Chapter 1467 – Wheat Has Less Fun

If there is a type of warfare that suits the Colony’s talents better than a defensive siege, I don’t know what it is. Our capacity to build, fortify and repair is exceptional, and we can pack far more numbers into far smaller areas than most species.

I’ve often considered what the best way to attack a stronghold defended by my army would be, and I always come to the same conclusion: fight somewhere else.

Dislodging the Colony from a fortified position is never worth the cost.

– Excerpt from the notes of Solant.

I have to say, probably not for the first time, just how much I dislike the Krath. It’s not that they’re the schoolyard bully, but they’re the annoying kid who always knew how to point the bully in your direction, somehow always on the one day of the week mother had provided lunch.

How the heck did you do it, Derrick? Could you smell the margarine sandwich?! It’s not possible! Even if you did smell it, you would have thought it was a butter sandwich!

Gah. These damn slugs have got me so worked up that I’ve got weird memories from my last life popping up. The good old days when I was in primary school and still got lunches from home. It was only when I got to high-school the real foraging started.

Who even cares about that?! I’ve got stupid slugs to try and hunt.

And my family brings me all the food I could possibly want these days. In fact, I kind of feel like they bring me too much. There’s only so much I can eat, and I don’t need to consume Biomass to heal that much, since I trigger my healing gland over and over again.

It’s nice and all, but there’s other ants who need the food more than I do. Yeesh, I’m starting to sound like my mother. My real mother. She still complains about the Colony trying to overfeed her, even though she hunts for most of her own food. I never thought I’d sympathise.

I settle down amongst the reserve troops further back in the fortress to wait. If I go straight to the front, the slugs will call off whatever they’ve cooked up until I leave. It’s been way more efficient just to sit here and wait for them to make a move; at least I get to see some action that way.

The thousands of soldiers, mages, generals and scouts in the waiting grounds make space for me in the middle and generally go about their business as if I wasn’t there.

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At least, that’s how it seems on the surface. Through the Vestibule, I can feel the Will of the Colony flooding through me, which means I know exactly what they want. What they want right now is for me to crush the Krath. The ants are diligent and dutiful soldiers who’ve remained calm in the face of the hit-and-run tactics, ambushes, feints and assaults, but even they can be irritated.

The Krath are such a pain in the thorax that even my siblings have had enough. I have to do my best to make sure I don’t let them affect my mental state. If I get impatient and make a mistake, then I’m handing the Krath exactly what they want.

“This really is an annoying opponent to face,” Advant sighs as she settles in next to me.

“I can handle annoying a lot better than I can terrifying. If they can’t do better than this, then we’ve as good as won already,” I reply.