Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 46 Diggers and Cellars
The reason why it is peculiar is mainly due to its distinctive appearance.

The previous ant colonies mutated, no matter how much the new ant species changed in size and how much their abilities increased, they generally maintained the basic appearance similar to ants.

But this time is different.

This time, the new ant species produced by the mutated queen ant has a completely different form from all previous ants.

Their body size is almost the same as that of the builder, but compared to the builder, they have a narrower and longer body.

At the same time, the legs and limbs under their bodies have disappeared during this mutation, and the entire body below the head has completely become an earthworm-like body state, but compared with the fragile earthworms, the appearance of their bodies still remains Its hardness is similar to that of soldier ants, but it maintains enough flexibility strangely.That layer of skin is like a tough elastic material, and even the guardian's pliers need to be torn many times to tear it apart.

In addition, their heads have undergone dramatic changes.

The originally well-developed upper jaw has completely disappeared, replaced by a row of protruding mouthparts that are generally tapered and covered with spiral folds.

If they straighten out, the whole body looks like a sharpened pencil.

Due to the loss of limbs, they can only rely on wriggling to move on the surface, so the movement speed is not fast.

But, in contrast, the speed at which they dig underground is simply astonishingly fast!
The special structure of their heads allows them to penetrate deep into the soil like a drill, and at the same time, like an earthworm, they can quickly swallow dense sand, and then process it through a special channel inside the body and then quickly expel it from the body. A unique kind of loose soil particles, and these soil particles can be easily moved by even the most common worker ants.

Based on their rapid digging underground, Zero named them: diggers.

After obtaining a second-tier builder and the ability to initially store sweet potatoes, he also obtained a digger who is good at digging caves. It is not too much to say that it is God's will.Zero immediately issued an order to quickly breed a group of diggers, who would be the best builders of the cellar.

Due to the current rapid reproductive ability of queen ants and the growth rate of this batch of builders and diggers, although there are only five queen ants that have undergone re-mutation, if they reproduce with all their strength, they can grow into a batch before winter.

In this case, coupled with the assistance of ordinary worker ants and soldier ants, it is not difficult to quickly complete several storage cellars.

At the same time, the cultivation of more second-order mutated ant queens has also been put on the agenda. Zero plans to use the existing few ant queens to lay eggs and reproduce after winter, increasing their number to [-] as a means of breeding. Second-generation builders and diggers and later experimental materials are used.

In addition, in order to distinguish them from the second-generation queens of the three ant species such as the guardians, Zero called them the rearing queen and the fighting queen respectively.As the name implies, the queens that produce functional ant species such as builders and diggers are logistics queens, while the queens that produce combat ant species such as guardians, assassins, and explorers are combat queens.

At present, the mutation direction of the ant colony is roughly these two routes. As for more, Zero has not been able to conduct experiments.

…………

The autumn is crisp and clear. The fruit trees planted by Ling and the ants in the early years have experienced several times of withering and prosperity. The early fruit trees have already been able to bloom and bear fruit, and more fruit trees are still in the state of seedlings.

Every autumn in the past, Zero never forgot to sow the seeds of the fruit trees. Until now, more than half of the land in the northern grasslands has been planted with such fruit trees. Of course, Zero consciously made the distance between them split.

Generally speaking, the distance between fruit trees should not be less than three meters. This is to provide them with enough living space when they grow up, and try to ensure that their root systems will not be too entangled underground and compete with each other.

In the middle of the fruit trees, sweet potatoes and berries are interspersed. On this land, the original weeds are basically wiped out by the ants driving the aphids, leaving only the plants that the ants themselves planted.

At this moment, swarms of ants are busy on the land, most of them are ordinary worker ants and soldier ants, and occasionally a builder and guardian who stands out from the crowd can be seen.

The ants stopped before a berry bush.The guards took advantage of their height and length to cut off all the berries close to the ground with their own large pliers, and there were a large number of ants below to carry the fallen fruits back.

As for the higher berries, the guardians will also climb up the branches, cut them all off, and then the worker ants will move them back to the nest.

The way the builder leads the team works completely differently from them.

In the dark underground, diggers have already touched the vicinity of the sweet potato roots.

Using their unique advantages, they quickly exposed the entire root of the sweet potato to the ground.

After that, there will be guards who will cut off all the stems and leaves around and above the sweet potato, and then dozens of builders will come and work hard to drill into the bottom of the sweet potato, prying this body with their thick forelimbs and strong upper jaw. Food ten times bigger.

In the next period of time, they will carry the sweet potato to the newly dug cellar for storage.

Thanks to the participation of diggers and the help of a large number of ant colonies, the construction of the cellar progressed very quickly.

According to Ling's intention, the cellar entrance is a narrow passage that can accommodate objects about twice the size of ordinary sweet potatoes. After extending three meters obliquely underground, the passage suddenly widens and the height also expands slightly. A horizontal passage is about 20 meters long. A more spacious passage appeared in front of my eyes.

On both sides of this horizontal passage, the ants dug large and small caves, the big ones are two or three times the size of sweet potatoes, and the small ones are only half of them. These caves were built for storing sweet potatoes.

This cellar can probably store half of the current ant colony's annual food consumption of sweet potatoes, which already accounts for one-third of the current ground sweet potato production.

This is only the first phase of the project. Plan Zero will move forward along the main passage after winter, building a horizontal passage every three meters, and expanding forward continuously to increase the storage scale of the cellar.

At the same time, the ants are also storing a large amount of sweet potato seeds in the cellar, and they will only wait for the next spring to sow them, and they will have a good harvest in autumn!It is foreseeable that next year, this cellar will expand exponentially, and when autumn comes, it will also be filled with a large number of ripe sweet potatoes.

With such repeated farming, as long as the sweet potatoes can still grow, one day, even if all edible insects on the entire island are extinct, the ant colony will still not lack food sources.

　Xie Shuyou [Heat Source Healing] [-] Rewards! !This chapter is updated for everyone's support!Thank you for your monthly tickets, recommendation tickets and rewards! ! !Trying to type...

　　
　
(End of this chapter)