Chapter 164 Settling new lands (1/2)

The Queen is holding up incredibly well. In fact, if I hadn't been sneaking the odd peak at her with my mana sense on I wouldn't even know that her core was leaking energy. The brilliant radiance of her core has already faded to half of its full l.u.s.tre. After five days on the move the whole colony is tired and desperate for rest. It's almost a shame that we aren't a nomadic ant species like the army ants.

Mind you, those b.u.g.g.e.rs are completely blind, so if I'd been born as one of those separate from the colony there is no way I'd have been able to survive until now. Also, the entire reason those ants are nomadic is because they are so numerous, and so ferocious that they strip the land bare of everything they can possibly eat, forcing them to move to a new location constantly. There is a lesson in that for our own colony going forward. We can't be so greedy as to strip the land bare, intake will have to be managed. Well, that's in the far future if we ever manage to grow enough to dominate our environment.

…

An ant can dream dammit! Don't look down on my humble ambitions!

All I want is for my family to rise! To be ascendant!

It's a lot for a few ants to take on but with a bit of grit and a heck of a lot of tunnel digging, I'm sure we can make it!

We have arrived in our new land! A blessed place full of monster infested nests and forests. Battle awaits around every corner and that means only one thing. Bioma.s.s!

This colony is hungry!

We need food!

Like an angry demon the colony as a whole swept forward over the boundary separating the lands of Liria from the untamed wild. Despite keeping a close eye behind us we never saw pursuit from the humans we had left behind, which surprised me a lot. Once we made it over the border the tension I'd carried inside, expecting an attack to arrive at any moment in retaliation for our grand theft core, evaporated. There is no way they'll be bothered to chase us into here, surely?!

The workers don't care. They dive right in, marching forward, antennae eagerly sweeping over every rock and plant in the hopes of flus.h.i.+ng out a monster. Whenever we run into some surface monsters they either attempt to flee or leap out to attack! The former are shot with acid until they can't move and the latter are promptly ripped to pieces and distributed amongst the workforce.

Even I'm forced to eat some of it in order to force away my hunger. I get a bonus point for new source but nothing else. These creatures are so weak they provide nothing to myself and Tiny. We have got to get ourselves into the Dungeon quickly so we can mutate!

Unfortunately we can't set up a nest until we find a section of Dungeon close to the surface that we can occupy. The Queen absolutely has to be inside the mana infused air of the Dungeon in order to live!

The imminent demise of our collective mother puts a lot of pressure on us workers and we hustle here and there trying to find an entrance. After two days of desperate searching, when the panic in my thorax was reaching critical ma.s.s, we finally succeeded! A relatively narrow crack in the earth, occupied by some rather tough looking dog faced bipeds that I'd never seen before.