The only ones left in System's nest were him, fourteen ants that had pupated twice, one ordinary soldier ant, Meatball, Aura, and about a dozen of his old slime friends.

  After a year and a half of Excavator's digging, the entire underground nest now occupied nearly two hundred meters of space, with well-developed passages and countless chambers everywhere.

  According to Bck's description, the strength of Excavator's ability had increased by more than ten times in the past year and a half, which was why the progress of expanding the nest had gone so fast.

  Between the expansion and the loss of so many of System's ant subjects, the huge nest seemed extremely empty.

  Because of her [Mental Connection] ability, Queen Linda had repced System as the slime breeder and often took care of the slimes.

  Although the queen had the activated her [Mental Connection] ability long ago, System remembered her proficiency with it being very low. She was able to communicate with insects, but she couldn't form a connection with fungi at all.

  It seemed that after the queen had emerged from her pupa, her [Mental Connection] ability had been improved, and she could now control the slime friends just like System.

  ...

  System quickly followed Bck and several ant knights into the queen's chamber.

  Right after her second pupation, the shape of Queen Linda's body had been almost the same as before. Her head and thorax were very small, and her abdomen was extremely huge.

  She'd grown tremendously in the months since then, and her body was now nearly ten times rger than before. Her head and thorax were nearly half a meter long, while her abdomen was extremely bloated, and was now close to two and a half meters long, making her full length reach about three meters.

  When System first walked into Queen Linda's chamber, she was pying with some of his old slime friends.

  The queen was lying on the ground and appeared to be very bored. She kept commanding four slimes to split and combine back together over and over again. She then had the slimes jump in circles around a small mound of earth.

  System could feel some pleasant emotions from the queen. Even after pying with slimes for more than a year, Queen Linda still found them very interesting.

  However, when the queen saw System, she immediately cast those old slime friends aside.

  "King, seeing you. I'm, happy."

  Like most of System's ant knights, Queen Linda's mental messages still weren't very smooth. Her communication skills were a little better than before her second pupation, but her messages were still awkward.

  It seemed like the ant queen's second pupation hadn't improved her intelligence too much.

  When she saw System arrive, the queen moved her bloated body, wanting to get closer to him, but she was so massive that it was very difficult for her to move.

  Seeing this, System moved closer to her and rubbed her head with his tentacles.

  While touching her head, he keenly picked up on a hint of hostility from the queen. This hostile emotion wasn't targeted at him, but at Bck, who was standing next to him.

  System soon discovered that not only was Queen Linda hostile to Bck, but Bck also felt a bit of hostility toward the queen.

  Obviously, something must have happened between the two of them during this year and a half.

  After he thought for a moment, System sent a mental message to Queen Linda.

  "What happened between you and Bck? Is it because of the egg-ying? It was my decision to stop you from ying eggs during this period, and Bck was only reying my orders."

  However, the situation was obviously nothing like he'd imagined. Queen Linda sent back a mental message, "Not about eggs, no. It's Bck. She won't let me, go see you."

  The mental message from the queen seemed very aggrieved, and System also understood the reason that she was hostile toward Bck.

  Although the passage eighty meters underground was narrow, it would have been simple for Excavator, with her much improved abilities, to expand the passage enough for Linda to pass through easily.

  And with Little Strong's [Strong Body] talent, it wouldn't be difficult in theory for her to carry the barely-mobile queen over to visit System's pupation chamber.

  System turned to look at Bck. Bck didn't make any excuses and answered simply and clearly, "Only she has the [Mental Connection] ability and could sense your emotions while you were unconscious. None of us have it, so I didn't want her to visit you."

  The logic in Bck's words amazed System. Only Bck could use her jealousy as an excuse and say something like that with such confidence.

  Although System knew that Bck had felt some jealousy toward the queen before, he didn't expect that after Bck gained power, she would bully Queen Linda like this.

  Even without Shava's help, perhaps Bck could have simply relied on her own wisdom to dominate the nest's affairs. The queen likely wouldn't have been able to resist.

  System had always been partial to the smart Bck. Apart from Shava, he usually cared about Bck the most.

  However, this time, when he looked at the aggrieved queen ant, System finally sighed helplessly, then criticized and educated Bck.

  In fact, if Queen Linda were allowed to go to the empty chamber where he was pupating a few more times, she might have been able to use her [Mental Connection] ability to connect to him when he was awake.

  If that had happened, he wouldn't have been ignorant of the outside world during his third pupation.

  ...

  However, System only criticized Bck for a short while, because he could sense that there was a problem from the tone of Bck's mental messages. He set aside his criticisms and instead asked about what had happened during his long absence.

  During the one and a half years of his pupation, the situation in the Warren Pins seemed to have gotten a little weird. Through the mental images that Bck sent him, System found that many strange-looking wild wolves, ratmen, and gnolls had shown up in the Warren Pins.

  "Is that...a zombie?" System sent a confused mental message.

  "I don't know. Aura said he was familiar with those guys, but he forgot what they were. Shava and Meatball caught them several times. Their rotten meat is somewhat poisonous to us, so only Meatball can eat those things."

  "When did they first show up?" System asked.

  Bck thought for a while and replied, "Last winter, after it snowed, we found a wild wolf like that wandering around here. Later, Meatball killed it."

  System didn't keep asking questions. He decided to go ahead and take Shava up to the surface to look around.

  ...

  The Warren Pins had entered the deep winter season, but the weather wasn't particurly cold, only around zero degrees Celsius.

  There was no snow on the ground. Although the grass and pnts were obviously not as lush as they usually were in the summer, they weren't completely dead.

  System's antennae picked up a faint hint of decay, like the smell of a corpse that had been rotting for a long time.

  When he flew into the sky, he took a quick look toward the east, in the direction of Lilt Forest. A yer of light green mist covered the forest, making it difficult for him to see the forest's interior. At the same time, he saw countless giant vines covered with thorns growing near the forest's border.

  These giant vines intertwined with each other, like a wall, completely separating Lilt Forest from the Warren Pins.