As he watched the Death Knight fight the centipede demons, System noticed something strange.

  Centipede demons would typically start fighting as long as they came within twenty meters of each other, but these centipede demons that had suddenly emerged from the ground weren't fighting each other. Instead, they were all attacking the Death Knight together. It was obvious that they were being controlled by an insect demon.

  The facts soon confirmed System's thoughts.

  During the battle between the Death Knight and the centipede demons, there was a sudden fiery explosion.

  An insect demon roughly two and a half meters tall had used some sort of fme power to unch a sneak attack, bsting the Death Knight off of its skeletal warhorse.

  However, the Death Knight didn't suffer any serious injuries after being blown away. After shaking its head, it instantly returned to the battle.

  Because he didn't dare to get any closer, System couldn't use [Probe and Analyze] to check the combat power of the two creatures. He could only make a rough estimate that the battle between the insect demon and the Death Knight seemed to slightly favor the Death Knight.

  It was only because more centipede demons were constantly emerging from the ground to attack the Death Knight that the battle remained in a stalemate.

  A few minutes ter, when System turned back to the battle after briefly scanning the nearby area for threats, he saw that the Death Knight's sword had already chopped the insect demon's head off.

  With the insect demon's death, the surviving centipede demons immediately regained their chaotic nature and began fighting each other.

  The Death Knight didn't pay any attention to these centipede demons that only knew how to kill. Its white sword slowly began emitting a yer of bck light. The Death Knight swung its sword to tear open the colpsed underground space, then moved into a previously hidden underground passage.

  Because System could only watch at a distance from the sky, he didn't know what the Death Knight was doing underground.

  More than ten minutes ter, the Death Knight jumped out from the underground space. It stretched out its right hand, which began to shine with a beautiful blue light. Soon, a brand new skeletal warhorse surrounded by blue fmes appeared from out of nowhere.

  After mounting the brand new skeletal warhorse, the Death Knight quickly rode away.

  The remains of the skeletal warhorse that had been shattered by the centipede demons' attacks had instantly colpsed into ordinary broken bones when the Death Knight's new warhorse had appeared.

  System watched the Death Knight gradually ride into the distance, but didn't choose to follow him. He wanted to explore the underground space.

  If his guess was correct, this should be the centipede demons' nest that he'd spent so much time looking for, but had never been able to find.

  After flying south for a while, System reached Shava, who had been waiting five kilometers away. He had decided to take her with him into the demon nest.

  His pursuit of the Death Knight had been a spontaneous idea, and he hadn't brought Shava with him while out on his earlier routine patrol. However, because Shava had the ability to sense him, as long as she realized that he was too far away and hadn't returned for a long time, she would take the initiative to rush in his direction.

  It was for this reason that System had asked Shava to keep a distance of five kilometers from the Death Knight while tracking him, warning her to be careful and hide so as not to be discovered.

  ...

  Although the Death Knight was now far away, there were still some small demon centipedes ranging from several centimeters to more than twenty centimeters long in the soil around the nest. Because they were no longer being controlled by the insect demon, these small demon centipedes were biting each other madly.

  System knew that unless these centipede demons could grow into three-meter-long giant centipedes after killing and devouring each other, there could only be one survivor among them.

  He ignored the centipede demons, since they generally wouldn't attack other creatures until they'd finished killing each other.

  System moved over to the skeletal warhorse's scattered bones, stretched out his tentacles, and popped one of the bones into his mouth. However, he quickly spit it right back out.

  Compared to zombie meat, the taste of the skeletal warhorse's bone was even worse. It was several times more unpatable than zombie meat.

  System even felt like rinsing his mouth with clean water.

  It seemed like this undead creature couldn't be used as food at all.

  He turned his eyes away from the scattered bones and looked at the reddish-brown fleshy roots in the soil that looked like tree roots. While they seemed like they would be soft, the roots were in fact extremely hard.

  System's [Mental Transmission] could sense faint emotions from the fleshy roots, which seemed like those of pnts.

  He tore off a small piece of a fleshy root and put it in his mouth. Although it tasted sweet and spicy, the fvor was very light.

  The fleshy roots were dense and firmly rooted in the soil. They seemed to be absorbing nutrients from the dead and injured centipede demons.

  System saw that when the roots were spshed with centipede demon blood, they absorbed the blood in a short time. If the corpse of a centipede demon appeared next to the fleshy roots, the roots would quickly entangle the body like vines, as if to absorb and recycle it.

  System observed for a while without finding anything else of note, so he headed into the depths of the demon nest with Shava.

  The deeper inside the nest they went, the more severe the sulfur smell grew, and the more battling centipede demons and centipede demon corpses appeared.

  After entering the depths of the demon nest, System finally reached the part of the nest that the Death Knight had destroyed. He saw a giant, broken tumor with a diameter of several meters, and reddish-brown flesh and blood was scattered all over the ground.

  Before the Death Knight destroyed this demon nest, it had probably looked like a potato or sweet potato sprouting from the nd, only with many more roots than usual extending out from it.

  System picked up a small piece of flesh and put it in his mouth. In addition to the expected sweet and spicy fvor, the scattered flesh also contained the foulness typical of undead creatures.

  The Death Knight seemed to have used its power as an undead creature to pollute the flesh and blood.

  Because of the demon insect nest's destruction, there were many reddish-brown insect eggs among the scattered pieces of meat. System looked around and found that there were at least thousands of eggs.

  Perhaps the Death Knight had thought that the insect eggs weren't very threatening, so it hadn't cleaned them up, or maybe it had been in a hurry to destroy another demon insect nest. Whatever the reason, most of the eggs were still alive.

  System extended his tentacles and casually picked up an egg. After using his tentacles' [Perception] ability and finding nothing abnormal, he used [Mental Transmission] to try to communicate with the centipede eggs.

  Unlike the centipede demons that had already hatched, the emotions produced by these centipede eggs weren't particurly violent and could be affected by System's mental messages.

  However, after some experiments, he found that this effect was extremely weak. It was basically impossible to brainwash these centipede eggs like he'd brainwashed ant eggs.

  ...

  However, just when System was about to leave after deciding there was nothing valuable there, he suddenly detected a very subtle emotion in the pile of minced meat, as if something was calling for help.

  The thing sending out the pintive emotion didn't seem to be an insect egg, but something more like a pnt.