The bck ball of light didn't cause any obvious negative effects when it entered System's body. Instead, it made him feel energetic, as if his body was filled with endless strength. The power and flexibility of his tentacles also slightly improved. It was as if the bck light was some kind of tonic.

  However, along with this energetic feeling, System found that he seemed to have lost something very important. His heart became empty, and the insect bloodline in his body seemed to be wailing.

  An insect's body couldn't cry, but if he were still human, he would definitely be in a state of tears.

  'What's wrong with me? What did that bck light make me lose?'

  System stretched out his tentacles and carefully checked his body.

  All thirty tentacles were intact. Even the small hooks on the tips were still there. There was also no problem with his antennae, eyes, or the exoskeleton covering his body.

  But the more he used his [Perception] power to investigate his body, the more he could feel that his body was missing something. It wasn't something as simple as a limb or an organ that was gone. Instead, it was some intangible aspect of his body.

  [Digital Code] was normal; [Pupation] was normal; [Insect Adaptability] was normal; [Perception] was normal; [Mental Transmission] was normal...

  When he searched through the several talents that he relied on for survival and found that none were missing, System felt relieved, but the feeling of emptiness in his heart didn't disappear. It only grew more and more intense.

  System opened the [Tools Menu] and looked through [My Information]. All of the Special Talents and Derived Skills in his body were intact, but in the Special Talent column, there was something new—[Severance Curse].

  ...

  [Severance Curse] (11/11): A Special Talent that System obtained through the ratman wizard's sacrificial ritual. Removes the ability to mate, shortens remaining lifespan, increases lifespan consumption, and provides a slight increase in physical fitness.

  ...

  Perhaps because it had slightly improved his body physically and mentally, [Severance Curse] was pced in his Special Talent column. System quickly used [Data Compition] to relocate [Severance Curse] to the abnormal state column.

  After checking this insidious curse's information, he finally knew what he'd lost.

  250 days of lifespan had vanished in an instant, and his lifespan consumption in the future would increase by about one-third. This meant that for every three days he lived, he would lose four days of lifespan.

  If he'd lost 250 days of his lifespan back when he'd been a grasshopper, he would most likely have dropped dead on the spot. In actuality, if he'd received this curse back then, he might not have lost so many days of life, because the curse shortened a creature's life proportionally.

  And it wasn't just his lifespan that he'd lost. The sinister curse had also taken away his ability to mate. Although his body still possessed the organ responsible for mating, that organ had now completely lost its ability to function.

  System suddenly realized that he'd missed something when he'd used his [Perception] ability on himself earlier. When he'd checked his physical condition, his tentacles hadn't produced the usual feeling of excitement and comfort.

  Although his [Exotic Insect] title had mentioned that he couldn't reproduce, that was just the ability to reproduce. Now he'd even lost his ability to mate!

  Of course, once mating was successful, System's life essence would be passed on to his offspring, and he would die.

  In that sense, [Severance Curse] and the [Exotic Insect] title were like a double insurance for him, making it so that he no longer had to worry about dying due to mating.

  Despite this, he still felt very lost. It wasn't because of the stolen 250 days of his life. It was simply because he felt sad about losing his ability to mate.

  Unwilling to mate and unable to mate were two completely different concepts. Even though he was terrified of dying due to mating, he'd never had any intention of neutering himself.

  'The curse of severing the lineage and shortening the lifespan...'

  System's mandibles trembled constantly. No one would feel good if they were hit by such a vicious curse. He not only became sad and angry, but also a little regretful, and he was now even more afraid of ratmen.

  In his final analysis, System had still underestimated them too much. Although he'd imagined many abilities that a ratman wizard might have, his imagination was far too limited.

  In despair, the ratman had cast a spell to sacrifice himself in order to curse System. In this magical world, there must be countless other bizarre abilities like that. Even with Shava's protection, he might not be able to keep himself safe.

  System looked over at the stone statue. Before the ratman wizard had self-destructed, System had felt that the stone statue was a little abnormal. Now, he couldn't help but immerse himself in it.

  The stone statue was stained with the ratman's bck blood, and it exuded an indescribable aura. As he stared at the statue, System unconsciously stretched out his tentacles to touch it.

  However, he soon realized how oddly he was behaving and slowly pulled back his tentacles. It seemed that he'd resisted the statue's temptation.

  Accompanied by a strange sound, tiny cracks spread across the nearly twenty-centimeter-tall stone statue, after which it suddenly colpsed into a pile of sand.

  Because of the strange stone statue and his growing fear of ratmen, System didn't pn to stay in the warren much longer. He simply gathered the ratman wizard's books, then quickly left with Shava and returned to the nest.

  When he got back, System commanded two worker ant knights to monitor the ratman warren in shifts and to let him know if anything unusual happened there.

  ...

  As he'd expected, no more rats showed up to scout the nest after that, and no unknown visitors appeared in the ratman warren.

  It seemed that the rats scouting the nest recently had been under the command of the ratman wizard alone, and no other ratmen had participated or known about it.

  After reading through the pile of books left behind by the wizard, System roughly knew what the statues worshiped by the ratmen were.

  Although he couldn't recognize the words in the books, he could still understand some of the pictures.

  In one book that was bound in very exquisite animal skin, System had seen an illustration containing a statue that was very simir to the ratman wizard's stone statue, only the one in the book was even more exquisite.

  The book's outer cover was bck, and the words written in it were completely different from those in the ratman wizard's other books, but System still didn't recognize them.

  The illustrations in this book seemed to have a strange power.

  When System had first looked through the book, he'd felt that the beings in the illustrations were incredibly lifelike, and the shadows seemed to move as if they were alive, like smoke. He'd even seen dark red pupils hidden in the shadows...

  However, when he'd flipped through the book again, the illustrations had become still.

  Strangely, when System watched the video recorded in the [Tools Menu], the illustrations in the book actually came alive again, and he also saw the red pupils.

  That hadn't been an illusion.

  System specuted that the ratman wizard had likely gained his powers from the mysterious entity in the illustrations.

  System flipped through all of the ratman wizard's books without finding a way to remove the curse. Even if there was a way to remove the curse in one of the books, he probably wouldn't be able to recognize it.