The ant continued to produce more offspring whenever it had the chance. Several batches had already hatched and ravenously began to eat the Scarlet Teeth. Despite growing large amounts of food in advance, these ants’ appetites were insatiable.

  The majority of ants born didn’t have the characteristics [Sturdy Exoskeleton] or [Sharp Pincer] and only a couple of ants managed to win the genetic lottery to inherit both. While he had anticipated this, the rarity of these characteristics was much smaller than he expected.

  He was wondering how he would be able to get enough food to feed the ants when he reached an interesting idea. He commanded the ants through their mother to start eating the weak, where the ants with the valuable characteristics ate and killed those without either. He recalled that there was a strategy like this in his past life, though it hadn’t worked for him back then.

  Through this act of mass cannibalism, he managed to reduce the amount of food needed at the small cost of worthless ants. However, the energy the queen ant required for each round of egg-laying was nothing to scoff at. He didn’t know if ant corpses worked well with Scarlet Teeth as they were designed for animal carcasses.

  He still had a stockpile though, and time was running out.

  He looked at the quest and felt anxiety. What bothered him most was not the king-level monster that was coming, but rather it was the reward. Three hundred soul points.

  This reality had already deviated from the game when it came to rewards, with the rewards he got for defeating the third and fourth waves being negligible. This, however, was different. There should be no quest or challenge that gives out more than a hundred soul points. Back in the game completing the fifth wave only gave 100 soul points.

  He couldn’t decipher what this could mean. There were obvious differences from this reality and the game it was based on, the biggest being an added dimensional axis. In the game the rewards increase with each challenge. He couldn’t think of a reason why it would be different here.

  Stolen story; please report.

  Maybe there was a reason that he couldn’t see. After all, the reason why terraforming, marking, and casting spells was different here was due to the more immersive and realistic environment he was in. Maybe if he continued to grow stronger and reach the end of the game, he would understand what caused this strange discrepancy.

  He shook his head and returned to the ants. It was hard to tell the quality of the exoskeleton without the power to summon status screens. The pinsers were hard to study too. He had to painstakingly separate the ants, which was harder since he had to do it through the queen ant.

  He used some of the inferior ants to feed the queen ant and hopefully create another batch of ants. The deer was helping to speed up development and alleviate some of the constant hunger the ants were in. He only had to deal with this for another day.

  He stopped micromanaging the ants and returned to the dungeon. He didn’t have any information on the sort of powers and abilities that the boss monster will have. It could be good at healing, attacking, or, if he was really unlucky, good at making a mess of his dungeon layout. He had to come up with multiple strategies to deal with it and its band of magic beasts.

  After thinking about it, he decided that the best defense for this was nothing. A great, expansive nothingness. He created several large chasms between the dungeon entrance and the core. While there would probably be flying magic beasts, but what he was betting on was that the boss monster couldn’t fly.

  If it couldn’t fly, then it would either keep its flying monsters close to it or send them out into the dungeon; both situations were beneficial to Jacob. Flying enemies were always a pain to deal with, if they flew off without the rest to back them up then he could deal with them much easier. Of course, if the monster kept them then it gave him more time to strategize and prepare.

  There were no spikes at the bottom. At the level of the boss and its minions, they would be able to tank spikes even without defensive characteristics. They would still probably get injured, but they wouldn’t be killed from it. The biggest reason, though, was that creating so many spikes would take far too much time.

  There were no bridges or paths, just large gaps with several tunnels on the other side. These monsters had high enough perception just from their levels to be able to sense where the dungeon core was. Normal branching paths and dead ends wouldn’t be enough for them.

  So Jacob made it so that all paths would reach the dungeon core. Eventually. While he didn’t know exactly how these monsters would behave, it was better to plan for different situations. Each of the tunnels across the many chasms would lead to the dungeon core by constantly twisting back on itself.

  Even with the powerful magic and large mana reserves, crossing such a large gap would be difficult. It wasn’t like they could create a bridge out of stone across—the bridge would have to be sturdy enough. Though maybe there was some spell one of the monsters had that could create a bridge out of wind. It was unlikely, but it wouldn’t be the strangest thing. Wizard-class adventurers sometimes had that.

  He didn’t have any ranged units beyond the dungeon fairy. Ultimately they weren’t worth the cost of gaining and had little benefit for the dungeon after the fifth wave. Though he still felt the sharp pain of regret.

  The time was counting down, and he could feel the boss monster approaching.