When System tested his [Data Tempte] ability on a few ant eggs, he found that the energy and experience consumption was higher than when he used it on pnt seeds.

  The consumption when he gave an egg a bnk [Data Tempte] wasn't all that different from when he gave one to a pnt seed, and it only consumed about three percent of his experience bar. However, when he gave an egg a tempte to follow that contained another egg growing into a rva, the experience consumption increased by anywhere between several times and dozens of times that amount.

  The higher the level of the ant copied by the [Data Tempte], the more experience it consumed.

  For now, unless he farmed many zombies for experience, it would take him at least a few days to accumute enough experience to raise a single ant according to a specific tempte.

  Unless the target was an extremely gifted ant, System simply couldn't afford use this ability.

  In addition, even if the growth tempte of one ant was forcibly applied to another, the target ant's body and bloodline may not have sufficient potential to follow the recorded tempte, which would lead to unexpected or poor results.

  ...

  However, although his [Data Tempte] talent consumed too much energy, the [Tools Menu] that came with a bnk [Data Tempte] still pyed a big role for his most intelligent ant subjects.

  System wasn't stingy, and he soon gave temptes to more than a dozen ants that had pupated twice, including Shava and Bck.

  The [Tools Menu] that his ant subjects had access to was much simpler than his own [Tools Menu]. The ants couldn't store images, watch videos, or view their personal information. There were only some simple apps that System had compiled using [Data Compition].

  The ants had access to apps that could do things like tell the time, get directions, measure distance, track the temperature, and do calcutions, along with some simple games that System had compiled when he was bored during his third pupation.

  System thought that his ant subjects would be curious about the games and would try to py them. However, except for Bck, who was much smarter than the others, none of the other ants tried to py any of the games. Their wisdom was still very limited. It was difficult for them to even understand how to tell the time by using a simple clock app, let alone learn how to py any complicated games.

  As for Shava, the only other ant who was smart enough to understand the games, she didn't want to py them because she'd found a different treasure in the [Tools Menu]—the calcutor.

  As soon as she understood the principle behind the calcutor, Shava started to frequently pester System until he gave in and asked her math questions. However, she only wanted him to give her addition and subtraction problems that used numbers below six, which he found incredibly annoying.

  System decisively chose to increase the difficulty of the questions, and he turned the simple addition and subtraction problems that Shava requested into retively more complex word problems.

  For example, there were 31 grass seeds in a pile. Today, 5 were eaten. Tomorrow, 8 new seeds were added to the pile, then 15 were eaten, while 3 were lost. How many seeds were left in the pile?

  As long as the problem's difficulty was slightly increased by a few steps, Shava couldn't calcute the result even with a calcutor.

  As for the question about grass seeds, Shava had pondered for an hour before finally giving System an answer. "If it had gone on for one more day, I could have eaten all those grass seeds!"

  After that, Shava no longer showed off her mathematical skills to System. Instead, she started pestering Bck and Aura to give her simple math problems so that she could show off her calcution ability.

  ...

  Winter in the Warren Pins was very peaceful. One or two wandering zombies would occasionally come to System's nest and kindly contribute some experience to him.

  After seven days, the first batch of eggs produced by Queen Linda finally hatched one after another. The slimes controlled by the queen were soon ordered to split into smaller slimes, some of which became food for the newly hatched ant rvae. The rvae pushed against each other like newborn kittens as they competed with each other for the slime.

  After a simple inspection, System estimated that it would only take four or five days for these ant rvae to turn into pupae and then become adults.

  During these days, System finally met and captured a living gray rat. He also caught one of the bck birds that Shava had mentioned, a crow that fed on carrion.

  After seeing the live rat come into contact with a zombie rat, System finally understood why the Warren Pins had undergone such earth-shaking changes in the past year and why there were so many undead creatures now.

  Unlike how the zombies completely ignored insects, when a zombie rat came within roughly ten meters of the live rat, the zombie rat rushed at the live rat crazily and started biting it.

  When the zombie rat bit the live rat, the live rat was infected with pgue bacteria and a special kind of energy that exuded a rotten smell.

  The live rat soon began oozing blood and purplish-bck pus. Eventually, it died from its infection ten hours after being bitten by the zombie rat. About a day ter, the dead rat turned into a zombie rat and struggled up from the ground.

  The fatal effect of the pgue bacteria combined perfectly with the death toxins that were reanimating the zombies, each making up for each other's shortcomings. It was because of this powerful combination that the pgue bacteria and undead creatures could spread to such an extent in the Warren Pins.

  As for the crow that System caught, like insects and reptiles, it was one of few creatures in the Warren Pins that wasn't affected by the pgue or the death aura.

  Although crows would also be attacked by zombie rats, their bodies were completely immune to the effects of the pgue bacteria, and the zombie flesh and blood containing the death aura didn't have any effect on them. Instead, the zombies became the crows' food.

  ...

  System checked the time with his [Tools Menu], then tied the crow up with a straw rope, having decided to eat it ter as a midnight snack.

  'It's about that time again.'

  For the past three days, at around 11:15 in the te morning, a strange and eerie cry could be heard in the nest.

  In fact, it couldn't really be said to be a cry. It was more like a mental ability simir to System's [Mental Connection], and it transmitted some disturbing, eerie, and desperate mental fluctuations.

  This strange mental fluctuation made System's ant knights feel somewhat confused and angry, while the newborn ant rvae all became anxious and uneasy when they heard it.

  According to an eyewitness image that one of System's worker ant knights had transmitted over the [Mental Network], the thing emitting this spiritual fluctuation each day seemed to be a white spirit that looked simir to a ghost.

  According to Bck, this white spirit had first appeared half a year ago, and it had haunted the nest for more than ten days at that time. When the spirit had eventually floated into Aura's room, Aura had used some unknown ability to immediately disperse it.

  ...

  Although this was System's first time encountering a ghostly thing like this, he wasn't afraid at all. Instead, he felt very irritated.

  This noisy ghost was like an annoying fly. His only thought was to catch the screaming ghost, and if he couldn't catch it, he would find some way to destroy it.

  This white spirit seemed to be hiding somewhere in his nest. In each of the past three days, it had appeared near his second pupation ants at about this time. After arousing the ants' anger, it had floated through the walls to hide.

  System thought for a long time, but he couldn't figure out why this ghost had snuck into the nest to cause trouble for the ants.

  A breakthrough came in his investigation when he and Bck were talking about the ghostly spirit that morning. When they discussed the ghost's behavior during its first appearance half a year earlier, System had come to the conclusion that this ghost had most likely been attracted to the nest by his ant subjects. In particur, it was their wisdom, which had recently improved after their second pupations.