As a mysterious green halo enveloped the bird in the old druid's hand, its frantic chirps of pain and panic gradually quieted down. The druid spoke in an unknown nguage and gently stroked the injured bird's feathers.

  Soon, accompanied by a joyful cry, the bird spread its brown and white wings, flew up, and circled above the old druid's head.

  The druid once again dispyed his aura containing nature's purity, which made System feel like he was being held gently in the arms of mother nature.

  System hesitated over whether he should jump in front of the old druid, reveal his wisdom, and ask for ways to extend his life. For some reason, the idea of doing so made him feel uncomfortable.

  In his heart, he sensed that something was wrong with the druid, but he couldn't figure out what it was for now.

  While he was hesitating, the pheasant-like bird circling in the sky above flew away, and the old druid took slow, impossibly long steps, disappearing into the forest after only two or three strides.

  ...

  'Why didn't I go over just now?'

  It wasn't until the druid had disappeared that System came back to his senses.

  Thinking of how he only had two months left to live, he regretted not being able to rush over to the old druid earlier.

  From the way the druid had rescued the drowning creatures from the water and the gentle expression on his face when he'd healed the injured bird, System felt that the old druid's kindness was not fake, and interacting with him seemed worth the risk. Maybe the druid could provide System with a way to prolong his life.

  But it was too te to go after him now. System jumped off in the direction the druid had gone, but found that the old man had already completely disappeared.

  He could only jump back helplessly. He hopped over to the blood stain left behind by the injured bird and decided to try eating some of the blood.

  There were two ants twitching on the ground near the spots of blood. Most likely, they'd been accidentally crushed by the struggling bird while they were crawling nearby and were now seriously injured.

  System had no intention of eating the injured ants, so he kicked the two unlucky insects away. He observed the situation around him and saw that other ants had already gathered around another blood stain, then started sucking up the blood in front of him.

  He thought the bird blood had a nice fvor, simir to a fragrant milkshake mixed with tea from his previous life. Even after he stopped drinking the blood, a pleasant aftertaste remained in his mouth, causing him to savor it endlessly.

  It wasn't as delicious as the scorpion's meat, but it tasted much better than other foods. The experience provided was about thirty percent more than caterpilr pupae of an equal weight.

  It seemed like the blood and flesh of birds were also a kind of food that conformed to System's deliciousness principle.

  Between bird blood, tadpoles, the scorpion, insects, and pnts, System had now eaten many different kinds of food. He really couldn't figure out why the lizard corpse had provided such an abnormally high amount of experience.

  He didn't think too much about it and simply swallowed a few more mouthfuls of bird blood. Because it didn't have an effect on [Molting and Growth], System decisively gave up on this kind of food.

  He jumped away and continued to search for more food that he could snatch from the ants.

  ...

  Three days passed.

  System reached level 9 as expected. His body grew from six and a half to eight centimeters in length, and his physical fitness was further improved.

  Although [Molting and Growth] still hadn't been promoted to level 13, he felt that it was only one step away. As long as his level increased to 10, [Molting and Growth] would definitely break through to the next level, and he would get more specific information about his third metamorphosis.

  After reaching level 9, System's [Insect Adaptability] (11/21) had upgraded to [Insect Adaptability] (12/21).

  Once again, [Insect Adaptability] had sent System a mysterious scene, like a memory or a video, from from his bloodline. In the scene, countless grasshoppers flew freely across the vast world.

  At the same time, because of [Insect Adaptability]'s upgrade, System's Derived Skill [Limb Regeneration] (5/11) had upgraded to [Limb Regeneration] (6/11), and [Dark Vision] (3/5) had upgraded to [Dark Vision] (4/5).

  The most significant change was that [Corrosive Mucus] (7/13) had upgraded by two levels to [Corrosive Mucus] (9/13).

  The gnds in System's mouth had become rger, the corrosion ability of his mucus had grown stronger, and the total amount of mucus he could secrete had nearly doubled.

  On top of that, the gnds in his mouth that secreted [Corrosive Mucus] had undergone special changes. He could squeeze the gnds using the newly generated muscles that surrounded them to squirt out a jet of [Corrosive Mucus].

  This was simir to the way king cobras sprayed venom or the way bck dragons breathed out clouds of corrosive poison in a fantasy world. It's just that the maximum distance he could spray out his [Corrosive Mucus] was very short. At the skill's current level, the mucus could only reach a few centimeters away.

  In any case, this was System's only long-range attack method. Although he could also use his forelegs to grab and throw small stones, it was difficult to exert force with them, so the attacks couldn't even hurt small ants.

  In addition to the changes that caused by leveling up, System had become more and more familiar with these bck and brown ants over the past three days. His movements when capturing them were getting more and more skillful.

  Recently, he'd even used a trick to attract a lone soldier ant into the muddy water, then kept kicking it back into the water every time it tried to crawl out. In the end, he'd managed to kill the exhausted soldier ant without suffering any damage.

  The bck and brown soldier ants had much sturdier exoskeletons than worker ants and were also more aggressive. They fought in a methodical way and would target the vital areas of their prey's body when attacking. They also had a stinger on their abdomen that could shoot acid.

  Soldier ants were dangerous, but in some ways, they were even dumber than worker ants.

  Soldier ants had much better eyesight than worker ants, but they would still rush straight toward System's grass that was covered in formic acid, even charging into the muddy water to reach it.

  Soldier ant corpses had a better fvor than worker ants, but the risk of hunting them was too great. The overall efficiency was far worse than when System simply snatched food from worker ants, so he'd only killed a single soldier ant before giving up on them.

  During these days, he'd been fortunate enough to meet two of his distant grasshopper retives. Unlike when System was a rva, he'd felt very close to his own kind since becoming an adult.

  However, after only a short interaction, the two grasshoppers had flown away.

  In addition to meeting the grasshoppers, he'd also discovered that there were many mosquito-like insects in the forest, which should be insects that bred in the water during their rval stage.

  Although this type of insect could fly, it was completely different from regur flies, which were very agile. System could easily catch these mosquito-like insects with a jump.

  Alongside the mosquitoes, he'd met several familiar creatures that were still very dangerous. They were toads like the one System had once survived an encounter with through a combination of luck and defying his instincts.

  Perhaps because of a ck of food, several toads had been hunting ants near the ant nest in addition to eating mosquitoes.

  Most of the toads had been successful in their hunts, as the much smaller ants had little power to fight back. However, there was one ten-centimeter-long toad that had courted death by hopping too close to the ant hill.

  After accidentally being crippled by the sting of a soldier ant, the toad had been finished off by four or five soldier ants working together. As soon as the toad was killed, it had been directly drowned under a sea of thousands of ants that endlessly poured out from the ant nest.

  ...

  At noon, after hunting for the entire night and half of the next day, System decided to return to his nest for some rest.

  In the past few days, he hadn't met the old druid again.

  While jumping back to his nest, System's heart and blood suddenly started pulsing irregurly, and he felt a strong and inexplicable emotion. He couldn't figure out what these strange new feelings in his heart were.

  At this moment, accompanied by an unusual roaring sound, a huge grasshopper flew over his head.

  The grasshopper was more than twenty centimeters long and had a brown and yellow body. It turned its head to look down at System, then changed direction and started flying straight toward him.