System suddenly raised his head, and a fsh of blue light appeared in his eyes.

  He immediately began rapidly ascending. His tentacles even intertwined to form a more streamlined shape, increasing his flying speed further.

  For nearly a month now, he'd been feeling uneasy for some unknown reason, but on this day, he finally found a hint of something unusual.

  Because of his enhanced [Perception] talent, the Derived Skill [System's Eye] had also improved. System's vision could now pick up even more details, including the frost energy floating in the air.

  While he usually sensed frost energy with his body, he could now actually see it with his eyes.

  Because System's own body contained the power of frost, he could see the frost energy floating throughout Lilt Forest even from thousands of meters away. In addition, he could also see another type of colorless energy from a distance that was closely reted to his [Mental Transmission] and [Perception] abilities.

  Just now, System had happened to discover a strange frost energy vortex that had appeared in the sky above the forest about one hundred meters away. When the vortex had appeared, the frost energy in the area had decreased a little.

  The vortex wasn't very big, measuring only a few dozen centimeters in diameter. When System flew over, the frost energy vortex hadn't completely dissipated yet, and he immediately sensed how unusual the area was.

  His antennae picked up a strange sulfur smell, and there was also a very hot and dry aura that made him feel slightly disoriented.

  This heat energy was incompatible with the frost energy floating in the air. Once the two energies came into contact, they would annihite each other. The icy blue vortex had been formed by this reaction.

  'How could such a hot energy aura appear with so much snow around?'

  System transformed into [Frost Form] in mid-air and asked Nellis his question as soon as her halo started hovering over his head.

  Nellis seemed to be very familiar with this strange aura and immediately expined to System, "This is the aura of the Abyss."

  "The Abyss?"

  "Yes."

  System hovered in pce and scanned the forest for a while, only stopping after the sulfur smell in the air had completely dissipated. He didn't manage to locate any traces of Abyss creatures in the forest below.

  System had heard about the so-called Abyss from Nellis more than once in the past six months.

  However, she wasn't very clear on what the Abyss looked like. She'd only said that her former contractor, the white bear, had fought with demons from the Abyss several times.

  From a long, long time ago, Lilt Forest had seemed to have some unknown connection with the Abyss, and there would always be some Abyss creatures invading.

  System had also asked the giant goblins about the Abyss, but the goblins, possibly due to their race having lost their frost powers for so long, were also not very clear. They didn't even know as much as Nellis.

  "King, did you find anything?"

  After seeing System suddenly fly high into the sky and hover there for a long time, then seeing his solemn expression when he returned, Shava immediately approached and questioned him.

  "Nothing for now," System replied. Although there was no trace of any Abyss creatures, System now believed that his uneasiness had originated from this aura.

  Perhaps he'd eventually encounter monsters from the Abyss.

  ...

  Back at System's nest, the five worker ants who had set the trap and caught the mouse went back out after eating and resting for a while. They wanted to retrieve the paralysis trap that had been used to catch the mouse.

  There was only one soldier ant in the entire nest with the ability to secrete this [Paralysis Toxin], and she had to rest for a long time in order to produce more toxin each time they set the trap.

  To save time, the bait full of toxins needed to be recovered so that the soldier ant could eat and absorb it. Otherwise, the [Paralysis Toxin] on the poisoned bait would lose its effectiveness over time.

  Ants were born with a keen sense of smell. When this species of bck and brown ants had turned gray and white and their body size had grown rger, their sense of smell had also become even more sensitive.

  The five worker ants' antennae shook at the same time, and they quickly tapped their antennae together to communicate with each other. The ants had detected an unusual smell nearby.

  The group of worker ants gave up on recovering the toxin-infused bait, instead deciding to track down the strange smell. They gradually crawled over to a tree nearly thirty meters away from the nest.

  Behind the tree, the ants found half of a caterpilr, which was about five centimeters long.

  The ants explored the situation near the caterpilr for a while. After finding nothing of interest, two of them worked together to carry what remained of the caterpilr's body, and the group headed back to the nest.

  Although the king had prohibited the active hunting of these caterpilr, there was no reason not to recover its body when it was already dead.

  However, the five workers had only carried the caterpilr two meters when a strange, uninvited guest appeared in front of them.

  Its pink flesh was exposed, and it looked like an oval-shaped meatball the size of a watermelon. The meatball kept trembling in the snow and exuded a slightly sulfurous and bloody smell.

  Although the worker ants in System's colony had a higher level of intelligence than other ants, they'd still inherited the traditional ant fearlessness.

  The workers approached the meatball. They wanted to find out what this odd, strange-smelling thing was.

  As they approached, the speed of the meatball's trembling became faster and faster. When a worker ant was just about to touch it, the meatball suddenly changed.

  The meatball split open, and a giant, white caterpilr nearly fifteen centimeters long crawled out. A dark brown line as thin as a hair extended from the back end of the caterpilr, connecting it to the meatball.

  This giant caterpilr looked and moved just like a real caterpilr. It crawled forward, rushing toward a worker ant, and used its bloated body to tightly wrap around the worker like a snake.

  Despite their huge size and overwhelming strength, caterpilrs weren't naturally good at fighting.

  The entangled worker ant kept biting with her mandibles, causing considerable damage to the caterpilr. The other workers also cooperated tacitly and unched an offensive against the caterpilr, biting it all over.

  One of the worker ants suddenly discovered something. She didn't continue biting the caterpilr. Instead, she attacked the thin line connecting the caterpilr to the meatball instead.

  The thin line was very sturdy, but System had strengthened the mandibles of his colony's ants, resulting in them becoming very strong and sharp.

  In less than half a minute, the thin line was bitten in two by the worker ant. The struggling white caterpilr instantly lost its ability to move and fell still.

  The ants decided to carry the giant caterpilr back to the nest. However, they clearly didn't notice that the pink meatball nearby had changed shape.

  A twenty-centimeter-long round mouthpart emerged from the meatball, and that mouthpart was full of sharp, white teeth.

  In an instant, the meatball ate the five worker ants along with the giant caterpilr that had grown out of its own body...

  The surface of the meatball soon began to wriggle again, and an ant nearly eight centimeters long sprang out from the meatball's surface. Just like the caterpilr, this ant also had a hair-thin line connecting it to the meatball.