Discovered

The way to solve the problem now was to keep searching for new Black Ant nests to ease the pressure. Or they could wait until the Insect Nest had enough bugs, then wipe out the ant nest completely, turn them all into food, and take over the territory.

The two plans weren't mutually exclusive. They could search for new Black Ant nests while also encroaching on their neighbor's nest. It just meant Rowan would have to get busy again.

He could produce a few Spy Bugs to sneak into the nest and gorge themselves; that shouldn't be a problem. But expecting them to do Rowan's current job—stealing food while covering their tracks—would probably be too difficult for bugs with their intelligence.

If they slipped up and the Black Ants tracked them back to the Mother Nest, its current fighting strength would make it hard to defend itself. So Rowan had to personally handle infiltrating the ant nest and hauling food away.

As for exploration, Rowan had already searched dozens of meters around the Mother Nest. To find new Black Ant nests, he would have to venture farther afield.

Most of the bugs in the Insect Nest were currently based on the Black Ant template. They were effectively blind, relying mainly on close-range contact with their antennae to search their surroundings.

That method came with many dangers, and the farther they went, the likelihood of encountering danger would increase exponentially.

With the Insect Nest's current population, it would be hard to withstand such heavy losses.

He needed new bugs now—ones that could see with their eyes and had a decent field of vision, so they could spot the many dangers along the way in advance. Then they could report back all the information they gathered.

But that brought him back to square one. Rowan could probably produce the necessary physical features, but the bugs weren't intelligent enough to carry out such complex scouting missions. And intelligence wasn't something he could adjust.

The bugs in the Insect Nest were fine at repetitive, mechanical tasks, but they were hopeless at anything even slightly complicated. They couldn't understand what Rowan wanted, so he had to do it all himself.

When he had the time and means, he would have to make some bugs with brains. He wouldn't need many; he just needed someone capable of leading the others when trouble arose.

Complaining wouldn't change anything; he still had to get the work done. Every day, Rowan moved enough supplies to keep the Transport Team busy for about a day into a temporary Storage Room. Then he sealed the passage connected to the Hatching Room tightly and spread pheromones around it warning, "Danger, do not approach."

After finishing that, he would crawl out of the nest and explore farther afield.

The Insect Nest continued developing in an orderly fashion. The first batch of pupating larvae had emerged from their cocoons, becoming a new generation of adult ants. As they grew, they would gradually take on various tasks.

The Mother Nest had grown larger. Rowan had grown, too, but he reckoned he could no longer drag it around.

Thinking it best to prepare for danger, Rowan used Big Black as a template and removed its Digging Leg genes. After observing it, he had found that its massive mandibles conflicted with its digging legs. Those mandibles, which spread wider than its body, weren't very convenient for moving underground.

At the same time, he added gene fragments for communication and identity recognition through pheromones, then had the Mother Nest produce more than a dozen eggs based on the template. If they hatched successfully, they would be dedicated fighters, tasked with defending the Mother Nest.

This was the first time Rowan had used a template he had designed himself to hatch bugs from eggs.

It was an entirely new experiment. He didn't know whether a bug template that wasn't found in nature and had never matured naturally could still be used to produce bugs from the egg stage.

If bugs with these entirely new gene sequences could undergo a complete developmental process, hatch successfully, and grow into Mature Forms, then, once the Insect Nest had abundant resources, a whole series of unnaturally evolved bugs with many advantages and abilities would be born.

By then, the Insect Nest's territory would expand like a snowball rolling downhill. It would no longer have to grow by leeching off ant nests as it did now.

Daydreaming about a bright future filled Rowan with enthusiasm, and things did indeed seem to be going well.

A few days later, his hard work paid off. Rowan found another Black Ant nest in a different direction from the Insect Nest.

This nest was much larger. Rowan found at least fifty Soldier Ants inside, so he estimated that it might have a population of three or four thousand.

Not only were its Hatching Rooms much larger and more spacious, but it had two of them. There were also several food Storage Rooms. The Worker Ants ground food that wouldn't be eaten right away and wouldn't spoil easily into powder with their mandibles, then coated it in a little mucus to keep it from going bad.

Naturally, the Hatching Rooms were also full of even more Yellow Worms. These parasites had dared to steal from Rowan's Granary—they were unforgivable. So Rowan gave every one of them a glob of spit.

The newly discovered ant nest was more than a hundred meters from Rowan's Insect Nest. There were also many Black Ants, and they patrolled a wide area every day without leaving any blind spots. The Smuggling Tunnel would have to be at least fifty meters long. For Rowan, that was a real undertaking.

Fortunately, Rowan had more underlings now. He left more than twenty to carry food for the Transport Team and another twenty or so newly emerged ants at home to care for the larvae. Then he took the remaining dozens of ants and began a grand excavation.

Rowan's days were now packed with work. Early each morning, he first went to Ant Nest No. 1 to carry food to the Storage Room and seal off the tunnel, then left the Transport Team to work on its own. After that, he rushed back home and took the Excavation Team to Ant Nest No. 2 to dig a tunnel. Along the way, he would also find some members of his new neighbors' nest and give them a demonstration of Rowan's Combat Technique, so the skill wouldn't get rusty.

The Black Ants who watched the performance generally couldn't afford Rowan's appearance fee, so they had to pay with their bodies and were devoured by the Excavation Team.

Time flew by. Just as the extra-long Smuggling Tunnel was nearly complete, something happened to the Transport Team.

The Smuggling Tunnel to their old neighbor, Ant Nest No. 1, had been dug nearby by taking advantage of a blind spot in their patrols. It was only a little over ten meters from the ant nest.

But as Rowan shifted his focus elsewhere and stopped performing Rowan's Combat Technique in that area, the number of Scout Worker Ants there gradually increased.

Today, as luck would have it, the Transport Team had just emerged from the tunnel carrying food when they ran straight into a Scout Worker Ant.

Seeing so many ants who looked like her but lacked her nest's identifying pheromones, the Worker Ant immediately went over to demand an explanation.

The Transport Team wasn't exactly known for its good temper, either. After a heated exchange of antennae, the two sides eventually started fighting.

The Scout Worker Ant was no match for the outnumbering Transport Team. But it was the team's first fight, and somehow, even with so many bugs, they let the Scout Worker Ant escape...

The Transport Team didn't think much of it. But after they brought the food back to the Insect Nest and went out again, they were ambushed by the scout, who had returned home and gathered reinforcements.