He had frozen the mind of the ant queen because he didn’t want the mind of the information broker to escape from this host. This move had cost him 6 years of his lifespan and reduced his total lifespan from 20 and a half years to 14 and a half years.
His total lifespan was further reduced by another 6 years when he activated the Nanite Metac on the body of the ant queen. So his total lifespan fell to 8 and a half years.
He had spent 12 years of his lifespan on this one ant queen, but he considered the expenditure to be worth it. His face was even full of expectations as he modified the ant’s body.
Even though this ant queen is a world guardian, its body couldn’t resist his power and was slowly being changed. The process was painful, but the ant queen didn’t feel any pain because its mind was frozen.
Since the ant queen was so big, the process of converting its body into a golem would take longer than it took to convert Rusty into a golem. The fact that he was also actively trying to reforge the ant queen’s body into a factory also extended the time needed for the conversion.
In order to avoid dying because he ran out of lifespan, he decided to replenish his lifespan while he was busy converting the ant queen. So he released a black force field from his hand and swept it through the cavern.
Because of his actions, the cavern was cleared of ants in just three seconds. Only he and the ant queen remained in the giant cavern. Even the unhatched eggs had been swept away by him, too.
His actions were silent, but this didn’t stop the ant colony from going into a frenzy. The ants wanted to rush into the cavern to check on the queen, but froze at the entrance of the cavern and formed a blockade that prevented the ants behind them from entering the cavern.
The ants that were blocked became anxious and tried to force their way through into the cavern. But it was all in vain. After all, the only outcome for their effort was for them to either reach the entrance of the cavern and freeze or be unable to reach the entrance.
They didn’t know why they couldn’t get into the cavern, so they were becoming more and more anxious. Loki saw this and was pitiful of their plight. He released the black force field again and used it to clear the entrance of the cavern.
By sweeping the black force field farther into the tunnels of the ant colony, he cleared the way for more ants to enter the cavern and be frozen by the mental influence of the Mind Freeze Metac. Then he devoured them to make room for more ants to be frozen.
He kept himself busy doing this while he worked to create his first factory golem. Throughout the entire process, he had a smile on his face, so it was clear that he was in a good mood.
The fact that his lifespan was increasing rapidly brought a smile to his face. He was in such a good mood that even if his modification of the ant queen failed, he would still be happy.
Most of the ants were at rank 3. This is because this is the level they reach naturally when they mature.
Rank 1 and rank 2 ants are still considered juvenile and young ants. Only the soldier ants were capable of reaching rank 4.
There were a few soldier ants in the cavern, but there were no rank 1 and rank 2 ants. The rest were rank 3 worker ants, which ensured that the minimum amount of lifespan that he got from the ants was 3 years.
In just a few minutes, he had reached 300 years of lifespan. More ants were still coming, so he was sure to gain even more lifespan. This made him glad for making up his mind to come here.
After an hour, his lifespan had crossed 1,500 years. Then this fell when he decided to spend 50 years on his body, soul, and mind to raise them from 5.5 units to 6 units.
He wanted to raise his stats from 6 to 7, but he had to stop here because Fenrir couldn’t support that much growth yet. Apparently, he would have to raise his cultivation to rank 7 before he could continue increasing his strength.
He was thinking about this when he sensed that the transformation going on beneath him had been completed. With this done, he clapped his hands in satisfaction. Then he summoned his Cave Heaven.
As his Cave Heaven appeared, he tore a hole through the barrier of the dimension shielding the Cave Heaven from the first dimension. When the tunnel was created, he placed the entrance of the tunnel in front of the giant ant. Then he ordered the ant queen to enter the tunnel.
The ant queen obeyed him without hesitation and went into the tunnel. It passed through the tunnel into his Cave Heaven.
He immediately checked to make sure that the ant queen was fine. When he was sure that everything was alright, he closed the tunnel to his Cave Heaven.
Then he looked around the giant cavern and said, "It seems I don’t need to hold back anymore."
As he said that, he let the full power of his Devour Ability explode out of him. This caused an ocean of power in the form of a black force field to erupt out of him.
This ocean of power covered a distance of 9,347.8 kilometers in every direction. If this 9,347.8 kilometers were the length of a square, the square would possess an area of 87,381,333 square kilometers, which is the current size of his Cave Heaven.
But right now, this length of 9,347.8 kilometers covered every direction around him to form a sphere in which the power of the Devour Ability was rampant. Everything within the sphere was devoured by the black forcefield.