I Am the Swarm

After realizing that the big-headed ant's territory was indeed unexpectedly small, Rowan began to pay attention to the surrounding trees during the inspection process to see if they had also engaged in animal husbandry.

But even in animal husbandry, without destroying the vegetation, it is difficult to feed so many combat units with such a small territory.

Rowan did find some aphids on trees along the route, but no signs of mass farming. But he had other unexpected discoveries.

On the yellow-brown soil, a strange stream caught Rowan's attention.

After a closer look, I found that this small stream turned out to be flowing leaves. The leaves are being carried, and the porters are the worker ants of the big-headed ants. No matter how big or small they are, each of them uses their molars to bite leaves that are several times their size and move.

There are also some larger soldier ants in the carrying team, which patrol around the stream. While ensuring the safety of the worker ants, it is also responsible for clearing some small obstacles on the way. Make the rough road a little smoother. Of course, in the face of obstacles that are too large, they can only choose to detour.

The direction of the flow of this green leafy stream is the location of the big-headed ant nest, and Rowan is going against the stream.

Before long, he discovered the source of these leaves.

This is a fairly tall tree, at least fifty meters high, and the green stream spreads down from the top of the tree. However, due to the cover of the dense branches at the top, the specific Rowan could not see clearly.

However, it doesn't matter, the sticky hair on his feet is enough to support him on the smooth rock wall, and climbing a tree is not easy.

Changing his own pheromone, disguised as a forbidden stone, Rowan avoided the team of big-headed ants, and flew up along the other side of the tree trunk.

Looking at the tops of the trees, he saw something magical.

On some young leaves at the top, the worker ants of the big head ant use their molars as scissors. One side is inserted into the upper part of the leaf, and the other side is used to cut from the bottom up, and this process is repeated over and over again.

Finally, a part of the leaf is neatly cut, they use their molars to carefully lift the leaves from falling, and then become part of the leafy stream.

The worker ants lining up behind continue to cut the leaf until the leaf is completely cut.

The big-headed ants also know how to protect the vegetation. They only collect about one-third of the leaves on each branch, leaving two-thirds intact, so as to minimize the impact on the vegetation.

Their actions made Rowan wonder whether there is also an intelligent soul directing them.

But Rowan found that the bighead ants don't eat the leaves, they just cut them up and transport them back to their nests.

What is this for?

Luo Wen knew that the worker ants working in his aphid pasture usually feed themselves first. The leftovers will be fed to the same kind around, and only when everyone is full will the rest be transported back to the nest...

But Luo Wen looked at it for so long, but didn't find a big-headed ant stealing it, which is too abnormal.

When he first discovered the situation here, he thought that these leaves were in the diet of big-headed ants. If this is the case, it can also explain why they have so many labor and troops with only so few territories.

You must know that other ant species that Luo Wen has seen have not eaten this kind of leaves.

Looking at it now, the situation seems to have changed. Big-headed ants don’t even eat leaves, so why bother to mine the leaves?

Luo Wen couldn't figure it out, but he knew that this must be related to the secret of their powerful violent ability. Because he had wandered around the big-headed ant's territory for so long, this was the only unusual place besides the chimneys of their nests.

The secret must be hidden in the ant's nest, and Luo Wen felt a little itchy, but unfortunately due to the constraints of his body size, he had already bid farewell to the undercover job.

So now we can only take some special measures.

Although judging by the appearance of the big-headed ants, they are not very aggressive. However, no matter how small their territory is, it still blocks the way for the swarm to expand, and sooner or later there will be a battle between the two sides.

When the time comes, it will be time for the secret to be revealed.

But now, Rowan needs to seize the opportunity and fight a prepared war.

Rowan was a little excited to meet a stronger new opponent, and it took him only a short time to rush back to the general base.

After checking the mother nest, it was found that the super-giant big-headed soldier ants still use the ordinary feeding system of ants. It's just that its muscles are unusually developed and powerful, and it can squeeze oxygen farther to support its huge body.

This set of muscle-strengthening gene fragments is quite useful, while the others are mediocre.

After concocting several new insects, Luo Wenwen planned to learn from the big-headed ants and divide the soldier ants and worker ants into dozens of body types, large and small. Thinking about it later, it seemed unnecessary. The swarm has its own development model, so there is no need to learn from everything.

For example, the big-headed ants use soldier ants, big workers, and middle workers as transportation tools, and units below the small workers are responsible for fixing the transported goods. But the bug swarm has transport bugs with stronger carrying capacity, and slime bugs responsible for fixing items, which is more convenient.

As for the production plan, first place an order for 500 queen ants and get 3000 queen ants together.

Before fighting the big-headed ants, you first need to solve the red ant nest and the site that receives them.

These five hundred queen ants were following the frontline rioters in the early stage, and then sent out to take over the territory.

Of course, a red ant nest territory does not need five hundred queen ants, but it is almost enough to add the big-headed ants.

This is called planning for a rainy day.

Of the 2,500 queen ants, except for the more than 500 that are far away from the northern front line, the distance is too far, and the cost of transporting troops to the front line is too high, so they were not assigned production tasks. However, they also have tasks, and need to transport supplies to bases close to the front line.

The rest of the nearly two thousand ant queens began to fight with all their strength.

As time passed, the newly produced worms in each base had already burst out of their pupas one after another, and then they were transported to the frontline bases one after another along with a large amount of supplies.

A month later, counting the North Army that had already been summoned to station here, the swarm had assembled a total of 500,000 soldier ants of various types and more than 1.5 million worker ants.

Coupled with various auxiliary arms, the total number of troops reached 2.1 million.

This is the largest military operation of the swarm since its birth. Luo Wen is full of sincerity and has raised the strategic threat level of the big-headed ants to the highest level. This time, he is going all out to deal with it.

As the saying goes, before soldiers and horses move, food and grass go first.

The army of more than 2 million is the limit of the swarm's current strength, which is more than 2 million mouths. Behind the army, there are more than 2,000 branch bases, and more than 12 million worker ants are ensuring the logistics. There are more than 5,000 transport bugs in various parts of the territory, and they are continuously transporting the materials produced in each base to the front line.

That's it, because of the rush of time, there are still some material gaps.

But it doesn't matter, there is a granary in front of the army...