Completion

After a very unfriendly exchange, both sides broke into a fierce skirmish. At first, the two forces were evenly matched, but this was the enemy's home turf, and reinforcements arrived in an endless stream.

The situation shifted rapidly once a Soldier Ant reached the battlefield. This specialized combat unit, designed solely for fighting, charged into the fray of brawling worker ants like a grown man bursting into a kindergarten—truly invincible.

The Soldier Ant rampaged through the Transport Team, meeting no resistance, and in the blink of an eye, it had slaughtered the transport unit, leaving them in complete disarray.

Although the insects produced by the Mother Nest were modeled after Black Ants and looked exactly like them, for some reason, they fought to the death without retreating. In contrast, the Scout Worker Ant from the original ant nest knew to flee when it couldn't win a one-on-many fight.

Consequently, the entire Transport Team was wiped out.

Rowan only discovered the anomaly the day after the incident occurred.

On the night of the brawl, Rowan had returned to the Insect Nest with his excavation team only after dark. The number of Black Ants in the nest wasn't particularly high, but there were several dozen, all bustling about. To be honest, Rowan hadn't even noticed that a dozen or so were missing. After drinking some sap and grooming a tree root to feed Big Black, he went to his small room to rest.

It wasn't until Rowan woke up the next day and intended to take a headcount before setting out that he realized the Transport Team hadn't returned. His heart sank immediately; he knew something had gone wrong.

Rowan reacted quickly. After a moment of thought, he pinpointed the loophole he had left behind and deduced the truth with near-perfect accuracy.

He set out alone to investigate the situation. He hadn't crawled far from the entrance when he encountered Scout Worker Ants, likely tracking the trail left by the Transport Team.

Rowan didn't alert the enemy. Instead, he wiped away the traces and laid down new pheromones, leading the trail toward the direction of Ant Nest No. 2. Whether the scouts from both sides would eventually meet was no longer his concern; he had already successfully distanced his own Insect Nest from the mess.

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

The signs of battle at the tunnel entrance confirmed Rowan's suspicions: a large-scale group fight had taken place here. Although the battlefield had been cleaned up, the pheromones scattered everywhere—signaling "enemy," "alert," and "combat"—revealed a great deal of information.

Instead of entering the tunnel, he crawled from the surface to the entrance of the ant hill and swaggered inside. Shortly after, he found the Transport Team in the Hatching Room, though they appeared before him only as various severed body parts.

Rowan sighed, wondering if Black Two or Black Three were among them. Since all the Black Ants looked identical, and as the number of ants in his nest grew, he had long since lost the ability to tell which was which.

However, he felt no grief. Perhaps, thousands of years from now, his memories as an insect would accumulate and eventually suppress his memories as a human. But for now, having only recently transformed, his human soul and memories remained dominant, making it difficult for him to develop any real affection for a few insects.

He never considered these insects his kin; they were merely tools. He hatched them and fed them only to make his own life more comfortable. His sigh was more of a frustrated self-critique for failing to plan thoroughly and suddenly losing so many tools.

After grabbing a meal in the Hatching Room, Rowan didn't linger. He climbed out of the ant nest and returned home.

Ant Nest No. 1 was too dangerous for now, so he wouldn't bring his workers there for a while. It was the perfect time to let them rest and replenish their stores.

His main target now was Ant Nest No. 2. The Smuggling Tunnel there wasn't built on the basis of a patrol blind spot, making it safer. Besides, it would be finished soon—just a day or two of overtime—and the food reserves in the Insect Nest were sufficient to last that long without any issues.

Returning to his own nest, he first went to the Mother Nest to prepare some eggs. This batch was based on the Black Ant genetic template, but he added a pair of Digging Legs to them.

Transport work on the surface was still too dangerous; he needed a professional excavation team. In the future, he planned to dig an underground tunnel connecting Ant Nest No. 1, Ant Nest No. 2, and his own nest, avoiding any dangerous surface encounters.

Furthermore, there might be a No. 3, No. 4, or even more nests to connect to this underground network. Relying solely on himself to dig wouldn't work; it contradicted his original intention. His goal was to eat until full, sleep until rested, and evolve while lying down—not to work for these tools.

Although he had held this idea for a while, he hadn't been in a rush, wanting to wait for the success of his previous experiment before proceeding with the modifications.

However, this sudden emergency forced him to accelerate his plans. Fortunately, the previously prepared eggs, while not yet hatched, remained vibrant; it seemed it was only a matter of time before the larvae emerged.

This was the source of his confidence in accelerating the plan: the eggs still held life, proving the concept was viable.

Gathering his crew, Rowan set out with this unprofessional excavation team. Currently, he was doing all the digging himself; these ants were mostly responsible for moving the excavated soil out of the pits and performing later reinforcement work on the tunnels.

Two days passed, and the Smuggling Tunnel for Ant Nest No. 2 was completed. Rowan, familiar with the process, forged his "ID," snuck into the Hatching Room, dug a temporary path connecting to the Smuggling Tunnel, and began transferring food.

Food reserves within the nest gradually increased. Rowan specifically dug out two storage rooms; although he didn't need them yet, he believed there would come a day when they would be put to use.

Time flowed on, and everything seemed orderly. The eggs based on the Big Black template finally hatched into larvae. These new larvae looked different from the ants; they resembled the White Worms Rowan had encountered when he first arrived in this world.

Looking at the larvae before him, Rowan felt a sense of nostalgia. Those early White Worms had helped him immensely. They were hardworking and uncomplaining, no matter how he treated them. Back when his teeth weren't very strong, whenever he held a tree root out to them, they would bite it open for him without a single complaint—truly great insects.

After another period, the second batch of Black Ants with Digging Legs hatched from their eggs. They looked quite similar to ordinary ant larvae, with almost no discernible difference.

During this time, the number of insects in the nest increased steadily, not only replacing the losses from the Transport Team but exceeding the previous count.

With sufficient manpower, Rowan led them to re-excavate the Smuggling Tunnel of Ant Nest No. 1, this time connecting it directly from underground to the top of his own nest.