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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 4
Chapter Title: Endless Expansion (1)
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[Cave Thread Snake: 1c1601]
[One-Eyed Jumping Spider: 1d0080]
After ascending to the upper floor, the Legion devoured and scorched everything in sight.
The genetic pool it acquired also expanded.
The mushroom and moss colonies, which had held at least some semblance of life, were utterly wiped out.
[As you stopped providing energy, the Legion, which had been expending it freely, slowly began to worry about energy efficiency.]
"Should've done this sooner."
[Prioritizing efficiency inevitably leads to a drop in combat power. The number of soldiers decreases, and expansion slows.]
"It's not like we're short on time."
Unless I was willing to brazenly snap pictures at a supermarket and feed them everything in sight.
As long as I couldn't do that, they had to find their own answers.
The one silver lining was that these creatures were remarkably intelligent, despite lacking proper brain tissue.
[Naturally. The very size of our Hive Mind is our brain.]
"Why are you so smug about it?"
I was sprawled out on my bed, staring blankly.
I had no classes today. I was supposed to be studying, but I couldn't focus at all.
"What kinds of species did the other Players choose? Like, wolves? Rabbits, or something?"
[The variety is immense. To name one, there are even intelligent species.]
"...What?"
I'd asked casually, but the answer that came back was quite a shock.
Intelligent species? I thought we were all just raising animals.
[I did say the variety was immense. I meant it literally.]
"Isn't that totally unfair, then?"
While some of us were playing a cell-raising game, others were playing a civilization-builder.
[That is something no one can say for certain.]
But its tone was firm.
Honestly, I couldn't understand it, but I just kept my mouth shut.
It wasn't like my complaining would change anything.
In the end, I decided to put any thoughts about other Players out of my mind.
[The Legion has reached a new definition of efficiency.]
It was constantly thinking and experimenting.
Faced with their current problem, they established a new policy.
This was the right way. I wanted them to be as self-sufficient as possible.
[They would control the number of soldiers, instead increasing the combat power of each individual to find the optimal balance. They also devised a method to conserve energy to an extreme degree by putting some fully grown nests into a dormant state.]
They armed themselves with new methods they had discovered on their own.
Of course, their conquest and predation did not stop.
This second floor, too, had all but fallen into our hands.
The updated map showed our territory steadily expanding.
[The third floor. The dominant species there are now vertebrates. We needed powerful soldiers to hunt them.]
I brought over some cola and chips and settled in to watch.
At this point, it felt less like a game and more like a documentary.
I was suddenly reminded of the ant farm I'd had so much fun with as a kid.
[It cannot create results beyond the data it has acquired, but it can combine and manipulate it.]
The most terrifying thing was that while our opponents were mere beasts, we were a Legion.
The Hive Mind, moving as one with a single purpose, created soldiers not just for hunting, but for 'war.'
With different soldier types for each role, I didn't think we could lose unless we were crushed by some freakishly overwhelming physique, like a bear destroying a beehive—even with our reduced numbers.
Besides, we always moved after thorough reconnaissance.
The next floor was inhabited by creatures of similar sizes, so gradually increasing our own size was the optimal strategy.
[Once again, it was time to hunt.]
After a short period of reorganization.
The Legion advanced to the upper floor once more.
The poor native creatures, unable to stop the invaders who devoured and evolved at an astonishing speed, were simply hunted down.
"Can't we just dump all our resources into one massive unit?"
I muttered the thought that popped into my head as I munched on a chip.
Right now, we were operating with a large number of small soldiers.
Wouldn't it be better to just make one giant, a real heavyweight bruiser?
[Efficiency.]
It shut me down with a single word.
A truly all-purpose word.
[And above all, we still lack experience. You, who are merely watching, may not realize it, but try to see it from our perspective. Right now, our entire world consists of just a few caverns in this cave.]
"...I think I get what you mean."
[These beings do not even know what a human is. The information they have gathered so far is extremely limited. They possess immense hardware, but none of the species they have consumed so far have had advanced brains. In other words, they lack the software to run the hardware.]
"If we keep climbing this cave, will we eventually meet another intelligent species?"
It wasn't just my rapidly growing creatures; I was getting curious, too.
Where exactly did this cave end?
Was this cave the entire world?
Or perhaps the real world lay beyond it.
[...That is precisely what you must continue to watch and teach the children. Things like human curiosity and interest.]
