Law of the Swarm

Chapter 97 Settled

System found that the energy fluctuations dissipating from the eyeballs seemed to be very similar to his [Mind Transmission] and [Perception] power.

When System tried to use this power to make contact with the eyeballs, System strangely received some blue images in his mind.

It was the picture that the eyeball was facing. The picture was blurry and there were no other colors.

But even in this dim mousehole, I can still make out what's around me.

Obviously, this eyeball is obviously a magical item with utility, which can be regarded as a windfall.

Not only that, but System discovered that this magic prosthetic eye seemed to have a miraculous effect on the map in the leather bag, when using this prosthetic eye to look at the map.

There will be many lines and characters that have never appeared on the map, some of which are like treasure maps.

It's a pity that this false eye is of no obvious use to System, whether it is the function of the treasure map or the ability to see things clearly in the dark.

Can only be used as a toy for Shava who likes shiny things.

……

After entering the rat hole full of stench and searching for nearly an hour, although not enough rats were caught, System still got something. He got a leather bag and two gadgets with magical functions.

Compared to harvesting in the rat hole, waiting for the ratman's paralytic toxin took a lot of time for System.

Maybe it's the Ratman's acting skills, or maybe the little meatball's paralyzing poison needle is so effective.

A full five hours passed, and the Rat moved its slightly stiff body to try to escape, and was killed by the impatient System, who was then skinned and dismembered by System and Shava. pieces of meat.

System also tasted the blood and some pieces of meat from the Rat Man as he always did.

Generally speaking, the meat pieces on the Ratman taste slightly better than ordinary rats, but the taste is very limited, still milky and sweet.

Still not as good as some insects.

……

Using the leather bag and some smooth tree branches, System once again used human wisdom to recreate a towable sleigh cart. The meat of the Ratman was placed under the leather bag, and some ant pupae were placed on the top. .

Because of the strong leather bag, System's sled trailer was very successful this time.

But after only using it for more than three days, System had to give up the sled trailer.

It wasn't because the sled trailer was damaged, but because as System and his ant colony gradually moved away from the Lilte Forest, the ice and snow on the ground became thinner and the temperature gradually increased.

With volcanic ash acting as a snowmelting agent, after three days of walking, System's simple sled could no longer continue walking on the muddy snow.

However, during these three days, System saw many rats and other small animals in the Warren Plain one after another. Because of the abundant food sources, System also selectively threw away some pieces of ratman meat.

Basically every [-] meters or so, there will be a nest of mice or a nest of rabbits, and System found a rat man again during these three days.

This brown ratman was discovered when System was patrolling the sky, about two kilometers away from him.

When System found the Ratman, the Ratman was dragging a dead bird with a dozen mice.

When the rat man saw a group of a dozen or so jackals marching from a distance, he panicked and hid the ordinary rats in the rat hole, never showing their faces again.

It seems that these intelligent rat people should not do well in Warren Plain.

It is very likely that, like the goblins before the glacier lord returned, they were enslaved and hunted by the jackals.

However, because the Ratmen like to dig holes, System reckons that the possibility of being captured and enslaved by the Wolf Man is unlikely, but that he may occasionally be hunted by the Wolf Man for snacks.

System didn't go too far to trouble the rat man either.

After observing the direction of the Wolf man, System also adjusted his route selection to avoid the Wolf man.

It's not that System can't beat these jackals, but it's unnecessary.

After all, jackals are also powerful beings, just like the jackal that pierced System's abdomen with a throwing spear, his strength should not be underestimated.

……

……

System moved forward with his ant team. After 20 days, System finally selected a location near a stream to start building a new nest.

It wasn't that System's speed was too slow. In fact, System had left the ice and snow world on the border of the Warren Plain a few days ago and entered the plain with a warmer climate.

Although some volcanic black ash fell, there were no traces of it on the weedy grassland.

In one month, the volcanic black ash has been basically purified by weeds.

The environment of the grassland is suitable. System found some grasshoppers of his kind on the grassland, as well as some other insects such as crickets and flies.

But System has yet to choose where to place the lair. After all, System has decided to live here for a long time, so he should be more cautious in choosing the location of the underground lair.

Water sources, food, and safety must be considered in detail.

