Juggernaut: Rise of the Zerg

Chapter 17 Aphids
Spring is coming, the ice and snow are melting quietly, and the temperature is rising quietly.

The river gradually melted, and everything recovered one after another.

Everything is the same as in previous years, and everything is completely different from last year.

Zero's army of ants rushed out of the ground after a long time, galloping and exploring their own territory to their heart's content.

A large number of flying ants rushed out of the ant nest, and flew into the sky with a flick of their wings.

Many insects became active again, which also provided replenishment for the gradually depleted granary of the ant colony. They rushed forward in swarms without fear of death, killing their opponents and dragging them back to the nest.

The queens in each nest had plenty of food and began to expand again.

In the chilly spring, under the guidance of flying ants in the sky, groups of ant colonies spread around like a march, with a clear goal.

The ant colonies have also found a way to deal with the locusts and grasshoppers that were difficult to kill at the beginning.

Without him, it's just a simple and crude insect sea tactic.

In this land, all insects are the food of the ant colony, and among the insects here, they no longer have natural enemies.

In the sub-nest by the river, several teams of worker ants came out one after another, and the flying ants in the sky pointed out the direction for them. In the reeds by the river, the new green shoots provoked many white and tender larvae, and they were greedily gnawing on them. Bite on the fresh and juicy reed seedlings, without knowing the danger is approaching.

The ant colony is already very experienced with this kind of food that is almost impossible to fight back. When the ants reach the root of the reed where they live, the end is already doomed.

Soon, the ant colonies returned to the nest in groups carrying fat and white bugs one by one.

Due to the proximity to the river, the insects here are much more abundant than other places, providing a lot of food for the ant colony here, and therefore, this branch nest is the best developed among all the branch nests.

While the called worker ants carried food back to their nests, the flying ants in the sky began to look for food along the river again.

The field of view in the sky was very wide, and soon, they found the target again. Not long after, under the transmission of Zero, a group of worker ants drove out of the nest again with a clear goal and went straight there.

This is just a microcosm of the entire army of ant colonies. Under the guidance of flying ants in the sky, the predation of ant colonies is always beneficial.

On the ground, there are also a large number of exploration teams looking for food. Where the ant colony passes, almost no other insects grow. The rich food is carried back to the ant nest in piles and dismembered to provide food for the reproduction of the queen.

This is certainly good news, but at the same time it also caused zero sense of crisis.

As the size of the ant colony expanded again, the predation efficiency increased sharply, and the ground around the ant nest was almost covered and searched over and over again.

If this continues, it will be difficult to find food around the ant nest, and the ant colony will be forced to explore further.

Although expansion is the long-cherished wish of the ant colony, for Zero, this forced expansion is not a good thing.

Because in this way, there is an upper limit to the number of ants that can be supported in an area. Once this upper limit is exceeded, the ant colony will have to find a new area to settle down.

Although this kind of thing does not cause much trouble to the ant colony because the unexplored area is still vast, but for Zero, a huge problem has been placed in front of him.

If the ant colony spreads out on a large scale, it will greatly increase the field of view of zero, but it also means that the ant colony cannot gather enough numbers to drown the enemy in a short period of time, which is essentially the same as ordinary ants There is basically no difference.

If this is the case, then the enemies that the ant colony cannot defeat now may never be able to defeat them, because their greatest advantage in battle is their fearlessness and absolute superiority in numbers.

Although it is only a sign at present, Zero can already foresee the bottleneck that the ant colony will face in the future.

He didn't want the ant colony under his control to have a combat power ceiling, which meant that the natural enemies of the ant colony would always be able to kill them unscrupulously and leave without hesitation.

In fact, there are two solutions to this problem.

One is the earthworm pasture, but the current domestication has not improved much, and the earthworms still spare no effort to escape. If they want to succeed, I don't know how long it will take.

The second is the planting plan of the unknown fruit, which also takes a very long time to wait for the results.

For these two solutions, Zero currently has no good solutions, so he can only temporarily shelve them and look for new solutions.

Just when Ling was at a loss, the ant colony nesting by the river made a new discovery.

As the weather gradually warmed up, the reed seedlings by the river gradually began to grow taller. At some point, dozens of small aphids climbed up on these seedlings.

Almost at the moment when flying ants discovered aphids, Zero had a new solution to the crisis that the ant colony was about to face—grazing aphids!
First of all, when the temperature is right, aphids reproduce surprisingly fast, they can produce a generation every 4-5 days!
Secondly, aphids like to suck the sap from the young leaves of plants, and this grassland lacks everything except leaves!

Again, the aphids' small size and high adaptability means they are no match for the ant colony and are easily resigned to it.

Finally, aphids can also produce honeydew, which contains a lot of sugar!

This is simply the creature that the ant colony needs most!
Zero immediately mobilized the flying ants and looked for aphids in the grass by the river, and soon found that there were some large and small aphids lying on the back of most of the reed leaves, and some even started to lay eggs. up.

After receiving the news, Zero immediately selected an area within the sphere of influence of the ant nest, and at the same time ordered the ant colony to dispatch a large number of aphids that could be captured alive, and killed those that could not be captured alive, and brought back their eggs.

Zero should try to breed aphids on young weeds.

In fact, he is also a little puzzled. The ant colony has established a foothold on the grassland for so long, and even the surrounding area of ​​the ant nest has been turned upside down by the ants. Why have there never been any traces of aphids on the grass blades?

But this question is actually irrelevant. The most important thing is whether the aphids can survive and reproduce normally on the grass blades.

It shouldn't be a problem when you think about it, aphids are well-known plant killers.But it is a huge doubt that I have never found aphids in the grass.

This question troubled Zero, making him feel that things might not be as simple as he thought before.

It wasn't until the ant colony brought the aphids and their eggs back to start breeding that Zero gradually understood the problem.

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(End of this chapter)