“Over there! It's those things!”
A goblin riding on the back of a one-eyed wolf suddenly spotted something. His face turned pale with instant panic.
Appearing before them was a scout squad of five small ants.
As usual, the ants were constantly twitching their antennae, scouting new areas and searching for food.
Their tactic had always been to advance while exploring. Once they found prey, they would instantly summon a hunting squad through their connected hive mind to tear the prey to shreds.
Seeing that the ants had already detected their presence and were rapidly closing in, the goblin warrior's expression shifted drastically as he yelled at the top of his lungs:
“They've spotted us! Run!”
Normally, if the enemy's numbers were equal to theirs, the ants would at most confirm their presence and then retreat.
But seeing that these creatures had no intention of fighting and were instead fleeing for their lives without looking back, the ants immediately gave chase.
For they instinctively knew that at the end of a desperately fleeing enemy's path, there was bound to be their nest.
The leading goblin warrior, however, had other calculations in mind. The chief had ordered them to lure these creatures to human territory.
They even had to deliberately control their speed, fearing that if they ran too fast, the ants would stop chasing.
Sprinting all the way, they did not lead this ant scout squad toward their own tribe deep in the forest, but instead headed in another direction.
“Don't let your guard down! They could catch up at any moment.”
The leading goblin warned his companions in a hushed tone.
This chase did not end quickly.
While worrying that the ants might give up the chase and turn back, they cautiously lured them toward the target location, step by step.
They couldn't possibly reach human territory in a single day, so their ultimate goal was to lure the ants onto the highway commonly traveled by humans.
“Speed up!”
At the leading goblin's command, they squeezed out every last drop of their strength, suddenly accelerating and disappearing at the end of the road.
Left all alone on the highway, the scout ants could only twitch their antennae, staring blankly at their surroundings.
On the surface, it seemed like just a few scout ants examining the surrounding environment, but that was not the case.
This information had already been shared with the entire colony. Driven by mutual curiosity, the colony developed a keen interest in this completely new territory and began to investigate.
Losing track of prey was not uncommon for them.
After all, there were still many enemies in this world that were faster and stronger than them.
But exploring a completely new territory was a different story.
For the colony, which had always lived in the rugged forest, the vast plain unfolding before them was a brand-new environment they needed to readapt to.
“Are those... wheel tracks?”
And from the very beginning, there was another person who had been exploring this world through the eyes of the ants.
◆◆◆
“Did those goblins lure the ants here on purpose?”
At first, Lin Miao hadn't thought much of it. After all, notifications like [Colony detected enemies] and [Hunting completed] popped up constantly; there was no way he could look closely at every single one.
It wasn't until he saw the prompt [Chase has entered a stalemate] and switched his perspective over that the pursuit was already nearing its end.
Not long after he started watching, the desperately fleeing goblins shook off the pursuit of the scout ants. However, their every move was incredibly suspicious.
Those goblins were clearly muscular combatants. Logically speaking, dealing with a scout squad of just a few small ants should have been child's play.
Even if they feared drawing reinforcements from the rest of the colony, that explanation was far too forced.
Even to Lin Miao, an outsider, the way they constantly maintained a distance where they were just about to be caught, dragging out the chase, was clearly with ulterior motives.
[Your servants have developed a keen interest in the brand-new environment.]
And the result was exactly what lay before him.
The colony had discovered a brand-new territory, a land far removed from the sphere of influence they had been slowly expanding.
There was a highway here that was clearly man-made. Without a doubt, this was territory occupied by another faction.
[Your servants crave more food and faster growth.]
It was only natural for the colony to be interested in this place.
The large-scale war with the goblin forces not long ago had cost the colony a heavy price, but it had also brought them explosive growth.
They had devoured a massive number of enemy corpses and completed their evolution.
Moreover, Lin Miao had already been feeding them a continuous stream of nutrients through the terrarium. In the end, this war had actually allowed them to completely restore and grow the colony.
Having tasted the sweetness of victory, the colony was no longer satisfied with slowly expanding their nest and hunting scattered prey.
During this period, the colony had only found a few abandoned goblin tribes. But those goblins had either fled in advance upon hearing of their fearsome reputation, or had abandoned their tribes and left because they were powerless to resist.
Now, the colony was eager to launch a new war.
“Those goblin fellows are too suspicious. They must be plotting something.”
Lin Miao frowned and muttered to himself in a low voice.
[Your servants are unable to comprehend your will.]
Of course, even if Lin Miao emphasized the goblins' suspicious nature a hundred times, the current colony couldn't understand him at all.
He could only thank his lucky stars that they hadn't misunderstood his words and done something ridiculous.
After all, there was already a precedent where they had misunderstood his instructions and completely lost control.
“Sigh, for now, I can only help them with what I can do.”
Lin Miao quickly gave up on trying to guide them. Looking at the test tube in his hand, he murmured to himself.
Inside the test tube, a few tiny ants were crawling around. These were fire ants he had taken the time to get after work.
In Lin Miao's eyes, even compared to those notoriously ferocious foreign ants, their abilities were not lacking in the slightest.
[Your servants have sensed food falling from the heavens and have simultaneously detected intruders.]
This time, the colony once again immediately detected the large amount of food Lin Miao had dropped into the terrarium, as well as the invasion of the fire ants.
The worker ants that crawled out first immediately rushed toward the fire ants.
Although these were ordinary individuals that had not completed their Tier 1 evolution, even ordinary worker ants were much larger than fire ants.
[Your servants have fallen into a panic due to the enemy's fierce counterattack.]
But even though there were only a few of them, the fire ants still displayed extremely strong combat capabilities. Even without their best-suited group combat abilities, they were still not to be underestimated.