In fact, the easiest way is for System to directly select a Ratman's cave to snatch it. The Ratman's cave is extremely large and extends in all directions. With a little modification, it will undoubtedly become a good lair.

However, the Ratman's lair is too messy, and it is obviously not a good idea to transform it. Tem even found a Ratman while hunting a Ratman in the warm Warren Plain. The disgusting practice of people feeding maggots on their feces for food.

This practice made System feel disgusted, but what was even more disgusting was that the maggots that System had just seen subconsciously sensed them with their tentacles, and then ate a live maggot.

It tastes really good...

Since then, System has resisted sneaking into the Ratman's cave.

Using the ratman's lair to transform, System had some ideas before, but now he doesn't think about it at all.

Although his spirit is almost used to the way of thinking of bugs, and he is more inclined to bugs, some things are still completely unacceptable.

……

In 20 days, System's Ant Knights added two new members. It took about a month longer than ordinary worker ants, and two soldier ant knights emerged from their pupae.

One of the soldier ant knights seems to have acquired a talent similar to [strong body] by listening to the voice of the world.

With a body of more than ten centimeters and a weight of less than 200 grams, it can lift a large stone of [-] kilograms, and there will be no problems with the exoskeleton on it.

The other soldier ant, like most ants that pupate twice, still doesn't know exactly what kind of ability it has acquired.

Including these two soldier ant knights who broke out of the pupa one after another, there are only five ants who can master and use the ability to hear the sounds of the world.

One of them does not belong to the Knights of Worker Ants, but is just an ordinary worker ant that has secondly pupated.

This large worker ant was nicknamed "Excavator" by System.

Although its intelligence is lower than that of ordinary worker ant knights, it is naturally good at digging and carrying.

After listening to the sounds of the world, it gained the ability to manipulate mud and sand, and the ability is dozens of times stronger than the power generation ability of the hook.

With this ability, the great worker ants, who are good at digging, are even better at building ant nests.

It can be said that "Excavator" alone is more useful than all the ant teams in System combined.

Chapter 98 Settlement
The choice of where to build a new lair not only depends on System's subjective assumptions, but more importantly depends on an experienced geological expert excavator.

Although the Excavator is not even very coherent in the transmission of mental information, it has an innate understanding of the location and structure of the lair.

Of course, if you ask the excavator why it chose this address, the excavator will never be able to answer. It just thinks it is good, but it can't explain exactly what is good.

……

The forelimbs of the great worker ant touched the soil on the ground, but it did not appear to have any special movements. The soil began to come alive like System's [Corrosion Slime], and gradually wriggled and formed a diameter of about half a meter and a depth of about ten centimeters. circular pothole.

Some incompletely rotten plant branches and some other soil impurities remained in the pit. Under the instructions of System and Black, the other ant teams acted quickly to clean up and transport these impurities.

The excavator has certain limitations in controlling sand and soil, or its intelligence is not ideal for the control of this ability.

It can control sand and small pieces of gravel to move, but it can't use [corroding slime] jelly to wrap some dead branches and broken leaves to move like System.

So when the excavator manipulates the soil and sand and gravel fragments, there will be a lot of dead branches, rotten leaves and soil impurities falling down, and other ants need to clean these things up before the excavator can continue to use its capabilities.

With the capacity of the excavator, a circular tunnel with a diameter of half a meter like this can be excavated about three meters in a day.

After all, the body of an excavator needs proper rest and eating to restore this energy. Otherwise, let the excavator dig without stopping, and it can completely create a tunnel more than ten meters long in a day.

Because the excavator has the ability to manipulate sand and stones, it can force the scattered sand and stones together with the outer wall of the tunnel.

Not only can the inner wall of the tunnel become solid, but it also saves the ant people from the trouble of carrying the excess sand and stone produced by excavating the tunnel.

It only needs to move and clean up the soil and impurities that cannot be controlled by other ant people excavators.

As the great worker ants displayed their abilities one after another, an hour later, a pothole nearly half a meter deep appeared in front of System.

Due to the increase in depth, the rotten grass stems and soil impurities under the grassland have decreased a lot, and the speed of the excavator has been further accelerated. However, System estimates that after digging about half a meter, the energy of the excavator will be exhausted, and a few hours of rest will be required. to fully recover.

