Small insects living underground were naturally sensitive to earthquakes. In the past six months, a small earthquake had once occurred in Lilt Forest.

  System had been sleeping at the time. When the earthquake had woken him up, he'd quickly ordered his ant subjects to escape from the nest.

  However, the previous earthquake hadn't actually been very strong. The ground had just shaken a few times before it had ended.

  In fact, although his ant subjects had been a little panicked, without System's nervous command, they wouldn't even have evacuated from the nest.

  ...

  However, System and his ant subjects hadn't sensed any signs of this earthquake. Even System's [Intuition] had only given him an uneasy feeling a few seconds before it had started.

  This sudden earthquake was extremely strong. The little meatball lying on the ground next to System was like a bean in a hot pan, constantly bouncing around due to the shaking.

  Any soil that wasn't already frozen solid started to fall. In less than a second, the entrance connecting the chamber System was in to the nest's main passageway had colpsed.

  [Mental Network] activated!

  System instantly activated [Mental Network] in order to connect the minds of the dozens of ant subjects within one meter of him.

  He felt the panic and anxiety of his ant subjects. Some of them also sent out pained emotions, and two of them had completely gone silent during this period.

  Afterward, accompanied by a strong sense of uneasiness from [Intuition], the chamber System and Meatball were in also colpsed from the violent shaking. System was buried beneath the soil.

  The amplitude of the earthquake grew higher and higher.

  System could sense that the earthquake's epicenter was to the west. He didn't have time to think about the earthquake's source at that moment, however, because System and the little meatball were currently being crushed under the violently shaking soil.

  The earth seemed to be boiling, and it was rolling back and forth like waves around System.

  He heard the part of his exoskeleton that connected his wings to his back make a cracking sound. His entire exoskeleton then cracked under heavy pressure from the frozen soil surrounding him.

  If even he was hurt by the pressure from this soil, his ant subjects who hadn't undergone a second pupation would obviously be unable to bear it.

  In System's [Mental Network], he felt more and more of his ant subjects' pained emotions, and nearly ten of them had gone silent. It seemed that most of the chambers in the underground nest had colpsed due to the sudden earthquake.

  The strong vibrations and shaking caused the soil to pack more firmly around System, and the breathing holes in his abdomen were also tightly covered. If this continued, even he would die of suffocation.

  System randomly pushed at the surrounding soil with his tentacles. He exerted a lot of effort to open a gap around his abdomen, temporarily eliminating the danger of suffocation.

  But the violent tremors continued...

  Suddenly, System felt something touching him. As it turned out, the little meatball had used his [Morph] ability to transform into a strangely shaped creature and now had several cws growing from his body, which he'd used to dig his way over to System.

  ...

  The powerful earthquake sted for ten minutes. After it ended, System finally received a mental message from Shava.

  Three minutes ter, Shava, who was emitting a faint, white light, finally broke through the soil and arrived at System's side.

  "Meatball, go rescue any injured worker ants you can sense through [Mental Network]. Shava, you and I will go to the queen's chamber to check on the ant rvae and Queen Linda."

  ...

  After nearly two hours of work, the more than one hundred ants living three to five meters underground had basically all been rescued by the ants themselves.

  Ants were masters of digging. After an ant was rescued, she would immediately become another member of the rescue team.

  There were 127 adult ants in the nest, including sixty-seven ant knights, whose bodies hadn't sustained any obvious damage. There were nineteen seriously injured ants, and the bodies of seventeen dead ants had been recovered.

  Some of the remaining twenty-odd ants may have died and been buried beneath the soil, while others may have escaped because they'd been either in the highest yer of the nest or out searching for food when the earthquake had hit.

  System could feel through [Mental Transmission] that there were several worker ants digging down from the surface above the nest.

  Compared to the adult ants who possessed sturdy bodies, the twenty-three ant rvae in the queen's chamber had fared very poorly. All of them had been crushed by the soil, and either their bodies had burst, or they had suffocated to death.

  However, although Queen Linda and the twelve ant pupae next to her had also been crushed by the soil, all of them had survived intact. Thankfully, the pupae had hard shells and didn't need to breathe very often.

  ...

  However, just as System was about to order the ant rescue team to dig upward so that they could all escape to the surface, the ground started shaking again.

  Although this aftershock wasn't as violent as the recent earthquake, System's ant subjects were still in serious danger, and many of them were buried again beneath colpsing soil.

  Fortunately, the aftershock wasn't strong, and his ant subjects didn't suffer any casualties.

  But the aftershocks seemed to be endless. For every few minutes of stillness, there would be a few minutes of shaking, so the ants' digging progress had been stagnant. System was unable to bring his ant subjects from the retively dangerous underground to the surface.

  Eight more hours passed, and once the aftershocks completely stopped during the night, System finally had his ant subjects dig their way up to the snowy surface.

  Once they were out, System found two soldier ants who were guarding the nest's entrance along with five workers who were in the process of digging their way down.

  This earthquake seemed to have caused the deaths of more than seventy ants, including all of the ant rvae. If System included the mortally wounded ants who wouldn't be able to recover from their injuries, nearly half of the colony had been lost.

  However, he couldn't pay attention to his ants for too long. Through the hole leading out of the nest, System smelled a strange scent like gunpowder and saw an orange fire in the sky in the direction of the Lilt Mountains.

  As System climbed out of the nest, fallen trees and cracked, uneven ground came into sight.

  It seemed that this earthquake was much more serious than it had seemed underground. Fortunately, no rge chasms had formed near the nest. If one had, the consequences would have been disastrous.

  However, System had no time to think about any of that. His attention was fully focused on the fire to the west. In the direction of the Lilt Mountains, System discovered orange fmes and thick, bck smoke rising into the sky.

  He spread his wings and flew higher. From the sky, he saw that there seemed to be more than a dozen active volcanoes thousands of kilometers away in the Lilt Mountains. These active volcanoes had all erupted at the same time, and fiery red va was now flowing down into the nd of ice and snow.