Within a few days, the underground part of [Sennan City] was quickly built, and there were no facilities on the ground, not even an ant mound.
The new lair greatly expanded the sphere of influence of the Divine Envoy King's Legion. Soon, before autumn, a large area of farmland was opened near Sennan City. At the same time, more than half of the aphid and scale insect herds on the peninsula, which were already overcrowded and unable to expand, were divided.
This new nest has not yet been invaded by alien ants. Fire ants are still far away from the northern edge of the forest, and leaf-cutting ants have not invaded this area. Even the nearby ants did not come here. They only arrived at [Xinyang City] along the river beach when they needed to trade.
Maybe it would be a matter of time before it was exposed, but the God Envoy King Legion was still prepared to be as fully prepared as possible before that.
If this year's drought had not been unusually severe and even the forest areas had been affected, and the God's Envoy Army's food reserves were always near a warning line, the protagonist would have planned to establish two or three more places in the open space in the woods before winter. The small secondary nest eventually completely controlled the central and southern parts of the forest, while using the northern part as a buffer zone and isolation zone from red fire ants.
He even chose a nesting site.
However, because the forest is greatly affected by drought, the income from obtaining food is reduced. If we continue to expand according to the original plan within the year, the resource pressure of the Divine Envoy King Army will still be quite high.
Although the forest is not far from the river, the lack of rainfall throughout the summer has inhibited the growth of vegetation, and insect reproduction has also weakened due to the poor growth of the plants.
While tall trees in the woods can rely on their deep root systems to remain relatively unaffected, herbaceous plants and ferns are much less affected.
As it happens, ants rely more on low-growing herbs for their daily food, such as grass seeds that can grow multiple times a year, some young leaves and shoots, and insects in the grass.
Trees, on the other hand, can provide relatively less food, mainly in autumn, mainly various fruits. But at this moment, it is either not the time to harvest the fruits of the trees, such as walnut trees, or some fruits are difficult to preserve and can only be tasted, such as some almond trees.
Insects on the trees are not as easy to find as those in the grass. If the ant hunting team really couldn't find prey, they would not be willing to hunt in the maze-like branches of the trees.
However, the demand for food from the Divine Envoy King's army has been increasing sharply these days. On the one hand, it is due to the increase in the ant population of big-headed ants. On the other hand, it is due to the fact that several affiliated ant tribes have separated their nests and expanded the ant population. On the other hand, it is due to the increase in the individual food ration needs of the warriors of the God Envoy King.
After the protagonist became a "father" unwillingly, his first and second batch of genetic offspring have grown up, which has supplemented the number of warriors of the God Envoy King, but also brought new problems.
When the first offspring reach adulthood, the protagonist is on his way to the swampy area. After he returned to [Xinyang City], he learned from Spade Elephant that there was something strange about his descendants.
The abnormality is simple: it is too edible. . .
The first batch of offspring of the protagonist are relatively slow in development. Other worker ants emerge from pupae in about a month, but this batch of ants also took an average of 40 days to emerge from pupae.
Moreover, after breaking out of the pupa, its food intake is twice that of other worker ants or soldier ants, making it extremely eatable. Since the big-headed ants can go to the food warehouse to forage on their own when they are hungry, at first the spade elephants only found that the food inventory suddenly stopped growing, and even dropped slightly. After an investigation, they discovered this problem.
When the protagonist first learned about it, he wondered whether his genetic descendants could inherit his physical characteristics that were obviously different from other ants, but after experiments, he was disappointed.
These descendants of soldier ants or worker ants are not as magical as their own bodies. Although their eyesight, intelligence, strength, etc. are better than ordinary ants, they are not particularly exaggerated, and they do not inherit special skills such as "gods descend to earth".
To put it bluntly, the soldier ants and worker ants descended from the protagonist are probably slightly stronger than the previously cultivated soldier ants or worker ants, but their food intake is correspondingly larger.
Due to input-output issues, the protagonist no longer breeds soldier ants except for a few giant soldier ants such as "celestial beings", and the number of giant worker ants is also limited.
Unexpectedly, now, all of his offspring will be giant soldier ants and giant worker ants, and he can only breed these ants in a short period of time.
The protagonist can only accept his fate. He calls his descendants "soldier ants" or "worker ants" to distinguish them from the previous "soldier ants" and "worker ants".
Fortunately, the protagonist later discovered that the magic soldier ants and magic worker ants, which have higher intelligence, stronger strength, and better eyesight, and can even see targets dozens of meters away, performed well in foraging, and their unit output was enough to offset their extra consumption. . The protagonist was very proud at one point - indeed his genes were better!
But in this dry season, the excellence of individual foraging abilities has been offset, and foraging opportunities have declined. As a result, foraging now relies more on quantity rather than individual excellence.
For example: In normal times, when food is plentiful and can be found casually, three magic worker ants can catch a cricket just like ten ordinary worker ants. Their work efficiency is three times, but the food consumption is only twice. Naturally, Earned.
But now, food is scarce, and finding food depends more on how to find it. These foods are hidden in trees and grass, and cannot be found with good eyesight. They need to be detected at close range or even confirmed by antennae. At this time, the detection range of ten ordinary worker ants is much larger than that of three magical worker ants, and there are more opportunities for foraging.
This is because the current food income of the Divine Envoy King's Legion is declining, but food consumption is increasing, and they have to rely on the resale trade of ants to import some food. But now all ant tribes are experiencing a food crisis. Even if their ruling class is willing to squeeze out some precious food for trade in order to enjoy honeydew, the quantity is limited.
The Legion of the Divine Envoy King can only choose to spend this famine year caused by drought in hibernation, waiting for a season with good weather and suitable for expansion!
——I am the dividing line——
Recently, some problems occurred in the aphid pasture in [Sennan City]. At first, they were not taken seriously. It was not until a group of "magic worker ants" joined the herding team that something unusual was discovered, and they were reported to the protagonist.
It turns out that some worker ants responsible for grazing have recently shown symptoms of being unwilling to return to their nests at night, moving lazily and sluggishly, but becoming more violent and aggressive, even biting their companions who try to bring them back to their nests.
The culprit causing this symptom is a caterpillar mixed in the herds of aphids and scale insects. A caterpillar that can also secrete honeydew and is adopted by grazing ants!
