Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 23 Completed
Spring came again, and in the blink of an eye, Ling had led the ant colony through two springs and autumns.

In two years, under the zero-planned expansion, the ant colony has grown from only one ant queen to hundreds of ant queens, nearly [-] ants of various types, and the area occupied has also changed from the original From a small mound to a vast expanse of land straddling the banks of a river, while continuing to explore beyond.

They domesticated aphids, and slowly began to domesticate earthworms, and even they are still making aphids and earthworms evolve in the direction they need!

Food issues are gradually reducing the constraints on their development, and correspondingly, their sphere of influence is also gradually expanding.

After the cold winter passed, as many as [-] large and small earthworm domestication fields had been built in the ant nest, and they were still expanding, and more fields were constantly being built.

The ants are repeating what they did in the first domestication field, trying to teach the earthworms not to try to escape as soon as possible.

In order to observe whether earthworm larvae are easier to domesticate than adults, all the earthworms transferred to the domestication farms are newborn larvae, which makes the number of domesticated earthworms more in the same batch of domestication farms of the same size.

The weather is getting warmer and the plants are starting to sprout.The carefully selected aphid eggs that the ants had saved last fall came in handy again.

These eggs are selected by the ants, and they are either the offspring of heat-tolerant aphids, or the eggs laid by large and efficient aphids.

As for the remaining aphids before winter, they all entered the ant nest and became the food reserve for the ants.Most of them cannot survive the cold winter, and sooner or later they will freeze to death, and a small number of them need to hide in the soil to survive. It is better to make some insignificant contributions to the ant colony.

On the contrary, the eggs they laid were well taken care of by the ant colony. In order to prevent them from freezing to death, the ant colony specially stored them in the insect room opened above the earthworm farm, where the ant colony was deeper At a moderate temperature, they will neither freeze to death nor let them feel warm and hatch early.

The aphid eggs that came outside the ant nest quickly hatched under the warm sea breeze, and soon, they began to spread rapidly on the new grass again.

The "herding" team of ants keeps a close eye on their every move. They will kill or remove more aphids than the grass blades can bear, and constantly urge the aphids to eat and produce honey.

The aphids that were killed basically belonged to the thin and extremely slow-feeding aphids, and they were the focus of the ant colony's elimination.As long as such aphids are found, they will inevitably be killed and eaten.

And the aphids transported away to other grass leaves are basically strong, fat, large food intake, and high production efficiency. They are the treasure of the ant colony, and they are high-quality mothers that produce offspring, and they will not be killed easily. .

As the aphids quickly spread across the grass, the food reserves of the ant colony increased again after a harsh winter.

At present, everything is on the right track. The second batch of expanded sub-nests have established passages with the "first ring", and there are passages connecting each other. The criss-crossing underground passages spread inside the ant nest, one after another. Endless ants shuttle among them.

It can be said that the "second ring" of the ant colony has been fully completed.

In terms of food reserves, the sum of the food in each nest is enough for the ant colony to eat until summer, and there is still some left over for the ant colony. With the increasing number of grazing aphids and the food captured by the ant colony itself, the amount of food in the ant nest Accumulation will increase substantially again.

Everything is thriving, and at the same time, Zero also believes that the time for the third expansion has come.

Different from the previous two times, because the outer area has become larger, the number of ants in the ant nest can no longer meet the needs of the flying ants who go out and carry the ants in the territory to the outer area to open up - that will make the entire ant nest group empty .And the food stock does not allow such a massive expansion.

This time the expansion will be carried out gradually. The ant colony will first expand the first step in the south, which is also the place that Zero attaches the most importance to, not only because it is approaching an unexplored forest, but most importantly, as the ant colony Sooner or later, the other three directions will reach the seaside, and by then, the road of expansion in these three directions will come to an end.

Only the south still has vast land that can support the ants to continue to reproduce in large numbers.

Under Zero's instruction, 25 flying ants mobilized nearly [-]% of the ants in the ant colony to carry a large amount of food across the river to the underground passage on the south bank. They will join the five colony teams mobilized by the ant colony, Together, head further south on the South Shore to establish a new territory for the ant colony.

Today's ant colonies are already familiar with the process of expansion. The queen ants in the ant colony have laid eggs to supplement the loss of the ant colony in the "second ring" before they set off. After a month, the number of ant colonies within the "Second Ring" will return to its peak.

During this period, the ant colony around the mother nest will temporarily fall into a "weak period". reduce.

Fortunately, the flying ants took away a large number of ants, and the amount of food left in the ant nest was still sufficient, enough to support the full recovery of the ant colony.

When the ant colonies headed to the south gain a firm foothold, the number of ants within the "second ring" will also recover. After a period of accumulation, when the food reserves are sufficient, Zero will expand in the other three directions again.

Zero's current plan is to complete expansion in all four directions within this year, and initially build the framework of the "three rings" of the ant colony.

When winter comes, the ants will have plenty of time to connect them with the "second ring", and finally enclose this piece of land as the territory of the ant colony.

This is not an easy task, and the biggest difficulty lies in the food reserves.

The expansion in just one direction to the south consumed most of the food accumulated last year.Even with the support of aphid pastures and increasing earthworm farms, there is still a long way to go to achieve this goal.Not to mention that the ant colony needs to save enough food for the winter before winter, which is also a huge amount.

Therefore, in the process of gradual expansion, Zero must find a way to obtain more food, or be able to find the best of both worlds, otherwise the goal of basically completing the third expansion before winter will not be achieved.

However, the plan could not keep up with the changes after all, and Zero finally had some ideas about his own expansion plan.

(End of this chapter)