That's true, why would she have to make a decision between two things? She could do both at the same time.
While occupying territory and increasing the number of troops, she could also continuously attack. But for now, she needed to observe the Incan swarm first.
Lin was very curious about how they 'resurrected' other creatures.
In the territory of the Inca swarm, the Flyers found the fifty entrances to the ground. Without exception, they were all inside the Hometrees. Perhaps all the Hometrees could be connected to the surface, and there were more than fifty Hometrees here. Obviously, there would be more entrances and exits.
Should she blow up all the entrances? That wasn't necessary, she only needed to place a few eyeballs and tentacles around to observe.
Furthermore, it seemed impossible to attack the Incan swarm through these entrances. Most of the entrances were very narrow, and the insides were very winding. It was basically a small, winding tunnel, perfect for setting up traps. Lin guessed that there were only relatively wide entrances in the desert, which was why large insects like the Sandspitter only appeared in the desert.
Then, after dealing with these matters, she should be able to clearly observe the Incan swarm's movements. But since she still hadn't discovered any Giant Wasps burrowing into the ground, Lin didn't know where the entrances were.
However, this meant that they could only ambush from the desert, which was much easier to defend against.
Additionally, Lin had the Flyers follow the Giant Wasps that burrowed back into the ground. Lin discovered that these Giant Wasps were all flying towards the same place, which was the fossilized Hometree.
The Giant Wasps spit out a viscous liquid, which was then transported by the Black Wasps into the Hometree for the Giant Wasps to consume. After consuming the liquid, the Giant Wasps would lay an egg within 2 days. At this time, the Black Wasps would transport the egg to another Hometree that was 3km away from the fossilized Hometree.
Lin hadn't entered this Hometree yet. In fact, because there were too many Hometrees, only a few of them were observed by Lin's Shapeshifters and Flying Eyeballs. The Flyers were currently following the Black Wasps and creating Flying Eyeballs to follow them into the Hometree.
The interior of this Hometree was very different. It was a very large space, just like the one Lin was currently occupying. The interior of the Hometree seemed to have been hollowed out, and there was only a large insect inside. Along with many, many eggs.
This large insect was about 10 meters long, and from its large abdomen, it seemed to be a Queen type creature.
Black Wasp placed the egg in front of the Queen. The Queen extended a thorn-like limb from her mouth and pierced it into the egg.
After that, the eggs began to slowly expand as if something was growing inside. Moreover, many strange things grew on the surface of the eggs. Lin discovered that each egg was different. Some of the eggs had many small spikes on the surface, and these spikes had many threads growing out of them. The entire egg had turned red and black.
Lin speculated that this egg might be related to one of the creatures hunted by the giant bees, the Red-Bellied Ball Spider.
The other eggs were basically the same. They would transform into creatures that looked similar to the creatures that the giant bees had hunted. For example, one of the eggs became flat and long, and many cockroach legs grew on its surface. It also emitted a strange smell, which was obviously related to the hot spring cockroaches.
There was also a type of egg that turned black and enlarged. Its shell had a strange protrusion that looked like a salamander lying on top of it.
Almost all of the eggs were like this. They showed the characteristics of the species that had been hunted. This was very strange. How did they become like this?
Perhaps only by dissecting them would she know. Lin really wanted to observe their internal changes.
However, they were different from Lin. Lin usually observed the internal structure of a creature and pieced together a similar structure. In fact, it didn't matter if the creature she observed was dead or alive. Normally, it would be better if it was alive.
The Inca insects, on the other hand, had to go through a series of troublesome and complicated procedures. The giant bees hunted the creatures, created eggs for the fat insects, and then sent the eggs to the Queen. The Queen injected some kind of liquid into the eggs, and the eggs began to grow into the creature's appearance.
The whole process lasted for about 7 days and nights before the eggs slowly grew to maturity. A fully grown egg would normally be 5 to 10 times its original size. However, because the egg was only about 10 centimeters long, it wouldn't grow too big no matter how much it grew. Moreover, these special eggs looked like small creatures.
In the Queen's Hometree, there were these eggs everywhere. Most of them were stuck to the inner walls of the tree or placed on the ground. Every one of them looked different, and no one was the same. The Inca insects had collected a lot of different creatures.
Once the eggs were fully grown, a tentacle-like structure would extend from the Queen's back and pierce into the eggs. It seemed to have formed some kind of connection with the eggs.
After that, the Queen would produce a large number of eggs. These eggs were all the same size and were all white spheres without any distinguishing features. After that, the black bees would carry the eggs out. Lin also had the flying eyeballs follow them. The black bees would then move the eggs to another Hometree. This Hometree was filled with a large number of identical eggs, and quite a few of them had just hatched.
The creatures that hatched were all exactly the same. They were all worm-like insects that only knew how to wriggle on the spot without any sensory organs.
The black bees would then bring these worms out of the Hometree and feed them to the other insects in the swarm. Here, a few of the insects that Lin had seen before appeared, such as the Exploding Armor Worm, Sandstorm Worm, and so on. After eating these worms, the insects would undergo some changes. A Sandstorm Worm that ate a worm's abdomen would turn silver, while a few Exploding Armor Worms that ate a worm would turn black.
These mutated insects would then gather at a relatively empty spot in the forest, seemingly conducting some sort of experiment. Lin noticed that the Sandstorm Worms that had turned silver no longer spat out sand, but a boiling liquid instead.
Meanwhile, the black Exploding Armor Worms would release a large amount of black liquid that wasn't hot or flammable, but seemed to be highly toxic.
So that's how it is … Lin now understood.
The Inca swarm's ability was to extract the abilities of certain living creatures, but they couldn't directly resurrect the living creature. Instead, they fed the worms that contained the creature's abilities to other insects, allowing those insects to absorb the creature's abilities.
However, she still didn't know how the Earth Shatterer came to be. Perhaps they were directly resurrected.
Although they could use this method to directly alter the insects' abilities, there were still some drawbacks to this method. For example, the Exploding Armor Worms would no longer be able to create a flame explosion, while the Sandstorm Worms would no longer be able to spit out flammable sand. In other words, they were basically discarding the previous ability after obtaining a new ability. However, this method could also allow the insects to rapidly adapt to different situations. It felt pretty good, but the process was a bit cumbersome.