Completion

After a very unfriendly exchange, the two sides launched into a fierce battle. At first, they were evenly matched, but this was the other side's home turf, after all, and reinforcements kept arriving.

The situation changed rapidly when a Soldier Ant reached the battlefield. This specialized fighting unit charged into a brawl between a bunch of Worker Ants like a grown man barging into a kindergarten. It was utterly unstoppable.

The Soldier Ant charged through the Transport Team, and none of them could stand against it. In the blink of an eye, the entire team was routed.

Although the insects produced by the Mother Nest were modeled on Black Ants and looked exactly like them, Rowan didn't know why the Scout Worker Ant from the Ant Nest had once fought several opponents at once and, when it couldn't win, known to run away, while these insects produced by the Mother Nest fought to the death and never retreated.

And so, the Transport Team was wiped out.

Rowan didn't notice anything was wrong until the day after it happened.

On the night of the brawl, Rowan had only returned to the Insect Nest with the Excavation Team after dark. There weren't that many Black Ants in the nest, but there were still dozens, and they were all busy. Honestly, he hadn't noticed when a dozen or twenty went missing. After drinking some sap and peeling off a tree root to feed Big Black, he went to rest in his little room.

It wasn't until he woke up the next day and was preparing to count his workers before setting out that he realized the Transport Team hadn't returned the night before. His heart sank at once. Something had happened.

Rowan reacted quickly. After thinking it over briefly, he realized there had been a hole in his plan and guessed what had happened with reasonable accuracy.

So he went out alone to investigate. He hadn't crawled far before he ran into a Scout Worker Ant, which had probably followed the Transport Team's trail.

Rowan didn't alert it. Instead, he erased the tracks and laid down fresh pheromone trails, leading the clues toward Ant Nest No. 2. Whether the scouts from both sides ran into each other later was none of Rowan's concern. He'd already made sure the Insect Nest wasn't implicated.

He crawled all the way to the exit of the Smuggling Tunnel. Though he saw many Scout Worker Ants along the way, Rowan had already changed his identity, so it didn't matter if he ran into them.

The traces of battle at the tunnel entrance confirmed Rowan's guess: a large-scale battle had taken place here. The battlefield had already been cleaned up, but scattered pheromone signals like "enemy," "alert," and "battle" still revealed plenty of information.

Rather than enter the tunnel, Rowan crawled overland to the nest entrance and strode inside. He found the Transport Team in the Hatching Room, though they were scattered before him in various states of dismemberment.

Rowan sighed. He didn't know whether Black Two and Black Three were among them. All Black Ants looked alike, and as the number of Black Ants in the Insect Nest gradually increased, he'd long since lost track of which ones were Black Two and Black Three.

But he didn't feel particularly sad. Perhaps after hundreds or thousands of years, as his memories as an insect accumulated, they would gradually suppress his human memories. But he hadn't been an insect for long, and his human memories and soul still held sway. It was difficult for him to feel anything for a few insects.

He had never considered these insects his kin. They were just tools. He hatched them and fed them only to make his own life more comfortable. His sigh just now was more like the frustrated, self-reproachful sigh of someone who hadn't planned carefully and had suddenly lost a lot of tools.

After grabbing a bite and a drink in the Hatching Room, Rowan didn't linger. He got up, climbed out of the nest, and headed home.

Ant Nest No. 1 had been too dangerous lately, so he wouldn't bring anyone there for now. That would give them time to rest and build up their stores.

His main target was still Ant Nest No. 2. Its Smuggling Tunnel wasn't located in a patrol blind spot, so it was safer. It would also be finished soon; working overtime, they'd need only a day or two. The Insect Nest still had some food reserves, enough to last that long without any trouble.

Back at his own nest, he first went to the Mother Nest and prepared some Insect Eggs. This time, they were all based on the Black Ant genetic template, with an extra pair of Digging Legs added.

Transporting things aboveground was too dangerous. He needed a specialized excavation team. In the future, he planned to dig an underground tunnel connecting Ant Nest No. 1, Ant Nest No. 2, and his own Insect Nest. That way, they could avoid dangers on the surface.

And there might be a No. 3, No. 4, and even more nests to connect to the underground network in the future. He couldn't possibly dig everything himself; that wasn't what he had in mind. His plan was to eat, sleep, wake up and eat again, and evolve while lying around—not to work for these tools.

He'd had this idea for a while, but hadn't been in a hurry to act on it. He'd wanted to wait until the previous experiment succeeded before preparing the new eggs.

But this sudden emergency had forced him to move the plan up. Fortunately, the eggs he'd prepared earlier hadn't hatched yet, but they were still full of life. It seemed it was only a matter of time before the larvae emerged.

That was what gave him the confidence to move the plan forward: the eggs were still viable, which proved the plan could work.

After gathering his workers, Rowan set off with the unprofessional Excavation Team. Until now, he'd done all the digging himself. The ants mostly carried the dirt he dug out of the tunnels away, and did some of the finishing work to reinforce them.

Two days later, the Smuggling Tunnel at Ant Nest No. 2 was complete. Rowan expertly forged a new identity, slipped into the Hatching Room, and dug a temporary passage connecting it to the Smuggling Tunnel. Then he began moving food.

The Insect Nest's food reserves gradually grew. Rowan even dug out two Storage Rooms. They weren't needed yet, but he was sure they would be someday.

Time passed, and everything proceeded in an orderly fashion. The Insect Eggs based on Big Black's template finally hatched into larvae. They looked different from ants, resembling the White Worm Rowan had encountered when he'd first arrived in this world.

Looking at the larvae before him, Rowan felt nostalgic. The White Worm had been a huge help back then. It had worked tirelessly, no matter how he treated it. When his teeth had still been weak, whenever he held a tree root out to them, they had bitten it open for him without complaint. They really were wonderful insects.

After some more time, the larvae of the Black Ants with Digging Legs that he'd prepared in the second batch also hatched from their eggs. They looked quite similar to ordinary ant larvae, with almost no noticeable differences.

During this time, the number of insects in the Insect Nest steadily increased. They not only made up for the losses from the Transport Team but also brought their numbers much higher than before.

With enough workers at last, Rowan led them in digging out the Smuggling Tunnel at Ant Nest No. 1 again. This time, they connected it directly underground to the area above the Insect Nest.