'Could it be that those worker ants left the nest?'

  System shook his head. Although he hadn't instilled in these ants the idea that he was their queen, they still regarded him as their closest family member and would never disobey his instructions.

  Even if these worker ants wanted to take a break outside the temporary nest, they should have returned and continued to feed the rvae according to System's previous instructions.

  He asked Shava, but didn't get a clear answer from her.

  If System hadn't asked, Shava, who was eating slime, wouldn't even have known that the number of worker ants in the nest had decreased.

  Although Shava had a certain degree of wisdom, she wasn't very sensitive to numbers. She couldn't even figure out how to count to ten.

  System was helpless about this.

  While he was thinking, he suddenly felt something unusual from his [Intuition] ability.

  He selected a worker ant and took it away from the nest. He had a feeling that as long as he took a worker out, he'd uncover the truth about how the two ants had disappeared.

  The group of ants that had been patrolling at the entrance of the cave had been transferred away by Shava to work on the nearby wintering nest.

  However, because this pce was very close to the bck-brown ants' nest, System soon encountered an "ant search team" responsible for foraging.

  An ant in this search team discovered him and gradually approached, as if trying to find out what he was.

  However, before the ant could get close, the worker ant brought out by System walked up to meet it.

  The two ants started touching each other with their antennae as if they were communicating, when suddenly they seemed to discover that something was wrong. In the blink of an eye, the two ants started biting each other.

  Seeing this, System immediately used his tentacles to separate the two worker ants, then twisted the enemy ant's head off with his tentacles.

  The two workers were both offspring of the same queen ant, but they'd acted like sworn enemies upon meeting, determined to fight each other to the death.

  Even if System hadn't been there, the two worker ants would have fought without hesitation.

  After seeing the two workers fight, System easily guessed the reason for the disappearance of his two worker ants. They'd probably left the temporary nest for some reason and died in the process of contacting these bck and brown ants.

  Unlike Shava, the ants hatched by System had an innate hatred for the ants in the other nest.

  When System used [Mental Transmission] to ask his worker ant why he'd attacked, he received a very clear answer—enemy.

  Not food, but enemy.

  The situation was like the time System had lied to many ants about being an ant from the same nest. Once the ants had realized that he was lying, they'd responded with this same kind of anger and hostility.

  'So that's how it is.'

  System, still holding the worker from his nest, jumped onto a nearby pnt. As he observed the nearby ant nest, he quickly thought of a reasonable expnation.

  The ants raised by System and the ants in the ant nest were all descendants of the same queen ant.

  However, because of their different growth environment, they had a slightly different scent, which meant that they could be viewed as an entirely new nest of ants.

  This may be an instinct of ants. In a single area, if there were two colonies of the same type of ant, only one of the two was destined to survive.

  Now that System thought about it, back when he'd deceived the ants by saying that he was their queen, maybe they hadn't found out that he was a grasshopper. Instead, they'd regarded him as an ant from a foreign colony. Otherwise, the ants wouldn't have been so angry at that time.

  ...

  No matter what, now that things had come to this, System shouldn't be wasting time reminiscing over the past. He needed to think of a way to deal with that ant nest.

  As the new queen ant raised by System continued to produce offspring, his ants and the ants in the other nest would definitely go to war.

  Even if a war didn't happen this autumn, then once the long winter ended, if System still pnned to live here, his ant nest was destined to fight an endless war with the other ants. There was no way around it when the two nests were only a dozen or so meters apart.

  He couldn't tell what would happen after winter, but if he fought with that ant nest next summer, his ants were sure to suffer heavy casualties.

  After some consideration, System made a choice between spending this winter safely before migrating next spring or destroying and occupying the other ant nest this autumn.

  He finally chose the tter.

  In the final analysis, he now had two slimes that he could use as hired thugs. After winter came, the two slimes might disappear, so System didn't want to miss this great opportunity.

  In terms of size, esticity, and digestion ability, the two dark green slimes were much stronger than his old friend the brown slime. It shouldn't be a problem for them to deal with this medium-sized ant nest with about one hundred thousand ants.

  Moreover, with System sending commands, he could order the slime to leave once it became clear that its digestion ability had decreased.

  With the slime's powerful digestion and recovery speed, its ant-eating speed was certain to be faster than the queen's egg-ying speed.

  Even if the first attack by the two slimes didn't have a fatal impact on the ant nest, their repeated attacks over a few days would definitely cause heavy losses.

  At that time, he'd find a way to let Shava kill the queen ant, then have her command the worker ants to haul all of the eggs, rvae, and pupae out of the ant nest and eliminate them.

  In this way, this nest of ants could be decred completely extinct. An ant nest that had lost both the queen and the eggs had no possibility of producing a new queen. Even if System didn't take action, the remaining ants would naturally die after a period of time.

  With his help, the speed of the ant nest's demise would be further accelerated.

  After that, he'd let Shava lead the ant construction team to expand the defeated nest. They could clean up any remaining ants and occupy the ant nest openly.

  In the ant nest, there was enough food for hundreds of thousands of ants to survive through the winter, which would be enough for him to cultivate a new queen ant. He could even use that food to raise a small slime to provide a stable source of high-quality food.

  The more System thought about it, the more he felt that it was a wise choice to destroy the colony of ants this autumn.

  And even if his attempt failed, it wouldn't have any impact on him. At most, he'd ask his ants not to leave the nest in the autumn, then migrate once spring arrived.

  It was just a pity that the wintering nest he'd had Shava lead the ant construction team to dig had completely lost its function.

  However, if the ant nest could be occupied as System imagined, this kind of trivial matter would be irrelevant.

  ...

  Having made his decision, System acted very efficiently. After ordering Shava to continue watching over the ants in the temporary nest and warning her not to go out, he spread his wings and flew to the swamp where the slimes lived.

  Today, System would command the two slimes to unch the first wave of attacks on the ant nest.

  However, while System was flying, he suddenly noticed many white ice crystals falling from the sky—snow!

  There were no clouds in the sky, and the temperature was as mild as it usually was in early autumn, yet there were snowfkes falling. It even seemed like the number of snowfkes in the air was rapidly increasing.