Roar!

  The dragon suddenly opened its mouth and let out a roar that made System's blood boil. The roar combined with the unique aura from the dragon's body made System tremble uncontrolbly.

  System had only been fpping his wings unconsciously to maintain his previous state of hovering in the air. The sudden roar made his mind go bnk and caused him to lose control of his body.

  System could see the frosty teeth and small tongue inside the dragon's mouth. In his shocked state, all he could think was that the dragon's tongue looked surprisingly simir to a human tongue.

  Just when System thought he'd be swallowed up by the dragon as a snack, the dragon slowly closed its mouth.

  System sensed the dragon's undisguised teasing from its eyes and expression. The reason the dragon had opened its mouth was obviously not to eat System, only to scare him and see his reaction.

  The dragon closed its mouth, but System still seemed to hear the dragon speaking in an unknown nguage.

  The nguage sounded simir to the dragon roar he'd heard in the distance earlier. The voice wasn't loud, but it was very clear in System's mind, and he understood it completely.

  "I thought it was something else, but it turned out to be a, to be a..." The frost dragon showed a puzzled expression. It seemed to be confused about what System was, and it spent a long time trying to figure it out.

  "What were you, again?"

  The frost dragon's voice was full of confusion, but it lost its patience after a short while, as if it didn't want to waste time trying to recall such an insignificant thing.

  "Forget it, I guess you can't understand me even if I ask you."

  The frost dragon made a zy sound, opened its mouth to yawn, and flew away...

  ...

  System watched as the frost dragon covered in blue ice crystals vanished into the distance. The huge dragon didn't even cause a breeze during its flight, which was very strange.

  However, System had no time to ponder the dragon's strange flying state at the moment.

  When the dragon had yawned, it had emitted a strange, cold breath. Some of that cold breath had penetrated directly into System's body.

  He didn't feel anything unusual at first. The breath was a little cold, but it wasn't unbearable. He even discovered that his experience bar suddenly increased from 3% to 11%. It was obvious that this cold breath offered some benefits for his body.

  However, as time went on, System felt his body start to stiffen.

  A yer of white frost gradually began to form over his exoskeleton, and that yer of frost was slowly getting thicker.

  System's wings started fpping more and more slowly. It turned out that his wings had also been covered with a yer of solid ice crystals at some point.

  His slender tentacles had completely stiffened due to the cold. Even if System fell from the air, he guessed that the wind from the fall wouldn't be able to budge his tentacles at all.

  He felt his wings getting stiffer and stiffer, and he gradually lost his ability to fly. As the frost covering his body became thicker, he grew heavier and heavier, and his falling speed began to accelerate.

  ...

  For some reason, System suddenly recalled his recent experiences while catching insects. With his excellent eyesight and agility, it was easy for him to go out foraging.

  After catching an insect, he'd often take a few bites and then discard the rest of the corpse.

  In recent days, he'd use his tentacles to perform tests and experiments on various unlucky insects.

  Once the test was over, he'd kill some of the insects and eat a few bites, while he'd let others go. Yet, if he didn't check the video records in the [Tools Menu], System himself couldn't remember which of those insects he'd killed or let go.

  Now that System thought about it, the dragon's attitude toward him had been exactly the same as his own attitude toward those ordinary insects.

  The dragon might have just been curious and wanted to see what type of creature System was on a whim. After seeing System, the dragon gave him a scare, then left immediately as soon as it lost interest.

  However, it was the frosty breath that the dragon had inadvertently emitted when it had left that had brought System such a huge crisis...

  System had completely lost his ability to fp his wings, and even his legs and tentacles gradually became unable to move.

  Before long, his heart, which had always been steadily beating, slowly stopped.

  Because of the position his wings had frozen in, System's body was spinning like a top, going round and round in circles while falling rapidly to the ground.

  His body was stiff and uncontrolble, but his mind wasn't damaged at all, and his eyes could still clearly see everything around him.

  As he neared the ground, System could tell that the situation didn't look good for him.

  He clearly heard a cracking sound caused by the collision between his wings and a branch. His wings, which had originally been soft and pliable, were now like thin, fragile sheets of ice.

  At the moment his wings collided with the branch, one of them shattered into several pieces, and the part of his exoskeleton responsible for protecting that wing was broken off at the root.

  As he continued to fall, his body smmed into several more branches before finally falling into a thick pile of dead leaves.

  One of his powerful hind legs had been completely severed, and the other was half gone. Only two of his other four legs were fully intact. Both of his antennae were missing. Even one of his eyes had shattered during his crash nding, and there were numerous cracks on his abdomen from the impact.

  System could see many pieces of his body near the dead leaves.

  However, surprisingly, he wasn't dead. Not only was he not dead, after he fell from the sky onto the dead leaves, his heart even slowly started beating again. However, the frequency of his heartbeats was very low, and his heart was only beating once every few seconds.

  System checked [My Information] in the [Tools Menu]. He saw that even though his body had been reduced to this state, his remaining health was still at 71%. He didn't know how this number was calcuted.

  'Maybe this is the powerful vitality of insects. If I were another type of creature, I would definitely die after falling like that.'

  He remembered Shava's condition after she'd fought with the mouse. Even with her badly broken body, she could still struggle and make herself move.

  However, unlike Shava at that time, System was also very stiff because he was frozen. He tried to move different parts of his body, but he couldn't do anything at all. He couldn't even twitch his mandibles.

  He could feel snowfkes falling onto his body from time to time. These snowfkes would melt immediately when they nded on dead leaves, but they remained snowfkes and didn't melt when they fell on him. It seemed like his body was now even colder than the snowfkes.

  As time passed, System found that his remaining health was gradually decreasing. In a little over ten minutes, his health had fallen from 71% to 63%.

  His body still showed no signs of being able to move, but his heart was slowly starting to beat faster. He didn't know when he'd recover his mobility.

  After another ten minutes, System sensed that his body seemed to have become a little weaker.

  When he saw that it now took the snowfkes falling on the dead leaves more than ten seconds to melt, his [Intuition] sent him a feeling of uneasiness.

  In fact, even without the reminder from his [Intuition], System could figure out the seriousness of the matter. The snowfkes around him had changed from melting immediately after nding to melting more than ten seconds after nding, which undoubtedly showed that the temperature was dropping bit by bit.

  If System couldn't regain his ability to move soon, then once the temperature dropped further, it would likely be impossible for him to recover.