Twin Moons

Not long after reaching Level 3, System's vision gradually darkened.

The sun had already set, and before long, night would fall.

As the sky steadily darkened and a slightly chilly breeze stirred, the forest filled with more insect cries—some from crickets, others from chirping cicadas.

As System ate tender leaves, he noticed irregular movements in the grass some distance away. However, an insect's compound eyes made it difficult to see exactly what was there.

Before long, something silver-gray emerged from the grass and moved in his direction.

As it drew closer, the image in System's compound eyes became clearer. A silver-gray rat passed beneath the plant he was on and began gnawing at the roots of an unknown plant nearby.

Unlike the forest during the day, many insects and small animals became much more active at night.

Before long, the giant silver-gray rat finished gnawing the plant roots and disappeared into the grass.

Then, less than several dozen centimeters away and slightly above him, System spotted a black spider three or four centimeters in size releasing a strand of silk that drifted in the wind.

The spider was releasing a "search line," the first step in weaving its web. As long as the strand drifted on the wind and stuck to something, it would use that thread as a foundation and begin weaving until a complete web was formed.

The forest at night was clearly fraught with danger, so System abandoned the idea of continuing to leap between plants in search of tender leaves.

His vision became worse at night, while predators were obviously more numerous. One moment of carelessness, and he could fall into a predator's trap.

As a herbivorous insect, hiding away and going hungry for a night would certainly be miserable, but it greatly increased his chances of survival.

With human intelligence, he naturally could not live recklessly like an ordinary grasshopper.

After all, what made grasshoppers powerful was their reproductive ability, not the survival ability of each individual.

System painstakingly used his not-very-sharp mandibles to cut off three tiny tender leaves, then decided he would find a spot beneath a dead leaf on the ground to hide for the night.

These three tender leaves could serve as snacks when his hunger became unbearable, easing it slightly.

The little grasshopper carefully crawled from a branch toward the plant's stem, using the hooked spines on his legs to make his way steadily down to the ground...

Branches, scattered dead leaves, and soil that gave off the scent of decay—the ground was a complicated environment for a grasshopper the size of a soybean.

Of the three tender leaves the size of little fingernails that System had bitten off the plant, he found only two. He simply could not locate the other leaf and could only give up on it.

After laboriously carrying the two tender leaves beneath a slightly damp dead leaf, System subconsciously glanced up at the night sky. A humanlike look of bewilderment appeared on his insect face.

A grasshopper's eyesight was poor, incapable of seeing distant things clearly. He could not make out how many stars shone in the night sky, but he could see two moons far apart from one another—one white, the other pale yellow.

This was no longer his original world...

System did not stare at the two moons in the night sky for long. He had already become a grasshopper and had lost his memories; whether he was still in his original world no longer made much difference.

He quickly burrowed into the dead leaf and quietly began to rest.

Insect bodies were peculiar. Although System had forgotten his name and memories from his previous life, some common knowledge remained very clear in his mind.

It was difficult for a human to keep their body completely still. After only a short while, the body would unconsciously twitch a few times. A grasshopper's body, however, was entirely different.

Lying beneath the dead leaf, System effortlessly remained motionless. He felt like a dead branch, utterly still.

Before long, the frequency and depth of his abdominal breathing slowly weakened. From breathing once every second or two, it gradually stretched to once every five or six seconds, until he breathed only once every several dozen seconds.

It was a peculiar state of dormancy. Once he entered it, the hunger in System's abdomen rapidly faded, and his entire body became like an inanimate object, requiring only the tiniest amount of energy to maintain his vital signs.

System estimated that in this state, he could last two or three days—or perhaps even longer—without food or water.

Drip—

At the sound of a dew drop falling, System fully woke from his half-asleep state.

Not long after his body had entered dormancy the previous night, his mind had gradually slipped into a hazy state between dream and wakefulness. Now that he was awake, he felt refreshed and invigorated. It seemed that even an insect required proper dormancy.

The morning was somewhat cool. System moved his slightly stiff body, and the breathing of his abdomen quickly returned from once every several dozen seconds during dormancy to once per second. At the same time, intense hunger flooded his mind.

After taking a few sips of dew dripping from the edge of the dead leaf, System began chewing the two tender leaves he had hidden beneath it yesterday to fill his stomach.

After an entire night, the tender leaves tasted somewhat worse. Yet as he watched the changing information on [Self-Information Generation], System completely confirmed the pattern behind leveling up.

So far, he had only one way to raise his level: eating.

Although any kind of leaf could ease his hunger, different leaves had vastly different effects on raising his level.

The rule for judging which leaves were more effective was also simple: how delicious they were. Even leaves of the same kind varied in taste depending on their freshness, and their effects on raising his level varied accordingly.

It seems that if I want this body to grow more within the same amount of time, I need to eat delicious, fresh leaves whenever possible.

But searching for delicious tender leaves and leaf buds means searching more plants, which would undoubtedly become more dangerous.

In my current state, there's absolutely no need to take risks. I should still gather food the way I did yesterday and ensure my own safety.

Having settled on his plan for the day, System focused on eating the two not-so-fresh tender leaves.

Because his level had increased and his body had grown larger, System soon finished both leaves. His eating speed was more than twice as fast as it had been at Level 2.

After leveling up, his mandibles had become somewhat sturdier. System decided to try eating slightly larger leaves today. If he succeeded, he would not need to waste time searching for tender leaves and leaf buds.

After crawling out from beneath the dead leaf, System quickly discovered several uninvited guests nearby: five or six black ants about one centimeter in size.

After the night had passed, the living creatures active in the forest had also changed, replaced by a new batch that preferred moving about in daylight. The few ants before him were among those daytime creatures.

Five or six black ants were very close to him, the nearest less than thirty centimeters away. The antennae atop their heads swayed back and forth, seemingly searching for food.

The ants were not very fast, nor had they noticed the grasshopper nymph crawling out from the dead leaves. With a few easy hops, System moved far away from the "ant search squad."

In fact, after seeing these ants, System felt no fear at all, and his [Insect Instinct] gave him no warning of danger.

After grasshoppers hatched from their eggs, they were no longer prey for ants. Ants might hunt some enormous lepidopteran larvae—caterpillars of butterflies or moths—but they could never catch an agile grasshopper.

The main threats System faced were hunters like mantises, which struck with one lethal blow after camouflaging themselves, or accidentally getting stuck in a spiderweb.

Or the enormous creature before his eyes—

Its body was covered in brown, raised, ferocious patterns. Its light-brown abdomen pulsed continuously, its round eyes blinked from time to time, and it possessed an incomparably huge mouth.

While avoiding the ants' "search squad," System had made three consecutive leaps and landed right before this toad camouflaged among the pile of dead leaves.

A toad—also known as a toad—was an extremely famous insect hunter, as far as System knew.

And now, System was less than ten centimeters away from it.

He could even smell the moist, fishy breath exhaled from the toad's mouth...