Plan

Aside from that, he felt that his body had undergone some significant changes, too. It seemed different from before.

If Rowan had known more about entomology, he might have guessed from the spider's anatomy that the oxygen supply system inside him had also been upgraded. However, he would soon be able to look up that gene fragment through the Mother Nest.

The new oxygen supply system could support him as he grew to a much larger size.

But he hadn't gained the ability to spin silk. That made sense, when he thought about it. The creature had only looked like a spider. Rowan had named it that for convenience, using a term he understood, but who knew what it really was?

Besides, it hunted by using a rock to launch surprise attacks. It hadn't shown any talent for weaving webs.

Rowan didn't feel any regret over not gaining the ability to spin silk.

Those six Walking Legs and Venom Fang alone had already made this a huge windfall. Everything else was a minor detail—nice to have, but not necessary.

With his great enemy avenged, Rowan had temporarily lost interest in stirring up trouble. And so, this region entered a period of peaceful development.

With the help of four Ant Nests, the number of bugs in the Insect Nest grew by the day. Gradually, the Ant Nests alone could no longer meet the Insect Nest's daily needs.

However, some time ago, the Big-Eye Scout Ants he'd sent out discovered three new Ant Nests. Preparations were already underway to dig new transport tunnels. With supplies from seven Ant Nests in total, the Insect Nest would surely be able to keep growing for a while longer.

Hundreds of days and nights passed in the blink of an eye. Rowan didn't know how long a year was on this planet, and the climate in his region barely changed. It seemed the days were always the same. The plants didn't sprout or shed their leaves according to any regular pattern, so it was impossible to distinguish spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

After all this time, the Insect Nest was now connected to thirty-five Ant Nests nearby. Its huge Swarm consisted of more than ten thousand Worker Ants and several hundred Soldier Ants.

Even those numbers were the result of Rowan deliberately keeping the population in check. Otherwise, the number of bugs would have at least doubled.

The main reason was that the transport routes had become too long.

The farthest Ant Nest was nearly a kilometer from the Insect Nest. By the time a transport Engineer Ant reached the Storage Room to steal food, it had almost exhausted its strength. After eating a small portion of the food prepared in the Storage Room, it would carry the rest back, eating some more along the way... By the time it returned to the Insect Nest, there was hardly any food left.

To put it in more concrete terms, each morning, a Transport Team Worker Ant would eat one unit of food before setting out. It would then reach the Storage Room of Ant Nest Number Thirty-Five, eat one unit of food, and carry two units back.

After returning, it would eat half a unit of food and rest for the night. The next morning, it would eat one unit before setting out again, and the cycle would repeat.

The numbers showed that the cost of transporting two units of food was a staggering two and a half units. It was already becoming a losing proposition.

And each Ant Nest had a limit to how much food could be stolen from it per day. Going beyond that limit would disrupt its normal operations, gradually reducing how much food it could provide. So, for the sake of sustainability, they couldn't strip the nests bare.

As a result, the Insect Nest had stopped expanding several dozen days ago. They rarely sent Transport Teams to Ant Nests numbered thirty and above anymore, leaving only a few Spy Ants behind to freeload.

Rowan had considered having everyone eat dirt, but tests showed that the energy conversion from eating nothing but dirt was far too low. The eat-dirt skill was only useful when avoiding extreme danger: the whole Swarm could go dormant and keep its energy consumption to a minimum.

Simply put, eating dirt could keep them from starving to death if they slept all day without working or expending energy. It couldn't sustain their daily needs when they were working normally.

The Insect Nest's development had hit a bottleneck. Rowan had thought of a few ways to keep expanding. The first was to improve transport efficiency. Ants were strong enough to carry food several times their own weight, but unfortunately, they lacked suitable transport equipment to make full use of their strength.

With just their mandibles, they could carry a little more if the food hadn't been broken up. Unfortunately, most of the food stolen from the Ant Nests had already been ground into crumbs.

They were like trucks with a one-ton capacity, but only a cab and no trailer. Each trip, they could carry only a few dozen or a hundred kilograms in the cab.

So, if he could find a way to increase their carrying capacity and let them reach their full potential, the Insect Nest could expand its territory several times over.

Unfortunately, Rowan didn't know how to build trailers. He could only hope to come across a bug that came with one built in and extract its gene fragment. But when he might encounter such a bug was a matter of luck—and it was hard to say whether any such bug even existed.

The second plan was to relocate the Insect Nest. Its current position was backed up against a Cliff. When the Insect Nest had still been weak, that location had been useful: they only had to watch out for enemies from the front and didn't need to worry too much about attacks from behind.

But now the Insect Nest was already quite powerful. If they moved to a place surrounded by many Ant Nests, their current transport capacity would let them connect to at least twice as many nests.

More connected Ant Nests meant more food to steal, and the problem they faced now would naturally resolve itself.

But this plan only addressed the symptoms, not the root cause. It would merely ease the problem. The Insect Nest was already enormous, and relocating it wouldn't be easy.

And even if they did move to a new location, the tunnels connecting them to the Ant Nests wouldn't be completed in a day or two. They still had no solution for how to get through that period.

The third plan was to clear out the Ant Nests around the Insect Nest and claim a stretch of territory on the surface, where they could obtain food for themselves.

There were four Ant Nests very close to the Insect Nest. To avoid conflict with them, the bugs usually didn't wander around on the surface.

All the Insect Nest's food came from supplies delivered by the various Ant Nests. In other words, apart from the Soldier Ants, everyone was part of the Transport Team. This ecological model was far too lopsided and overly dependent on others.

So, if they could secure some territory on the surface, they could produce some food themselves. For example, they could raise the little green bugs that lived on leaves, and with Rowan's intelligence, expand their breeding operation. Although the way those bugs produced food was a little questionable, they could feed it to the underlings.

Compared with the first two plans, the third was the most feasible.

But the tool-using bugs in the nearby Ant Nests did their jobs well, working tirelessly and deserving credit for their hard work. Combined with Rowan's lazy outlook and lack of ambition, the matter was put off.

That was, until a few days ago, when some changes occurred.