In a gravel pile near the bck and brown ant colony's nest, System piled food onto a half-buried stone, then sprayed it with his [Corrosive Mucus].

  Ever since he'd found out that Foolish could control worker ants, he no longer had to worry about getting food, so his routine of snatching food from ants every day had ended.

  All he had to do now was sit back and enjoy the fruits of the ants' bor, since the nearly one hundred worker ants would regurly bring him food from their nest, while also serving as his free construction team.

  What constrained System now was no longer the time spent stealing from ants, but his eating speed. After all, he couldn't swallow his prey directly like a snake. Eating by biting and chewing undoubtedly wasted a lot of time.

  System's solution to this problem was to use his [Corrosive Mucus] to partially digest his food externally. After that, he only had to quickly slurp up the half-digested food, which would save him a lot of time.

  Now that his [Corrosive Mucus] had undergone several upgrades, he was capable of secreting enough mucus to externally digest a rge amount of food.

  Although the secreting and recycling process wasn't all that efficient, because the worker ants could bring over more than enough food for his needs, the losses were basically negligible.

  The only thing System was worried about was how much the fvor would change. The corpses of different insects and mushrooms would end up getting mixed together after they were melted by his mucus, so the fvor might get a little weird.

  Fortunately, after he gave it a try, he found that this wasn't the case.

  A grasshopper's sense of taste was completely different from a human's. After he swallowed the dissolved, gooey mixture, System didn't find the fvor bad at all. It tasted simir to a mixed-fruit yogurt, and he kind of liked it.

  Swallowing all of the goo made his abdomen swell slightly.

  After eating, System began conducting brainwashing tests on several ant eggs that Foolish had brought back.

  The eggs were a translucent white with a slight yellow tinge. Each egg was about three millimeters in diameter and faintly exuded the unique acidic odor typical of ants.

  The eggs were at different stages of growth. Some of them showed the outline of newborn ant rvae through their outer getinous coating, and System estimated that those eggs would hatch soon. Others didn't have the solid body of rvae inside, and it was obvious that it would take a long time for them to hatch.

  System used [Mental Transmission] to communicate with these ant eggs one after another.

  Unlike ant rvae, as long as he briefly communicated with the eggs using [Mental Transmission], they would send back a feeling of intimacy, as if they were returning to the safety and comfort of their mother's embrace. The farther away the eggs were from their hatching time, the more intimate their transmitted emotions were, but the strength of their connection to him was also weaker.

  When he used [Mental Transmission] on an egg that had just been id by the queen, so a rva hadn't yet formed inside the egg, there was no effect at all. Obviously, at this stage of growth, ants, like pnts, had no thoughts yet.

  Six or seven minutes after being lied to by System, the eggs that were about to hatch would see through his lies. From then on, like the adult ants, they would always regard him as an enemy.

  The eggs that were further away from hatching could be deceived for a longer time. Only after more than ten minutes would they realize that System wasn't one of their kind, but they were different from the eggs that were about to hatch into rvae. Eggs that were further away from hatching wouldn't permanently regard him as an enemy.

  As long as System sent comforting messages and emotions to these eggs with [Mental Transmission] once they started viewing him as an enemy, after a while, they would once again believe that he was their queen.

  Of course, after a certain period of time, they would once again realize that he was lying.

  ...

  After brainwashing the eggs repeatedly in this way for a whole day, System gradually figured out the rules for brainwashing ant eggs.

  After repeated communication through [Mental Transmission], the length of time the eggs would believe him for had been significantly extended, and both the degree and duration of their suspicion had gradually decreased.

  If he continued to perform [Mental Transmission] on the eggs in this way, System estimated that in about three days, he would be able to completely subdue an egg and turn it into an obedient ant like Foolish.

  Although this method successfully accomplished his goal, and it shouldn't be a problem for him to subdue hundreds of ants, the result still left him feeling very unsatisfied.

  The efficiency of brainwashing eggs with [Mental Transmission] was too low. He always had to keep an eye on them. Once the eggs doubted his words, he needed to use [Mental Transmission] to appease them immediately. Otherwise, if he ignored an egg for a long time, the brainwashing effect on that egg would be lost.

  To completely brainwash a batch of eggs, he had to closely monitor them for a total of about three days, during which time he couldn't leave their side for too long.

  It would be okay if there were only a few eggs. If there were too many, not only would he not be able to handle them all, his mental power would also be depleted faster, to the point that he wouldn't even st until the end of the three days.

  That said, System, who had already stockpiled enough food at this time, actually had nothing better to do.

  As long as he ate peacefully and waited for about 14 days, he could reach level 12 and undergo his third metamorphosis.

  System thought for a while. Compared to venturing out to find edible magical creatures, brainwashing these eggs was obviously the better and safer choice.

  He ordered Foolish to continue stealing eggs from the ant nest, then let her continue leading the one hundred or so worker ants that were building his winter nest.

  System soon got to work near the pile of rocks. After discarding any eggs that were either too close to hatching or too far away, he was finally left with a total of thirteen eggs.

  As long as he kept brainwashing eggs in batches of thirteen, once he added in the necessary rest time, he'd be able to produce one hundred loyal ant subordinates in about a month.

  Of course, these subordinates would just be ant rvae. They wouldn't have any ability to move, so he'd still stay busy for a while taking care of them.

  System used [Mental Transmission] to transmit the intimate feelings of a mother for her children to the eggs one by one, then responded to the feedback each of the eggs returned.

  After an entire day of practice, he was already familiar with brainwashing ant eggs. Although thirteen eggs were a lot to handle, it wasn't an impossible task to complete.

  As he carefully observed the eggs lying on the ground in front of him, he suddenly discovered something. A blue ring fshed across his compound eyes.

  [Information Reading] activated!

  System carefully examined each of the ant eggs. He scraped off a bit of the getinous coating from each egg, then put the coating into his mouth and tasted it.

  Eventually, he discovered that one egg in the group of thirteen was unique. The pattern on this egg was slightly different from the pattern on the other eggs, and the data dispyed on [Information Reading] also showed that this egg was different from the rest.

  System recalled some knowledge about ants from his previous life. The habits of ants in this world should be simir to those of ants from his previous life.

  In a nest of ants, the eggs id by the queen could hatch into four types of offspring.

  One of them was male, called a drone, which specialized in mating with the queen. Drones would die shortly after mating.

  The other three types were female, and they were ates, soldiers, and workers.

  Ates had the right to mate. If they were lucky, they could build a new nest and become a new queen ant. Usually, there was only one queen in each nest.

  Soldiers and workers were incomplete female ants. Although they were also female, they couldn't mate. Soldier ants were mainly responsible for defending the nest, while worker ants were responsible for all of the miscelneous work.

  System stared at the ant egg that was different from the others, and the antennae on his head kept twitching.

  In fact, he couldn't tell whether this ant egg was a soldier, a male, or an ate, but it didn't matter. By discovering how to differentiate between the eggs, System had undoubtedly opened a new door.

  Why did he have to brainwash ordinary worker ants?He could completely brainwash an ate, then train her to become a queen.

  If the queen ant saw him as one of her own kind, then the queen's offspring would also most likely see him as one their own kind.

  He could completely control a new ant nest!