Law of the Swarm

Chapter 33 Brainwashing
In a gravel pile near the soldier ant Dasha's nest, System collected food on a sunken stone, and then secreted [corroding mucus] and sprayed it onto the food.

Since he discovered that Dasha can dispatch ordinary worker ants, System no longer has to worry about getting food, and no longer has to work hard to snatch ants every day.

He just needs to sit back and enjoy the benefits, waiting for nearly a hundred worker ants to carry food from the ant nest as his free labor.

What restricts System now is no longer the time it takes to snatch ordinary ants, but the speed at which he eats.

After all, he cannot swallow his prey directly like a snake.

Eating by chewing will undoubtedly waste a lot of his time.

The method that System came up with was to use his [Corrosive Mucus] to digest the food outside the body, and then he only needed to suck the half-digested food with all his strength, which would save him a lot of time.

[Corrosive Mucus] After several upgrades, the amount of mucus that can be secreted is enough to help him complete in vitro digestion.

Although there will be some consumption in secreting [corroding mucus] and recycling, but with worker ants carrying almost unlimited food, these consumptions are basically ignored.

The only thing System was worried about was that these different insect corpses were mixed with some mushrooms melted by mucus, and the taste would become strange.

Fortunately, after System tried it, he found that it was not the case.

The taste structure of grasshoppers is completely different from that of humans. After swallowing the liquid System, they did not feel any peculiar smell. Instead, they found it delicious, like mixed fruity yogurt.

……

Sucking the mucus made his abdomen swell slightly, and System began to brainwash the few ant eggs brought by the soldier ant Dasha.

The ant eggs of this dark brown ant are translucent white, slightly yellowish, about three millimeters in size, and faintly exude the unique acidic smell of ants.

Several ant eggs have different degrees of hatching. Some of them can see the outline of newborn ant larvae through the outer gelatin, and it is estimated that they will hatch in a short time; while some have no solid body of larvae inside, obviously There is still a long time before the ants hatch.

System successively used [Mind Transmission] to communicate with these ant eggs.

Unlike ant larvae, this kind of ant egg can send him the intimacy of returning to the mother's body as long as his [teleportation] is slightly connected.

The farther away the hatching time is from the eggs, the more intimate the emotions they produce, but the weaker the spiritual power they feed back.

And if it is the kind of eggs just laid by the queen ant, the larvae in the eggs are completely unformed, and it will not have any effect on System's [Teleportation]. Obviously, this kind of eggs are still alive like plants. Without any thinking.

Those insect eggs that are about to hatch, after being hypnotized by System for six to seven minutes, they will see through System's lies, and then, like ordinary adult ants, will regard System as their enemy forever.

Insect eggs that have been hatched for a longer time can be deceived by System for a longer period of time, and it takes more than ten minutes before they realize that System is not their kind.

And it is different from the eggs that are about to hatch into larvae.

This kind of eggs that are a little longer from hatching will not permanently regard System as an enemy.

As long as System continues to use [Mind Transmission] to appease it when it regards System as an enemy, after a while, they will believe that System is their queen ant again.

Of course, after a certain period of time, they will realize that System is not of the same kind.

……

Repeatedly brainwashing the ant eggs in this way, after a whole day, System gradually figured out the rules of brainwashing these eggs.

Through continuous communication with [Mind Transmission], the time for these eggs to believe in him has been significantly extended, and the degree and time of doubting him have gradually decreased.

If following this trend to carry out [teleportation] on the eggs continuously, System speculates that in about three days, he will be able to completely subdue an egg and turn it into an existence like the soldier ant Dasha.

Although this method successfully realized System's vision, it should not be a problem to continue to collect hundreds of ants, but the result obviously made System not satisfied.

The efficiency of using [Mind Teleportation] to brainwash these eggs is too low. He has to keep an eye on these eggs all the time. Once these eggs have doubts about him, he needs to use [Mind Transmission] to appease him immediately.

Otherwise, if you don't appease for a long time, the various brainwashing effects on the ant eggs will fall short.

Therefore, he must constantly monitor the eggs for about three days, and cannot leave for too long in the middle.

It's okay to only have a few eggs. If there are too many eggs, it will not only make him unable to operate, but also accelerate the loss of his mental power, making him unable to persist for less than three days.

But in any case, System, who had enough food at this time, actually had nothing to do.

As long as he eats with peace of mind these days and waits for about 14 days, he can reach level 12, and then undergo the third molt.

System thought for a while, compared to going out and taking risks to find edible magical creatures, brainwashing these insect eggs is obviously a better and safer choice.

He ordered Dasha to continue to go to the ant nest to steal a few eggs, and then let Dasha, the soldier ant, continue to lead the hundreds of worker ants to build a nest for him to survive the winter.

System then got busy near this pile of rocks.

Discarding the eggs that were too close to hatch and those that were too far away, System finally left 13 eggs.

If the rate of 13 pieces is taken at a time, and the necessary rest time is removed, System will be able to acquire a hundred ants who are loyal to him in about a month.

Of course, these subordinates may be just larvae of ants, without any ability to move, and he needs to be busy for a while.

System used [Psychic Transmission] to these eggs in turn to convey the intimacy of a mother to a child, and then responded to the feedback of these eggs one by one.

After fumbling all day before.

Brainwashing System with worm eggs is already familiar with the process. Although 13 worm eggs are a bit more, it is not impossible to complete.

System carefully observed the eggs in front of him, and he suddenly noticed something, a blue halo flashed from his compound eyes.

[Information read] Launch!

System carefully inspected a few eggs, scratched them with his hard feet, and then put the egg mucus in his mouth to taste.

System finally picked out a distinctive ant egg from these eggs. The pattern on this egg was slightly different from other eggs, and the data displayed on [Information Reading] also This shows that this egg is different from the rest of the eggs.

System recalled some knowledge about ants in his previous life, and the habits of ants in this world should be similar to those in his previous life.

In a nest of ants, the eggs laid by the queen can hatch into four offspring, one of which is a male, called a male ant, who mates exclusively with the queen or female ants, and dies shortly after mating.

The other three are female, namely female ants, soldier ants and worker ants.

The female ant has the right to mate, and if she is lucky she can create a new nest and become the new queen, usually only one queen per nest.

Soldier ants and worker ants are incomplete female ants. Although they are also female, they cannot mate. The soldier ants are mainly responsible for defending the ant nest, while the worker ants are responsible for all the chores of the ant nest.

……

System stared at this ant which was different from other ant eggs, and the antennae on its head kept shaking.

In fact, he couldn't tell whether the ant egg was a soldier ant, a male ant, or a female ant, but it didn't matter. By discovering the difference between the eggs, it undoubtedly opened a new door for System.

Why did he want to brainwash ordinary worker ants?
He can completely brainwash a female ant, and then train this female ant to become a queen.

If the queen ant regards him as a kind, there is a high probability that the queen's offspring will also regard him as a kind.

He can completely control a new ant nest because of this!
(End of this chapter)