Different from the System absorbing the free energy in the air from time to time, the way the excavator replenishes energy is simple and direct. It will stretch its legs and let its body touch the ground as much as possible to absorb the power that appears in the ground.

While watching the digging progress of the big worker ants, System stretched out his tentacles to catalyze some vine plants with the ability of [Growing Plants] near the newly built nest.

In these few days, System has completely figured out the ability of [Stimulating Plants], a druid.

The effect of [Growing Plants] in the snow is not ideal. There are reasons for his lack of strength, but it is more related to the climate. Even if he has the ability to [Grow Plants], he must meet the growth conditions of the plants.

Appropriate temperature, water, soil, and sunlight required by plants are all indispensable. If some of them are lacking, the effect of [promoting plants] will be greatly reduced.

……

The five vines gradually grew under the power of System [Stimulating Plants], growing by one centimeter every ten seconds, gradually camouflaging the pits dug by the excavator.

After traveling in the grassland these days, System has basically figured out the food chain near the junction of Warren Plain and Lierte Forest.

Among them, the wolf man and the pig-headed man are at the absolute top of the food chain. However, these days, System has only seen a pig-headed man tens of kilometers away from a distance. What is the specific status of the pig-headed man? Observed.

The status of the Wolf Man in this grassland is equivalent to the human beings in System's previous world. It can be said that he is detached from all species in the grassland, and other creatures in the grassland are under the rule of the Wolf Man.

At the next level of the food chain of the wolf man and the pig man, there are the pack of wolves that appear from time to time in the grassland, the black eagle in the sky, and the wise rat man.

System was in such a hurry to catalyze the plants to form vines that he was guarding against the black eagles descending from the sky to attack.

It wasn't that System was afraid of these hawks, but that these hawks kept circling in the sky, not knowing when they would land, which made System very annoyed.

Compared with the eagles, which have no natural enemies in the air, the ratmen and the wolves fight with each other.

Just like the ratmen and the mice they control, the wolves on the grassland are like the pets of the jackals. When the wolves of the grassland meet the jackals, they will roll around in front of the jackals as if to please them.

It is precisely because of the relationship between the wolves and the jackals that System puts the wolves and the ratmen on the same level of the food chain. Otherwise, with the intelligence and strength of the ratmen, they can be the upper level of the wolves.

Further down the food chain, there are one-horned sheep and some snakes on the grassland, and then there are some small rodents such as rabbits and mice, and some poisonous arthropods such as scorpions and centipedes.

In terms of species, the food chain on the grassland is much simpler than that in the Lierte forest.

……

However, in the past few days, after observing nearly ten ratmen and killing three of them, System found that the more he knew about intelligent creatures like ratmen, the more he felt that he understood them. less.

Although the Ratmen are below the Gnolls in the food chain, they are not as defenseless as the Goblins used to be.

Although the living habits are extremely dirty, the Ratmen are obviously not low in intelligence and can make some simple tools and weapons.

System was even hit in the body by a simple bone crossbow made by the Ratmen.

The bone arrows were stained with some ratman feces, carrying some plague-like germs.

If it wasn't for System's [Mind Teleportation] ability to sense the emotions of fungi and bacteria, he might have suffered considerable damage from the Ratman's crossbow.

Not only that, after constant inspections in the sky, System found that there seemed to be a settlement of ratmen more than 100 kilometers to the south of him.

There are hundreds of rat caves camouflaged in the grass there, at least hundreds of ratmen and tens of thousands of ordinary rats live there, it seems to form an underground ratman village, or ratman city.

There are often wolves who stray into it and are attacked by ratmen.

……

System's choice of nesting site was also influenced by the Ratmen's underground city.

The wintering nest previously built in Lierte Forest was five meters deep, with three forks and more than a hundred empty rooms, although it was enough, but System felt it was still too small.

He decided to follow the example of the Ratman and build his underground lair bigger.

Perhaps in a short period of time, the scale of his lair cannot be compared with that of a city.

But as time went by, System felt that he could bring his ant people here to build an underground city suitable for them to live a comfortable life.

(End of this chapter)