The fifteen-centimeter-long toad sitting in front of System made him tremble all over. The sensation he felt now was simir to what he'd felt back when he encountered that little praying mantis.

  His [Insect Instinct] once again exerted a strong influence. System's strong hind legs responsible for jumping started accumuting strength, and his body's instinct urged him to jump away and escape from here immediately.

  '[Insect Instinct] says to jump away as soon as it detects danger?'

  'But my instinct is backfiring this time...'

  System forcibly suppressed the influence of his [Insect Instinct]. This Derived Skill was simple and effective. It was helpful for avoiding most dangers and greatly increased the survival rate of a grasshopper colony, but this instinct obviously didn't apply in front of toads.

  If the toads in this world had the same habits as the toads in System's previous life, jumping in front of a toad would be a deadly mistake.

  System could guarantee that as soon as he jumped, he would be sucked straight into the toad's belly by its long, sticky tongue, and would soon be turned into a puddle of thick soup by the toad's gastric juices.

  Fortunately, he happened to remember some habits of frogs and toads. They both preferred moving food and had no interest in dead things.

  System seemed to have raised frogs as pets in his previous life. Sometimes, when the mealworms he'd purchased were inactive or dead, he would tie a string to them, then drag them around in front of the frogs in order to entice them to eat the insects.

  Facing the toad in front of him, System knew that the safest thing he could do was remain still, since stationary objects weren't attractive to toads.

  After forcibly suppressing his [Insect Instinct] that made him want to jump away immediately, System's breathing gradually slowed down, and he once again entered a dormant state.

  While System was waiting for the toad to leave, the ant search team from earlier were gradually moving closer. This team of ants obviously didn't notice the toad hidden in the pile of leaves, so they continued foraging around the area looking for food.

  Whoosh!

  The dynamic vision of an insect's compound eyes was very powerful, but the toad's tongue was clearly faster than System's eyes could track. He saw the tongue in the toad's mouth fsh away, and an ant about twenty centimeters away from the toad disappeared.

  System watched as the toad spit half of a leaf out of its mouth. The leaf must have been pulled in unintentionally alongside the ant.

  The sound of the toad's tongue colliding with the leaves on the ground had armed the remaining ants. They quickly began crawling around, searching for anything unusual that could have caused the leaves to rustle.

  However, it wasn't long before several more ants were sucked in by the toad's long tongue one after another. The only ant that managed to avoid death had simply happened to be searching in a different direction. That stroke of luck had allowed it to eventually wander away to safety.

  Even in the face of this unreasonable and strange crisis, these ants weren't timid at all. It was unknown whether this was because of their low intelligence or if it was due to their instincts. System guessed that their fearlessness was likely instinctual.

  He recalled a scene from a documentary he'd watched in his previous life. Even when faced with their natural enemies—anteaters thousands of times their size—ants would charge into battle without flinching.

  ...

  It wasn't until noon that the toad finally decided to leave. By then, it had already eaten more than a dozen ants, several bee-like flying insects, and an enormous dragonfly.

  After the toad left, System, who was now out of danger, finally had a chance to eat. Eating and growing were the survival instincts that flowed in every grasshopper's blood, and System was more focused on growing quickly now than he was earlier due to his thoughts the previous night.

  Insects like grasshoppers relied on high fertility rates for the species' survival. While in their rval stage, they had a survival rate dozens of times lower than adults. Therefore, they must grow and become adults as soon as possible in order to improve their chances of survival.

  After releasing his body from dormancy, System chose a direction and jumped away cautiously.

  A grasshopper's jumping seemed somewhat simir to a human riding a roller coaster, but a grasshopper was not a human. During the jumping process, System's body felt almost like a well-oiled machine. He was able to calmly observe the area around him for any abnormalities.

  On the first pnt he jumped to, System found two white flowers at the top. The flowers were about five centimeters in diameter, but he couldn't see the shape clearly because they were too far away.

  He decided to collect some nectar from the flowers. If he wanted his body to grow quickly, he needed nutritious food. Nectar was obviously a good choice.

  More than that, System really wanted to find out how nectar tasted. He could eat pnt leaves that tasted slightly bitter to humans as if they were fruits, so how would already-sweet nectar taste in his insect mouth?

  He was looking forward to it.

  As he crawled his way up to the flowers, System, who was proceeding cautiously, encountered five small, white, translucent bugs. These bugs had six legs just like he did, so they should also be a type of insect.

  They were very small, only about three millimeters in length, which was half the size of System's body. These little bugs were using their unique mouthparts to destroy the pnt walls. At the same time, they swallowed the slightly cloudy juice that flowed out from the damaged areas.

  They were obviously herbivorous insects that preferred peace, but System was not about to be polite. He directly used his strong body to squeeze a little bug out of the way, then drank the juice that the bug had been collecting.

  As System had expected, these little insects were not social insects like ants. After seeing System's strong body, the little insect that he'd squeezed away quickly ran off.

  The others ignored System's actions and continued drinking the juice that oozed from the damaged pnt. Apparently, they didn't realize that System posed a threat to them.

  After he saw how the little insects reacted, he went back to drinking the pnt juice. It had an excellent fvor, and was somewhat simir to mango juice from his previous life.

  After he went on to snatch the juice produced by two more of the little bugs, the remaining few all ran away one after another.

  System bit a few more wounds into the pnt wall, but found that it would no longer leak any juice after those little bugs had left. Those bugs had most likely used some sort of ability unique to their species to cause the juice to seep out of the pnt's wounds. Maybe their mouthparts had injected some kind of special biological mixture into the pnt.

  System gave up on the juice, then quickly climbed onto the flower using the spurs on his legs.

  The flowers were rger than they had appeared from beneath the pnt, roughly seven centimeters in diameter, and were simir in shape to chrysanthemums. The stamens in the center of the flowers were dense and strong. He tried to cut through one with his mandibles, but ultimately failed due to his biting strength being insufficient.

  The easily accessible nectar had already been sucked clean by bees. If these stamens couldn't be cut, the deeper nectar could only be left for a butterfly's long proboscis.

  System reluctantly hopped away from the flowers. He decided to try eating some mature leaves instead.

  The taste of mature leaves was simir to that of young leaves, and the effect on his growth was also simir. However, it took far too much effort to bite into mature leaves with his soft mandibles, and the efficiency was more than three times worse than when he ate young leaves.

  If he only ate these mature leaves, his eating speed may end up being slower than his digestion speed, which would undoubtedly make him hungrier and hungrier. He could only give up. If he wanted to eat leaves like these, it seemed like he could only wait until after his first metamorphosis.

  While System was jumping around and staying wary of danger, he discovered hundreds of light green, crystal clear insect eggs on the back of a leaf. His insect face unconsciously showed a greedy look.

  ...

  Author's note:

  A grasshopper's diet is not limited to grass. When they're very hungry, they will also eat meat. This is true even for grasshoppers in the early stages of development.