The highly toxic formic acid they sprayed frantically could instantly paralyze and kill small ants upon contact. Even the larger worker ants would be injured and lose their combat capability because of it.
[Your servants have quickly responded.]
But they had survived even the magic bombardment of the goblin shaman.
The combat experience they accumulated would be shared with the entire colony. As long as the colony was not completely wiped out, this experience would remain forever.
“They were bound to win anyway.”
What's more, their numbers were an absolute sweep.
More worker ants poured out of the nest in a continuous stream, and the fire ants were completely suppressed in an instant.
Perhaps because the fire ants had resisted too fiercely, their corpses were torn into exceptionally tiny pieces. They were soon delivered to the Queen Ant for her to feed on and absorb their genetic information.
[Based on the newly absorbed information, they will become even stronger.]
This was all Lin Miao could do for now.
According to his projections, after a combat unit equipped with this brand-new ability joined their ranks, it might make up for their long-standing weakness in long-range attacks and allow them to develop completely new tactics.
The colony inside the terrarium nodded in unison in his direction to express their gratitude.
After that, he stayed in front of the screen, observing the colony's movements. Time slipped away in a daze until it was time for him to sleep.
[Your servants have discovered an enemy nest.]
When this system prompt arrived, it was early the next morning—early morning in the otherworld, just as the sun was rising.
The “enemy nest” the colony referred to was, without a doubt, a stronghold built by another faction in that world.
Before this, they had at most discovered crudely constructed goblin tribes. But this time, they had found a completely new type of enemy nest.
“A castle?”
Watching the scene unfold on the screen, Lin Miao murmured blankly to himself.
It was definitely on a completely different level than walls made of piled-up dirt.
Although it wasn't very high and looked somewhat crude compared to a real castle, it was indeed a proper wall built from stacked stones.
Moreover, surrounding the stone walls was a fairly large village. There were probably quite a few people living inside the castle as well.
“It's a human territory.”
Lin Miao frowned and let out a soft sigh.
He had known this day would come sooner or later, but he hadn't expected it to arrive so quickly.
In the vast fields in the distance, quite a few people were working on their crops.
[Your servants are preparing for war. This war will bring them a massive amount of food.]
“...”
Unlike Lin Miao, whose feelings were somewhat complicated, the ants did not hesitate in the slightest, even though their opponent was a massive group.
As long as there was food in front of them, and as long as they could grow their power using this food, they would not hesitate to strike, killing and devouring everything.
Whether they were goblins or humans, to the ants, they were nothing but food.
It was precisely this instinct, pure to the extreme, that had allowed an ordinary, clueless person like Lin Miao to awaken as a so-called god.
“Can they win?”
Lin Miao bit his lip. In his eyes, the human force appearing before them was much stronger than the goblin army that had foolishly rushed them last time.
Although this world didn't have missiles that could level an entire area with a single blast, or machine guns that could rapidly spit out bullets, it possessed magic with similarly wondrous powers. Lin Miao had no way of knowing where the upper limit of the otherworld's residents lay.
But regardless, he and the colony were already bound by a shared destiny.
Since they had already made up their minds to wage war, no matter who the opponent was, Lin Miao could only hope they would win.
“Those goblins... there really is something wrong with them.”
At the same time, anger flared up in Lin Miao's heart toward those goblins who had lured the scout squad here.
If his guess was correct, those goblins had absolutely lured the colony here on purpose.
Their goal was to make the human force and the ants fight until both sides were crippled or even destroyed together. They were playing a perfect game of borrowing a knife to kill.
“Once this is over, I'll make sure to deal with you guys properly.”
Lin Miao thought to himself.
From the moment he learned his colony was going to war with this human force, an inexplicable unpleasantness had welled up in his heart, and he needed an outlet to vent it.
Once everything was over, teaching the culprits behind all of this a good lesson would probably be the best way.
[Your servants are preparing to deploy troops on a massive scale. They have determined that the enemy nest is of a scale they are fully capable of conquering.]
“Scale isn't everything.”
Lin Miao warned in a low voice.
[Your servants have received your warning, and their fighting spirit has burned even stronger instead.]
“Wait, how did it turn out like this?!”
Watching the army of hundreds—no, thousands of ants, large and small, pouring out of the nest in a continuous stream, Lin Miao could only find it absurd.
For these ants, retreating without a fight was simply not an option.
They seemed firmly convinced that no matter how high the price paid, as long as they won, they would ultimately come out ahead.
“Perhaps that's not wrong either.”
Lin Miao thought to himself.
They possessed the ability to absorb magic power and special forces to complete their evolution.
Every time they broke through their limits and completed an evolution, they would awaken brand-new abilities.
Combined with his assistance from the side, they had absolute confidence that even if they fell into a crisis, they would surely break through.
“To be honest, just looking at this lineup, it doesn't seem like they'll lose.”
Moreover, after confirming the full combat strength the colony had deployed this time, a strong premonition arose in Lin Miao's heart: they might actually win!
True, it was still unclear what kind of combat strength their opponent possessed.
The colony had only gotten a rough grasp of the scale of the enemy's nest before making the decision to attack.
But that endless black tide of ants stretching from the nest all the way to the vanguard—the densely packed small ants, the medium-sized worker ants numbering no less than several hundred, and the army of Tier 1 evolved worker ants whose numbers had clearly exploded—was of a scale already incomparable to when they fought the goblins last time.
What's more, there were dozens of soldier ants, marching majestically at the very front of the army with their massive bodies.
The soldier ants leading the vanguard were all individuals that had completed their Tier 1 evolution.
They possessed even more massive bodies and sturdier exoskeletons. Like path-clearing chariots, they smashed through blocking trees and sent obstructing rocks flying, leading the entire army forward in an unstoppable charge!
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