In the half month since the rainy season, System had greatly strengthened his [Pupation] talent, and it was now ninety percent of the way to level 16. He was only one step away from raising it to level 17, which meant that he would soon meet the conditions for his third pupation.

  However, he hadn't solved his fundamental problem. He still needed to figure out how to completely avoid any potential threats from druids and ratmen while he was pupating.

  System gave up on strengthening his physical abilities for the moment. He, along with Bck, starting spending more time studying the books that the ratman wizard had left behind, especially any books reted to pgues.

  While communication with Rafael and sacrifices were required in order to cast pgue spells, not all of the books about pgues were specifically about pgue spells.

  In fact, most of the books about pgues had nothing at all to do with pgue spells. Instead, they mainly contained research on various methods of cultivating pgues.

  Although a pgue spell could infect the target with a pgue instantly, the pgues caused by spells were at least ten times weaker than the pgues that the ratmen had developed themselves over the years.

  It was only after he'd read Lance's notes that System realized just how deadly and dangerous those bottles of pgue reagents that he drank actually were. Almost all of those pgues had been capable of killing gnolls or pigmen within a few hours.

  Fortunately for him, those pgues had almost no effect on insects.

  System's biggest gain from the ratman wizard had turned out to be a transparent cube about five centimeters wide on each side. The cube seemed to be made of a material simir to gss or crystal.

  At first, System had given the crystal cube to Shava to py with. However, after he learned the ratman nguage, he'd realized that this square thing was actually a magic item. When activated, it pyed a role simir to a microscope and made it possible to observe extremely tiny things.

  This magic cube could be activated with most types of energy. System could activate it by using his frost energy or druidic nature power, but the energy that powered his [Perception] and [Mental Transmission] abilities didn't have any effect on the cube.

  This was also the reason why System hadn't discovered that the cube was a magic item.

  In addition to the magic cube, System still hadn't figured out how to use the skull props that could produce illusions. He guessed that he would need to communicate with Rafael and obtain some special kind of power in order to use them.

  ...

  System first viewed his [Pgue Mucus] through the magic microscope, then observed his blood, some mushrooms, and the various types of slimes that he was studying one after another.

  He discovered that the microorganisms that were joined together to form slimes weren't all that different from fungi. As soon as he learned this, he decided to use the ratmen's pgue-breeding technology to try to change the shape of slimes to be more like mushrooms. To be precise, he wanted to deprive slimes of their ability to jump around so that they had no choice but to obediently be used as food.

  But System had been too presumptuous. Although slimes had a simple shape and structure, they weren't insects that could be investigated with [Perception] or modified with his [Insect Ability Activation].

  System was forced to run a rge number of experiments using the ratmen's methods of pgue cultivation. After several days spent attempting to figure out how to transform the slimes, there were no results. His slime test subjects were still hopping around.

  However, at one point during his experiments, System had accidentally allowed a slime to swallow one of the luminescent mushrooms that he was cultivating. After eating the mushroom, the slime had produced a short burst of bright light, just like a camera fsh.

  Whenever he was bored these days, System tried to understand the principle behind the slime's fsh. However, the fsh had only appeared once. After that, nothing he tried was able to make the slime emit another fsh of light.

  Even when he looked over the video data in his [Tools Menu], System didn't find any clues. It seemed that the slime's fsh of light at that time was only a coincidence.

  In System's final analysis, the slime's ability to emit a bright fsh of light wasn't of any obvious use to him.

  That why today, after he fiddled with his experiment again without any signs of progress, he ended up eating his slime research subject along with some of the luminescent mushrooms.

  System finally gave up on this useless research.

  ...

  As System had expected, the gradually decreasing rainfall only continued for another four days, after which the rainy season that had sted for a total of twenty days finally ended.

  After the rain stopped, the sky cleared up, and the warm, humid air felt very comfortable to the various insects living in the grassnd.

  System could finally use his [System's Eye] to observe distant things while flying in the sky. The rain had been too strong in recent weeks, and it had blocked his line of sight.

  The ratman gathering pce more than a hundred kilometers to the west was completely silent. Calm water covered the entire area, and it looked like the entire ratman gathering pce had been flooded by the rain.

  The higher slopes a few kilometers away from the gathering pce had avoided any flooding. System saw some muddy footprints around several of the warren entrances, and it appeared that some of the ratmen were still alive.

  When System looked over at Lilt Forest to the east, he saw that the elves were the same as always. The accumuted rain didn't have much of an impact on them. Most of them were still leisurely staying inside their tree houses, while some of the elves were swimming happily in the water with leopards.

  Caw!

  A loud bird cry interrupted System's thoughts. Grasshoppers were born with an instinctive fear of birds. Even if ordinary birds were no longer able to threaten System, his heartbeat would still speed up when he saw or heard them.

  The source of this cry was one of the bck eagles that were commonly seen on the grassnd. This bck eagle seemed to have discovered System flying in the air and fled in panic.

  'Is it the one that got away st time?'

  As the overlord of the grassnd sky, these bck eagles wouldn't take the initiative to flee even if they saw System's strange appearance. At most, they wouldn't attack him. However, this bck eagle was obviously terrified of him.

  System didn't bother chasing after the fleeing bck eagle. He slowly descended from the sky and returned to the nest.

  ...

  Everything around him had calmed down. The ratmen nearby weren't making any obvious movements, and neither were the elves over in Lilt Forest. His [Intuition] also hadn't given him any uneasy feelings tely.

  Perhaps his [Intuition] could only detect things that would happen in the near future, and the ratmen or druids might have already located his nest.

  But where in this world could one be absolutely safe?

  Even back in Lilt Forest, when System had been incredibly careful before he molted, he'd still ended up facing much more danger than he was now. There would always be various dangers in this world, and he couldn't just sit around waiting forever.

  System decided that he would undergo his third pupation in the near future.

  The water level on the grassnd that had risen to half a meter deep fell very quickly. System estimated that the standing water would be completely gone after another half a month.

  If there was no activity from the ratmen or elves by the time the rain fully receded, and his [Intuition] still wasn't giving him any warnings, System would go ahead and begin his third pupation. He was eager to break the level lock and become a magical creature.

  In the past ten days, System had decided to have Excavator dig a very deep chamber, at least several dozen meters beneath the surface, where he could safely undergo his pupation.

  Although groundwater would start seeping in as long as they dug more than ten meters deep, System believed that Excavator would be able to easily solve that problem.