Chapter 32: Shadow
Editor: Atlas Studios
System acted swiftly and ordered Foolish to command the worker ants and build a nest for him to spend the winter.
Foolish communicated with the worker ants by spraying special acid and touching their antennae. It did not take long before it led more than 100 worker ants from the ant nest nearby and started digging a few meters away.
As the middle management of the ant nest, Foolish had the power to assign normal worker ants.
Usually, a normal soldier ant could command dozens of worker ants, while Foolish, who was smarter, could command more of them, probably around 100 or so.
Theoretically, Foolish could command more worker ants because there was no upper limit to the number of ants that its antic acid could control.
However, commanding too many worker ants would undoubtedly make the soldier ants with poor command ability unable to attend to everything at once. Thus, the controlled worker ants would fall in confusion, lowering their efficiency.
Soldier ants seemed to be born knowing how to command and the appropriate number of ants they could control.
…
The idea of digging a nest was brilliant, but System found it unsatisfactory when watching Foolish lead the worker ants to dig.
Although he had asked Foolish to dig a wider cave, he did not know if Foolish had sent the wrong order or normal ants' intelligence was low. In short, the cave the ants dug was too narrow.
It took nearly an hour of communication for the worker ants to widen the soil near the cave's opening under Foolish's command.
Nevertheless, this was only the opening, and the width of the cave's interior was not known to System.
When System tried to get close to the cave to check, the worker ants would attack him without mercy. After all, System relied on Foolish to command these ants.
As a result, when the less intelligent Foolish commanded lesser intelligent worker ants, it led to a tragedy.
System ordered Foolish to transfer all these worker ants away. Then he discovered that except for the cave's entrance, the inner passage was almost identical to an ant nest. It was so narrow that he could not possibly go through at all.
Except for the first two hours, System and the ant construction team led by Foolish were making no progress for the entire afternoon.
If he kept ordering Foolish to command in the way he wanted, this group of ants would more or less understand and listen to some orders. But this was inefficient in order to meet System's expectations.
"Can't there be any more ants like Foolish?"
System looked at Foolish that was rubbing its limb. If there were hundreds of soldier ants like Foolish under his command, it would not be a problem to build one, or even five caves.
He instructed Foolish to continue digging the cave with the worker ants.
System approached the ant nest and tried to use [Mind Transmission] to find obedient ants like Foolish.
After driving nearly a hundred ants into a rage with his lies, System concluded that Foolish was just a special case among ants.
Even if deceived by his lies, normal ants would notice something wrong and then attack him without hesitation.
"A few dozen seconds?"
System suddenly realized something, but at that moment, he had yet to find the key point.
He thought for a while, played back the images with his [Information Entry], and then keyed in the information of the hundred ants that he had just tried to deceive into the menu of [Self-Information Generation] for statistical analysis.
The time between being deceived and going into a rage was generally around 30 to 60 seconds. Usually, these ants would believe him in the first 20 seconds, but at around 25 seconds, they would become dull and mentally confused.
The time those ants needed to awaken from confusion varied greatly from 5 to 30 seconds, depending on the individual differences.
"Could it be that there is an obvious difference in the lies I told?"
System shook his head. The information he gave to these ants using [Mind Transmission] was basically the same, and even the tone he used was similar.
System re-watched the images in [Information Entry] and was reminded of something. He recalled the images of [Information Entry] a few hours ago and found the key point he had thought of earlier.
A few hours ago, he had ordered Foolish to catch an ant larva from the nest.
Before eating the ant larva, he had also told it a lie using [Mind Transmission]. Although it had eventually caught him telling a lie, it had been deceived for nearly five minutes. Adult ants would see through his lies in a short period.
If he could get Foolish to catch more ant larva from the nest for him to test out…
No!
The success rate on ant larvae might still be low, but how about the eggs before they became larva?
By brainwashing ants from the egg stage, would they become as obedient as Foolish?
If this hypothesis was true, he could order Foolish to carry some eggs for him to brainwash. After the eggs were hatched and the larvae grew into adult ants, he would have many ants that only worked for him.
Unfortunately, it was impossible to determine the needed time for the process, as he did not know the dark-brown ants' growth cycle.
Also, Foolish could not track the amount of time spent. When System asked how long it took to mature from when it was born, it gave a puzzled look and could not answer at all.
If it took too long, for ants to mature, System could only give up and find another way.
…
While System was making plans about winter, a bug returned from Leyte Forest to the abyss across the void.
Leyte Forest was covered with ice and snow all year round, and ever since the Glacier Lord had disappeared 300 years ago, the ice and snow there had started to melt. It had become a place with four distinct seasons.
Shadow had been traveling between the abyss and the Leyte Forest for 30 years.
Every year at the end of summer, her master, an Abyssal Druid, would use a special secret spell and send her into the main world. She had to search for bugs that had power beyond their race limit and bring them to the abyss.
Shadow loved the sunshine of the main world, but she could not stay for too long.
Abyssal Druids, formerly known as Swarm Druids, specialized in ordering insect swarms in nature, and they belonged to a branch of the Druids.
After the Swarm Druids had surrendered to Demon Overlord Ogan, the Druids' traitor, the Swarm Druids, had been called the Abyssal Druids.
They used the flesh and blood of bugs to rebuild a demon nest, which could significantly improve the incubation efficiency of the newborn demons. Thus, they developed many new types of demons.
Shadow did not know that until ten years ago when she had slowly started to understand this.
Shadow was regretful as she had been forced to kill two of her kind who had betrayed the master.
At that time, she had known nothing.
Shadow knew that she possessed intelligence now, just like those two who had betrayed the master.
After handing over a bug, whose power had reached the limit of its race, to her master, Shadow had disappeared into the shadows.
However, she had concealed one special bug she had found in the Leyte Forest—Quin.
Shadow looked forward to meeting Quin again the following year. Although Quin was much weaker than her, she had something that she did not have…
-- Gift
received