Chapter 291: New Anthill

Gaemi had originally wanted to show Joo Joowon her abilities, but at this moment, she could only honestly tell her that she had encountered a problem.

After hearing this, Joo Joowon thought for a moment before asking Gaemi, "Can you live in a tree?"

Gaemi was stunned for a moment. "I can live by myself."

The ants she had gathered were all ground-dwelling species. Although they had no problem climbing trees, they could not produce the kind of silk that tree-dwelling ants used to stick leaves and other things together to form an anthill.

Joo Joowon felt that this was not really a problem. At present, most of the other ants did not have much combat power either, so there was no expectation that they could fight enemies. Having them live separately from the Ant Queen would not affect anything. At most, it would only make "serving the food" a little slower, which would affect Gaemi’s eating.

Therefore, she directly pulled over a Lightning Struck Tree. She controlled the spider silk to pass through the soil and, with a few movements, dug out a hole large enough to accommodate the tree’s roots. She then planted the Lightning Struck Tree inside. The entire process was extremely efficient and fast, leaving the worker ants nearby completely dumbfounded.

Gaemi had not expected it to be this fast either. Once she came back to her senses, she immediately directed the dazed ants to build their nest directly beneath the tree, taking advantage of the loosened soil here to begin digging.

Ants needed a relatively moist environment, but for some reason, the soil here seemed extremely dry. Not only did this make it difficult for plants to survive, it also affected Gaemi and the others. For one thing, digging tunnels required much more effort than building a nest in other places.

Joo Joowon did not care about this. Extraordinary creatures were not as fragile as ordinary ants. Besides, it was normal for conditions to be somewhat difficult during the early stages of starting a new colony. This was simply a stage when enjoying an easy life was difficult in the first place.

He watched for a while and, after confirming that there were no problems, he then prepared to leave. Before departing, he could not help asking Gaemi once more, "Are you sure you can stop any intruders? Nothing will go wrong?"

Gaemi was very dissatisfied with Joo Joowon’s doubts. Her entire body floated into the air, and she then chose a spot farther away from the energy pool.

Boom!

A thunderous roar suddenly erupted from the ground, as if even the air had been torn apart. The falling rocks and dust formed a huge mushroom cloud. When the smoke and dust finally cleared, the ground looked as though it had been plowed, with deep grooves running everywhere and leaving behind a massive pit at least one meter deep.

The rocks that had splashed toward Gaemi were directly cleared away by her Mental Power. Only then did she look toward Joo Joowon, as if asking whether she finally understood that she had not been bragging this whole time.

Joo Joowon was silent for a moment before pointing toward the ants over there. "You killed them."

Gaemi had indeed avoided the direction of the energy pool, but the Lightning Struck Tree where the ants had been digging was not far from here. The shaking of the ground and the flying rocks had thoroughly thrown the entire ant colony into chaos, and quite a few of them had been directly buried.

Gaemi froze for a moment before hurriedly flying over to take a look.

Unless it was necessary, Gaemi would not use her Mental Power to keep herself suspended in the air. After all, it was not as if she could not have other ants carry her around. There was no need to waste her own Mental Power. But now, she could no longer worry about such things.

The facts proved that the lives of most insects were indeed very fragile. There was no need to mention those that had been struck by rocks. There was simply no possibility of them surviving such an impact.

As for the ants that had been buried by the tunnels they had dug themselves, most of them were already completely dead. The ones that remained were mostly missing limbs or had broken legs, making it difficult for them to contribute any more to the tunnel-digging work. The only path left for them was to be used as stored food.

For ants, as long as there was even a slight injury on their bodies, they could no longer count as labor.

Gaemi looked at everything before her and felt like crying.

She had only wanted to show off her abilities a little. She really had not intended to wipe out her entire family! Which idiot had carried the eggs she had laid over here too?!

Joo Joowon comforted her. "It’s fine. Isn’t there still a hole in the tree? There are also some leaves piled up inside. Staying there temporarily should be fine."

Gaemi: "..." She felt even more like crying. What Ant Queen lived in a hole?!

However, after losing this batch of worker ants, the available labor immediately became insufficient, so Gaemi could only accept this suggestion.

The soldier ants she had given birth to herself had to be kept for use against enemies at critical moments. It was impossible to waste their energy on this kind of repetitive physical labor. Otherwise, when they actually had to fight an enemy, they might not have enough energy left and fail to kill the enemy successfully.

Although some ants had died, Joo Joowon’s mood was still quite good. He could not sense Gaemi’s overwhelming desire to cry.

Gaemi really lived up to her reputation as a mutated beast that specialized in Mental Power. She was far ahead when it came to using Mental Power. Unless some particularly troublesome opponent came along, Joo Joowon believed that Gaemi could deal with the enemy by herself and even turn it into an extra meal for herself.