Brainwashing

Near the nest of Big Fool, the soldier ant, System piled the food atop a concave stone, then secreted [Corrosive Mucus] and sprayed it over the food.

Ever since discovering that Big Fool could command ordinary worker ants, System had stopped worrying about obtaining food altogether. He no longer had to struggle every day to snatch ants away.

He only needed to sit back and reap the rewards, waiting for nearly a hundred worker ants to carry food out of the ant nest as his free laborers.

What constrained System now was no longer the time spent robbing ordinary ants, but the speed at which he could eat.

After all, he could not swallow prey whole like a snake.

Eating by chewing would undoubtedly waste a great deal of his time.

System's solution was to use his [Corrosive Mucus] to digest the food outside his body. Afterward, he only needed to suck up the half-digested food with all his strength, saving himself a great deal of time.

After several upgrades, [Corrosive Mucus] could now be secreted in sufficient quantities to help him complete this external digestion.

Though secreting and recovering [Corrosive Mucus] consumed some energy, with worker ants carrying him an almost limitless supply of food, those losses could basically be ignored.

System's only concern was that the melted corpses of various insects and some mushrooms, all mixed together in the mucus, would taste strange.

Fortunately, when System tried it afterward, he found that was not the case.

A grasshopper's sense of taste was completely different from a human's. System did not detect any strange flavor as he swallowed the liquid; instead, he found it quite delicious, with something of the taste of mixed fruit yogurt.

Once sucking up the mucus had made his abdomen swell slightly, System began testing his brainwashing on several ant eggs Big Fool had brought over.

The eggs of these dark brown ants were translucent white with a faint yellow tint, roughly three millimeters in size, and gave off the ants' distinctive acidic scent.

The eggs were at different stages of development. Through the outer gelatinous layer of some, the outlines of newly born ant larvae could already be seen; they would likely hatch before long. Others had not yet formed the solid bodies of larvae within, and were clearly still far from hatching.

System used Mind Transfer on the ant eggs one after another, communicating with them mentally.

Unlike ant larvae, these ant eggs would transmit an intimate feeling to him, as though they had returned to their mother's womb, as soon as his Mind Transfer made even a slight connection.

The further an egg was from hatching, the more intimate the emotions it produced—but the weaker the mental power it fed back.

If it was the kind of egg that had just been laid by the queen, where the larva inside had not taken shape at all, then System's Mind Transfer had no effect whatsoever. Clearly, such eggs possessed no thoughts yet, like plants.

For eggs that were about to hatch, after System hypnotized them for six or seven minutes, they would see through his lie. Like ordinary adult ants, they would then regard System as an enemy forever.

Eggs that were further from hatching could be fooled by System for longer. Only after more than ten minutes would they realize System was not one of their own kind.

And unlike eggs about to hatch into larvae.

These eggs that were still further from hatching would not regard System as an enemy permanently.

As long as System continuously soothed them with Mind Transfer while they regarded him as an enemy, after a while they would once again believe System to be their queen.

Of course, after some more time had passed, they would again realize that System was not one of their kind.

By repeatedly brainwashing the ant eggs in this way, System gradually figured out the pattern after an entire day.

Through continuous communication via Mind Transfer, the time these eggs believed in him had noticeably increased, while the degree and frequency of their suspicion had gradually diminished.

If he kept using Mind Transfer on the eggs without interruption at this rate, System estimated that in around three days, he could completely subdue an egg and turn it into something like Big Fool, the soldier ant.

Although this method had successfully achieved what System envisioned, and continuing like this should make recruiting over a hundred ants no problem, System was clearly not very satisfied with the result.

Using Mind Transfer to brainwash these eggs was simply too inefficient. He had to keep watch over them at all times, and the moment any of them developed suspicion toward him, he needed to soothe it immediately with Mind Transfer.

Otherwise, if he neglected to soothe it for too long, all the brainwashing he had done to the ant eggs before would go down the drain.

So he had to monitor the eggs constantly for roughly three days, and could not leave for too long during that time.

A few eggs were manageable, but if there were too many, not only would he be unable to handle them all, his mental power would also be depleted faster, making it impossible for him to last three days.

But no matter what, now that System had an ample supply of food, he actually had nothing else to do.

As long as he ate in peace over the next several days, after waiting around fourteen days, he would reach Level 12 and undergo his third metamorphosis.

After thinking for a while, System decided that compared to venturing out to search for edible magical creatures, brainwashing these eggs was clearly the better and safer choice.

He instructed Big Fool to continue stealing several more eggs from the ant nest, then had the soldier ant Big Fool continue leading the hundred-odd worker ants in building his overwintering nest.

System then busied himself near this pile of rubble.

Discarding the eggs that were too close to hatching or too far from it, System ultimately kept thirteen eggs.

At a rate of thirteen at a time, excluding the necessary rest periods, System could gain a hundred ants utterly loyal to him in about a month.

Of course, those subordinates might only be ant larvae, possessing little ability to move, so he would still need to stay busy for some time.

One by one, System used Mind Transfer to convey to the eggs an intimate feeling like that of a mother toward her children, then responded to each egg's feedback in turn.

After his full day of earlier experimentation.

System was already thoroughly familiar with brainwashing eggs. Thirteen eggs were a bit more than before, but not beyond his ability to handle.

System carefully observed the eggs before him when he suddenly noticed something. A blue glow flashed past his compound eyes.

[Information Reading] activated!

System carefully inspected several eggs, scraping them with his hard legs. He then put the mucus scraped from the eggs into his mouth and began tasting it.

In the end, System picked out one unusual ant egg from among them. The patterns on this egg differed subtly from those on the others, and the data displayed by [Information Reading] also showed that this egg was of a different species from the rest.

System recalled some knowledge about ants from his previous life. The habits of ants in this world should not differ much from those of the ants in his former world.

In an ant colony, the eggs laid by the queen could hatch into four kinds of offspring. One kind was male, called drone ants; they existed solely to mate with the queen or female ants, and would die soon after mating.

The other three kinds were female: female ants, soldier ants, and worker ants.

Female ants had the right to mate. If one was lucky, she could establish a new nest and become a new queen. Usually, each nest had only one queen.

Soldier ants and worker ants were incomplete female ants. Though they were female as well, they could not mate. Soldier ants were mainly responsible for defending the nest, while worker ants handled all the nest's miscellaneous chores.

System stared at this ant egg, so different from the others, his antennae swaying ceaselessly.

He could not actually tell whether this egg would become a soldier ant, a drone ant, or a female ant, but that did not matter. Discovering the differences among insect eggs had undoubtedly opened a brand-new door for System.

Why did he have to brainwash ordinary worker ants?

He could brainwash a female ant instead, then cultivate her into a queen.

If the queen regarded him as one of her own kind, then there was a great chance her offspring would regard him as one of their own as well.

He could use this to seize control of an entirely new ant colony!