Reality is always extremely realistic. After a short period of sadness, the protagonist still has to continue to work. That's good, at least he won't always worry about the illusory death.
With the sudden first cold wave, "Dongyang City" was cut off from the outside world. Now the protagonist can only command his subordinates in "Dongyang City". As for other territories, he can only hope that they can do "autonomy" "Yes.
According to the established plan, after next spring, the protagonist will expand his territory on both sides of the river, and the target of expansion will be the Pavement Ant Kingdom.
Now, there is the Northern Expeditionary Army of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom on the north bank of the river to contain and weaken the enemy. With "Linshui City" and "Bridgehead" as the logistics base and departure base, the protagonist already has the preliminary conditions for expansion.
However, the size and combat power of the Pavement Ant Barbarian Army are also considerable. Judging from the experience of fighting with them, the protagonist knows that he needs more and stronger troops to complete his expansion plan.
The expansion of the Divine Envoy King's legion is not unsatisfactory. In more than a year, it has expanded from one legion to six legions, and its combat effectiveness is also extremely strong. This was achieved even though last year was a lean year overall. The territory also expanded from "Dongyang City" to "Linshui City", "Southern City", "Bridgehead" and "New Yancheng".
However, the battles between the Northern Expeditionary Army and the Pavement Ant Barbarian Army, involving dozens or hundreds of legions and spanning more than a dozen sub-nests, also made the protagonist see his own disadvantages. Although soldiers are more valuable than more, when the enemy's numerical advantage is too obvious, there will be a situation where too many ants will kill the elephant.
Therefore, the protagonist hopes to continue to expand the size of the army and improve its combat effectiveness.
The work of expanding the size of the army cannot be completed in winter. At this time, the farmland in "Dongyang City" can no longer be sown and harvested, and the breeding farms have also stopped operating. Although there are still many seeds and insect eggs stored in the granary, these are production materials after next spring and cannot be used easily.
The large amount of food stored in the granary is the prey and plants collected last year, most of which are produced from farmland and breeding farms. For example, all mealworms and fly maggots in the farm will be killed before winter and made into jerky, bacon or cured meat.
Although this food is more than enough to supply the existing ant colonies in "Dongyang City" for the winter, it is unable to support the rapid expansion of the Angel King's army in winter. What's more, the war after the spring will require a large amount of food reserves, and the protagonist does not want to demolish the east wall to make up for the west wall.
In winter, queen ants also enter the physiological cycle where they stop laying eggs. Although conditions permit, they can also adjust their body condition, secrete hormones, and expand their abdomens again. However, this will cause too much damage to the body, so you should not squeeze the queen ant like this unless absolutely necessary.
Considering various factors, the protagonist can only expand the size of the army after next spring and with a stable food supply. What he can do now is to improve the combat effectiveness of the six existing field legions as much as possible.
The protagonist adopts a three-pronged approach to achieve his goal.
The first measure is to equip the remaining five legions with ant-hunting ant scouts.
In the previous military reform after pacifying the southern hilly area, the protagonist used the hatched ant eggs captured to equip the first army with two additional squads of 100 ant warriors as a dedicated scout team.
As the First Legion gets closer, they have yet to prove themselves again on the battlefield. However, in several large-scale hunts organized in the autumn, the Sickle Ant Scouts performed well as the eyes and ears of the legion, proving the value of their existence.
As the ant queens that surrendered before winter continue to give birth, the second batch of 500 newly hatched ant warriors have arrived in Dongyang City from "Southern City" before the cold wave. ”, the protagonist already has enough scythe-hunting ant warriors on hand to strengthen the entire legion.
Therefore, the protagonist dispersed the 100 ant-hunting ant scout veterans who originally belonged to the first legion. Except for the first legion retaining 20 veterans and adding 80 new recruits, the other five legions each added 16 hunters. The sickle ants scout veterans and eighty-four new recruits.
Due to limited conditions, each legion can only conduct troops' running-in training in the open chamber of the underground lair, and further field training will still have to wait until spring. However, this method of bringing the old with the new, coupled with the unique ability of ants to pass on experience through information packets, can still allow the Legion and the Hunter Ants to quickly adapt to each other in a short period of time.
The second measure is the inclusion of beetle troops.
Since this year's cold wave came earlier than before, the first batch of beetles that hatched according to the established plan happened to emerge from their pupae shortly before the cold wave arrived. The original plan of conducting field training before winter was suspended.
After these beetles emerge from their pupae, they are domesticated by specialized worker ants who have learned the domestication techniques of Big-headed ant survivors. So far, the results are pretty good, but being kept in the dark underground for a long time has made these beetles a little irritable. However, the cold air that invaded the ground made the beetles more honest. They also felt that once they climbed to the ground, they would be frozen to death immediately.
According to the laws of nature, these beetles should have hatched after the beginning of spring, but the protagonist could not wait that long, so he used the greenhouse effect to hatch them in advance, so that he could make use of the winter months and completely domesticate a beetle. It takes so long. When spring comes, the protagonist will have five completely domesticated beetles.
These beetles were sex-checked by domesticated worker ants shortly after emerging from pupae. There were three males and two females in total, all of which were medium-sized scarabs.
The protagonist plans to use two female scarab beetles as seed beetles and try not to send them to the battlefield. Male beetles already need to fight for mates during the mating season, so they are stronger and more aggressive, making them the best choice as army war bugs.
In order to prolong the lifespan of these war insects and to better control these male scarabs that are extremely violent during the breeding season, the domesticated worker ants also castrated two male scarabs, leaving only the largest and strongest male as a seed worm. .
The castration technology of ants is also inherited from the remnants of big-headed ants. They use this method to create large numbers of war insects that obey commands.
When the male scarab beetle has just emerged from pupa and the body's carapace is still soft and weak, the domesticated worker ants find their gonads located at the back of the body and quickly bite them off, completing a castration.
Scarab beetles that have just emerged from pupae have strong wound healing capabilities, so this simple and crude technique does not cause a high mortality rate like castration in the human world.
After castration, the scarab beetle has a more docile temperament, is more obedient to commands, has a harder shell, and is said to have a longer lifespan.
