BZZZZ

With the cockroach taking flight, the Spawns below rocketed up like springs and held onto the cockroach. Once on top of the cockroach, the Spawnlings hiding inside their mouths crawled out. Crawling on the soft underside of the roach, their proboscis shot out, trying to pierce the cockroach’s flesh!

Helzar cursed.

‘Damn it, retreat!!!’

He saw what the Spawns did, and he also saw the Spawnlings trying to suck on the cockroach’s blood. However, he saw the sharp proboscis of the Spawnlings breaking when they tried inserting them into the cockroach.

‘That’s one hell of a cockroach,’ Helzar sighed as he crawled down the bonsai tree. Behind him, the Swarm followed, with Zhar right behind him carrying the Motherbug.

‘The cockroach is still flying, what's it looking for?’ Just as Helzar wondered what was going to happen, he saw the cockroach flying to the ceiling, before sticking on the glass cover.

‘Is it trying to escape?’

The glass cover of the vivarium was too tall for the Swarm to reach. Helzar calculated that the Lava Ants can easily reach it by stacking themselves like a tower, but they've yet to do so.

‘It makes sense, there's no prey insects outside the garden,’ Helzar sighed. He would've liked to escape too, but he couldn't. The edge of the vivarium was surrounded by a body of water, and he didn't want to risk crossing it yet.

He even doubted if the current Swarm could.

With the cockroach completely ignoring them, Helzar went further north, reaching the end of the land. The entire north and east was a lush field, as well was the home of the bonsai tree. Meanwhile, the south was a bit flooded like the wetlands, and the west was a rocky field. The Lava Ants started swarming the west first, making Helzar believe that the ants lived there.

‘I’ve got to produce more Motherbugs, and I can finally produce another one today.’

The Nest could only produce one Motherbug a day, thus why Helzar's progress had been stunned so far. His plan was simple, he was going to act like a parasite.

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‘If the eggs could infect an ant, it'll at bare minimum grow into a Spawnling. Then, it'll grow to an adult Spawn after infecting another ant,’ Helzar breathed out, feeling his head about to burst.

He was taking a gamble, and a dangerous one at that.

‘A dying man had nothing to lose, anyway,’ Helzar laughed. During his escape, he recalled the rest of the Spawns who were hunting prey. A minute was just a breeze passing by, and the Swarm was complete once again.

‘In total, I have less than a hundred three-legged Spawns, more than a hundred four-legged Spawns, one Motherbug, and around a hundred Spawnlings and eggs.’

After tallying up the numbers of the Swarm, Helzar detached his Nest and had it produce one more Motherbug. In this war, the Motherbug was more important than the Spawns.

‘Once the war starts, blood will flood the soil, and the eggs can suck on it to become Spawnlings. The Spawnlings can still latch onto the ants without the help of Spawns.’

Of course, more Spawnlings will die if they are alone instead of riding a Spawn.

Taking a look at the prey insects caught by the Spawns, Helzar had them all amputated or killed without spilling much blood. He needed these insects to feed the Motherbugs for the Motherbugs to produce eggs.

‘The preparations are finished. All that's left is to wait,’ Helzar kept an open eye to the plants in front of him. The plants in the northern area were heart-shaped, with red hearts in the center of each leaf. If they saw a drooping leaf, it usually meant that a cockroach was hiding under it.

‘The leaf secretes an acidic liquid, but the cockroaches are unaffected. I suspect that the giant cockroach from before will become trouble in the future.’

Though Helzar knew that, he had little choices to pick from.

+++-+++-+++

Luckily for Helzar, he had another day to waste, and that day was spent hunting for more prey. In the middle of the day, the ants finally found him, and the war officially began. The struggle between insects was underwhelming from above, but the insects themselves begged to differ.

A thin layer of mist enveloped the vivarium floor, reeking of a sour, rotten stench. White bugs burrowed through the bodies of Spawns and Lava Ants alike, eating to their heart's content before hardening their exoskeletons.

Chkk… chaa!

The Spawnling turned, having fulfilled its duty and transformed into an adult. It’s now ready to battle, but as soon as it turned, it was greeted by the open mandibles of its nemesis, a Lava Ant!

CRUNCH!

The Spawn's head was crushed instantly, dying before it could do any good. However, its death was not in vain, because from the dry corpse of another ant below it, more Spawnlings crawled out. They had two vessels to infest, and they all happily hitched a ride on both the living and the dead.

The ant didn't know to look out for these tiny blood suckers and rushed off to another area of the battlefield, joining a group of ants who were struggling to kill a Spawn.

The Spawn was strong, and it was agile too. Its battle experience exceeded any of the other Spawns, and it was also the oldest Spawn. With one bite, it would tear off an ant's limb and spit out a white egg. With one move, it would evade the attacking ants.

CLACK! CLACK!

However, Zhar wasn't invincible, and he knew that he would die if things remained as they are. The Lava Ants can launch their stingers like projectiles, and he was lucky to dodge one aimed at his head.

Chhh…

Before the battle, Helzar stuffed Zhar’s mouth with eggs, and Zhar spat them out whenever he wounded an ant. The eggs would latch onto the ants, and the ants would die not long after, dried up and ready to munch on if the Spawns wanted.

On the other hand, Helzar's role wasn't that of a fighter, but that of a delivery man.

‘The faster I can feed the Motherbugs, the more eggs they can produce! It doesn't matter if the resulting eggs and Spawnlings die after a couple of hours, I just need dead ants, and meat shields!’

Helzar was the fastest in the Swarm, and he can zoom around in the battlefield like fish underwater. He also kept an eye out for Zhar, occasionally giving more eggs for Zhar to carry.

The Lava Ants may have deadly stingers, but Spawns have blood-sucking babies!