You Are Not the Ant Queen

Using [Corrosive Mucus], he sealed off the passages near the pile of rocks to keep ants from passing through.

At times, System used Mind Transfer near the rock pile to brainwash the eggs. At other times, he hopped over to inspect the construction progress of the overwintering nest near the work crew led by Big Fool, the soldier ant. Sometimes, he carried over the eggs Big Fool had brought him and sorted through them.

System was extremely busy.

Three days passed.

He successfully brainwashed the first batch of thirteen eggs.

It was even earlier than System had expected. Most of the eggs only needed around two days to be successfully brainwashed and would no longer doubt him. Only two of them truly required three full days of hypnosis.

After brainwashing the eggs, whenever System activated [Mental Link] to connect with them, the eggs would send him an incomparable sense of peace and security, as though they had returned to their mother's womb. They had already come to regard System as someone they could depend on.

System estimated that no matter how much time passed, these eggs would never rebel against him.

However, compared with the smooth progress of brainwashing the eggs, his search for different types of ant eggs was far from smooth. Over the three days, System had examined several hundred ant eggs, yet he had found only three types.

The overwhelming majority were worker ant eggs. Of the other two types, one had five eggs, while the other had only one.

The five more numerous eggs should, barring surprises, be soldier ant eggs. As for the single egg, System could not determine whether it contained a male or female ant.

In truth, even if that egg was a female ant, System would not be satisfied.

What he wanted was one female ant and one male ant. Only with both types could he reliably breed ant offspring.

Left with no other choice, System could only have Big Fool, the soldier ant, continue searching for more ant eggs for him to choose from, hoping to gather every type of ant as soon as possible.

Over those three days, compared with the search for ant eggs, the worker ant construction crew led by Big Fool, the soldier ant, had made tremendous progress.

Especially over the most recent day, Big Fool had directed nearly a hundred and fifty ants to widen every passage in System's overwintering nest to suitable dimensions. System had hardly needed to give any instructions at all.

Big Fool, the soldier ant, seemed to have grown much smarter.

Ants were social, colony-dwelling insects, and their habits were both simple and complex.

They were complex because of the social relationships within an ant colony. Sometimes, they performed many actions ordinary people could not understand, yet those actions usually carried a certain meaning.

They were simple because everything ants did had a clear purpose: the prosperity of the nest.

And precisely for the prosperity of the colony as a whole, soldier ants and worker ants—these two kinds of female ants without reproductive ability—lived under exceedingly harsh and miserable conditions.

Once they emerged from their pupae as adults, worker ants and soldier ants would toil tirelessly. They ate only the bare minimum of food, just enough to maintain their physical strength.

Big Fool, the soldier ant, was no exception. Each day, it ate only a small amount of food before refusing to eat any more.

That did not change until Big Fool encountered System.

After System ordered it to keep eating for several days, until its abdomen had swollen so much that it was slightly splitting apart, Big Fool's body began to slowly grow larger.

Big Fool's level had likely increased. But without System's Numerical Code talent, its growth was only gradual; it would not suddenly grow much larger like System had.

Over these days, Big Fool's body had grown from the usual three centimeters for a soldier ant to four and a half centimeters. And the change had not completely stopped—its body was still growing little by little.

Its level increase, combined with its occasional exchanges with System through [Mental Link], had taught Big Fool how to think.

Perhaps that was why Big Fool had become smarter.

It might still be inferior to the Grasshopper Queen, but Big Fool had clearly developed a new trait.

While directing the worker ants in constructing System's overwintering nest, it always liked to hold a translucent pebble the size of a peanut.

System had found this translucent pebble by chance in the forest. Thinking it was pretty, he had picked it up and brought it back. He did not know whether it was crystal, diamond, or some other kind of stone.

When System noticed that Big Fool seemed to like the pebble, he gave it to the ant.

From then on, Big Fool always held onto it.

Sometimes, it gripped the pebble and played with it on the ground. Other times, it held it up to observe the sun or moon in the sky, though no one knew what exactly it was looking at.

In short, System found that Big Fool had gained a trace of spirit.

Because Big Fool's intelligence had improved, the overwintering burrow had been built very spaciously, so System directly requisitioned this burrow, which had been dug a meter and a half deep.

While brainwashing the many ant eggs near the rock pile, System had to constantly watch for movement around him and keep his nerves taut at all times. It was very inconvenient.

This overwintering nest, one-quarter of which Big Fool had already constructed, was just right for System's temporary use now that its passages had been widened. Some of its empty chambers could also temporarily store food and ant eggs.

As for the overwintering nest's construction, with Big Fool's work crew now more efficient, System could simply have Big Fool build an entirely new burrow.

Once System had decided everything, he immediately acted, quickly moving the many ant eggs into the burrow.

Two days soon passed...

Big Fool's construction crew steadily built a brand-new underground overwintering nest. Before long, the progress of the new nest would likely catch up with the burrow System had requisitioned.

And on this day, after continuing to sort through nearly two hundred more ant eggs, System finally gathered every type of ant egg.

The most basic conditions for breeding a colony of ants were now in place.

And during his spare time over the past two days, while brainwashing the ant eggs, System had also cultivated a miraculous crop.

In the dim cave, using the liquid from the fleshy corpses he had digested along with some impurities from dead leaves, he had successfully cultivated a kind of mushroom common in the area.

This was a very wondrous kind of mushroom. It was edible, tasting much like an ordinary mushroom, with a faint hint of yogurt.

Though it possessed no magical power, this mushroom was remarkable in that it gave off a weak fluorescent glow.

After observing it, System discovered that the mushroom only fluoresced while growing. Once it stopped growing, the faint light would slowly fade away.

System could not figure out the principle behind the mushroom's luminescence either.

Because growing this mushroom consumed rather a lot of nutrients, he only cultivated a small amount in the cave—just enough for his [Dark Vision] to be effective.

Another day passed.

Of the twenty-odd ant eggs System had brainwashed, one had finally hatched successfully into an ant larva. It seemed that these dark brown ants did not have a very long growth cycle.

After the ant egg became an ant larva, the larva's attitude toward System did not change. It still regarded System as the queen of the colony.

System selected some soft fungi and butterfly larvae to feed these ant larvae.

The ant larvae liked the food System provided very much, and they grew quickly as well.

Everything was proceeding steadily according to System's plan.

Yet trouble arose in the very place where trouble should have been least likely to appear—

That day, during his usual exchange with Big Fool, the soldier ant, through [Mental Link], Big Fool suddenly sent System a message. "You... are not... the queen..."

"Wha... what?"

System had never imagined that even in the face of Big Fool, the soldier ant, he would feel such panic.