The Insect Nest lay deep underground. Without digging legs, ants could hardly burrow that far with their bodies alone. So Rowan had built a temporary nest above the Insect Nest to transfer supplies. It could also serve as a decoy, creating a fake nest to act as the real nest's first line of defense.
The distance from Ant Nest No. 1 to the Insect Nest was a little over fifty meters, about the same length as the Smuggling Tunnel at Ant Nest No. 2. For Rowan, who had already gained experience with this kind of construction, such a project was a piece of cake.
After spending some time completing the tunnel, the Insect Nest resumed stealing food from Ant Nest No. 1. With supplies from two nests, the food reserves in Rowan's own Insect Nest began to grow at a visible rate. They not only covered the Hatching Room, but had also started piling up in the Storage Room he had dug earlier.
From then on, Rowan's daily routine was to visit both nests early each morning and carry enough food to the tunnel to supply the Transport Team for a full day's work. Then he would continue expanding his reconnaissance range.
After some time, Rowan had grown enormously. He had reached the size of the Black Armored Beetle "War God" from back then. He lacked its two giant mandibles, so his fighting strength was a little lower, but he was now more than capable of taking on a Soldier Ant one-on-one.
By then, he was a little larger than a Soldier Ant. Compared to his rounded build, the Soldier Ant's slender frame looked rather frail.
Aside from their sharper mandibles, Soldier Ants were basically Worker Ants enlarged more than tenfold. When they had no advantage in size, they naturally stood no chance against Rowan's Combat Technique.
Rowan set a trap not far from Ant Nest No. 1 and led a large group of his underlings into an ambush. Using a strategy of besieging one enemy to draw out its reinforcements, he lured out a Soldier Ant. After a bit of effort, he killed it and obtained its gene fragment.
By then, the Insect Nest had more than two hundred adult Black Ants. The eggs, larvae, and pupae together numbered well over a thousand. One thing worth noting was that the ants from the second batch, which had been bred with digging legs, had all pupated. Meanwhile, the Black Armored Beetles from the first batch were still larvae, though they had grown larger—some were already bigger than many adult Black Ants.
Considering the template they came from and their size as adults, that was understandable.
Though Rowan had obtained the Soldier Ant template this time, he had no plans to hatch any. Their role was similar to that of the Black Armored Beetles, but they were much weaker in combat. They also did no productive work and consumed a great deal of food, so hatching a few would serve no purpose.
By the time that batch of Black Armored Beetles matured, the Insect Nest ought to be ready to emerge aboveground and claim a territory.
Before that, though, he still had to hurry and search for more nests. The number of insects in the Insect Nest was growing rapidly, and supplies from just two nests were no longer enough.
Several days later, Rowan discovered a new nest more than two hundred meters north of the Insect Nest. He immediately forged an identity and infiltrated it.
The main passage of the nest, which had once seemed fairly spacious, now looked extremely cramped beside his enlarged body. If he kept growing, he probably wouldn't be able to continue his spy work unless he widened the tunnels himself as he went. But by then, who knew whether his forged identity would still work?
Back when he had been eating and drinking in the Hatching Room at Ant Nest No. 2, he had once seen a Soldier Ant kill a Worker Ant. That Worker Ant had certainly not been a spy like him; it had been a genuine resident with a legitimate identity. Rowan still had no idea why the Soldier Ant had attacked it.
But the incident had taught him that even ants from the same nest could attack one another. Trusting and relying too much on his forged identity would make him let down his guard.
After that, he was no longer so careless when entering a nest. He proceeded cautiously instead. However, as his body continued to swell, the different kinds of Soldier Ants in the nests posed less and less of a threat to him, and he was beginning to feel invincible again.
The newly discovered Ant Nest No. 3 was also home to Black Ants. It was about the same size as Ant Nest No. 2, and Rowan found no unusual types of Soldier Ants inside.
As usual, he spat a few mouthfuls of thick phlegm at the Yellow Worms who were freeloading in the nest. Then he returned home, gathered his troops, and sent the Excavation Brigade off to work in grand style.
The route to Ant Nest No. 3 passed between Ant Nest No. 1 and Ant Nest No. 2. Traveling aboveground might lead them to run into scouts from either nest, creating uncertainty for the supply operation.
So this time, Rowan planned to start digging above the Insect Nest and carve out a tunnel more than two hundred meters long underground, directly connecting the Transfer Station above the Insect Nest to Ant Nest No. 3.
At Rowan's current size, all he had to do was dig a passage large enough for himself, and the ants would have a comfortable tunnel with extra height and width. He only needed to clear the way at the front. Hundreds of ants behind him could continuously carry the soil he dug out to the transport tunnels.
So although this tunnel, at more than two hundred meters, was the biggest project Rowan had ever undertaken, it might be completed even faster than the fifty-meter tunnel to Ant Nest No. 2.
Several days later, a new species of ant equipped with digging legs joined the team. The difference between digging legs and ordinary limbs when moving soil was like the difference between sweeping up beans with a broom and picking them up by hand. The improvement in efficiency was obvious.
Everything had been going smoothly. With the help of the digging ants, the new tunnel would also be completed ahead of schedule. But just then, an accident happened.
After a full day of work, Rowan returned first. The Excavation Team still had to clear the soil from the tunnel, so they kept working. Above the Insect Nest, the dirt they had carried out bit by bit had formed a mound more than half a meter high.
Rowan climbed to the surface, planning to drink some tree sap and bring some back for Big Black. The Black Armored Beetle larvae based on Big Black's template had started pupating one after another over the past few days. He wondered whether they would eat only plants after emerging from their pupae. In any case, he had stopped damaging plant roots and had begun consciously protecting the vegetation around the Insect Nest.
He was climbing a plant, looking for a tender branch to bite into, when several moving, ocher-colored spots flashed across the corner of his eye.
He immediately grew alert. As the Insect Nest had expanded, there were hardly any other creatures around anymore, even though it had yet to formally establish itself aboveground. Ocher-colored creatures were especially rare.
Rowan moved toward them until the figures came into clear view.
Well, talk about running into old enemies. Those ocher-colored figures were the Desert Ants who had nearly sent him to an early grave back then.
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