunger Resistance], System felt that his abdomen had grown larger.

It was not that his body had grown bigger from leveling up—his abdomen had become much larger in proportion to the rest of his body.

System felt that his abdominal capacity had at least doubled. He continued eating the dragonfly corpse for quite a while before the bloated feeling returned.

He even had an illusion: the corpse before him, which weighed two or three times as much as he did, could be entirely eaten by him even without any excretion.

And as he continued eating, System discovered that it was not entirely an illusion.

Over ten minutes later, when he had eaten half of the remaining corpse, System's abdomen had swollen to an unbelievable extent like a balloon. His belly was more than twice as large as the rest of his body.

Even so, there was still space left in System's abdomen. He felt that he could keep eating.

But System promptly used reason to stop himself from continuing. Though his stomach could hold more food, his body could no longer bear it.

Dragging around such an enormous abdomen had already made his movements far more clumsy. If he kept eating, he would surely have trouble moving. Should anything dangerous happen, he would be utterly unable to flee.

So System guarded the dragonfly's corpse while moving his body about, waiting for the food in his stomach to digest.

As he digested, System's experience bar continued to rise. He estimated that once he fully digested the dragonfly's corpse, he would be around halfway through level 7.

As long as he found a little more food, he would reach level 8 in less than two days. And reaching level 8 meant that he would undergo his second molt and become an adult grasshopper capable of flight.

At his current rate of digestion, System estimated that he could finish the entire dragonfly corpse before nightfall, then drag his full belly back to his nest. The next day, he could go out to forage as usual.

While System guarded the dragonfly corpse and occasionally exercised to speed up digestion, waves of mysterious, lingering song drifted from deep within the forest.

The melody twisted and turned in ever-changing tones, seeming to tell an ancient story weathered by time. But System could not understand its exact meaning; he could not understand this world's language at all.

System could only tell that the singer seemed to be an elderly human man.

Before long, accompanied by the murmuring sound of flowing water, the owner of the song slowly rowed past System while reclining halfway upon a wooden raft.

The singer was a handsome yet elderly humanoid creature, with a pair of antler-like horns atop his head, pointed ears, and ragged brown clothing.

He resembled a druid from a fantasy world, one close to nature. He controlled the raft's progress across the water with some mysterious power.

The old druid exuded a tranquil, mysterious aura of nature that made System instinctively want to draw close. He even felt the urge to leap into the old druid's palm.

On the raft, System saw several snakes of different species, as well as two silver-gray mice and a red-furred fox.

The fox and the two mice were visibly drenched. Natural enemies, they nestled peacefully together with the snakes on the raft, like companions who had lived together for years.

System guessed that the old druid had rescued these animals from the water and used some mysterious power to make them exceptionally calm.

Before long, the old druid on the raft gradually drifted away, while System stared after him and fell into deep thought.

The old druid reclining on the raft emanated a strange power. System could sense a mysterious natural aura surrounding him.

The old druid's reclining posture was like a Buddha entering meditation, merged into nature itself, and a phrase surfaced in System's mind—one with heaven and man.

System truly could not find any other words to describe the old druid. The old druid genuinely gave him the impression of a master who stood apart from the world.

"Can he be trusted?"

The instant he saw the old druid, System had even wanted to reveal that he possessed intelligence. But in the end, he suppressed the impulse in his heart.

He could not even bring himself to make simple contact with the old druid. He merely watched from afar as the old druid departed on his raft.

The human heart was unfathomable. Beneath that outward aura of tranquil nature, what thoughts did the old druid truly harbor? System had no way of knowing.

As a grasshopper, he had no right to speak with the old druid as an equal. He could not bear to hand his fate over to such an unfamiliar intelligent being...