Slimes and Ant Swarms

The deathless ant legion and the dim-witted slime fought each other, and System felt there was a strong chance they would end up mutually ruined.

The slime's gelatinous body would devour countless ants, but the endless stream of ants would also severely damage that gelatin.

Even System could not guess who would emerge victorious.

It would probably depend on the scale of the ant colony. So long as there were enough ants, the slime would absolutely be drowned beneath the flood formed by their gathering.

He just did not know how intelligent a fantastical species like a slime truly was.

After encountering danger, would it choose to lock horns with the ant colony to the bitter end?

Or would it know when to stop, devour a few ants, then bounce away?

The slime was not far from the reddish-brown ants' nest, only around twelve meters away.

System had a way to draw the slime over. He could toss dead branches to lure it.

Through his earlier tests, System had discovered that the slime's behavioral pattern was very simple. So long as there was an unusual faint vibration nearby, it would move in that direction.

If this slime remained in its current state and did not wander off at random, System was confident he could lure it to the ant nest with around a hundred tossed branches.

Having made up his mind, System quickly sprang into action.

He had nearly fallen into the slime's scent trap just now, which left him somewhat irritated. Thus, even though repeatedly tossing dead branches would waste a great deal of time, System resolutely chose to do so.

He searched for suitable dead branches, carried them to a spot diagonally above the slime, found the right angle, and threw them down...

System repeated this process again and again.

The slime truly was very unintelligent. Just as he had expected, it moved step by step toward the ant nest.

However, the slime's movement speed differed slightly from System's estimate. Usually, each branch he tossed would move the slime only around five centimeters. Coupled with the forest's complicated terrain, System estimated that he would need to toss over two hundred branches before leading the slime to the ant nest.

More than two hundred tossed branches would take at least seven or eight hours to complete. By then, it would be dark.

With the darkness and the mental exhaustion he would feel by then, System somewhat wanted to give up.

But if he missed today, this slime might vanish without a trace.

System considered it, then ultimately decided to continue. He tried to make his movements nimbler and more efficient.

Luring the slime through the first half of the journey was arduous, but near noon, an unexpected development occurred in his efforts to guide it—

Several reddish-brown worker ants appeared not far from the slime, exploring in its direction.

The slime bounced over and swallowed the worker ants into the gelatinous substance of its body.

Not long afterward, more worker ants scouting out from the ant nest appeared. The slime continued bouncing about as it devoured the ants, drawing ever closer to the nest...

After noon, System basically no longer needed to act, because the ants themselves would actively lure the slime toward their nest.

System realized that ants and slimes were likely both links in this forest's food chain.

Even if he had not deliberately lured the slime over, this slime was destined to clash with the ant colony.

Yet System still could not determine which of the slime and the ants stood higher in the food chain. Though the slime appeared to be devouring ants step by step, the ants might also be using themselves as bait to lure in the slime.

As the slime gradually approached the ant nest in the rotting tree, more and more ants patrolled back and forth. The slime devoured them with increasing frequency, approaching the nest even faster.

Within the football-sized slime's gelatinous body, System could see tiny reddish-brown specks—ant corpses. Clearly, the slime could not fully digest the ants in a short time.

As the slime drew closer to the ant nest step by step, once it was roughly half a meter away, the ants inside the nest suddenly surged out like a flood and charged at the slime!!

The mandibles of these reddish-brown ants were slightly smaller than those of the dark brown ants, and their bodies were more slender and slight, but they were far faster than the dark brown ants.

With a single leaping roll, the slime easily engulfed and devoured hundreds of ants. But as it continued rolling, thousands of ants had already trampled over their companions' bodies and crawled all over the slime's gelatinous form...

The slime was still consuming more ants, but System saw that many worker ants were already carrying rice-grain-sized pieces of gelatin back to the nest.

The battle between the ants and the slime was exceedingly brutal. Half an hour later, because the slime had swallowed too many ants, the viscosity of its gelatin had greatly decreased. Ant corpses and slime gelatin began constantly falling away.

Not long afterward, perhaps driven by its instinct for survival, the slime did not choose to continue fighting the ants to the bitter end.

It bounced away from the ant nest, and with every successive bounce, more gelatin and ant corpses fell from its body.

It had been football-sized when it arrived, and though it had devoured countless ants, it was still football-sized when it left. Clearly, the ant colony had carried away a considerable amount of its gelatinous body.

Though the ant colony had seized a large amount of slime gelatin, it had also paid with the lives of tens of thousands of ants.

The two sides had clearly both suffered grievously.

Under the guidance of huge soldier ants, the surviving worker ants near the nest began carrying away their companions' corpses, cleaning the gelatin from their bodies and transporting it into the nest. The colony moved in orderly fashion...

System did not continue watching the ants. He pursued the slime in the direction it had fled.

Along the slime's escape route, plenty of gelatin and ant corpses had fallen away. He could use the opportunity to try the slime gelatin and eat the ant corpses to fill his stomach.

Because its gelatin was falling away, the bouncing slime had shrunk by nearly a third after fleeing more than ten meters. In the end, it bounced into the mud of a puddle and stopped.

Having seen where the slime stopped, System began trying to eat the scattered slime gelatin.

Having fallen from the slime's body, the gelatin had not immediately died. Instead, it slowly wriggled across the ground, seemingly trying to gather back together.

However, aside from a small number of larger chunks of gelatin that could successfully merge, small pieces would completely lose all movement within a few minutes of separating from the slime's body.

"Could this be a form of reproduction through fission?"

System looked at the five-centimeter gelatinous sphere trembling lightly as it gathered before him, and felt that he had gained a deeper understanding of slimes, those magical creatures.

System aimed his insect head at the mass of jelly and began to suck it up.

This small mass of jelly seemed to have gained a new life. The moment System's mandibles touched it, it tried to bounce up and swallow him.

But it was too small and too weak. System easily shredded it with several of his forelimbs, after which the scattered jelly began gathering together once more.

The jelly tasted fairly good, giving off a rich yogurt flavor, similar to mushrooms but much more intense.

It tasted slightly better than insect pupae, yet the experience it provided was fully three times as much.

As System sucked down the jelly, he could feel it trembling faintly in his stomach.

The trembling jelly in his belly did not make System uncomfortable. On the contrary, it felt rather pleasant, as though the jelly he had swallowed was massaging his abdomen.

Not only that, as the jelly in his abdomen was gradually digested, System discovered that slime jelly had an extraordinary effect on his Metamorphic Growth talent.