After traveling several hundred meters underground to the portal at the ruins, Ying sensed that the location where they could use the snail's magic crystal was still about one thousand meters down.

  If it hadn't been for the snail, System never would have discovered that such a building existed beneath the portal.

  With Excavator practically swimming through the soil, it wouldn't take too long for the group to reach the underground building.

  More than ten hours ter, System and the others successfully arrived at their destination one thousand meters underground.

  When Ying used the magic crystal to activate a blue crystal several meters tall, the dirt around them began to shake violently as if there was an earthquake.

  The huge blue crystal emitted a faint blue fluorescence. At the same time, a yer of blue light appeared around the area like a shield, completely separating it from the surrounding dirt.

  System could vaguely see some gray tiles on the ground that had been exposed when the soil was pushed away. The tiles seemed to have some strange patterns on them.

  In addition to the surrounding dirt's vibration, System also felt the ground slowly begin to rise. He soon realized what the location that Ying had activated was.

  System spoke in his hoarse voice, "Is this a building simir to a floating isnd?!"

  As soon as he finished speaking, the giant blue crystal suddenly flickered as if it was unstable before its light went out completely. When the crystal's light went out, the blue light shield that protected and isoted the group from the surrounding dirt also disappeared. At the same time, the tremors stopped, and System and the others were quickly buried by falling dirt.

  Perhaps because the residual energy of the floating isnd was insufficient, or possibly for other reasons, the floating building had only floated up a few dozen centimeters before stopping instead of continuing to rise until it reached the sky.

  However, not activating the floating isnd was in line with System's usual style of low-key development.

  If this floating isnd really flew up, he wouldn't know how to deal with the consequences. After all, a floating isnd was too high-profile and could easily cause unnecessary trouble.

  ...

  A few hours ter, the group finally returned to the surface thanks to Excavator's hard digging.

  Because the soil near the swamp was generally wet and loose, the shaking of the floating isnd a few hours earlier hadn't caused much damage up on the surface.

  There were some cracks and irregur bulges on the ground that weren't very obvious, and no changes were visible in the swamp itself.

  Through the locations of the new cracks and bulges on the ground, System learned that the massive underground building was probably circur, with a diameter of about one kilometer.

  This short "earthquake" hadn't attracted the attention of any Abyss creatures.

  The several magic-level creatures whose territories were within a thousand meters were still behaving as usual in their own territories. Several giant snakes and rge toads were either patrolling or resting without any changes.

  In order to prevent the creatures of the Abyss from fighting for territory and possibly causing trouble, after discovering that the magic creatures in the Abyss had territorial awareness, System had chosen not to kill all of the nearby magic creatures. He had only asked Ying to observe them from time to time.

  However, after hearing the snail's description of Moned Swamp, System felt that it would be okay to properly clean up these magic creatures.

  Of course, this was all based on the premise that the snail hadn't deceived him. System would have to spend some time investigating the truth of the snail's words.

  ...

  Although the floating isnd deep underground cked energy and couldn't fly, System thought that there must be something valuable hidden inside of it.

  After thinking up a simple pn, System suspended Excavator's construction of the underground nest and tasked her with digging up the underground floating isnd.

  If this underground floating isnd contained many valuable buildings, System didn't mind transforming it into his own underground city in the Abyss.

  ...

  After System gave the order, Excavator started digging around the underground floating isnd immediately.

  In his spare time while cultivating the magic insect nest, System always paid attention to Excavator's exploration underground. After more than ten days of digging, she didn't disappoint him. She unearthed a corridor made of gray stone bricks leading to two strange spherical halls.

  Unfortunately, there was nothing in these two halls aside from gray stone bricks.

  Aside from System, the one who paid the most attention to the underground building was Aura. In recent days, he often stared at the rge crystal several meters high. The zy butterfly was uncharacteristically active and often urged Excavator to go faster when she was digging.

  Aura didn't have any ambition to take over the floating isnd. He only felt that there must be a treasure house somewhere in this underground building.

  In Aura's words, he felt the call of the treasure.

  Dragons were born with an extraordinary passion for treasures. Perhaps Aura had some intuition about treasures, but System didn't care much about it.

  In addition to studying the demon insect nest from time to time and occasionally receiving a summons from different pnes, System was waiting for his ant subjects to return from the demipne. While waiting, he was frequently fttered by Jace the snail.

  System really enjoyed listening to the snail's fttery. Although most of Jace's words were a bit exaggerated, they still made System feel very comfortable.

  However, while System always brought the snail with him wherever he went, it wasn't so that the snail could ftter him. Instead, he often asked Jace questions that he had already asked before, then compared the snail's answers with the video data in the [Tools Menu] to observe whether he was lying.

  Although more than ten days had passed, System still couldn't completely trust Jace.

  He really wanted to kill the snail to get rid of this unstable factor.

  However, the lizardmen under Jace's control still held a lot of value. If the snail died, System would undoubtedly lose control over those lizardmen.

  After testing Jace for more than ten days, System had contacted a lizardman and confirmed the authenticity of the snail's words from the lizardman's responses. Jace truly did use his illusion ability to brainwash a tribe of low-intelligence lizardmen.

  Like the spear-wielding magic-level lizardman from earlier, most of the lizardmen in this tribe also possessed the lightning talent in their bloodline and had the ability to generate electricity.

  ...

  After some consideration, System finally decided to keep the snail by his side and continue observing him for a while.

  Time passed little by little, and soon more than ten days had passed. Many of System's ant subjects were finally able to arrive in the Abyss from the demipne.