'The toxicity isn't very strong, and the experience points provided are also okay. If I was really hungry, I guess it could be considered food, but that taste was really terrible.'

  After he spit out the gnoll's rotten meat, System thought for a while, then tore off and started chewing on another piece of its flesh. He wanted to make a better analysis of this zombie meat.

  Although the flesh and blood of the undead creatures in this world were a bit unpatable and toxic, they weren't completely fatal to living creatures. At least, they didn't seem to be fatal to insects.

  Life and death always coexisted with each other. Even undead creatures that represented death couldn't avoid that fact. There were many germs living on the bodies of these undead creatures, and those germs were still alive and well.

  In terms of taste, rotten zombie flesh was a bit like stinky tofu. If it had been salty, System may even have been able to accept it.

  Unfortunately, zombie meat tasted sweet, and the taste reminded System of an infamous fruit from his previous life—durian.

  System tried to eat another small piece, but he still couldn't accept how it tasted.

  [Slime-Body Transformation] activated!

  System modified two of his tentacles using this new power that he'd gained in his third pupation. It took a little more than ten seconds for the two tentacles to fully transform into dark-purple slime tentacles made of [Pgue Mucus]. He then wrapped these slime tentacles around the gnoll zombie's body.

  System was able to use his [Slime-Body Transformation] ability easily, but it took a little longer to perform than he would have liked. It took more than ten seconds to complete the transformation, which was too long for the ability to work for System's goal of ignoring physical attacks.

  And this ability also couldn't transform his entire body into slime. Currently, it could only transform about five percent of his body at a time, which was only about four tentacles.

  But no matter what, this ability to transform his body into slime would once again strengthen his recovery ability.

  When his body got injured, he could repair it by converting the wounded parts into slime, then converting the slime back into his normal body. He would lose less health if he recovered using this method than if he used [Super-Speed Regeneration] or [Limb Reattachment].

  Most importantly, System had only just obtained his [Slime-Body Transformation] ability. As long as he continued to strengthen it in the future, he would definitely be able to convert his entire body into slime at will one day.

  Without thinking further, System assimited the bacteria inside the gnoll's body into the [Pgue Mucus] that had been used to form his slime tentacles. When the infected pus came into contact with his [Pgue Mucus], the dark-purple pus quickly turned into the same slime as his [Pgue Mucus].

  After five minutes, System's slime tentacles had grown to three times their original size, and all of the zombie's pgue bacteria had been assimited into System's body.

  System's two slime tentacles returned to their original state. At the same time, by recycling the excess [Pgue Mucus], System's health increased from 80% to 91%, and his experience bar also increased by five percent.

  After the pgue bacteria was removed from the gnoll zombie's body, its rotten meat became extremely soft and fragile. As long as System touched it slightly, the remaining rotten meat would instantly fall off of the corpse's bones.

  It seemed that any gnoll zombies encountering System's ability would quickly transform from gnoll zombies into gnoll skeletons.

  However, System wasn't sure whether these zombies could survive the process of being transformed into skeletons by his tentacles. He needed more subjects to experiment on.

  System once again ate a small piece of the gnoll's rotten meat.

  Without the pgue bacteria, the rotten meat tasted a little less sweet, and the stench was about the same as before. The taste was still unpatable, and the amount of experience provided was lower.

  System threw away the zombie flesh that he was holding and looked at Shava, who seemed bored. He asked, "Will slimes eat this kind of rotten meat?"

  Shava looked confused and thought for a long time before responding, "Whether slimes will eat this rotten meat...Bck knows, and Linda should know, too."

  'Why did I even ask...?' System shook his head helplessly and decided to ask her an easier question. "Forget it. What have you eaten in the past year?"

  "Toads, slimes, snakes, small insects...and bck birds."

  This time, Shava's answer was very quick, and she also gave him a long list. It seemed that while System was pupating, although there were some major changes in the Warren Pins, the lives of the ants hadn't been significantly affected.

  "After the heavy rain this summer, were there as many toads as st year?"

  "Yes, there were a lot. Bck also took me to many of the pces where toads hide."

  When he heard Shava's answer, System guessed that whatever was creating the undead creatures in the Warren Pins had no effect on toads, which meant that it was also likely that it had no effect on other cold-blooded animals.

  ...

  After he chatted with Shava for a while, System flew back into the sky to continue looking around.

  He specuted that the undead creatures currently infesting the Warren Pins were likely the creations of a necromancer or lich. The pgue bacteria could easily be released into a water source, which would produce a rge number of corpses, thus creating a rge number of undead.

  But System wasn't very clear about what had truly happened to cause the zombie epidemic. He needed to conduct a more thorough investigation.

  But no matter what, the disaster happening in the Warren Pins today was undoubtedly good news for System and his subjects.

  The elves of Lilt Forest had taken the initiative to seal off passage to the Warren Pins, and after a year and a half, those druids shouldn't come looking for him again.

  The threat from the ratmen that System had been worried about no longer existed. The ratmen couldn't even protect themselves now, so they were definitely not in any position to bother him for no good reason.

  The Warren Pins still had sufficient food for System's colony, and his ant subjects could breed and grow with peace of mind.

  ...

  System kept looking around from the sky, and he soon found more than a dozen undead creatures simir to the gnoll zombie within a range of ten kilometers.

  In total, he saw another gnoll zombie, a ratman zombie, two zombie wolves, and ten zombie antelopes.

  According to Shava's description, she'd found a living rat a few days earlier.

  However, after searching for nearly an hour, System didn't find any signs of the rat that Shava recalled seeing.

  Because of the existence of these undead creatures, System wanted to find a small warm-blooded animal to conduct experiments on. He wanted to know if the undead creatures would actively attack warm-blooded animals.

  But now it seemed that finding any surviving small animals would have to be left up to fate.