Dangerous Magical Creatures

It was not the pitcher-plant-like plant before System that gave off the unusual aura, but an unknown tree more than ten meters away.

The tree looked utterly ordinary, similar to a common poplar, about as thick as a human thigh.

System had eaten this tree's leaves before. His [Information Input] happened to contain data on this plant.

They were slightly sweet, and leaves of the same weight provided roughly one-twentieth the experience of insect pupae.

As System gradually drew closer, he sensed the tree's peculiar aura more clearly. Though he was in a damp forest, he felt a trace of dry heat.

The hot, dry aura was faint. If not for the innate Perception of an insect's antennae, System estimated that he would have had a hard time noticing it.

System hopped onto one of the tree's branches and began eating its leaves.

The leaves tasted exactly as [Information Reading] had described—only faintly sweet—but they provided five times the experience of the original leaves.

Since awakening, this was the second food System had eaten, aside from that lizard corpse, whose experience gain did not match its taste.

System hopped along the tree's branches, carefully examining what made it different, but apart from the dry, scorching aura, he discovered nothing.

"A plant from a fantasy world?"

He thought of the wild boar covered head to toe in flames, and that old druid who had radiated the aura of nature.

System guessed that both this tree and the previous lizard belonged to magical species, possessing supernatural power.

The abnormal experience gain likely came from absorbing the special energy attached to the plant while eating it, thereby gaining the experience needed to level up.

Yet in reality, his body could not digest or absorb that special energy, so his sense of taste could not distinguish the flavor of this unusual plant.

It was highly possible that as he absorbed this energy, once the special energy accumulated inside him exceeded a certain amount, quantitative change would trigger qualitative change, and his body would undergo a special transformation.

But these were all deductions System had drawn from subtle sensations in his body, and they could differ greatly from the truth.

Neither his derived ability, [Self-Information Generation], nor the inheritance within his bloodline contained any information regarding this magical power.

System estimated that he would uncover some clues after his third metamorphosis, since the Grasshopper Queen's ability to communicate mentally had been acquired during her third metamorphosis.

Since he did not know what effects these leaves possessed, System chose to leave after taking only a few bites, lest unknown changes in his body hinder the improvement of Metamorphic Growth.

In the end, System simply knew too little about this world.

Ever since arriving in this world, aside from the Grasshopper Queen he had encountered, he had not had anyone with whom he could communicate. Everything had to be explored on his own.

Continuing to explore as he hopped along, System soon encountered another magical lifeform.

It was not a plant giving off a special aura.

It was instead a basketball-sized mass of light-brown gelatin, emitting a faintly sour, astringent scent.

The gelatinous mass slowly wriggled across the ground, drawing rotten branches and fragments of leaves into its body, seemingly feeding.

The mucus creature looked much like a slime.

Slimes had appeared in many fantasy-themed games from System's previous life. Their combat ability was weak, they fed on grass or decaying debris, and they were usually the monsters a protagonist faced at the very beginning of a game.

A slime's gel was filled with corrosive mucus. It could digest much of the rotting debris in the forest and served as one of the forest's cleaners.

Besides the sour, astringent scent that corresponded to the dry heat aura of that magical tree, this slime also emitted a distinctive fragrance of grass and wood that greatly tempted System.

Watching the slime slowly move through the dead leaves, System decided to taste this gelatinous substance.

Leaving aside that delicious grassy, woody fragrance, the digestive fluid inside a slime's body would surely provide some benefit to his [Corrosive Mucus]. It was worth trying.

System hopped toward it.

But just as he reached a point one meter away from the slime, the blood in System's body suddenly trembled violently.

His [Insect Instinct] sounded a warning!

System stopped, and his mind immediately cleared.

Something had been very wrong with him just now. Why had someone as cautious as him rushed before the slime without any guard up, intending to suck up its gelatin?

System twitched the antennae on his head, and the strange grassy, woody fragrance emitted by the slime once more entered his mind.

His consciousness seemed to slip into an oddly relaxed state.

This time, System was already on guard.

He shook his head to clear it. After a brief moment of thought, System gripped a dead branch about five centimeters long and leapt in succession onto a branch above the slime.

Then he threw the dead branch down from above—

The moment the stick struck it, the football-sized mass of gel abruptly contracted. The entire gelatinous body suddenly shook and sprang upward violently, swallowing the stick in an instant.

The slime's grassy, woody fragrance did not mean that its gel was delicious—it meant this was a trap for hunting insects!

A slime could be easily killed by humans, but to insects, it was a deadly predator.

Seeing the dead branch's fate, System's body trembled slightly without his control. If not for the warning from his derived ability, [Insect Instinct], he might very well have been devoured by the slime just now.

Though [Corrosive Mucus] gave his body some resistance to corrosive liquids and meant he would not be digested easily, being engulfed by a slime's gel would undoubtedly suffocate him to death.

Species from a fantasy world might not be as simple as they were portrayed in games. They possessed all kinds of habits, and could very well feed on insects.

Having learned his lesson, System decided that whenever he encountered other unknown creatures in the future, he would be doubly cautious and never make the same mistake again.

He hopped away, and before long, System spotted some reddish-brown ants. Following their trail, he quickly found the reddish-brown ants' nest.

Unlike the blackish-brown ant nest, this one had been built inside a decaying tree.

The reddish-brown ants were about 0.8 centimeters long. Their nest was somewhat smaller than the blackish-brown ants' nest, but there were still many ants coming and going.

Watching the several thousand ants wandering near the nest, System suddenly had an idea—

What would happen if he lured the slime near the ant nest?