Just as Lin Miao stood frozen, his mind in complete disarray, a line of text popped up again as if to snap him back to reality.
【Notice: Please reward your servants who were victorious in battle!】
Lin Miao snapped out of it, letting out a startled grunt. “What?”
Reward them for victory? Now was definitely not the time to be thinking about that.
With his mind completely blank, Lin Miao kept shifting his perspective, a single thought dominating his mind:
If he just followed this tunnel to the very end, he would definitely find out where these ants had gone and what they had done.
I'm here.
With an anxious heart, he finally reached the end of the tunnel.
At the tunnel's end, a spatial rift glowing with a faint, dark purple light was fluctuating constantly. Countless ants were streaming in and out of it in a steady, endless flow.
Shifting his perspective to the other side of the rift required an immense amount of courage.
Suppressing his fear of the unknown, Lin Miao summoned every ounce of his courage, driven by a curiosity that was far stronger than his dread.
Finally, his field of vision followed a nearby ant and passed through the bizarre rift.
The next moment, the scene before him inverted completely.
His vision, which had been filled with endless darkness, was instantly flooded with bright light.
Lin Miao quickly turned off the night vision, and the landscape before him finally became clear.
Lin Miao could only stare blankly at the scene, muttering to himself in a daze, “Where on earth did I end up? Is this still inside my terrarium?”
His perspective had clearly just passed through a tunnel in the ant nest, yet he now found himself deep within an unfamiliar, dense forest.
And there were already at least several hundred ants here.
What was even more absurd was that when compared to the surrounding scenery, the sense of dissonance became incredibly intense.
Because compared to the surrounding trees, weeds, and rocks, the size of these ants was ridiculously massive.
A single worker ant, which should have been insignificant in front of a tree, now possessed mandibles that looked capable of easily biting through the trunk.
Even by Lin Miao's most conservative estimate, a single worker ant was at least the size of a large bicycle.
“What on earth have you guys been eating out here?”
Lin Miao slumped back onto the sofa. In the bright light, he once again clearly saw the items they had brought back as spoils of war.
One ant held something in its mandibles, which was still dripping with fresh, bright red blood. The crushed half-skull was unmistakably a human head.
A new system notification popped up once again.
【View Awakening Lore: The inhabitants of the otherworld are living in terror of the suddenly descended incarnations of death. These ants defy all reason and common sense, single-mindedly intent on devouring all living beings.】
Lin Miao couldn't make heads or tails of the situation; his mind was a complete jumble.
Although this suddenly appearing system had given Lin Miao some so-called awakening information, that alone was far from enough to clear up his current confusion.
Yet, new text continued to appear.
【The rumors and fear surrounding these ants quickly transformed into terror toward their ruler. Some of them have already begun to believe that an evil god is finally descending to destroy this world!】
Fortunately, Lin Miao managed to figure out one thing: the cause and effect.
To put it simply, the reason he was experiencing these bizarre occurrences was entirely because the ants he raised had caused a catastrophic disaster in some unknown otherworld!
The system's notifications kept coming, and a line of text that made Lin Miao's skin crawl slammed into his vision.
【Since you have awakened as the god of the ant colony, you and your servants are now bound by a shared destiny. Their rise and fall, honor and disgrace, will directly determine your divine status and your very survival. Please be sure to care for them with all your heart.】
Lin Miao's eyes widened, and he blurted out in disbelief, “What?”
But it didn't stop there.
Lin Miao didn't understand the first thing about becoming a god, but seeing that his life was tightly bound to this colony of ants made his eyes widen instantly, and the hairs on his body stood on end.
“I never intended to have the ants attack...”
For some unknown reason, a rift leading to an otherworld had appeared on one side of the ant nest. Crossing the rift, the colony had followed their survival instincts and completely razed the surrounding area on the other side.
And the ultimate consequence of all this was that he, as the keeper of the colony, had unexpectedly awakened as the god of these ants.
Lin Miao barely managed to sort out the sequence of events. He shifted his gaze from the screen before him and looked at the actual terrarium in his room.
To Lin Miao, the terrarium looked as peaceful as could be.
There were only a few worker ants crawling around outside, leisurely patrolling the area and waving their antennae in front of the empty fish food container. They seemed like entirely different creatures from the terrifying ant army sweeping through the otherworld in the video feed.
As Lin Miao stared blankly at the terrarium in a daze, another line of text popped up like a prompt.
【Please provide food for your servants as a reward. They are awaiting your grace.】
Lin Miao froze for a moment. He picked up the cup of mealworms he had prepared to feed them earlier but had set aside, and dumped them all into the terrarium.
The mealworms squirmed in the soil, and the worker ants instantly sent out signals, quickly gathering their companions to swarm them.
Watching the colony wave their antennae repeatedly in specific patterns before the instantly dismembered and killed mealworms, Lin Miao was stunned. With a face full of confusion, he muttered under his breath, “What are they... doing?”
【Notice: The servants who serve the god are no longer the insignificant creatures of the past. Please bestow power and wisdom upon them, as they forever thirst for greater growth and expansion.】
The system then informed Lin Miao that this was the colony's unique way of showing gratitude.
In other words, these ants, in their own unique way, were clearly aware of his existence as their feeder. They even knew that Lin Miao was the entity who kept them alive and cared for them.
【They are rejoicing in the grace of the Great One!】
A line of text popped up, completely confirming Lin Miao's suspicion.
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