Chapter 310: Chapter 310. Level 10 breakthrough- Is it really possible? (2) Troubles with the ant infestation

"I want to see them fight."

That was the biggest command Theo had given in a while, and he didn’t expect the ants to be so different from the previous ones.

The ant queen shared its vision with him, and Theo was fortunate that these images didn’t really make his mind hurt like the Hive Link.

When Theo saw the images, he couldn’t help but feel dumbfounded.

According to the ant queen, currently, he was looking at the last chamber, and this was the chamber that was now a few meters away from the baron’s aura.

From many sides, there were heads of crawlers trying to come inside, yet their faces contracted every time because the only type of ants there were in this chamber were the new burrow kind.

Theo had a hard time finding many ants at first, except for some in the middle whose antennae were moving everywhere.

He was getting the spectacle from the chamber’s small entrance through the tunnels with the help of an ant that was given orders by the queen.

Theo was first surprised by the sheer number of crawlers attacking them. But his curiosity was piqued even more when he realized that these crawlers were not trying to get inside the chamber.

They were retracting their faces again and again, only to push them back in.

The mysterious part was that there was nothing in front of them. Not a single ant was attacking them from the front.

Until Theo saw some more images that felt like videos.

In those images, he saw one of the newer ant species move in front of the chamber wall and use its mandibles to bite the soil.

This was very normal, and Theo could tell even the spider had the ability to do this after its evolution.

But the sheer amount of soil it got inside its mandibles, and then the way it moved its head back as if it were fully flexible just to throw the loose soil behind and continue, made Theo surprised and confused.

The most unbelievable thing about this situation was the speed of these ants. The tunnels were being formed with each passing second, something that used to take a lot of time before.

The images changed again, and Theo finally saw the end of that tunnel.

The ant went and bit into the white wall in front of the tunnel, making the wall move.

That exterior made him realize that the white wall was definitely a crawler.

The crawler tried getting away, but by then, the ant had already bitten off a big chunk of its body and kept it to the side before continuing to dig.

The image changed again, where another ant found the crawler’s body and dug its mandibles in, and the images kept showing that again and again.

Theo realized one thing from this observation.

These ants were better tunnel makers than anything else in the colony.

And they were not just builders trying to create chambers with this skill, but also using it in a unique way to fight off crawlers.

The image changed again, where the crawler was bitten again, but this time, the white wall didn’t retreat.

The crawler was already dead, and now the burrower ants’ main job was to keep biting it and getting all that meat back to the chamber’s entrance, where the smaller ants would slowly carry it toward the newer brood and storage.

Theo used another ten minutes of his precious time to watch how they fought.

There came a time when the tunnel system became so intricate and connected that it almost felt like a shared battlefield.

Many of these ants started using the same tunnels to move from one place to another after sensing the vibrations of crawlers moving nearby through the soil.

Their ability to detect and become one with the soil was so refined that Theo was sure they were getting better and better with every passive or intentional use.

He decided to check their stats after calling them above ground the next day to find out how much they had leveled up.

Time flew by, and soon Theo was able to hyper jump much better. But he focused on jumping a little lower than his potential and at least landing safely on his own feet instead of someone catching him.

A new training phase started when he was ready.

He now had to jump from one point to another accurately.

This meant another variable was added. He didn’t just have to know how high he was supposed to go, but also exactly where he wanted to land.

It felt like he was back at zero skill again, and from there, it took a long while to master it.

This skill needed more than a level-headed approach. It needed a stronger body.

According to the baron, Theo already had the required Strength stat to progress. He didn’t need to use his free points.

Theo decided to reach the peak of the strength he already had, and it turned out to be far more difficult than he had realized.

His body still hadn’t matured enough, even though he had the muscle lines and height to support it.

The age gap between his body and his skills was both his greatest disadvantage and his greatest advantage.

He had all the time in the world to learn things like this, and with a better body in the future, everything would already be engraved into his muscle memory and mind.

Just like that, a month passed.

The changes to the camp were visible at a glance.

But more than that, it was the colony underground that had changed the most.

It turned out Theo now had a grand total of 5000 ants inside his partial link.

In the present.

The camp now had five smokers all lined up and running. Just to the side of them, there was a big slab of rock where all the skinned and cleanly cut crawler meat was kept.

There were many big leaves covering the meat to protect it from the air and the smaller insects that naturally got introduced when Theo lost the container that had all the favorite insects the mantis liked.

The huts were the same as before, while the camp now had a lot of rocks encircling it. It looked a lot better utility-wise.

The fence was the same as before, and around the camp, everyone was sitting in an encirclement.

They all had serious expressions on their faces.

But it was the baron who broke the silence.

"Theo, aren’t these ants progressing very fast?" he spoke and used a stick to move the already burnt wood to the side, making the fire flare up.

"...They are a little fast since they settled inside the ground... and after the evolution."

"And their size?" he spoke again with the same seriousness. "You know they are taking over the forest around us, right?"

Theo nodded. He had felt like this conversation was going to come up sooner or later.

The ants were no longer only underground now.

They had made more tunnels outside the camp and had started foraging for resources.

Theo could see a few new chambers where moss was growing artificially. The ants had transferred it there on their own.

Another area showed a bunch of smaller sticks arranged around a chamber.

Theo couldn’t tell, nor was the ant queen able to explain, why it was doing that. But one thing was clear, they had already taken over a good part of the forest around them.

But the more stressing part, which even made Theo feel like it was happening too soon, was the size of these ants.

Since the evolution and the constant supply of crawler meat that kept going into the colony on its own, Theo had started noticing bigger and bigger ants.

Half a month ago, these tunnel ants were only tunnel burrower ants, just larger than normal.

But now, a new category of reinforced tunnel burrower ants had been born. A single one of them was now as big as Theo’s whole hand.

And there were more than two thousand of them in the colony already.

"The crawlers that attacked us when we got out of the lord’s aura are coming out in far fewer numbers, as you’ve noticed," Elias spoke, as if giving a report.

All of them looked at Theo for the answer they already knew.

"...They might all be shifting to attack the ants underground," Theo spoke and looked away, only to see a line of ants leaving a hole and moving toward the nearest tree.

That tree was already swarmed by them.

The others weren’t serious because there was a lack of crawlers, but because the ants had already infested everything around the camp.

"All the other beasts, much like your mantis, who is going a lot farther than normal, are having a hard time gaining experience, Theo." The abron stated and continued, "If things kept going like this, we might have to shift away from this colony of yours to give others the chance to level up too."

Theo thought a lot about it, the decision would make sense a lot if not for the fact that the ants too were being helped a lot by the baron’s aura. Keeping the predators away that they were not able to fight yet.