"Well, I was scared. I was scared that you wouldn't come back."

  There was nothing held back in Bck's mental message. As always, she pinly expressed her inner thoughts.

  Bck paused for a moment before sending System a series of mental messages.

  "Linda, Excavator, Little Strong, and the others were also very worried. They all came to ask me when you would come back."

  "I didn't know whether you would come back or not, but I told them that you would definitely come back and that you would be back soon."

  "I don't know why I did it."

  "They all believed me, but I knew it wasn't true. I became even more scared."

  "King, was this the 'lie' you taught me back then that I couldn't learn?"

  Bck stretched out her fingers and stroked the cold carapace on her chest hard, as if she wanted to break it open.

  "King, why do I feel so uncomfortable here when I lie?"

  System reached out and rubbed her head with one of his tentacles.

  "Slowly, you will grow to understand."

  System left her with only that sentence, escaping on the pretext of needing to study the centipede demon that he was carrying back to the nest. He couldn't give Bck an answer, nor did he want to.

  He shook his head helplessly. He couldn't help but think of the oath that he'd sworn to Shava after she'd saved his life during his third metamorphosis—"As long as I'm here, I'll be your king."

  Ever since that day, System had shouldered an invisible responsibility. Today, Bck's words had caused him to feel the weight of responsibility on his shoulders more heavily than ever before.

  In the past, he'd only had some guesses, but he was now sure that if he died or disappeared, his ant subjects would also be doomed to die.

  System suddenly felt that his life no longer belonged to himself, but to his ant subjects. He couldn't disappear for no reason, let alone die.

  This made him feel very depressed.

  He actually wanted to shout out loud, "After I die, I don't care about the floods and the raging heavens!"

  But he wasn't that kind of person.

  Perhaps it was because of this that when he'd first woken up in this world, he had already forgotten his retives and friends from his previous life, only remembering some insignificant details.

  System shook his head again. He carried the little centipede into the nest and pondered what kind of experiment to do with the centipede demon.

  While walking, he suddenly saw the chamber where Aura lived and couldn't help but enter it.

  Aura was moving around the gold coins with his feet, spreading them across the floor little by little. It seemed like he wanted to spread the gold coins on the ground to use as golden floor tiles.

  The butterfly pced the gold coins very neatly. In order to adjust the coins more perfectly, he tried his best to orient the designs on each gold coin exactly the same way.

  System turned to Aura and casually sent a mental message.

  "If I could live as heartlessly as you, maybe I would be much more rexed."

  As usual, Aura responded with a disdainful emotion and didn't say anything, instead continuing to happily fiddle with his gold coins.

  System left Aura's chamber. After seeing the butterfly pying happily with his gold coins, System felt surprisingly relieved.

  He had just spoken to the Lord of Gciers, who had once ruled over countless frost creatures. Although Aura had become a weak and tiny butterfly, he was still very happy. If he could be happy after that, why should System keep worrying so much?

  System readjusted his tentacles around the struggling centipede demon, then started walking toward Meatball's chamber after an idea suddenly came to him.

  Perhaps he could let Meatball eat this centipede demon. If Meatball could use [Devour] to master the demon's ability, maybe System would be able to infer backwards to find out how the centipede demons had appeared.

  ...

  Nearly twenty days passed in a fsh, and System's life in the nest didn't change much.

  In the past ten days, the number of centipede demons in Warren Pins had increased significantly.

  However, because System had ordered his ant subjects to stay at least twenty meters below the surface, which was outside of the centipede demon's sensing range, and Excavator had blocked the entrance to the nest, leaving only some narrow ventition holes, no centipede demons had invaded the nest recently.

  System, Shava, and Meatball had caught a lot of centipede demons in recent days and conducted numerous experiments. Unfortunately, most of those experiments had failed.

  The most successful experiment was one where System had created a big insect devil.

  He had gathered seven or eight centipede demons together, resulting in them fighting each other until one survived. After eating the corpses, the final victor had grown into a three-meter-long giant centipede demon.

  Three meters seemed to have been the limit of the centipede demon's growth. At that point, its movements had become slow, and its desire for destruction had greatly reduced.

  The giant centipede demon had seemed to exude a unique aura. Other centipede demons hadn't attacked it after sensing it. Instead, all of them had run away.

  Just over ten minutes after the centipede demon had grown to three meters in size, its body had begun to twitch violently. Its flesh had rapidly contracted and squirmed for roughly half a minute before finally solidifying into a brown tumor.

  Soon after the tumor formed, it broke open, and a big insect devil about 1.8 meters tall crawled out.

  The big insect devil looked simir to the little insect devils, only it seemed even more ferocious, with sharp spikes erupting from the carapace covering its limbs.

  According to [Probe and Analyze], the demon's combat power was in the 30-50 range, and it should be a magical creature with the ability to emit fmes.

  Right after bursting out of the tumor, the big insect devil spit out a steady stream of football-sized fire bombs at System. However, the fire bombs didn't travel very fast, and with System's [Intuition] ability, he had already been prepared even before the insect demon started attacking. Its fire bombs couldn't threaten him at all.

  As the fight with the insect demon progressed, System discovered another of its abilities.

  Just as ratmen could control rats and gnolls could control wolves, this big insect devil could control centipede demons.

  It was precisely because of the big insect devil's ability to control centipede demons that it was able to successfully nd a sneak attack on Shava's body once.

  However, its first hit was also its st. After that, Shava quickly dealt with all of the centipede demons summoned by the big insect devil.

  The insect demon's following actions greatly exceeded System's expectations. After discovering that its opponent was powerful and unbeatable, the insect demon suddenly knelt down on the ground, trembling all over as if begging for mercy.

  Just after System accepted the demon's surrender, pnning to learn the nguage of the Abyss from it like he had with the ratmen prisoners, the big insect devil suddenly leaped up from the ground and attacked System.

  Although the insect demon was chopped in half by Shava before it could reach him, it was still able to successfully spsh System with its blood.

  The demon's grim smile when it died troubled System.

  This event had given him a deeper understanding of demons from the Abyss. Just as the sleeping ice spirit Nellis had said, demons were chaotic and treacherous.