Laws of the Insect Hive

Below a few vines, thousands of ants appeared as far as System's line of sight. These ants were of the exact same species as the ones System killed in the morning, and they should be from the same nest of ants.

It seems that the torrential rain a few days ago did not hurt this nest of ants.

As System jumped to the vicinity of the vines, the picture in his compound eyes gradually became clear, it turned out that these ants were dismembering a lizard corpse among the dead branches and leaves.

The lizard may have unfortunately drowned in the torrential rains these days, when the ant colony was carrying the lizard's minced meat back and forth to the nest.

System looked at the lizard corpse and suddenly had an idea.

A means of obtaining food, a costless trade.

Because of the utility of [Information Reading], System's ability to observe is very strong, but compared to an ant's sense of smell, System is far inferior.

These ants can easily find food hidden in the smashed leaves and mud after a heavy rain.

As long as he pays attention to the movements of these ant colonies, he can snatch food from the hands of the ants.

When encountering smaller food to distract the ant colony, he can grab the food and leave directly, and when encountering a huge meat like this lizard, System can also snatch the meat from the mouth of the worker ants.

...

After a brief thought, System immediately acted. He picked an ant with a huge chunk of meat at the edge of the ant colony and rushed over.

Practice makes perfect, System found that the reflex nerves of grasshoppers are much more sensitive than humans, and he became more and more skilled at attacking these ants.

He can even predict how the ants will react after an attack.

He easily snatched the meat from the ant's mouth, and System's hind limbs exerted force, kicking the dizzy ants half a meter away, and then repeatedly jumping onto a nearby vine.

Ants have great strength and can lift objects dozens of times their own weight, but ants usually do not move such heavy objects for movement.

The piece of meat that System grabbed was slightly smaller than the weight of an ant, and he grabbed the piece of meat and quickly chewed it.

The taste of this kind of meat is similar to fragrant milk biscuits.

However, looking at the experience bar, System found that the experience of this food was nearly twice as high as that of the chrysalis.

This was the first food that violated System's delicious principles, but System continued to eat a few mouthfuls without finding the reason for the abnormal experience.

If he keeps eating this food, he may reach max level 15 before his lifespan ends.

"Could it be that reptiles have a higher degree of evolution than insects? It's a pity, if you snatch some tadpole corpses in the morning, you can analyze more results."

System continued to eat a few bites of lizard meat and observed the change in the experience bar before throwing it away.

This kind of meat has a great effect on his leveling up, but it has no effect on his talent [Metamorphosis Growth]. System continued to eat a few bites and then discarded the meat on his feet.

Although it is very important to increase the level, the first thing he needs to do now is to improve the talent [Degeneration and Growth].

Jumping in the direction these ants moved, it didn't take long before they discovered a mound half a meter high in System more than a dozen meters away, which was the nest of these black and brown ants.

This was an obvious large ant colony. System felt that the ant colony could accommodate at least hundreds of thousands of ants, but he did not know how much damage the heavy rain had caused to it.

There was an endless stream of ants coming and going. In addition to the common worker ants, System also saw some large ants of three or four centimeters shuttle back and forth among the worker ants. They should be soldier ants guarding the ant's nest.

The heads of these soldier ants are very huge, occupying half of the whole body, and they have huge fangs. System believes that these huge fangs can dismember him in an instant, and even bite off his thick hind limbs.

Not only that, the abdomens of these soldier ants are a bit strange. Through observation, System found that these soldier ants have stinging needles in their abdomens, and they spray some liquid from time to time to instruct the ordinary worker ants to move.

With the sharp and huge fangs, coupled with the tail stinger and the means of long-range attack, System had no plans to fight these soldiers.

Following a tributary where the ants gathered, System continued to jump and move, and he began to observe the range of activities of the ants and the food they hunted.

Not long after, System successfully snatched a half-centimeter-sized tadpole corpse.

Because of the rainstorm, although the forest suffered a disaster, after the stagnant water subsided, there was also a lot of food, and there were even more of these unfortunate tadpoles.

However, these tadpoles were usually trapped in the mud, and it was difficult for System to find them by sight, so he could only snatch them from the hands of ants.

The taste of tadpoles is not bad, similar to the flesh of lizards, they are similar to the taste of fragrant milk-flavored biscuits.

But unlike the huge amount of experience provided by the lizard's flesh, this tadpole's flesh follows System's delicacy principle, producing slightly less experience than a pupae of the same weight.

Lizards are reptiles, tadpoles are amphibians, and the two should be similar in evolutionary degree. System’s previous guesses were also wrong at this time.

System's taste theory should still be correct, the better-tasting food can bring him more growth, but that lizard must be hiding something different.

System thought for a while, but without finding any clues, he began to concentrate on eating the tadpole corpse grasped on his feet.

Tadpoles cannot molt like insects, but their meat quality is very useful for the talent [molting growth], even a little better than ants and crickets.

It seems that the transformation of amphibians from aquatic to terrestrial forms is similar to the morphological changes of insects.

...

System kept patrolling around the nests of these ants. On the one hand, he observed what food these ants could snatch for him, and on the other hand, he was looking for a new nest nearby where he could rest at night.

System found a spacious tree hole in a slightly dry tree, but the tree hole was too close to the ant's nest, and ants often visited the hole, so he had no choice but to give up the nest he thought of.

When the sun went down, System did not find a nest suitable for him to rest. Instead, he snatched the corpses of small tadpoles carried by a few ants, which could be used as his supper in the dark.

And during the time when the sun was down and it was still dark, System had a new harvest.

Near a pile of rubble, System found a food that was very useful to him because of these ants—a 20-centimeter-long scorpion corpse.

The body of this scorpion was pure black, because the rainwater soaked the shell slightly discolored, and there was a lot of mud on the body.

The scorpion corpse has not been completely discovered by the ant colony. Only a "exploration team" consisting of a dozen worker ants is investigating. If it is determined that the scorpion can be used as food, they will leave their scent and attract thousands of ant legions. .

When System saw these dozen ants wandering around the scorpion, he suddenly had a wonderful idea. If he succeeded, then he could own the corpse of the scorpion.

He could lure the dozen or so ants away, then use his pungent-smelling [Corrosive Slime]—

Draw the ground for prison!