Chapter 52: Rolling Larvae

Two events during the afternoon added entertainment to Shen Cong’s boring life.

One of them was the second generation mutated larvae’s cocoon finally cracking and green-headed flies coming out. Six of them the size of a baby’s fist started buzzing in the glass bottle.

They were between Levels 0.037 to 0.039. Their Activity cores were not that different from that of Mutated Green-headed Fly 1. All of them were the proboscis at their mouths.

Shen Cong named them second generation green-headed flies.

He separated one of the larger second generation green-headed flies and fed it a piece of rotten demonic bull king beef he had kept.

He shut the other five second generation flies, who belonged to the same batch, in another bottle and experimented on them. He wanted to see whether they would kill each other since he had lost interest in rearing green-headed flies. They just caused the air in Titan to smell terrible.

Aside from the five in the experiment, he still kept Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 and one second generation green-headed fly around because once he completed comparing Mutated Green-headed Fly 1 and the second generation green-headed fly, he would use both as bait for fishing.

Shen Cong could resolutely announce the end of the green-headed flies, but he did not know what sort of thoughts he should have for the two ant larvae that had just hatched.

Almost at the same time the flies broke out of their cocoons, the ant eggs hatched as well.

Two larvae that were slightly smaller than plastic bottles were crawling around happily inside a transparent plastic box. Whenever Shen Cong walked over, the two larvae would instantly crawl in his direction. The Activity they released allowed Shen Cong to sense just how much they longed for him and how close he felt to them.

This feeling was bad, really bad.

Even though they would turn into ants after they grew up and many people had actually liked keeping ants as pets before the disaster, they were still larvae for the time being. Their semi-transparent bodies were covered in fine hair and they squirmed around slowly.

There was a black core inside their bodies, which should be their organs.

The feeling of forming a connection with larvae was incredibly bad. That was why Shen Cong’s expression was as sour as spoilt milk.

“Get lost!”

Shen Cong tried to vent his emotions at the ant larvae through their Activity connection.

It was supposed to be him venting his emotions mindlessly, but he did not expect that the two ant larvae would actually listen to him and start squirming away. They did not dare get close to Shen Cong anymore.

After discovering this, Shen Cong’s attitude immediately changed, and he became interested.

It was a horrible feeling to form a sensory connection with small insects, but if he could command them, it would be much more interesting. In his perception, the two larvae were just around Level 0.036, which meant they were very weak.

“Come here.” Shen Cong revealed his thoughts again.

The two ant larvae obediently crawled over.

“Go away.

“Come here.

“Go over there.

“Roll!”

The larvae were able to carry out the first three commands perfectly, but they did not move when it came to the final command—to roll. They sent him a signal telling him they felt lost, which was most likely because they did not understand what “roll” meant.

“Flip your bodies over.”

Shen Cong tried switching to another thought, but the ant larvae still felt lost.

‘Clearly, they’re really dumb.’

But they were insects, and they were even larvae, the weakest form of insects. He shouldn’t hope that they would be very smart.

After playing around for a while, the two ant larvae sent him a message—hungry.

Ant larvae usually ate food partially digested by worker ants. It could be a mixture of meat and vegetables, just meat, or just plants. But Shen Cong did not know what mutated ants should eat. All that he had seen in the past was brachyponera ants eating metal.

‘Let’s feed them some leaves first.’

He tossed some leaves inside, but the ant larvae did not get close to them.

‘I’ll feed you some beef and sashimi.’

The ant larvae stayed far away from the sashimi. As for beef, they took a few bites of it before they stopped eating it.

‘Aren’t you picky? Am I really supposed to feed you metal?’

While thinking about this, Shen Cong tossed a worn down piece of metal into the plastic metal. He did not quite believe that ant larvae could eat metal. After all, the fat, fleshy larvae did not look like they could bite through metal.

However, the next moment, the ant larvae proved that even if they were larvae, they were still mutated larvae.

Screech! Screech! Screech!

The two ant larvae started eating the metal happily. Their mouths scratched through the metal piece, and they ate the metal scraps. Shen Cong observed them carefully. He could see a ring of sharp teeth in the ant larvae’s mouth which could easily remove a layer of metal.

In three minutes, the metal piece, which was the size of a palm, was completely eaten by the two ant larvae. Not a single bit of it was left.

‘Alright, if you eat that, I have plenty of it.’

Shen Cong tossed all the useless metal that he had left after finishing welding the bear traps into the plastic box. The ant larvae did not have any excretory hole, and all the metal scraps they ate accumulated in their bodies. He could see a large amount of metal scraps accumulating in the black organ through their semi-transparent bodies. Then, it was digested.

The ant larvae’s bodies grew quickly, and soon, they became larger than a plastic bottle, but they continued to eat the metal pieces greedily. Their bodies also turned from transparent to milky white before they turned into faint yellow. And the color just continued turning darker.

Shen Cong decided to just work on welding the bear traps by the side while observing the ant larvae.

An entire afternoon passed in the blink of an eye.

Once the ant larvae grew to the size of a large Coca-cola bottle, they finally stopped eating. Their entire bodies were a dark brown, and they had consumed a total of 2.5 kg’s worth of metal.

After they stopped eating, the two ant larvae started moving toward each other and rubbing against one another.

‘What are they doing?!’ Shen Cong looked at the ant larvae curiously. Some strange thoughts flashed in his mind.

But soon, he understood what the ant larvae were doing—molting.

They rubbed against each other to shed each other’s skins. This was a transformation that happened for first and second instar larvae. Usually, insect larvae would go through two moltings. Before molting, they were known as first instar larvae. After their first molting, they were known as second instar larvae, and after their second molting, they were known as third instar larvae or mature larvae.

Then, they would start entering the pulpa stage. They would form their cocoons and turn into insects.

What Shen Cong was curious about was that he had never seen this sort of transformation during the second generation green-headed flies’ puberty. They just ate, drank, and pooped normally. When they grew to a certain stage, they started entering the pulpa stage.

‘Perhaps it’s because the second generation flies turned from normal flies to mutated flies, so they were considered to not have evolved successfully at that time?’

Shen Cong made an assumption. After all, the flies had mutated through human interference. He had forcefully turned the children of normal flies into mutated flies.

Shen Cong shook his head and stopped paying attention to questions he could not answer. He just continued observing the two second instar ant larvae.

The skin of the first instar ant larvae was dark brown, but the newly emerged second instar ant larvae still had transparent, milky white skin. They were still about the same size as a large Coca-cola bottle, but their Activity level had increased from Level 0.036 to Level 0.048. They had improved by a lot.

What put Shen Cong in an awkward position was that while the first instar ant larvae shared a vague connection with him, when they evolved into second instar larvae, the connection between their Activity became slightly clearer. It seemed like the second instar ant larvae had more emotions than the first instar ant larvae. Or rather, they became smarter.

But Shen Cong did not believe that the second instar ant larvae became smarter.

So, he sent their thoughts to them.

“Roll.”

The next second…