Chapter 85: Revisiting the Ant Colony

Red watched the three-way war raging across the Fungal Deep. The Caustic-Mandible ants sprayed melting streams of acid, the Obsidian-Carapace ants crushed everything in their path, and the Parasitic Amber-Hive relentlessly threw hollowed-out chitin husks at both of them to expand its territory.

It was a perfectly balanced nightmare.

Red pulled up the diagnostic overlay for Sector 5.

[FACTION STATUS: SECTOR 5 ECOSYSTEM]

[CAUSTIC-MANDIBLE CASTE: 45,000 UNITS]

[OBSIDIAN-CARAPACE CASTE: 35,000 UNITS]

[PARASITIC AMBER-HIVE (ANOMALY): 80,000 UNITS]

[CURRENT FAITH GENERATION: 0 / DAY]

Red stared at the zero. The original ten thousand ants that had worshipped him as the Hive-Mind were dead. These new generations had been born in the dark, fighting for their lives against the acid. They didn’t know him. They only knew violence and survival.

He could easily deploy Gorak and Iron-Scale to purge the Parasitic Amber-Hive. The anomaly was currently marked as hostile, a glitch in his original design. But Red kept his hands off the terminal.

The parasite was valuable. It had successfully hijacked biological armor to protect its liquid core. The Obsidian ants were impenetrable tanks, and the Caustic ants were walking artillery. Wiping out the parasite would remove the exact evolutionary pressure that had created his two elite castes in the first place. Even the smallest heavy-handed change could shatter this hyper-lethal ecosystem, making the ants soft again.

“I am not losing any of you,” Red muttered to the Void. “But you are going to learn to work together.”

If he could force the Parasitic Amber-Hive into a symbiotic relationship with the mutated ants, he would possess an autonomous, self-sustaining biological army that could adapt to any hazard. He just needed to nudge them.

Red scanned the map for immediate fatal flaws in their territories. The Obsidian ants were running dangerously low on the heavy silicates required to reproduce their stone carapaces. The Caustic ants were exhausting their fungal food supply to fuel their acid glands.

He couldn’t just spawn food or resources from thin air. The System didn’t work like that. If a god could simply manifest calories with a thought, Aurelius would never have let his human followers starve, and the City of Spiral wouldn’t need a massive hydroponics facility. Everything required a physical equivalent.

Red zoomed out from Sector 5, dragging his camera feed across the subterranean tunnels until he reached the upper crust of the wasteland. He scanned the ash-covered plains near the Bastion.

He scanned the area and found what he was looking for.

The rotting corpse of a massive, iron-plated Siege-Worm. Bastion troops had slaughtered it a week ago during a border patrol, leaving its colossal, heavily armored bulk to decay in the dirt.

Red highlighted the massive corpse on his interface. He activated his minor telekinetic manipulation, which was a basic ability used for moving physical objects within his domain, requiring only a fraction of his focus and a fraction of his DP.

The earth beneath the dead Siege-Worm parted. Red dragged the multi-ton carcass down through the crust, guiding it through the cavernous shafts until it hovered directly above the Fungal Deep.

He positioned it perfectly equidistant between the three warring ant territories.

Red released his hold.

The colossal corpse plummeted, slamming into the spongy yellow moss with an earth-shattering impact. A shockwave of dust and spores blasted outward.

The pheromone signals across the sector spiked instantly. All three factions detected the massive influx of biomass. The scouting lines from the Caustic, Obsidian, and Parasitic hives immediately halted their skirmishes and converged on the center.

Red watched the feed, anticipating the natural assembly line.

They would quickly realize they couldn’t consume the beast alone. The Siege-Worm’s outer plates were far too thick for the Caustic ants to melt or the Ooze to penetrate, but the Obsidian-Carapace ants possessed the crushing power to crack the shell.

Once opened, the worm’s internal organs were highly toxic, a defense mechanism that would kill the stone-ants, but the Caustic-Mandible ants could easily spray their acid to neutralize and melt the lethal organs.

Finally, the Parasitic Amber-Hive was the only faction capable of safely absorbing the highly acidic marrow and excreting it as a stable, edible nutrient paste that the other two factions could safely consume.

It was a three-step digestion loop. Fighting over the corpse would yield absolutely nothing. Working together would feed the entire sector.

Red leaned back in his throne and minimized the window. He had provided the catalyst. The insects would either figure out the symbiosis, or they would starve.

The three scouting lines converged on the colossal corpse of the Siege-Worm.

Up in the Void, Red watched the standoff on his terminal. The factions hesitated, their antennae twitching frantically as they processed the massive mountain of meat and iron plating.

The Caustic-Mandible ants made the first move. A squad of the glowing, orange-abdomened insects rushed forward and sprayed high-pressure acid against the worm’s outer shell. The acid sizzled, but the star-iron plating of the wasteland predator was too thick. It barely left a scorch mark.

Next, a wave of hollowed-out chitin husks piloted by the Parasitic Amber-Hive crashed against the carcass. The liquid ooze tried to seep into the cracks, but the worm’s armored scales were sealed tight. The parasite possessed no physical strength to breach the defenses.

Finally, the Obsidian-Carapace ants marched forward. They ignored the other two factions, driven by pure biological hunger. Their heavy, stone-like mandibles clamped onto the iron plates. With a sickening crunch, they shattered the armor, tearing massive chunks of the shell away to expose the soft tissue underneath.

But the Siege-Worm’s internal organs ruptured, venting a cloud of highly corrosive, toxic gas. The Obsidian ants immediately began to seize up, their inorganic joints corroding under the chemical defense mechanism. They retreated, dropping the meat.

The ecosystem stalled for a fraction of a second. Then, the Hive Mind adapted.

The Caustic ants pushed past the retreating Obsidian frontline. They aimed their abdomens into the breached wound and sprayed their neutralizing acid directly into the toxic organs. The chemical reaction violently melted the lethal flesh down into a bubbling, steaming slurry.

However, the resulting liquid was far too acidic for any organic or silicon-based ant to safely consume.

That was when the Amber-Hive rolled in.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep