Law of the Swarm

Chapter 98 Settled

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)