Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 29 Protracted War

The loss of 30 is not a big number for the current ant colony. The real headache for Zero is how to make the number of ant colonies grow again on a large scale.

After completely controlling the northern grassland, the entire ant colony has basically spread out and developed in an all-round way. However, this spring, Zero gradually discovered that the growth of the ant colony slowed down again or even gradually stagnated!
The entire grassland is full of nests built by ants. They are far apart above the ground, but they have long been integrated and connected together below the ground.

The nest of the entire ant colony is becoming a whole at a slow speed, and the entrances of each sub-nest are more like the exits of the entire ant colony at different locations.

The land below the surface has already been divided up by ants, and an unknown number of insect rooms have been built to breed offspring or herd earthworms.

Some ant nests can only continue to dig downwards due to lack of space, and increase the depth to meet the space needs of the ant colony.

However, the underground that is too deep will pose a severe test to the ventilation of the ant nest, which can only be regarded as a stopgap measure.

In addition to the problem of living space, another reason for the stagnation of ant colony growth is the problem of food.

After dominating the prairie, this problem finally emerged over time.

Together, these two problems plague zero and deeply limit the expansion of ant colonies.

The solution to this problem is also very simple, that is to defeat the termites in the forest and take their territory into the bag.

In this way, both problems will be solved.

However, that is easier said than done.

Zero had no idea how to defeat the termites, which were significantly more numerous than himself and had stronger individual combat power.

To be honest, if it wasn't for the fact that they didn't follow the ant colony out of the forest for some reason, even if they were fighting on their own territory, Zero wouldn't be able to defeat these millions or even tens of millions of "invaders" , not to mention that what He needs to consider now is how to take the initiative to overcome them.

"To put it bluntly, the war against termite populations cannot be won by tricks. The number of ant populations is still too small, which is indeed a lack of hard power. Facing such a powerful opponent, it is useless to use any means. Facing the opponent's army." Zero thought slowly.

There are only a few ways that Zero can think of to defeat termites.The first is to have more or even more ants than the termite population, and fight them openly and squarely to kill them all.This is the most simple and crude method, and at the same time, due to the two difficulties that the ant colony is currently facing, this is also a plan that Zero is currently impossible to carry out.

The second is to increase the individual strength of the ant army as much as possible when the number cannot be increased, so that they can easily kill more termites under the same conditions, and win the war in this way.

There is a clue to this point. He can take the initiative to change the proportion of ant species in the ant colony, and only produce a small number of worker ants for logistical tasks such as grazing and caring for larvae and queens, thus freeing up a lot of resources for all Produce stronger and more aggressive soldier ants.

But this method is still not enough to defeat the termite colony. Obviously, the difference in combat power between soldier ants and termites is not enough to accomplish the feat of one enemy with many enemies. What's more, there are also some soldiers in the termite colony who specialize in combat missions like soldier ants. They are enough to rival the soldier ants in the ant colony, plus the termites and flying insects that the opponent can easily crush the air units of one's own side, even if all the members of the team are soldier ants, victory may not be guaranteed.

The other and most important point is that Zero has no idea how many termites live in this unknown termite group. He can only make a rough estimate based on the strength shown by the opponent in this war—it will not be less than 500 million, and it is extremely large. The probability is much higher than this number.

The lack of intelligence made it impossible for Zero to figure out the specific number of soldiers and ants needed to defeat the opponent, and it was impossible to start a war. Another defeat was a very high probability event.

But how to get the approximate number of termite populations is also an almost impossible problem—just as it is also difficult for the other party to estimate the number of its own.

If you are the leader of the termite colony, if you are the commander of the termite colony, you will not be able to know the information about the ant colony without leaving the forest and knowing everything about the grassland.

There will be no spies in the war between the two ethnic groups. Their appearance and breath are completely different, and they can be easily distinguished from each other.

"How to defeat them?" Zero couldn't find an effective way.

"It would be great if the ants could be stronger..."

At this moment, he remembered the ant colony self-breeding plan that he had put aside for a long time.

Ant colonies, however, are not aphids or earthworms, which are all produced by queen ants.

This means that the experience gained by Zero from aphids cannot be applied to such a huge group as the entire ant colony, but can only be used to select the best and eliminate the weak among the rare queens.

Of course, he can also mass-produce flying ants and let them combine with male ants to lay eggs and become queens, so as to select only for queens.

But this is not something that can achieve results overnight, or even in ten or eight years.Because according to zero observations, the ants produced by the queens are like automated production machine tools on the factory floor. There are unique templates for each ant species. Individual ants of the same ant species are like toys assembled in batches on the assembly line. And there is almost no difference.

This means that in order to obtain a queen that can produce a distinctive ant species, the number of samples required must be astronomical.For Zero's current limited space, this astronomical figure can only be achieved by accumulating time, and the resources consumed in this process are also difficult to measure.

"It's almost an impossible task..." Zero sighed.

"Perhaps, I can choose to tame the servant army to fight termites?"

However, he immediately thought of the appearance of earthworms and aphids, and rejected his whimsical idea with a smile, which was tantamount to giving a delicious meal to the termites.

"Forget it, compared to this, it is more feasible to find a way to increase food production as much as possible." Zero decided to work hard on the food issue without thinking of an effective method.

Although the standing army of an ant colony almost certainly cannot reach the number of termites at all, if the food problem can be completely solved, the number of ant colonies will theoretically no longer have an upper limit.

In this way, as long as there are enough queen ants hatched, Zero can hatch a large amount of immediate combat power in a short period of time, and when they have just grown into adults, they will be sent to the battlefield to be consumed. Rely on the endless quantity advantage to complete the crushing of the termite army.

"It seems feasible." Zero pondered for a while, then sighed,

"It seems that this is destined to be a protracted battle..."

(End of this chapter)