Ninja World: Insect Princess from Konoha

Chapter 3 Hyperindividuation
superorganism

Simply put, it is a tight group.

When you find a herd of deer in the wild, maybe what you find is not a 'herd', but a group of individuals who happen to get together.

It preys on its own, collects resources, breeds offspring, and thinks on its own, but it does not divide labor carefully and assemble into a social whole.

From this point of view, a superorganism, that is, a true social creature, has these three characteristics.

Division of reproduction, overlapping generations, and social upbringing.

So why hyperindividualization, and what are the benefits?
The answer is resources, that is, sustainable development.

The problem lies in the parasites. The group of parasites you see is not a real swarm. They are not social. It can be said that they are forced together under the influence of human beings.

It can even be said that parasites are not real insects, nor are they social. This highly specialized species is different from any natural species that Maggie has seen.

Their race has no future.

You won't see a single wild parasite anywhere in the wild.

The development of their family is deeply bound to the host. When a host dies, it means the destruction of the swarm.

Every child of the oil girl family will get the eggs of parasites in their infancy.

The moment a child successfully extracts Chakra, it means the rise of a swarm.

Chakra will cause the eggs to hatch, from which the adult parasite crawls out.

In other words, this kind of bug is born as an adult.

Well, the problem is coming.

Who played the role of breeding.

Adult parasites?

No, adult parasites only mate and lay eggs, and what happens next is none of their business. This is the highly specialized result of co-evolution.

The host plays the role of the mother who raises the worm to adulthood, even if the worm has no larvae and develops directly into an adult in the egg.

But the input chakra is the nourishment for the larvae to grow.

This also causes, once separated from the host, the parasite loses the ability to reproduce offspring, and the end can only be destroyed.

Visually speaking, the parasites are a group of professional warriors who are completely out of production. In addition to playing, they usually eat and mate.

Generally, if you don't work, once you work, you will be 100% dead.

This species, in the wild nature, has no future.

This also results in that the size of the swarm is actually directly proportional to the size of its own chakra.

Feeding requires food, or chakra.

As a result, the scale of the insect swarm is limited, which extremely limits the upper limit of the strength of the oil girl clan.

If this point is not resolved, Meiji knows that she has no future.

In order to support the huge bug swarm that is far beyond this age group, Miki has already ordered the bug swarm to hunt autonomously.

To offset part of the chakra consumption.

When it is really unbearable to consume, in order to prevent the destruction of the environment, Maggie will let some insect swarms commit suicide on the spot, and the corpses are collected as the swarm's reserve food.

But it's not a good idea to keep doing this.

So resources, sustainable development is a super big issue.

In addition, since I got the parasite at the age of four, the parasite has exposed many other problems under the use experience of more than a year.

It can be said that the parasite is the laziest beetle that Maggie has ever seen. If there is no special instruction, the parasite dares to lie down and eat Maggie's chakra all the time. It is more parasite than a parasite.

Among them, the biggest problem is implementation.

Undoubtedly, the parasite can faithfully carry out Maggie's orders, although there will be some small problems in execution.

For example, building a nest.

Commands that are too complicated cannot be executed perfectly, and can only be carried out in a general direction, not to mention Maggie, all the bugs of the same family are like this.

This is a question of IQ. Compared with her peers, Meiji is cheaper because she can perform real-time micro-manipulation, controlling the movements of the insect swarm as delicately as her hands and feet.

Therefore, it allows the swarm to complete extremely complex instructions.

And that's where the problem lies.

When the crypt was first dug, Maggie didn't notice for a while, and a large group of bugs suffocated to death in the excavated crypt due to ventilation problems.

Therefore, once the swarm of parasites are allowed to move freely, they will change from having brains to being brainless.

What can be done is not to look at God's will, but to lie down.

Once the current task is over, they don't know what to do, and they fall into a state of confusion. They instinctively lie down on standby, and eat on the top if they have something to eat. They will instinctively look for food when they are really hungry.

Not to mention group hunting, sometimes whether you can find something to eat depends on God's face.

That is, mating and even laying eggs are all carried out under the leadership of the oily girl clan.

To some extent, the parasites were perfectly trained by the oily girls.

