【The first soldiers bred by your servants based solely on blood vitality have been born.】
After discovering the secret of the enemy's power, the ant colony avoided food containing magic power and fed the larvae only food rich in blood vitality.
Now, these larvae have finally torn through their cocoons and emerged as adults, revealing their brand-new forms.
The cocoons carefully collected and transferred by the worker ants—especially those into which vast resources had been poured to grow into specialized individuals—were sent to a special hatchery.
The new ants hatching there simultaneously did not show much change in their physical appearance.
However, unlike the previous dark, almost pitch-black individuals, the new ants had slightly lighter exoskeletons, making them easily distinguishable when mixed together.
If Lin Miao and the colony's theory was correct, the holy power possessed by the new enemy would be completely ineffective against these newborn individuals.
“Did they judge that maximizing their numbers was the correct path?”
Lin Miao thought to himself as he looked at the newborn ants on the screen.
Although there were no massive, heavy individuals like the soldier ants among these newborns, they were all larger than ordinary worker ants and possessed mandibles that gleamed coldly like blades.
This was clearly a trait acquired from the gladiator ants he had introduced earlier.
Their bodies were also highly agile, with long, slender legs that suggested excellent mobility.
Particularly their mandibles, which were completely different from the previous ants that excelled at chewing and crushing; these mandibles were as sharp as blades, looking capable of cleanly severing anything in a single bite.
“...But their numbers seem too few.”
Lin Miao tried to rotate the screen, carefully inspecting every corner of the hatchery, before tilting his head in confusion.
【The food currently stored by your servants is insufficient to hatch a satisfactory number of them. They hope to obtain more food.】
The system notification that popped up just then answered his question.
Altogether, there were only about a hundred of these newborn gladiator ants.
Lin Miao did a rough count. While the number might not be completely accurate, their scarcity was an indisputable fact.
This was because most of the food they had previously hunted and stored contained both magic power and blood vitality.
Even in the vast, undeveloped forest they occupied, the food they could find now consisted primarily of magical beasts possessing both magic power and blood vitality.
They had only begun to search on a large scale for food containing pure blood vitality after formally invading the human sphere of influence, so their small numbers were unavoidable.
【Your servants have invested everything into this war.】
If this carefully crafted military force were to be completely wiped out, the ant colony would no longer be able to withstand the onslaught of enemies.
To find a path to survival, they had to win this war, devour the spoils, and breed more soldiers.
The ant colony knew this well, so they were preparing for war more thoroughly than ever before.
On the other side, the human forces also understood that the current moment was merely the calm before the storm of a total war.
“Now, let us set out to subjugate those evil magical beasts! It is our duty to completely purge them from this land.”
While the ant colony halted their operations and took a step back to prepare for war with all their might, those who had been hiding defensively in fortresses or cities began to amass their troops and launch an active offensive.
“One thing is for certain: these guys are not the local forces we fought before.”
Lin Miao was not only striving to record everything about the ant colony but was also doing his best to document and study the colony's enemies—who were, by extension, his own enemies.
Fortunately, the ant colony instinctively understood that scouting the enemy was equally vital, so they dispatched a large number of scouts to gather as much intelligence as possible.
Through this intelligence, Lin Miao learned that those who claimed to worship the Goddess, defeated the ant colony, and plundered the local residents actually came from elsewhere.
Their stronghold was likely located further south than the human territories currently targeted by the ant colony.
“Perhaps that territory is ruled by a god like me.”
Although Lin Miao could not be completely sure, he was certain that an unknown god stood behind these people.
The reactions of the local residents, coupled with the Church of the Goddess of Light's strange attitude toward the ant colony, gave him a persistent sense of familiarity.
What was more, that god was cunningly using him to expand their own influence.
They used Lin Miao's servant ant colony, painting them as an unreasonable, ruthless, and indiscriminate external force.
The Church of the Goddess of Light branded the ant colony as absolute evil, using this as a pretext to draw the surrounding human forces into their faction.
Considering that the ant colony indeed viewed all humans as food, regardless of whether they were servants of a god or not, this portrayal might not have been entirely incorrect. However, it still left Lin Miao feeling inexplicably annoyed.
It was exactly the same trick the goblins had used back then, trying to instigate a war between the ant colony and their human rivals.
“It seems the only way is to win a decisive victory and make them eat their words.”
Lin Miao smiled as he watched the human subjugation army gradually approach the ant colony's sphere of influence, along with the colony that was beginning to mobilize in response.
In Lin Miao's eyes, the most effective way to shatter the opponent's conspiracy was to win this war.
The reason the members of the Church of the Goddess of Light could be so arrogant was entirely because they had defeated the ant colony in their previous battles by relying on their holy power.
They used this as a beacon of hope for the human forces, justifying their various misdeeds and leaving the local residents with no way to refuse their demands.
If the ant colony could use these newborn individuals—who feared none of the holy power the Church of the Goddess of Light took pride in—to crush their arrogance, they would surely be able to halt the expansion of their influence.
And the colony's ability to obtain spoils of war and achieve further growth through this would merely be an added bonus.
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