System's actions were as efficient as ever. He quickly made his way over to the dungeon and killed the paralyzed ratman.

  This ratman died just the same as any other ordinary ratman. He didn't make any special noises, nor did he emit any energy fluctuations. It seemed like whatever was making System feel uneasy wasn't directly reted to this particur ratman.

  But dead was dead, and System didn't regret killing him.

  Although System was eager to understand and eradicate the [Severance Curse], compared to his own safety, killing the ratman was nothing.

  Bck was very disappointed when the ratman died. With the death of the ratman, she could no longer experience the joy of learning a foreign nguage.

  Of course, System ignored her disappointment. His main concern was the shelf life of the ratman's corpse as food.

  Because of the weather, System couldn't roast and dry the ratman's meat. The ratman's body would probably start to rot in a few days.

  The most effective way to preserve the meat was to freeze it. However, because there was no ice or snow near the nest, it took a long time for System's [Frost Breath] to recover after he used it. It took two or three days to restore his frost energy after a single use. He simply didn't have enough frost energy avaible to freeze the ratman's entire body.

  Aura, who had hundreds of times more frost energy than System, could naturally freeze the dead ratman, but System thought about how zy Aura was and immediately gave up on the idea of asking him for help.

  Ever since Bck had broken out of her pupa, Aura had even started asking her to bring him dew from outside in the mornings. System was definitely unable to command the zy, deformed butterfly.

  It seemed that the excess ratman meat could only be fed to System's slime friends.

  ...

  After System quickly dismembered and skinned the ratman's corpse, he threw it to his ant subjects for processing. He then made his way back to the nest's entrance.

  He looked out at the rainstorm that had been pouring down for about an hour and saw that there was no longer any hail falling, only rain.

  The rainwater could easily soak into the loose soil in the grassnd, so there was no standing water on the ground yet. System couldn't estimate how long the rain would have to st before the water level reached high enough to submerge the entrance to his nest.

  He turned to look at Shava, who was standing a short distance from the nest, and shook his head gently. Even though he'd come out of the nest, she still hadn't noticed him.

  She was focused on pying in the rain, though perhaps she would call it training.

  Because of the uneasiness System felt from his [Intuition], he had sent Shava out to observe whether there were any abnormalities around the nest's entrance. After all, she was System's strongest fighter.

  However, Shava was obviously lost in her own world at the moment.

  The twin bdes on her forelegs would chop at the raindrops falling from the sky from time to time. After every few dozen sshes, she would stop with a questioning look on her face. After thinking for a while, she would slightly adjust her movements and continue dancing with her twin bdes.

  Ever since Shava had gained self-awareness and received a name from System, she would practice tirelessly whenever she had free time.

  Before her second pupation, she had practiced biting with her mandibles. Since breaking out of her pupa a few months earlier, she'd been practicing with the twin bdes on her forelegs.

  'She's already so powerful...'

  System looked at Shava's sharp, clean movements with her twin bdes and was slightly stunned.

  When she had first started practicing with her bdes, System could still use his knowledge to give her some advice. He didn't know when, but at some point he'd stopped being qualified to guide her.

  From then on, Shava had only relied on her own thoughts and intuition to practice.

  Usually, when she sliced apart pnts or small animals, her level of skill wasn't obvious. However, as he watched Shava ssh apart the raindrops with her flowing movements, System couldn't help but feel a little shocked.

  Her movements reminded him of how he'd felt when he'd read about martial arts masters in his previous life.

  System didn't know how to describe it. After all, he didn't know anything about swordsmanship, so naturally he didn't know how skillful Shava's swordsmanship really was. All he could say was that it looked very pleasing to the eye.

  ...

  Without disturbing Shava, who was immersed in her own world, System once again flew up into the sky to investigate the surrounding area and find the source of his uneasiness.

  Bean-sized raindrops kept falling, but they didn't have much of an effect on System's flight. The only problem was that the rain blocked his vision, causing the scenery in the distance to appear hazy, as if he was looking at it through a thick fog.

  Through the dense rain, System saw two blurry shadows appear about two kilometers away, and noticed that the two figures were slowly approaching him. They were coming from the direction of Lilt Forest and clearly weren't the ratmen that System had imagined seeing that night.

  Because he had obtained the partial inheritance from the golden acorn, System could feel that one of the two figures was a druid.

  The dense rain greatly obscured System's vision, so he couldn't make out the appearance of the druid's humanoid companion. Based on the outline of the companion's body and the social retionships of the druids, System assumed that it was an elf.

  He could sense the feeling of uneasiness from his [Intuition] again. It seemed like these two figures had been the source of his uneasiness in recent days.

  'Is it because of the golden acorn? Or the butterfly that Aura transformed into?'

  System could only think of two things reted to the druids that might result in them showing up at his nest.

  One of them was the golden acorn that he'd eaten. The golden acorns were extremely rare, and he specuted that the druids might not have a way to sense that he'd eaten one.

  The second was Aura's remnant soul. As the culprit who had cut down every single oak tree in Lilt Forest, combined with the Lord of Gciers' grudges and entanglements with the old druid Medran, it was reasonable for the druids and elves to come looking for him.

  'What should I do?'

  System's brain was working rapidly. Having Shava attack these two was obviously not a wise choice. Without getting into whether or not she could actually defeat the two of them, even if she managed to kill the druid and the elf, that would only make more elves and druids show up to cause trouble in the future.

  System started flying in a different direction while he thought over his options.

  When his flight path changed, the druid and the creature that was probably an elf paused for a moment, then began moving in that same direction.

  After a few minutes, System, who had changed directions many times, finally confirmed that the two figures were targeting him.

  However, the two of them didn't seem to be flying very fast. Even though System wasn't flying at full speed, he slowly left the two figures behind.

  He made a quick decision. He decided to lead the druid and the elf to a gnoll vilge that was located about two hundred kilometers away.

  The gnolls and the elves had just experienced a war, and it was obviously impossible for System to let these two hostile beings follow him freely across the Warren Pins.

  As System flew toward the gnoll vilge, he began to sense something strange. Although his [Intuition] still gave him an uneasy feeling, the uneasiness felt very odd. There was a slight sense that his life was at risk, but mostly there was just an indescribable sort of feeling.

  After an hour, he had pulled away from the druid and the elf by about five kilometers. He could barely see them through the heavy rain from this distance.

  The druid and the elf suddenly stopped. They seemed to have given up on their chase.

  After they stopped, he finally learned why the two figures had been following him.

  His antennae picked up a strange voice coming from the distance. It was speaking in the Elvish nguage, which was one that System recognized, but couldn't understand at all.

  The message from the druid was peaceful and kind. Although System couldn't understand it, he was able to roughly deduce the meaning of the words.

  Perhaps because of the incomplete inheritance from the golden acorn, the other party had regarded System as a fellow druid who had transformed into a bird.

  Once the druid had realized that System was unwilling to meet them, he didn't try to force System to stop. The druid just sent him a friendly message before leaving.

  After the message was delivered, the two figures flew off, presumably to return to Lilt Forest.