Law of the Swarm

Chapter 62 The Second Pupation of Shava

After transforming into [Frost Form], System could clearly feel the free frost energy in the forest, which was much clearer than in the normal form.

He can simply manipulate these energies, causing them to condense and form snowflakes, just like the snowflakes he saw at a thousand-meter altitude.

At the same time, he can also control these frosty energies to enter his body, and convert them into experience points more efficiently.

System discovered that through the contract with the ice elf, his experience bar had reached 12% of level 98 without knowing it.

If he didn't use the [Ability Strengthening Technique] to consume these experience points, he would be able to rise to level 13 in less than a day just by absorbing the free frost energy in the air.

After changing into [Frost Form], the ice elf Nellis successfully regained consciousness.

However, System found that when his [Frost Form] was released, along with the disappearance of the ice-blue halo above his head, Nellis would also lose his movement as a result, as if he had entered a deep sleep.

According to Nellis, this is a means for the ice elves to reduce physical consumption.

After making a contract with the living beings, they will sleep most of the time.

……

Nellis would fall into a deep sleep most of the time outside of [Frost Form], which made System very satisfied. After all, it was too strange for an ice blue halo to appear on the head of a grasshopper.

It would be fine if it was daytime, but at night when such a blue light appeared above his head, System felt very uncomfortable just thinking about it.

Feeling his own body, System discovered that after the contract with Nellis, his body had undergone some special changes.

The roots of his tentacles became slightly itchy, and special nutrients were produced in the blood of his body, and these nutrients were gathered into his tentacles.

System discovered that the tentacles on his body were beginning to grow again, and at the base of the foot with only two tentacles, there was a third tentacle granulation.

It seems that the tentacles on each of his legs have to be complemented by three, a total of eighteen, and each tentacle will continue to develop until it becomes 30 centimeters in length and half a centimeter in thickness.

This kind of change occurred in System's body, System felt that it should be his new ability [Ice Spike] in [Frost Form].

[Ice Spikes] will produce ice spikes at the end of System's tentacles. Perhaps it is this ability that drives System's [Regeneration of Severed Limbs] and [Insect Adaptation] to keep his body going. Mutated to make his body more adaptable to the environment and increase his ability to survive.

Using [Perception] to feel the unique information in his blood, System learned more about the secondary development of the tentacles.

If this variation reaches the limit and the growing tentacles tend to be stable, he will completely lose the opportunity to re-grow the grasshopper's legs, and the legs will be completely replaced by tentacles.

However, it is not impossible for System to stop the changes that are taking place in his body.

System has a feeling that as long as he breaks off all his tentacles from the root with his fangs, he can stop this change in his body.

When he breaks these tentacles, his [Regeneration of Severed Limbs] will be able to function normally. As long as there are enough nutrients, he will no longer grow tentacles, and re-grow the exoskeleton of his limbs, allowing him to turn back into a grasshopper The original appearance of six legs.

……

After some consideration and choice, System finally let go of the changes in his tentacles.

Although the dozens of tentacles growing out of the body are not in line with System's aesthetics, the grasshopper's six ferocious exoskeleton legs are not much better, and the appearance is equally ugly.

So after consideration, System decided to keep these flexible and versatile tentacles.

The only pity is the grasshopper's strong and bouncing thighs.

But after his wings grow back and he has the ability to fly, the grasshopper's ability to bounce is not so important.

After briefly feeling the tentacles of his body, System went on the road again. Before it was completely dark, he finally managed to return to the top of the temporary lair covered by ice and snow.

Just like System used [Intuition] premonition and [Mind Teleportation] ability to perceive before, System found that besides Shava, only two of the nearly twenty ants he raised still had consciousness. .

One is the female ant that he has been focusing on cultivating, and the other should be a worker ant.

Shawar's mental fluctuations seemed a bit strange. Although she still had a certain degree of consciousness, she seemed to have lost the ability to sort out language with mental information, and could only convey some joyful emotions like ordinary ants.

After finding the right direction, System immediately began to clear the snow above the temporary lair with his tentacles.

It's a pity that System is not good at digging by nature, neither the grasshopper's body nor System himself is very good at digging.

With fifteen flexible tentacles, it took System three hours to successfully dig from above the snow to the entrance of the temporary lair. The loose, sandy snow slowed down the digging speed. not come up.

Pushing aside the soft snow at the entrance of the cave, System entered the passage of the temporary lair.

Some shimmering mushrooms left in the passageway in the temporary nest have lost their light. It seems that these mushrooms have not fully grown to their limit before they stopped growing due to the cold.

These mushrooms were not completely dead. System could feel the weak mood swings of the fungi in the mushrooms through [Mind Teleportation]. Nearly one tenth of the mushroom fungi were still alive and had just entered a dormant state.

But compared to mushrooms, System's ant people were not so lucky.

This temporary nest was widened according to his body shape, and the depth of the nest was only one and a half meters, so the cold could easily invade it.

In the nest passage less than half a meter deep, System found the corpses of five worker ants. The IQ of the worker ants is so low that they may not understand that the empty chamber in the nest is warmer than the colder passage. Some.

But the temperature in the empty room was not that high. It didn't take long for System to find the corpses of three ant larvae and a mature worker ant in an empty room. They were crowded in the corner of the empty room and eventually died. Lost.

Continuing to search the empty rooms of the temporary nest, System found more ant corpses, as well as the female ant and another worker ant that survived in the nest.

They have all undergone [pupation] and become a pupa state.

Among them, the pupa of the female ant is seven or eight times larger than that of the worker ant. It seems that the female ant larva has eaten a lot of things in these days.

System used the tentacles to conduct a simple inspection of the female ant and the worker ant, and found that the two surviving ant pupae also possessed an ability similar to [cold resistance].

System speculates that the ant encountered cold weather during the process of [pupation], thus activating the body's ability to fight against the cold.

After placing the pupae of the female ant and the worker ant, it didn't take long for System to find Shava in the empty room of the mouse's corpse.

One-third of the dead rats in the empty room had disappeared, and it was not known whether Shava ate them alone or shared the dead rats with numerous ant larvae.

And looking at Shava's current appearance, System also understood why Shava could not clearly respond to his spiritual messages.

Shava has obviously entered the second pupation, the exoskeleton of her body has softened completely, forming a huge pupa of about twelve centimeters.

But the chrysalis formed by Shava was not complete, the skin of the chrysalis was rough and deformed, and there was a diamond-shaped gap about three centimeters in the chrysalis, from which some white juice flowed out.

The internal heartbeat of the sava pupae is also very abnormal, beating irregularly, sometimes stopping beating, and sometimes beating several times in a row.

Fortunately, due to the cold weather, the white juice in the gap of the chrysalis was frozen without flowing too much, otherwise Shava might have died because of the failed second pupation...

(End of this chapter)