Overlord: Rise of the Zerg

However, the ants also have their own solutions to this problem.

Generally speaking, they do not completely hollow out the entire space. Instead, while building, they consciously leave "pillars" as load-bearing pillars to support the gravity above and make the building structure more durable. stable.

Of course, this is a story for another day. In order not to affect the ant colony's predation plan, Zero misappropriated these 300 ants and did not plan to add more troops here.

If this project wants to speed up the progress, it will be after winter comes and a large number of ant colony labor is released from searching for food.

The ant colony that has stopped expanding is lackluster. The busy ant colony keeps accumulating food, and time flies by.

A month later, the worker ants in the northern nest reported the discovery of the first fruit that fell to the ground.

This is a kind of fruit with no name. It is spherical in appearance and about the size of a walnut. When it falls on the ground, it is obviously ripe. The cracked and opened pulp and the juice flowing out of the ground exude a sweet smell to the outside world. .

Sugar is the ant colony's favorite. Soon, without even having to direct Ling, the ants who were out looking for food gathered in large numbers and began to cut and carry them skillfully.

The juice flowing on the grass was not wasted, and the worker ants naturally sucked it all into their bellies.

The abdomen of worker ants has a space specially used to transport and store liquids. The worker ants are so slender that they can hardly swallow solid food. These liquids, which contain a large amount of sugar, are their best food.

As more and more ants gathered, the fruit was soon bitten away, leaving not even a trace of pulp remaining, leaving only a dark, hard and smooth core.

Obviously, the ants judged that the hard core could not be used as food, so they simply ignored it.

But the difference is that the reason why He continues to pay attention to this fruit tree is actually not for the few fruits, but for the core.

He wanted to plant it. If it could sprout, maybe in a few years, the ants would have a fruit patch!

As the first fruit fell to the ground, within a few days, all the fruits on the small tree fell one after another, twenty-three in total, all of which were pocketed by the ants.

Of course, Zero also harvested twenty-three fruit cores.

He ordered the ant colony to disperse these fruit cores, transport them to randomly find small pits around the ant nest, throw them into them, and bury them as much as possible - this process actually took a lot of time and labor resources, and this process Even simple planting may not be successful, but Zero is still willing to do it. He can feel the sense of accomplishment in conquering nature.

Generally speaking, after the fruit falls, it will slowly decay naturally without external intervention. The rich organic matter in it will greatly fertilize the surrounding land and provide sufficient nutrients for the kernel to germinate in the future.

But now that all the fruit pulp has entered the ant's belly, it is obviously impossible to provide any energy for the fruit core.

But it doesn't matter. There are a small number of earthworms raised in the ant nest, and three hundred worker ants are still working hard on the construction.

Although the idea of ​​zero domestication has not really started yet, in the past six months, earthworm excrement has filled several enlarged versions of the caves used by the ant nests to store production waste.

Under Zero's instruction, these excrements were not discarded by the ant colony, but were properly preserved.

The waste excreted by earthworms is rich in organic matter and is an excellent organic fertilizer, even better than industrial chemical fertilizers. It should be feasible to use these things to replace the role of fruit pulp.

This is just a casual move, maybe it can work, maybe it can't, it doesn't actually matter. The ant colony won't be able to survive without these fruit trees, nor will it be able to live and feed just because of these fruit trees. Even if it can, it won't last for who knows how many years. What happens after that.

However, this was Ling's attempt to use the ant colony to change the environment. At the same time, he could also get some sugary fruits, and the cost was only the labor of some worker ants. He wanted to do it, so he did it.

…………

Time passes day by day, and autumn is gradually coming to an end. There are mountains of food in the ant nest granary, which can fully meet the needs of the ant colony for the winter.

Food that is easily decomposed by microorganisms, such as insect corpses and plant pulp, is stored on the outermost side. They will be the first resources consumed by the ant colony in winter.

Food that is easy to preserve, such as plant seeds, is stored on the inside as a supplement to the ants' food.

The underground passages from each branch nest to the mother nest have been completed. During this period, Zero did not find a new location suitable as a breeding room, which made him a little regretful.

As the weather gets colder day by day, the time suitable for the ant colonies to go out becomes shorter and shorter, and the food that can be found in the outside world also decreases sharply. In the end, the food found is no longer enough to be consumed by the worker ants in a day.

Zero decisively withdrew all the worker ants that were out looking for food, sealed off the redundant entrances and exits of many ant nests, leaving only the vents open, and completely began the journey through the long cold winter.

The withdrawn worker ants were not idle. A small number of them poured into the earthworm acclimation field originally built by 300 worker ants, greatly speeding up the construction.

Due to the excellent insulation ability of the ant nest, the earthworms in the breeding room showed no signs of hibernation. They still maintained their autumn activity frequency and even laid a batch of eggs again just a few days ago.

Because the ant nest cannot accommodate so many earthworms, after these earthworm eggs hatch, the new larvae will all become the rations of the ant colony.

There is nothing we can do about this. Although Zero strives to make the ant colony self-sufficient, get rid of dependence on the external environment, and minimize the uncertainty of food quantity, at present, there is no good solution.

The current method of relying on ant colonies to find breeding sites on their own is too inefficient and relies heavily on luck. After all this time, there are still only seven, and experimental domestication sites are still being developed. Successful domestication may take years. time.

At present, it seems that relying on earthworms to achieve self-sufficiency in ant colonies will still have a long way to go in the short term if there are no other breakthroughs.

"It seems that while trying to domesticate earthworms, we need to find other stable food sources!" Ling thought in his mind.

But now it's winter, and the outside vegetation has withered. Not to mention food, even living animals are rare.

"We can only talk about it next year..." Zero sighed.

"Perhaps I can search deeper underground?"

This may also be a way.

Ask for collection! ! !