With the Lance Beetle stomping around and gathering attention, the number of Crystal Spiders that still cared about breaching the gap in front of Sage were few. Sage threw a Green Revitalizing Pill into his mouth to speed his Qi recovery while also holding a Spirit Stone in each hand to restore his energy. Most of the energy for the growth of the Sacred Banyan’s came from the surroundings, but with all the changes and shaping he’d done it had drained him quite quickly. His energy had dropped to nearly a quarter of his maximum, which was barely enough to activate the massive formation plate for a few minutes. So far, it didn’t seem like he’d need to use it, but that didn’t mean he would want to put himself into a vulnerable position.

When a Spider rushed into the doorway, Sage’s Twin Soul would ambush it, knocking it senseless and turning it into a barrier. The Spiders to the rear had to climb over it and skitter up the walls, the slower pace making them into easier targets for Sage’s fists. Smashing back the first Spider, two more of them got entangled by roots, holding them in place as Sage smashed their heads in. With the doorway clogged up by Crystal Spider bodies, it became even easier to catch the Spider’s off guard. Thinking things were completely in hand, Sage frowned when he noticed that the Charming Lance Beetle had at least a dozen Crystal Spiders climbing all over it. It tried to roll on the ground to smash the spider’s on its back, but that gave the surrounding spider’s more time to climb onto it. A dozen were smashed, but fifteen of them climbed onto the Beetle’s back.

With the situation looking dangerous, Sage frowned and gave up one of his safeguards. Drawing in a deep breath, Sage braced his feet and released a full powered burst of Divine Breath. He used up nearly half of his compressed air store to unleash a gust of wind at hurricane force levels. A shallow chasm sliced its way into the crystalline ground in front of him, utterly destroying every Spider in its path and only barely dissipating by the time it smashed against the outer wall of Banyan trees, slashing up the vines and scattering leaves into the area. Cursing inwardly at opening a way for them to escape, Sage stepped out of the inner tree wall and released all of his fighting insects.

A Warp Worm, Charming Lance Beetle, Steel Silk Centipede, and three Emerald Dragonflies flew out of his Beast Bag. Sage hit each of them with a small Scent Marker before releasing another of the ‘aggressive’ markers for them to know that it was time to fight. Sage personally controlled the Warp Worm that he was bonded with, sending it over to clear away the Spiders that were swarming on the back of the first Charming Lance Beetle. After the Beetle’s back was clear, the influx of giant bugs turned the area into a full on battlefield. Previously, the Spiders had only a pair of targets and could swarm rapidly. Now, with a half-dozen more enemies they were spread thin and within ten minutes every last Crystal Spider had been defeated.

Sage laughed when the Steel Silk Centipede tried to eat one of the Crystal Spiders. The others could tell they weren’t really edible, but the Centipede was a bit too voracious and was soon spitting out glass like chunks. Shaking his head, Sage let the bugs roam free as he scoured the battlefield. With the area secured and his energy still recovering, he took the time to study the Crystal Spiders a bit more. Earlier he’d only studied a single spider corpse and had to be on guard while doing so, now he had a hundred in various states of destruction to look at. With a flash of inspiration, he pulled out a dozen different liquids from his bag and started testing them on the Spider corpses.

It took a few tries, but Sage finally found a type of ink that worked how he wanted. The glass like spider body in front of him was now stained with a dark green ink, making them look like a green version of cobalt glass. With the new tint, the details of their bodies became much easier to examine. Sage collected a half dozen of the corpses for later examination before returning to the smaller inner walled area. Having got his chance to test his combat prowess, Sage could now put his focus on clearing out the purple forest of spiders. Not wanting to have to kill thousands of them on his own, Sage was ready to put other hands to the task. From what he saw of the Spider’s outside, the bugs had varying levels of efficiency battling with the Crystal Spiders. At the same time they also had different specialities, so he still planned to create a varied mix.

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While he couldn’t call himself a rich man, Sage still had plenty of Spirit Stones so he didn’t mind wasting some. On the other hand, he planned to use a good amount of energy so he spent a bit of time to build an energy gathering array. Sage took out a few spirit jades and a dozen spirit stones along with a handful of specific materials, using them to fill the entire area encircled by the Sacred Banyan trees. The gathering array was far larger than what he usually built, using it to gather energy rapidly. All of the energy was used for the Insect Immortal Index. Each of the eggs was rapidly hatched and linked to Sage using the ‘Merge’ technique. When they were linked he could instantly teach them all the scent commands. Then he grew and matured them up to rank three before starting the process with the next egg. As soon as he linked to a new bug, the previous one was released from his control. It was something he had learned through experimentation. He couldn’t forcibly sever the link, but if he linked to a new bug the old link just faded away.

Three hours later.

Sage looked over the small army of insects. Warp Worms and Emerald Dragonflies were the least numerous, only a dozen of each. The Lance Beetles and Chameleon Mantis vastly outnumbered them as Sage had raised about forty of each, using them as the main shock troops and ambush killers. The most numerous though, were Steel Silk Centipedes. When he saw that they could easily slice through the Crystal Spider webs, Sage decided to make them the main force and took his time to assemble the full one hundred that were chittering around in front of him right now.

Ahh… wouldn’t it be nice to have such an army around all the time.

Shaking his head, Sage was sure such a horde would be capable of massive destruction. It was just too bad that this horde would be far too difficult to control. Worse yet, he didn’t have enough space to carry them all so they’d have to wander around in the open. With so many on the loose he’d barely be able to keep them all contained let alone keep them on task. He’d just end up releasing huge bugs into the wild to cause havoc among the common folk. The only reason he dared to do so here was because the whole forest was locked inside a trap array. Rocky was underground and carrying a scent marker, the same as he was. All he had to do was mark them with friendly scents and teach them a few commands when he was hatching them.

Now that everything was ready, there was just one last step. Going to the largest pile of remaining Crystal Spider corpse’s, Sage marked them with an ‘enemy’ scent and then threw the bodies into the ground of insects so they could all learn what their enemy was. With that complete, Sage kept a few of each bug around with him inside the tree wall before sending the rest out to hunt. A Lance Beetle sat over top of him like an armored building, while Sage was linked with another Lance Beetle he was using as a commander. The Charming Lance Beetle wasn’t agile in the air, but it was still plenty fast and heavily armored. In addition, it could use pheromones and scents to make itself seem friendly to other bugs.

Sage took advantage of this ability and when he was raising all the bugs he trained them to recognize some of the scents of the Lance Beetle as scent markers. He made sure to use scents that weren’t used by the Lance Beetles normally as he didn’t want the other Beetles confusing his control. As it was now, he kept himself within the energy gathering array, ready to create more reinforcements. At the same time the army of bugs was unleashed into the purple crystal forest, rushing about to hunt the spiders. Sage watched through the Commander Lance Beetle’s eyes, ready to use scent markers to gather the bugs when or where it was needed.