The way System viewed the chrysalis changed after only a few hours.

  During the night, when System checked the pupating butterfly with [Mental Connection], he unexpectedly received a strange mental message.

  To be precise, the tone of the mental message felt extremely familiar to him.

  "Where is this pce? Why am I trapped here? Forget it, I'm so sleepy..."

  This extremely familiar and fluent mental message surprised System.

  However, when he sent back a mental message and tried to communicate with the other party, the mind inside the chrysalis seemed to have fallen asleep again, and there was no response.

  System almost felt like the mental message he'd just received was an illusion.

  However, the [Data Bank] in System's [Tools Menu] had clearly recorded everything that had just happened, and the mental message from the pupating butterfly had indeed been real.

  The frost power and the familiar tone made System unconsciously connect the butterfly with the former Lord of Gciers.

  But that was obviously impossible. Such a powerful existence turning into a butterfly didn't sound like something that could actually happen.

  Perhaps this was just a highly intelligent butterfly simir to Bck, only with a somewhat abnormal mind.

  ...

  System checked on the sleeping butterfly occasionally with [Mental Connection] throughout the night, and he finally sensed it waking up again at noon the next day.

  After the butterfly woke up, it once again expressed its confusion at being trapped inside a chrysalis.

  Now that the butterfly was awake, System could finally send it a mental message.

  "Who are you?"

  "Who...am I?"

  The butterfly seemed to be thinking. Even after thinking for a long time, it still couldn't remember who it was.

  Soon, the butterfly gave up on trying to remember who it was and sent a mental message to System.

  "Great one, could you let me out of this dark space?"

  "You want to come out?"

  System gently shook the chrysalis with his tentacles a few times. The liquid inside the chrysalis was only slightly viscous, and the butterfly inside was obviously still a long way from being ready to break out.

  If System broke open the chrysalis now and the juice inside flowed out, the pupating butterfly would undoubtedly die immediately.

  System waited for a long time, but the butterfly didn't answer his question. It seemed that when he'd shaken the chrysalis with his tentacles just now, the butterfly's consciousness had fallen into a deep sleep.

  ...

  Seven days ter, System and his ant subjects successfully crossed the border of Lilt Forest and arrived at the Warren Pins.

  Although the edge of the Warren Pins was also covered by a yer of snow and volcanic ash, when System stepped out of Lilt Forest, he clearly felt a change in the temperature. The temperature, which had been minus thirty degrees a moment earlier, instantly rose to about minus ten degrees after he crossed the border.

  The distance System had traveled wasn't even ten meters, but there was a massive and extremely unscientific difference between the climate inside and outside of the forest. Even the amount of bck ash on the ground was lower in the Warren Pins.

  During these seven days, after System had communicated with the butterfly two or three times, he'd come up with more specutions about the retionship between the butterfly and the Lord of Gciers.

  System guessed that the Lord of Gciers had been reduced to something simir to a residual soul and lost his memory, after which he had somehow ended up becoming attached to a butterfly.

  He seemed to randomly drift in and out of sleep, and even when he woke up, he wasn't completely normal. The pupating butterfly didn't seem to be able to understand his current situation. Overall, he seemed to be a bit dumb.

  Although the butterfly didn't remember anything, when System mentioned words like Lord of Gciers, Will of Winter, Aura, and so on, the butterfly would fall into a daze and express his confusion.

  After System confirmed that this butterfly might be something like Aura's remnant soul, he was very conflicted about how to deal with him.

  The safest option was undoubtedly to immediately throw the chrysalis away in order to avoid unnecessary trouble.

  However, if System was being honest, while Aura was the culprit who had turned him into a tentacle monster, System had always had a positive attitude toward the dragon.

  If System or Shava, who had both joined the Winter Legion, were ever threatened, Aura would definitely help them resolve the trouble if he knew about it.

  Now that Aura had been reduced to this state, since System was aware of it, the right thing to do was to help him.

  After all, because of the frost energy attached to the chrysalis, if it was pced somewhere randomly, it would undoubtedly cover that area with frost. Whatever pce System left the chrysalis would easily be discovered by the gnolls.

  He could bury the chrysalis deep underground in order to prevent it from being found, but then the butterfly would suffer an undeserved disaster the moment he emerged from his chrysalis. Even if he survived and managed to crawl out of the ground, his wings would end up being deformed by the soil.

  System finally handed the question directly to the butterfly himself.

  He told the other party that he was a pupating butterfly, and sent over a video of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. He then had the butterfly choose what he wanted to do next.

  He could immediately emerge from his chrysalis right now, but that would surely end in death. He could also find a pce to wait quietly until he emerged from his chrysalis. The st option was to keep following the migrating ant caravan.

  The butterfly, whose intelligence wasn't low, obviously chose to follow System, who he still called "great one."

  System also decided to bring the pupating butterfly with him until the butterfly emerged from his chrysalis. After he became a butterfly, he could fly off whenever he wanted.

  ...

  Because of the frost slime's departure and the rge increase in the amount of food consumed by the ants as they rushed during their journey, when System led the ant caravan out of Lilt Forest, it was clear that their food supply wouldn't st.

  After all, System's insect body couldn't craft a suitable tool for carrying food.

  He'd tried to make a simple sled using two pieces of smooth bark and some vines a couple of weeks earlier, but the sled that had taken him a whole day to build had ended up falling apart as soon as he'd tried to use it.

  System could only have the ants use the most primitive means of transportation. Any food they wanted to bring with them was directly carried by an ant.

  The ants' consumption of food had obviously exceeded System's expectations. System had expected the food they'd brought along to st until they reached their destination with plenty left over.

  The situation would have been even worse if System hadn't taken the initiative to carry the ant pupae. Queen Linda was nearly thirty centimeters long, the pupae of the two second-pupation soldier ants were ten centimeters long, and while the others were smaller, there were still quite a lot of them.

  If System hadn't grown to forty centimeters in length after reaching level 15 and Shava wasn't helping him carry the queen from time to time, it would have been too much for him to handle.

  Although the ants' walking speed had increased as their food supply dwindled, it would still take at least ten more days to reach the green grassnd nearly three hundred kilometers away.

  The food carried by System's ants would only st another four or five days.

  'Is our only option to dig under the snow to look for grass and pnts?'

  Ants were omnivorous insects, so they could survive by eating grass when they were hungry. Although System hadn't eaten pnts for a long time, it was obviously not a problem for a grasshopper like him to eat a few pnts. As for Meatball, there was even less of a problem. He could even eat the bck ash falling from the sky if he wanted to.

  In fact, ever since System had first noticed that there might not be enough food three days earlier, he'd refused to give the little meatball any food. Meatball had only been allowed eat soil or the frozen grass and leaves buried beneath the snow.

  Of course, System also treated himself the same. For three days, all he and Meatball had eaten had been frozen grass and pnts.

  However, if this continued, eating grass would undoubtedly reduce the mobility of System's ants, and it would end up taking twice as long to reach the green grassnd.