After System calcuted the time, he realized that it had been more than half a year since Ying had showed up during his pupation. He didn't know when she would come back with those so-called insect companions of hers.

  "I hope she won't bring back any weird guys," System murmured to himself.

  He couldn't help but think of that awkward butterfly, Aura. Even though Aura had grown functional wings in the st year and a half, he still stayed in his chamber every day just like he used to.

  When his wings had been deformed, his biggest wish was that he could fly. Now that he was finally able to fly, he was too zy to actually do it.

  System, deep inside the nest, put down the clump of soil that he was holding in a tentacle and picked up a pnt seed that had already germinated.

  While he tested out his newly acquired [Data Tempte] ability, he thought about the recent zombie disaster in the Warren Pins.

  Wandering zombies had gathered together to attack a gnoll town. It was obvious that whatever had started this zombie disaster a year earlier wasn't over yet.

  "What on earth are the guys who gathered those zombies together trying to do? Is this the legendary undead disaster?"

  System's throat produced some hoarse sounds. In an instant, he remembered the plot of a video game that he'd pyed occasionally in his previous life.

  In that game, countless skeletons crawled up out of the ground and formed an army of undead that destroyed one town after another.

  The comrades who fought by your side in the town one moment would become undead creatures the next, standing back up from the ground to attack you with their bdes.

  "Will some high-level undead creatures in this world also inherit some of their memories from their previous lives?"

  When he thought about how the zombies' actions were extremely simir to how the creatures had acted when they were still alive, System felt that there was a high possibility that some of these undead creatures would retain their memories.

  He wasn't too worried about it, though. No matter what, there was almost no possibility of a conflict occurring between his colony and the undead.

  As long as whoever was controlling these undead creatures didn't make them cluster near System's nest, he wouldn't be affected.

  The zombies wouldn't actively attack insects, and they also didn't need to eat anything or compete with insects for resources.

  In some ways, the existence of these undead creatures had eliminated the upper yer of the food chain in the Warren Pins, which made it even easier for insects to develop.

  System had also been inspired by these undead. When the weather warmed up in spring, he would also eliminate some of the creatures in the upper yer of the food chain, such as the snakes that had been growing in number over the past year.

  ...

  A few minutes ter, System managed to successfully use [Data Tempte] on the newly sprouted pnt.

  Using [Data Tempte] consumed both System's energy and his experience points.

  He found that the consumption when he used [Data Tempte] on a pnt bud was significantly higher than when he used it on a block of soil, while it was only slightly higher than when he'd used it on mushrooms in his previous experiments.

  He guessed that the difference was likely because pnts and mushrooms were alive.

  Since he wasn't very familiar with his [Data Tempte] ability yet, System chose not to test it directly on his ant subjects. Instead, he first tried it out on some stones, soil, and pnts.

  His [Data Tempte] could target almost all inanimate objects, but it only had an effect when he used it on soil, pnts, fungi, or insects, which was simir to how his [Mental Transmission] ability worked.

  He could give some of the abilities in his [Tools Menu] to a target with [Data Tempte], such as the ability to record time and tell directions.

  After several experiments, he'd discovered that [Data Tempte] could be used to give abilities to soil and pnt seeds, but doing so had no obvious effect. He couldn't see any difference between the targets before and after he used the ability.

  If he broke a clump of soil into pieces after using [Data Tempte] on it, the [Data Tempte] would disappear, and the same thing happened when he chopped up pnt seeds that had a [Data Tempte].

  However, when System used the skill on a pnt seed that had already sprouted, the situation was somewhat different.

  When he plucked the sprout from the seed, the [Data Tempte] remained on the seed, while the removed sprout lost the ability.

  His guess was that whichever part was still alive would retain the [Data Tempte].

  As for the chopped mushrooms, whichever part was rger would keep the [Data Tempte], and the same was also true for slimes.

  ...

  But just after he used the druids' [Pnt Growth] skill on a seed, System sensed that the [Data Tempte] on the seed had undergone some special changes, which make System rethink his earlier assumptions about the skill.

  The effect of [Data Tempte] shouldn't be as simple as just granting the minor abilities in his [Tools Menu].

  System sensed the changes in the [Data Tempte] while continuing to use [Pnt Growth] on the seed. The pnt sprouting from the seed started to grow rapidly.

  Because there was no sunlight deep underground, the sprout stopped growing when it reached about five centimeters high.

  System put down the pnt that he'd just grown and took out another seed from the same pnt. He then applied a [Data Tempte] to the new seed.

  This time, System's experience consumption was ten times higher than when he'd activated the previous [Data Tempte].

  A few minutes ter, he successfully finished giving the seed a [Data Tempte], at which point he used his [Pnt Growth] ability again. The seed soon sprouted a pnt about five centimeters high just like the st one.

  System picked up the two seeds with his tentacles and started to compare them. As he'd expected, the pnts grown by the two seeds were extremely simir. The simirities weren't just because the seeds had come from the same pnt, however. Whether it was the thickness of the branches and the stem or the locations where the branches sprouted, the two pnts were almost identical.

  The only difference that he could find was that the leaf veins on a few leaves were a bit different in size.

  "Is this the right way to use the tempte?" System wondered to himself.

  The reason why the two pnts had become so simir was precisely because of System's [Data Tempte] ability.

  The way this skill worked wasn't difficult to understand. [Data Tempte] could change the way that experience points would be distributed as the pnt grew, forcing the pnt to match the growth of a tempte pnt as closely as possible.

  That was why the amount of experience consumed by System's [Data Tempte] on the second seed was so much higher than the one on the first seed. The second seen had been given a specific tempte to follow, while the first seed had grown naturally.

  It was just like the character temptes in an online game. Based on the race and css chosen, each level-up would produce a specific type of result.

  The warrior would gain more strength, the magician would gain more mana, and the thief would gain more agility.

  System's [Data Tempte] was also simir, and it could make the target's growth match the tempte that he'd set as closely as possible.

  System immediately thought of using this [Data Tempte] to control the growth of his ant subjects so that they would grow as strong as possible.

  However, his [Data Tempte] skill had a lot of shortcomings. It could only copy an ant's growth process exactly, and a [Data Tempte] must be given to each egg right after it was id by the queen in order for the skill to work.

  In addition, the experience value consumed when he created a tempte was much too high.

  Using a bnk [Data Tempte] on soil blocks consumed about one percent of his experience, while using one on pnt seeds consumed about three percent. However, giving pnt seeds a special [Data Tempte] to follow consumed a whopping thirty percent of his experience.

  The number of ant subjects was too rge, and it was impossible for System to afford that amount of experience consumption.