A Business Without Roots

Beneath several vine plants, System saw a densely packed mass of several thousand ants. They were exactly the same species as the ants he had killed that morning, so they should belong to the same colony.

It seemed the torrential rain from the past few days had not dealt this colony a crippling blow.

As System hopped closer to the vines, the image in his compound eyes gradually sharpened. The ants were dismantling a lizard corpse amid the dead branches and fallen leaves.

Perhaps the lizard had unfortunately drowned in the recent downpours. The ant colony was now carrying chunks of its flesh back and forth into their nest.

As System watched the lizard's corpse, an idea suddenly came to him.

A way to obtain food—a business with no capital required.

Thanks to [Information Reading], System's powers of observation were strong, but compared to the ants' sense of smell, he fell far short.

These ants could easily seek out food hidden beneath rotting leaves and mud after the storm.

As long as he paid attention to the movements of the ant swarms, he could snatch food from their grasp.

When they found smaller food, he could lure the ants away and seize it before leaving directly. And when he encountered a huge meal like this lizard, System could also steal the meat chunks from the worker ants' mandibles.

After a brief consideration, System immediately sprang into action. He picked out an ant at the edge of the swarm carrying a huge chunk of meat and charged at it.

Practice made perfect. System found that a grasshopper's reflexes were far sharper than a human's, and he was becoming increasingly adept at attacking these ants.

He could even predict how the ants would react after being attacked.

He effortlessly snatched the meat from the ant's mouth. Then, with a powerful kick from his hind legs, he sent the dazed ant flying half a meter away before repeatedly hopping onto a nearby vine.

Ants were incredibly strong, capable of lifting objects dozens of times their own weight. However, they normally would not carry such heavy objects while traveling.

The meat chunk System had stolen weighed slightly less than the ant itself, and he quickly began chewing it while holding it.

It tasted like rich milk cookies—quite delicious, though still a little inferior to insect pupae.

However, when he checked his experience bar, System discovered that this food provided nearly twice as much experience as insect pupae.

This was the first food to violate System's principle of deliciousness. Yet after taking a few more bites, he still could not find the reason behind its unusual experience yield.

If he kept eating this kind of food, he might be able to reach the maximum level of 15 before his lifespan ran out.

"Could reptiles be more evolved than insects? What a pity. If I'd stolen some of that tadpole corpse this morning, I could have drawn more conclusions."

System took a few more bites of the lizard meat and watched the changes in his experience bar before tossing the chunk aside.

This meat was extremely useful for raising his level, but it was utterly useless to his Metamorphic Growth. After another few bites, System discarded the meat he held in his forelegs.

Although raising his level was important, his first priority now was still to improve his Metamorphic Growth.

Hopping in the direction the ants were traveling, System soon found a half-meter-tall earthen mound over ten meters away—the nest of this colony of dark brown ants.

It was clearly a large ant nest. System estimated that it could hold at least several hundred thousand ants; he just did not know how much damage the recent rain had caused them.

Ants streamed in and out without end. Besides ordinary worker ants, System also saw several large ants, three or four centimeters long, weaving through the workers. They were likely soldier ants guarding the nest.

These soldier ants had enormous heads that took up half their bodies, equipped with massive mandibles. System believed those huge jaws could rip open his belly in an instant, perhaps even sever his thick hind legs.

Not only that, but the abdomens of these soldier ants were unusual. Through observation, System discovered that they possessed stingers and would occasionally spray liquid to direct the ordinary worker ants.

With their sharp, massive mandibles, tail stingers, and means of long-range attack, System had no intention of fighting these soldier ants. If he accidentally slipped near the nest, he would be drowned beneath a flood of ants.

Following a tributary path where ants gathered, System continued hopping onward. He began observing the colony's range of activity and the food it hunted.

Before long, System successfully snatched a tiny tadpole corpse, only half a centimeter long.

Although the rainstorm had brought disaster to the forest, once the standing water receded, it had also left behind abundant food. There was no telling how many unlucky tadpoles like this there were.

However, these tadpoles were generally trapped to death in the mud. System found them difficult to spot with vision alone and could only steal them from the ants.

The tadpole tasted fairly good, not much different from the lizard's flesh. Both had a flavor like rich milk cookies.

But unlike the lizard meat, which granted a massive amount of experience, this tadpole's flesh followed System's principle of deliciousness, producing slightly less experience than an equal weight of insect pupae.

Lizards were reptiles, while tadpoles were amphibians. Their degree of evolution should not differ by much, so System's earlier guess was proven wrong.

System's theory of taste should still be correct: the better food tasted, the more growth it brought him. But that lizard had to possess something unusual.

System thought for a while but found no clue, so he began focusing on eating the tadpole corpse held in his forelegs.

Tadpoles could not metamorphose like insects, but their flesh had a powerful effect on Metamorphic Growth, even slightly better than ant and cricket meat.

It seemed that amphibians transforming from aquatic forms into terrestrial forms had a marvelous resemblance to the transformations of insects.

System kept patrolling near this ant colony's nest. On one hand, he observed what food the ants might have for him to steal; on the other, he searched the area for a new nest where he could rest at night.

He found a spacious tree hollow in a somewhat withered tree, but it was simply too close to the ants' nest. Ants often visited its entrance, leaving him no choice but to abandon this ideal shelter.

By the time the sun set, System still had not found a suitable nest to rest in. He had, however, stolen several more small tadpole corpses being transported by ants, which could serve as a midnight snack.

And in the interval after sunset but before darkness fell, System made another discovery.

Near a pile of rocks, the ants led System to a type of food that would be very useful to him—a scorpion corpse twenty centimeters long.

The scorpion's body was pure black. Its shell had slightly changed color from soaking in rainwater, and it was covered in quite a bit of mud. It was currently wedged within a narrow crevice between the rubble.

The ant colony had not yet fully discovered the scorpion corpse. Only an "exploration team" of more than a dozen worker ants was investigating it. If they determined that the scorpion could serve as food, they would leave a scent trail to summon an army of thousands upon thousands of ants.

Watching the dozen or so ants circle endlessly around the scorpion, System suddenly conceived a wonderful idea. If it succeeded, he could claim the scorpion's corpse for himself.

He could lure these dozen ants away, then use his pungent [Corrosive Mucus]—

Drawing a Prison on the Ground!