Overlord: Rise of the Zerg

The weather is getting warmer, the snow is melting, and the weeds on the grassland have experienced another drought.

The spring sunshine shines down from the clouds, spreading generously on the withered grass, bringing the slightest warmth to the land that has been frozen for several months.

At noon, the sun became more and more dazzling, making the wind passing through the grassland warmer with some cold winter winds.

It was also at this noon that large numbers of ant colonies crawled out of the ground and began their new year's survival and work.

The food consumed in the ant nest during the winter was gradually replenished, and the aphid eggs stored underground were also placed at the roots of the grass that had not yet grown new leaves by the ant colonies that emerged from the ant nest.

After they hatch, the grass will come back to life, and they will naturally climb up the young leaves to suck the fresh juice.

A sweep last fall wiped out almost all insects and other insects on the grassland. However, when spring comes, there is still no shortage of insects chirping on the grass.

Those were their eggs that had flowed into the ground and hatched again in the increasingly warm environment of spring. They are like weeds on this grassland, surviving tenaciously on this land.

After a winter of construction by millions of ants, countless earthworm breeding chambers have appeared under the earth. A large number of earthworm larvae have gradually been domesticated and become production machines that provide food for the ant colony.

The eggs they lay will be moved by the ant colony to a special location for incubation. After the larvae are born, except for a small part of them that will be filled into the newly built earthworm breeding chamber, most of them will be directly turned into accumulated food by the ant colony.

It’s not that the ants are unwilling to wait for them to grow up before killing them to get more food. It’s just that the space in the ant nest is limited, and the growth cycle of earthworms is as long as two months. During this period, they need to be constantly fed and sent a lot of manpower to take care of them. For them, the cost consumed in this way is obviously much higher and not cost-effective.

If there is space for feeding earthworm larvae, it is better to build more acclimation fields to produce more eggs and hatch more larvae. It is more economical to win by quantity and save a lot of labor.

Today, the earthworm pasture has become the second largest stable food source for the ant colony after the aphid pasture. In spring and summer, the food provided by the aphids can satisfy nearly 90% of the ant colony's consumption, and the output of earthworms is also sufficient. The supply is as much as 30%, and as more acclimation fields are opened and more earthworms that have completed acclimatization move in, this proportion is still rising.

Therefore, in spring and summer, even if the ant colonies do not go out to forage, they do not have to worry about food reserves. Just send enough ants to graze the aphids and tend the earthworms, and the food will continue to increase.

Zero has calculated that by autumn, the output of aphids will drop sharply to the point where it can only meet 30% of the ant colony's consumption, and may even continue to decrease until it disappears completely. But by that time, the output of earthworms will increase to the point where they occupy 50% of the consumption of the ant nest.

Coupled with the food accumulated in the two pastures in spring and summer, it is enough to support the survival of the ant colony in autumn and there is still a lot left.

As long as the ants catch some more food during the harvest season in autumn, they don't have to worry about spending the winter.

In other words, if the ant colony no longer increases in number in the territory it currently occupies, they will only need to make a small movement in autumn to save food for the cold winter.

Even next year, in the spring and summer, the output of earthworms will accumulate more, which will further reduce the amount of food that the ant colony needs to capture in the fall, saving more labor for the ants.

This means that, at least in the spring and summer, a large number of ant colonies, numbering more than a million, will be liberated.

Last fall, Zero decided to send out a large number of ant colonies this year to explore the forest that had always excluded him.

Now, with the ant colonies occupying the entire grassland, the entire explored area has been basically completely occupied by the ant colonies. Apart from the forest, there is no second place for the ants to expand.

Following Zero's order, a large number of ants began to gather at the intersection of the grass and forest on the south bank of the river.

The creatures that had a chance to escape into the forest during last year's sweep, and then quietly sneaked into the grassland after the weather got warmer, began their desperate run towards the forest again.

Five days later, Zero assembled an army of about 800,000 ants—about 50% of the idle ants in the entire ant colony—and began to advance deeper into the forest.

Zero was not prepared to let the ant colonies swarm out. He needed to leave enough ants to ensure the safety of the nest and ensure the normal operation of the two farms.

The army of ants marched across the shadow of the intersection of the forest and the grassland, merged with the ants that had sneaked into the edge of the forest in the early stage, and once again marched into the depths of the southern forest.

Just like last year, wherever the ant army passed by, there was a lot of chaos.

The predators that once threatened the pioneers of the ant colony have become food in the bellies of the ants.

In the direction of the ant colony's advance, all obstacles are chickens and dogs, and no creature can stop their progress.

However, what makes Zero a little strange is that the deeper into the forest, the quieter the surrounding environment becomes.

As the ant colony continued to deepen, the quiet and mysterious atmosphere continued to surround them and continued to deepen. This atmosphere made Zero feel a little uneasy in his heart, and this uneasiness gradually amplified as it went deeper.

It wasn't until the ants came to the pine tree where Zero first discovered rosin that Zero gradually understood where the uneasiness came from.

Here, the ants finally discovered traces of large-scale biological activities for the first time after going deep into the forest, and they were even their own "kind".

They say they are the same kind, but in fact they are not the same kind at all.

They are only slightly similar in body size. Unlike ants with slender waists, they look much fatter. They do not have a slender waist, only the chest and abdomen.

This is actually a group of termites trying to carry away the rosin flowing from the pine trees!

Zero once thought about this place when he discovered rosin. When food is scarce, ants can barely eat this rosin to survive.

The termites also discovered the rapidly approaching ant army. However, they did not turn around and run away like the flying animals. Instead, they made a move that surprised Zero.

I saw that they quickly began to assemble in an orderly manner, and took an attack stance towards the huge ant colony.

Zero was somewhat surprised to see the termites in front of him, which numbered less than two thousand, through the flying ants in the sky. They did not seem to be afraid of the ant colonies that were large enough to threaten the super-large carnivorous creatures.

Is it that the ignorant are not afraid, or are they confident?

He didn't know, but that didn't matter.

Zero did not order the ant colony to stop advancing because of the doubts in his heart.

No matter what the reason is, just run over it. No matter what threat there is, I have 800,000 ant colonies in my hands. The advantage is mine!

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