It is an obedient biological weapon.

But if you are too obedient, you will lose your autonomy, so you have to rely on the oily girls for everything, and you have to feed your food to your mouth. Independent development is nothing but development.

And it is impossible for Meiji to stare at these bugs all the time, instructing them how to divide labor and cooperate, how to farm and breed, and how to have children.

And it's useless to teach them, they have no memory at all.

There is no solution, and the superorganism is one of them.

For example, ants, their actions and behaviors are engraved on the expression of genes.

What Meiji has to do is to copy this gene from the ant and engrave it into the gene of the parasite.

That is, the transcription of a program or a behavioral algorithm.

The algorithm of ants determines that each ant is needed when it is born, and acts according to the algorithm of the gene as soon as it is born. There is no need for leaders, no meetings and discussions, and the work is carried out according to the behavior algorithm, and each performs its duties.

Each ant will act according to the best behavior algorithm trained by its ancestors through billions of years of big data evolution.

Therefore, after a lot of observation, Maggie chose a local kind of long cool ant.

It was named by Maggie as the disparate giant-headed leafcutter ant.

He is the overlord of the ant colony in Konoha.

They are characterized by their large heads. Although they are called leaf-cutter ants, they do not cut leaves, but they can grow mushrooms. They are not considered army ants. They use the exit of the nest as a base to march and sweep around.

The size of the individual varies enormously, with the largest individual at least [-] times larger than the smallest, so it is called disparate, that is, all different.

When marching, the giant ants ride on the small ants, which is very similar to Butan coordination.

The advantage of this is to save the energy consumption of marching.

Not only is the combat effectiveness excellent in all aspects.

The most important thing is that this kind of ants are not aggressive, they are super strong but very cautious.

The honeypot worms bred before can be said to have failed, but they have not completely failed.

The original intention is to transform a bug that can independently produce chakra and store it, but the synthesis of chakra, this little bug is not qualified spiritually, but can store chakra, although the amount is small, but as a supplementary chakra The means are sufficient.

This can be regarded as a solution to the expansion of insect swarms, but the solution to the fundamental problem depends on super-individualization, that is, sustainable development.

At present, a new queen needs to be bred to abandon the low egg-laying efficiency and method of parasites.

Change to one fertilization and use for a lifetime, with a daily output of thousands.

The work to be done is still a long and big project.

This is just the beginning. Genes can be plundered and copied, which means that in this ninja world, Blood Successor Limits is also a harvestable resource for Miki.

Meiji took down several experimental bottles, all of which were modified eggs.

Among them, most of the eggs have already died, and died due to the collapse of the genes in the initial stage of genetic recombination.

As the master of the swarm, Maggie can perceive their life, death and health status, which saves Maggie a lot of trouble in observation.

And this is not the first batch of experimental subjects, nor will it be the last batch.

Such a result is expected.

Maggie does not have the means to manipulate genes for gene regulation, not even a microscope, she can only transcribe through Chakra, and the next thing is left to natural selection.

That is to say, look at the face.

Therefore, even if the eggs survived the initial stage without collapsing, they could not be said to be successful products. Most of them were deformed, and some of the less deformed ones were far from what Maggie expected.

There is only one way, continuous cultivation.

until successful.

And once it succeeds a little bit, Meiji can record the expression template of this gene and make it.

Therefore, we can continue to cultivate on this basis and choose the best from the best to achieve the ideal expectation.

It is a very time-consuming project.

"It's really long and each has its own characteristics."

To put it simply, it is to carry out cross-species gene transplantation first, then carry out gene aggregation molecular breeding, and then carry out group subculture selection.

Some insect eggs did not become adults under the catalysis of Chakra, and the genetic recombination caused them to lose the basic ability of parasites and quickly become adults.

And some climbed out, each with its own characteristics.

Some deformed children with missing arms and legs were selected and destroyed on the spot, and the rest were kept for observation for a period of time before deciding whether to keep them or not. At the same time, a new batch of eggs were bred.

Miki continued with her work.

After repeating this, throw the selected experimental body into the constructed insect nest ecosphere, and allow it to develop on its own.

Genes drive them to act.

(End of this chapter)