Chapter 5: Endless Expansion (2)

Chapter 5: Endless Expansion (2)

I barely accepted it.

That's right. That place is another worlds an alien world.

Anything could happen and it wouldn't be strange. Even the ants on Earth can shoot poison and acid.

"But how can it make sense for them to shoot hydrochloric acid?!"

Having given up on finding termites, I returned home, bitten by mountain mosquitoes.

Since we can already suck blood, mosquitoes, or rather, those damned insects, were utterly useless.

[It's good to remember. That cave is a labyrinth that should never be taken lightly.]

"I know that."

Giant spiders the size of king crabs, huge scorpions with six tails, and so on.

I knew that place, where monsters that could rival Earth's prehistoric creatures lived, was extraordinary and nothing that emerged from there would be surprising.

[Today's event will be recorded in the history of our race. The day we, our race, met a worthy opponent for the first time.]

"...Can we win?"

[No one knows that. But one thing is certain, our legion never stops. If there's an obstacle, we break it. If there's an enemy, we devour it. There's no other choice.]

"So we keep growing and growing... What will happen in the end? What if we devour the whole world?"

[Then we will devour another world.] Madness was glimpsed in the words.

I didn't particularly comment on it.

I simply searched the internet for a site that sold termites for breeding.

I thought about what was most important in this game.

And I concluded that it was the luck of the draw and the player's wealth... no, ability.

That was why I went to the shop on this bloody weekend, after quitting my part-time job, on a train.

It was faster for me to go than to have it delivered.

[I don't understand. You just need to take a picture. Didn't you say it's a waste of money?]

"That's stealing."

[Even for a single ant?]

"...Honestly, I'm a bit tempted."

Wouldn't it be okay to sneakily take just one ant?

If worst comes to worst, I could even get a recently dead body.

But the conclusion I came to upon arrival was to just not do anything suspicious.

What if I get caught and interrogated just to save a few thousand won?

I didn't have the skill to explain the phenomenon of things disappearing with a flash when I took a picture.

"I'm stockpiling power in preparation for war."

I took a picture of the termites I bought and sent them directly to the nest.

The legion, which had broken down the termites down to the microbial level, now had the ability to digest wood.

I went back to the back mountain.

In fact, stealing wood is also illegal.

I didn't know about other things, but I had no choice with this.

In the mountains where there were no CCTVs, I took a picture of a log that was rolling on the ground.

"...To prepare for when the scale of war escalates?" It was an undeniable statement.

The legion would never be content here.

It would grow further, fight bigger enemies.

[We decimate the enemy queen and use the larvae and eggs as food. We have won a war between legions. This event will be recorded in history]

I glanced at the clock.

Merely four hours.

In just four hours, the white cave ant colony that ruled the fourth floor fell to us. But that wasn't all.

The annihilated opponent left us an inheritance.

Their weapons could now become ours.

Weapons capable of capturing the beings on the upper floors.

"Do they ever rest?"

[Even in moments of rest, our nourishment is consumed] The legion never stops. *

The peaceful, wide expanse of the cave.

This unusually spacious place was quite developed with vegetation around the central lake.

This meant it was rich in nourishment.

Indeed, the fungus that grew here formed a colony of giant mushrooms, the size of a child.

A toad living here casually consumed something crawling on the ground.

This toad, about the size of a small dog, thoroughly enjoyed the popping sensation in its mouth.

The white cave ants, armed with strong acidity, were one of the lowest life forms here, living modestly in small numbers, unlike the lower floors where they formed a large legion as the rulers of the stairs.

The toad yawned with its mouth wide open and moved to another place.

It was the outskirts of the hive.

The toad, moving its sensory organs absentmindedly, suddenly looked down at its feet.

[It's time to hunt more advanced life and increase the size of our legion]

Countless ants, or rather, monsters hard to call ants, began to cling to the toad's body. The toad jumped and shook its body.

But other monsters, buzzing in the air, rushed at the toad.

[It's a new poison combined with strong acidity. A powerful extreme poison that melts the target's nerves and blood vessels] The poison injected by the stinger-tipped tail was no longer ordinary bee venom.

Even the thick skin immune to acidity couldn't withstand the acid directly injected into it.

The toad's massive body, struggling against this relentless attack, slowly fell.

[Even the predator of predators is our prey]

Something quickly cut through the air and flew in upon discovering the toad's corpse. It was a large bat, flapping its double-layered wings.

But the moment it grabbed the toad with its claws.

The legion covering the toad's body also attacked the bat.

The startled bat flew up.

The bat's body was covered in fur, but its skin was much thinner than the toad's.

The soldiers of the legion ruthlessly crawled over the bat's body and began to tear at the thin membrane of its flapping wings. [...This is just the beginning]

The bat, its wings reduced to rags, eventually staggered and fell to the ground.

It was the moment when the black wave crawling up from the weakest bottom of the labyrinth began to overturn the ecosystem of this labyrinth in earnest.