I couldn't quite imagine it yet, but it was certainly a possibility.
After all, we had come this far from a single-celled mass in just three days.
"Brought some bread."
"..."
"I'm not gonna let you take..."
The door flew open.
Then, a hand snatched the entire bag of bread from my grasp and retreated back into the room, slamming the door shut.
[High-quality nutrients...]
"Don't be ridiculous. That's barely a snack for you now."
Sighing, I went back into my room.
I'd spent the entire day just looking at my phone.
Setting aside all the talk of life, souls, and games, it was just plain fun to watch.
"The third floor was nothing special either. We should be fine to just keep going like this."
Compared to the lowest floor, which had little more than a few mushrooms and moss, the third floor had a slightly greater variety.
We discovered running water and plants that grew in the cave, and the number of small animal species living there had increased.
And we ate them all.
"Can't... can't I teach them the concept of farming? What are they going to do if they just eat everything in sight?"
[Farming is a luxury for us right now.]
True, it wasn't a great idea, even if it was mine.
Farming in a cave, of all places.
Besides, the point of farming is to use plants to convert energy I can't use into fruits or grains that I can consume.
Our species didn't need to go through the trouble of farming. It could directly produce energy by mimicking the method of the fungi we'd consumed, which served as producers in this ecosystem.
The only thing that mattered was the absolute amount of energy.
And there was no way to increase that energy without consuming others or receiving it from an external source.
"Where are you going?"
"Uh... for a workout."
In the end, I left the house again after the sun had set.
I was going to find a way.
Self-sufficiency was essential, but I felt I should fill in the gaps that were physically impossible for them to overcome.
[Have you found a method?]
"I've changed my perspective a bit. Food doesn't have to be man-made. Look, some animals get energy from eating this big tree."
[Our species lacks the ability to digest wood.]
"What's the problem? I just have to send you a creature that can."
I decided to be a bit more proactive about my ability to intervene.
My house was a pristine zone where you couldn't even find a cockroach, thanks to a certain neat freak, but the hill behind my house was a different story.
I held up my camera.
I figured if I just took pictures like crazy, I'd get something.
After all, it seemed like we could devour any bug that came our way now.
[Wait, that is not a good method.]
"Huh?"
[Do not just take pictures indiscriminately.]
But before I could press the shutter, it stopped me.
[Your account is still Level 1. This means there are limits on your ability.]
"I never heard anything about that."
[There was no need to mention it.]
...This little punk.
But it was a restriction that made sense.
If I were some rich and powerful person who could ignore all morals and laws and abuse this ability, it would be completely broken.
Just imagine what would happen if I spent money to buy warehouses full of meat and sent pictures of it all.
"Tell me things like that in advance from now on. So, what can I do right now?"
[At Level 1, you can provide a total of 10 specimens, and a maximum of 20kg of food per day.]
"...I think I understand why you were so obsessed with high efficiency."
It was a pretty realistic constraint.
Now I understood why it hated food waste so much.
It was best to exclude things like moisture, which could be obtained locally.
"Alright. So far, I've sent ants, fruit flies, spiders, bees, beetles... butterflies and a pigeon..."
[You have 3 opportunities remaining.]
"Ha."
Taking a single picture was proving to be a challenge.
I turned on my flashlight and approached a fallen tree halfway up the hill.
Though it was more of a large hill than a mountain, plenty of people were out for night walks along the trail. I used my flashlight to carefully examine the tree's surface.
What I wanted was a termite. An insect that fed on wood.
I'd seen on YouTube that you could just find them in the mountains.
"What is it? Why?"
[Find the termites later. I think you should see this now.]
An alarm went off.
I glanced at it nonchalantly, but what I saw was something I couldn't possibly take lightly.
[On the 4th floor, our target, there was another Legion. One that our initial aerial reconnaissance failed to detect. They were a species that lived primarily underground and on the surface.]
"Ants?"
The description sounded like ants.
On the screen, I could see them, clacking their mandibles on the ground, facing off against our scouts, which were based on Asian giant hornets.
They were large, but their overall shape—head, thorax, and abdomen—was similar to an ant's.
"...?"
[Do not underestimate them. Their Legion are the rulers of the 4th floor.]
A white ant facing them opened its mandibles wide and suddenly spat some kind of liquid, like an anti-aircraft gun.
The liquid struck a scout.
I was stunned into silence as I watched the point of contact melt away, dissolving into smoke.