After all, the smaller the body size, the less energy they consumed.
Moreover, for ants that had no hands to begin with, they could perform much more delicate tasks.
On top of that, there was another advantage: they could control far more individuals within a confined space.
The next morning, after waking up and quickly washing his face, Lin Miao spotted the scene inside the egg-laying chamber at a glance.
“But isn't this way too fast?”
Looking at the scene before him, Lin Miao was completely dumbfounded.
He never could have imagined that the process from hatching to reaching adulthood would be this incredibly fast.
Those newly laid, tiny ant eggs had actually already hatched, passed through the larval stage, and fully developed into pupae.
Compared to the original, larger worker ants, the development speed of these newborn individuals was simply unbelievable.
Just then, a system notification provided the answer:
【Growth Acceleration: Blessed by the god, they possess a much faster growth rate than others of their kind.】
This was an ability possessed by all ants that had become his servants.
They already grew much faster than ordinary ants, and for the evolved individuals, their growth rate was even swifter.
Yet these small individuals were a massive step ahead even of them.
They were so fast that in just a single day, they could fully develop from a mere egg into a mature adult.
“As expected, they instinctively used them to fill the gap in worker ants.”
Lin Miao muttered to himself in a low voice as he watched the activity inside the terrarium.
Because of this, the new type of ants, whose numbers had suddenly skyrocketed, quickly integrated into the colony and immediately began carrying out their designated duties.
Lin Miao had still been pondering how to make up for the heavy losses the colony had suffered in the war. He hadn't expected that the colony would not only complete another round of evolution using the food obtained from the war, but also perfectly absorb his assistance, overcoming the crisis in the blink of an eye.
Seeing the newly born, smaller species of ants diligently carrying out their duties as worker ants exactly as he had envisioned, Lin Miao became even more convinced that his idea was correct, and a deep sense of satisfaction welled up inside him.
【Your servants are highly satisfied with mastering brand-new combat techniques】
“Hmm?”
Lin Miao let out a soft hum of confusion.
However, the colony's actions never strictly followed his expectations.
Perhaps feeling that the situation had stabilized, they once again stretched their feelers toward the outside world in search of new prey.
And this time, charging at the very front lines were these newly born, small ants.
Their destination was a fairly wide river.
Although the current wasn't particularly swift, crossing it would be no easy feat without tools like rafts.
Yet, these small ants actually gathered in a dense swarm, using their own bodies to construct a raft, solving the crossing problem just like that.
Clumped together into a massive ball, they crossed the river. The moment they stepped onto the opposite bank, they launched an indiscriminate hunt against every single prey in their line of sight.
Lin Miao had only ever seen such scenes in documentaries. But if one were actually on the receiving end on the opposite bank, how would they feel?
Just when they thought they could rest easy with a river separating them, countless giant ants—each the size of a large dog—clumped together to cross the water and launch a surprise attack.
Just thinking about it was enough to make one's skin crawl.
“Monsters! It's those monsters from the abyss!”
“It's a surprise attack!”
Piercing screams echoed one after another. The first to become the colony's target happened to be a goblin tribe near the riverbank.
Like a highly mobile raiding party, these small ants launched an instantaneous assault on the tribe.
Thrown into a panic, the goblin tribe couldn't even put up a decent resistance before completely collapsing.
Although they were small and their combat power couldn't compare to the larger ants, the goblin tribe they raided was nothing like the goblin army they had faced head-on before. They were pitifully weak.
Lin Miao watched everything unfold in silence, saying nothing.
It had always been this way; words like mercy and pity had never existed in the colony's vocabulary.
In the end, their fundamental nature was still that of ants, so perhaps this was only natural.
To them, the top priority would always be the instinct to propagate and expand the colony. That was their everything.
Thus, even if Lin Miao subconsciously frowned, he never felt that their actions—ruthlessly treating the begging goblins, or even the corpses of their own comrades, as mere food—were cruel.
【Your servants are sorting through the food】
“Hmm...”
But even for Lin Miao, seeing them do the exact same thing to humans—members of his own species—inevitably stirred up complicated emotions in his heart.
Yet in the eyes of the colony, these humans were no different from the goblins. Devoid of any perceivable power, they were nothing more than ordinary lumps of meat.
“Could they be humans captured by the goblins?”
Lin Miao's heart skipped a beat.
The humans who stood motionless, allowing the giant ants to touch their bodies without any reaction, were all women clad in rags.
Looking at their state, one could easily guess what kind of treatment they had endured in this goblin tribe.
But the colony had no need to know these stories, nor could they. In the end, they still tore these women to pieces and treated them as food.
In fact, probably deeming this meat unworthy of being fed to the Queen Ant and the larvae, they simply devoured it themselves on the spot.
“I hope they avoid encountering humans as much as possible, but is that even feasible?”
Lin Miao murmured in his heart, his tone filled with helplessness.
Since they couldn't understand human language anyway, Lin Miao hadn't harbored much hope to begin with.
He only hoped that the moment, which would surely arrive sooner or later, could be delayed just a little longer.
Only four days had passed since he was dragged into this absurd turn of events.
Lin Miao knew all too well that he still needed time.
Rate on N.U.
