Lin Miao watched the battlefield on the screen as the dust finally settled.
Only when he saw the ant colony continuing to pursue the scattered and fleeing joint coalition army did he finally breathe a sigh of relief.
“If not for the tiger hornet ants, this battle would have been incredibly difficult.”
The combat power of the joint coalition army was definitely not to be underestimated. With the continuous bombardment of artillery fire and the fierce close-quarters combat of the powerful beastkin, this battle would have otherwise ended in a mutual defeat at best.
That it ultimately ended in a victory for the ant colony was entirely thanks to the stunning performance of the tiger hornet ants, which had been kept hidden until this very moment.
To breed them, the ant colony had invested a massive amount of resources, and their performance had completely justified that investment. Calling them the heroes of the ant colony was not an exaggeration in the slightest.
Their appearance had completely turned the tide of the battlefield, thoroughly crushing the elite forces that the joint coalition army had painstakingly prepared.
【The servants intend to delay the enemy's regrouping as much as possible】
The ant colony stubbornly continued to pursue the retreating joint coalition army. Had a portion of the coalition's forces not risked their lives to cover the retreat and set massive fires along the retreat path to buy time, the coalition's losses would have been far more severe.
Lin Miao secretly felt relieved. Fortunately, the enemy deity did not make a move this time. As expected, a forced intervention like last time does not come without a price.
What he had been most wary of was a repeat of the last battle, where those who received the deity's blessing underwent a rapid awakening.
After all, even with the tiger hornet ants, if one—no, more than two of those Awakened appeared, things would become extremely troublesome.
【The deity's authority will unlock restrictions based on the territory's scope and the scale of the servant forces in the current plane】
However, just as the Divine Net's description stated, a deity's intervention was by no means free.
The fact that the opponent could not force an intervention was a good thing for Lin Miao, who lacked any direct means of battlefield support.
【The Queen Ant has calculated the harvested spoils and has proceeded with the breeding of additional egg-laying queens and the construction of new nests as planned】
At the same time, the ant nest, which shared all battle conditions in real-time through the hive mind, immediately initiated its next plan the moment the battle ended: a large-scale expansion of nests and the colony.
Lin Miao opened a document he had prepared beforehand, thinking to himself, The defeated joint coalition army just now was probably the absolute limit of the combat power they can muster right now.
What he opened was his exclusive map, on which he had compiled and annotated all information after exerting every effort to gather and observe during this period.
Although more than half of the joint coalition army—which was led by at least two deities—had ultimately managed to survive, one thing was even more important.
In the short term, there would no longer be any force in that region capable of stopping the ant colony.
The human forces to the south no longer had the strength to hold out.
In Lin Miao's eyes, the troops they had gathered in the south were nothing more than a disorganized rabble, and the ant colony had long since seen through this.
Because there was far less of the ant colony's favorite food among the southern human forces compared to the west, the ant colony had only dispatched a few hunting squads to confront them and buy time.
If the main force of the ant colony, led by the tiger hornet ants, marched south, the villages and castles there were destined to collapse and fall unless the south could wait for more reinforcements.
【The servants have decided to concentrate their forces to attack the south】
The homeland of the beastkin was a vast prairie extending infinitely to the west.
On that vast expanse of land, which Lin Miao had not even fully scouted, there remained an unknown number of beastkin tribes.
And the ant colony had already made its calculations; they were not yet powerful enough to march into that vast western territory and completely occupy it.
【The servants have begun a great migration】
Watching the massive, sprawling ant colony on the screen, Lin Miao couldn't help but murmur, “Is this... a forward base?”
He saw countless worker ants departing from the main nest deep in the frontier borderlands forest—which they had constructed into a massive, castle-like structure—carrying ant eggs and pupae in their mandibles as they migrated into the distance.
This was the expansion of the ant colony's nests, and they weren't just expanding in the surrounding area. They were leaving the forest to establish entirely new nests right in the center of the heartland that once belonged to human territory.
A new nest with an egg-laying queen would undoubtedly serve as an excellent forward base for their assault on the south.
Lin Miao thought to himself: How many of these nests will be built in the future?
In some ant species, multiple queens and multiple nests interconnect to form a massive ant empire stretching for kilometers.
Clearly, his ant colony was aiming for exactly this model right now.
The only difference was that the empire they wanted to establish might end up controlling the entire continent, or even the entire planet.
Lin Miao's fingers lightly tapped on the desk as he thought, What should I provide them with now?
Now that they had acquired new land and resources, the ant colony would inevitably have more leeway. This meant they could undergo more and stronger evolutions, just as the Queen Ant hoped.
Naturally, Lin Miao's role became apparent once again.
Just as Lin Miao was lost in thought, staring blankly at the screen and his phone, his supervisor walked over with a troubled expression and said, “Lin Miao, we have a bit of a problem. What should we do?”
Lin Miao suddenly snapped out of it and asked blankly, “Huh?”
Frowning, the supervisor said, “You've seen the news, right? Haven't some rifts recently been detected only to suddenly disappear?”
The news? How could Lin Miao not know?
The place of miracles mentioned in the news was none other than the area where he lived.
Recently, the reason their residential area had become famous was precisely because of this anomalous phenomenon where rifts detected by the observation station would vanish immediately after showing signs of appearing.
The last related news he had seen was that even famous foreign research institutions had traveled all the way to this obscure satellite city in a corner of Modu to conduct research.
With a face full of panic, the supervisor said, “But that same phenomenon has happened here as well!”
At this very moment, in this place where they were on a business trip for rift-related negotiations and business, the exact same anomalous phenomenon had occurred.
Even though this place was far away from the company and the residential area where Lin Miao lived.
Lin Miao's heart skipped a beat, and he instantly realized: Wait. If our company bid on and bought the support rights for this area, wouldn't that mean...?
One of the revenue sources for an Awakened staffing agency was receiving government subsidies by handling on-site support work for rifts.
After all, those Awakened who shed so much sweat and fought with their lives deserved greater compensation.
But after finally investing equipment, manpower, and time for the support work here, if the rifts just vanished with a “whoosh,” the company would lose everything.
Watching all the staff around him whispering in a panic, Lin Miao's body suddenly froze as a thought abruptly rushed into his mind: Wait, could it be...?
The system interface popped up before his eyes:
【Transcendent Divine Status: Activated】
When the ant colony expanded, his Divine Status had risen by one grade, and the incomprehensible, strange power that came with it was currently in an activated state.
If there was any commonality between Lin Miao's residential area and this current place, it wouldn't be surprising if it was related to him.
Furthermore, he suddenly realized that the days when those anomalous phenomena occurred were precisely when he had lifted some of the restrictions on that power.
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