Lin Miao's heart skipped a beat. Did I do something unnecessary? he wondered.
He quickly shifted his perspective. On the screen, hundreds of worker ants were marching proudly, pouring through the spatial rift in unison and into the otherworld.
Seeing some of the worker ants starting to dig up the earth around the rift, carving out tunnels and piling up dirt, Lin Miao immediately understood their intention.
Building a safe nest was an instinct engraved in an ant's bones. They planned to build an anthill of their own in this unfamiliar world as well.
But unlike their fingernail-sized bodies in the terrarium, in that world, they were massive ants comparable to magical beasts.
With every scoop of their mandibles, vast amounts of dirt poured out as if dug up by an excavator. Several ants chewed together, and thick trees fell to the ground one after another.
Just like that, the forest around the rift was transformed in the blink of an eye into a fortress built with massive earthen ramparts through the combined efforts of hundreds of worker ants.
【They crave more food.】
At the same time, looking at the pop-up prompt, Lin Miao smiled. “...Got hungry after working so hard, did you?”
He finally understood why the food had been disappearing so quickly lately.
It turned out they were actually colonizing a new territory, which naturally required a lot more energy.
Lin Miao casually dumped a large number of mealworms into the terrarium. “Eat up, eat up,” he said.
【They are rejoicing in your grace.】
Having awakened as servants, they were already vastly different from ordinary ants, and they seemed to require much more energy.
Just like yesterday, after hunting down the mealworms, the worker ants waved their antennae at Lin Miao, expressing their gratitude in their own unique way.
Although their movements were as synchronized as machinery and it didn't look like they truly understood, they simply felt that this was what they had to do.
But right then, a notification that was slightly different from what he had expected popped up:
【They crave a brand-new food source.】
Lin Miao looked at the prompt, a bit speechless. “Wait, didn't I just feed you guys?”
He had clearly seen the worker ants carrying the abundance of mealworms he had bestowed upon them back to the nest.
Yet the system claimed that the ant colony now wanted new food.
Lin Miao felt utterly exasperated. He could only observe them himself to find out the reason behind this.
He quickly noticed something off: why weren't they feeding the larvae?
The worker ants that shredded the mealworms merely divided them among themselves and ate them. They didn't feed any of this food to the larvae and the queen, who should have been cared for with the utmost attention.
One had to know that before this, mealworms were a premium food source to them, far superior to fish food.
The system provided an explanation at this moment:
【They have instinctively sensed that the new food contains power.】
Instead, the worker ants were feeding the queen and the larvae something else.
When Lin Miao saw clearly what those chewed-up, meatball-like things actually were, he couldn't help but frown, his stomach churning.
It was the corpse of some human they had brought back from the outside.
They treated this—which, to put it bluntly, was human flesh—as some sort of exquisite delicacy. They carefully processed it and fed it meticulously to the egg-laying queen and the larvae.
【Special food contains magic and vital energy. They instinctively crave that power.】
Only then did Lin Miao realize that they had found something much more 'delicious' than mealworms—something he had absolutely no way of providing for them.
Right at that moment, another prompt popped up from the system:
【A scouting worker ant has discovered food.】
Thinking these guys were going to hunt and eat humans again, Lin Miao hurriedly shifted his perspective.
“Wait, what is that?”
But the scene before his eyes was beyond his expectations. The 'food' the worker ant had encountered was not a human.
It was a creature similar to a human, yet completely different.
They were much smaller, with greenish skin, yet they wore armor and carried weapons—the absolute spitting image of goblins from fantasy works.
“It's a monster from the abyss!”
The group of about ten goblins instantly fell into a panic upon seeing the scouting worker ant.
The one who looked like the captain was shouting orders at his subordinates.
Lin Miao was surprised to find that he could actually understand their words clearly, but now was obviously not the time to worry about that.
Because these goblins had already launched an attack on the worker ant.
“We can win if there's only one! Attack! We must kill it before its companions arrive!”
At the command of the pointy-bearded goblin captain, the goblins drew their bows, raised their spears, and rushed toward the worker ant in unison.
【Your servant is in danger!】
Lin Miao looked at the scene on the screen and said in a low voice, “I know.”
Sure enough, saying they could win against one wasn't a bluff. The goblins instantly pierced the worker ant—which was much larger than them—with their spears, and arrows rained down, embedding themselves in its body.
The worker ant also relied on its enhanced strength after growing larger, crushing one of them under its foreleg, but it was ultimately outnumbered.
Watching the worker ant get killed like this, even though it was just a single worker ant, an unexpected feeling of concern welled up in Lin Miao's heart.
After all, they were one and the same now, weren't they?
As Lin Miao was thinking, a new prompt surfaced before his eyes, as if urging him to take action.
【Prompt: Only a god can do this. Guiding your servants is the duty of a true deity.】
Seeing that prompt, Lin Miao instinctively understood what he needed to do.
【Your will has been conveyed. The servants are now tracing the scent of their fallen companion.】
That was right—commanding the ant colony to punish the enemies who had harmed their companion.
Lin Miao watched the screen as the goblins dismantled the dead worker ant's corpse with knives, scavenging for anything useful.
Casting aside all distractions, Lin Miao bit his lip and stared intently at the screen, watching the ant colony rush toward the scene at breakneck speed, guided by his will.
He decided to stop overthinking. He could barely protect himself right now, so he had no energy to worry about others.
Unlike their fingernail-sized appearance in reality, the sight of dozens of giant ants marching together was truly spectacular.
They were ants, after all; the rugged forest terrain posed absolutely no obstacle to them.
“C-Captain!” The goblin sentry's voice cracked with terror as he watched the ant colony swarm in from all directions.
“How can there be so many?!” The goblin captain's face turned pale as he stared at the overwhelming swarm.
Having no time to escape, the goblins found themselves completely surrounded in the blink of an eye, their faces frozen in sheer terror.
Rate on N.U.
