After being forced to step down, the once-annoying nun eloped with me.

It's similar to the poison Lalumia secretly gave Cecilia when they fought against the God of Light—except this time, Lalumia's poison will only work on demons.

But even so—

"It's better to mix it with regular poison gas—after all, demons can't withstand mixed attacks..."

Yang Hao muttered to himself, and faced with his plan, Lady Nia blinked, put down her glass, and asked:

"What about the unregistered residents in the passageway?"

“If nothing unexpected happens, they can be treated by an elven mage after being poisoned unconscious. But Nia, you also know—we can't do anything about those races in the [illegal] who have extremely strong resistance to magic.”

“I know… but thank you anyway for providing medical care for most undocumented immigrants. I won’t hold it against you in this matter. Please focus on your most important goals.”

When mixed with conventional poison gas, the divine poison gas, barring any unforeseen circumstances, will have a powerful impact on the demon larvae—at the very least, it will restrict their movement. This will immobilize them for a short time, creating an opportunity for the United Nations' magical puppet forces.

The magical dolls have been given new bodies.

This small body, no more than 1 meter tall, is equipped with various tools and weapons and can move freely in narrow passages.

They can easily fight demons using either magical or physical weapons simultaneously. Even if they die, the magical network nodes they activate can transmit their consciousness back, allowing them to await new commands in a new body.

...In a sense, he controlled an army that was practically impossible to kill—Yang Hao muttered to himself. After arranging a rotation system for the magical puppet troops to prevent them from suffering excessive mental stress, he continued to confirm the next steps in the plan.

The magical puppet army will launch attacks from the perimeter of each tunnel. Some will rescue the unregistered individuals, while others will use magical machinery to scout downwards and launch an assault on the possible location of the demon's lair.

They might step into a trap, be ambushed, or even be caught off guard by a high-ranking demon—but as long as they find the location of the demon's lair, it will all be worth it...

Yang Hao didn't expect to destroy the Demon Mother Nest this time. But he wanted to limit its range of activity—however... that might be a bit difficult.

"We still don't know how complex the underground tunnels are. Naturally, we don't know what the underground cavity where the Demon Mother's Nest is located has been dug out to look like."

Fen leaned against Yang Hao's back and mumbled something. Yang Hao couldn't tell if she was leaning against him from the front or the back. Under a strange pressure, he simply nodded in agreement.

"That's why we need Kino's help... Although the Sirens' [Flesh Magic] can't really help us in direct combat, it's still possible to explore underground using [Flesh Magic]."

"Huh?"

"I had her use [Flesh Magic] to create a large number of non-self-replicating neural networks around these tunnels—these biological neural networks are extremely sensitive to every movement underground. As long as the demon mother nest continues to expand outwards, those neural networks will help us roughly determine the direction of expansion."

Yang Hao has recently found a new use for flesh magic. Since Qi Nuo is one of the most powerful spellcasters among the Sirens, Yang Hao's new order to her is to use flesh magic to surround the Demon Tunnel complex within one day.

However, instead of using conventional flesh and blood, they use a more advanced biological nervous system—those neural networks that extend deep underground like spider webs. Although they cannot multiply themselves, they are exceptionally sensitive to underground vibrations. They can detect minute vibrations thousands of meters underground and even accurately determine the range and type of vibrations.

This is why the expansion of the demon's lair will definitely be detected by these neural networks. After all, the process of digging will inevitably cause vibrations from deep underground.

Um...

Based on the information received this morning, the expansion of the Demon Mother's Nest is indeed a foregone conclusion—although it will not be expanding very quickly.

Yang Hao felt that he had nothing left to confirm. He ruffled Naruja's hair, signaling that everyone could proceed according to plan, and then sighed as he gazed at the distant fireworks.

"Sigh... This is the first time I haven't gone home for the New Year—I hope I'll have time to go home after I finish everything today."

He muttered to himself.

The soldiers of the United Nations then began their operation according to his orders.

...... ......

To the Old Mother's Nest, the human practice of celebrating holidays is something the demon race cannot comprehend. The demon race's emphasis on resources is unprecedented, because they live in a world of limited resources and have no concept of wasting them.

But humans seem to be a peculiar species.

When they are sad or happy, they will eat and drink excessively, but when they are upset, they will quietly abandon the food they have painstakingly prepared until it rots.

In order to make their bodies secrete more hormones and obtain "happiness," they will waste precious resources on meaningless things—such as fireworks, colorful flags hanging on the outskirts of forests, and harmful alcohol and spicy foods that damage the stomach and mouth.

These were things the Mother Nest couldn't understand, yet was curious about. It fully grasped that different races could have drastically different perspectives on the same object, but ultimately, would this understanding be helpful to the demons' future grand scheme?

Observing the larvae and larvae, and looking at the drunken, defenseless soldiers on the outskirts of the forest, the Demon Mother Nest thought: There are some. But probably not many... However, this can serve as a teaching material for learning about human society, so that when the new Mother Nest fights against similar races in the future, it can gain the necessary experience in advance.

But then again...

"It's New Year's outside... I really want to eat spicy food... Ah."

"I want to go home..."

"Mother..."

Despite having ample food, the humans captured on the ranch exhibited unusual frustration during the holidays.

Could it be that family relationships are also a key element that we demons can exploit in the future?

If we capture a human warrior's family member and directly transform them into a demon, could we gain an even greater advantage in the war?

The old mother nest pondered. But for some reason, she suddenly had a bad feeling...

The forest above has been untouched by humans for a very long time.

Even if the children wanted to hunt, they could only catch creatures other than humans.

Although a smaller but higher-quality demon army was created by improving quality and reducing quantity, and there were no major problems with food consumption... for some reason, the Old Mother's Nest always felt like something was wrong.

In its mind, humans are a race that is almost impossible to manage.

Even with explicit prohibitions, there will still be individuals who betray their community for short-term gains.

Even if a group does not persecute any individual, there will always be individuals who hate the group for various reasons.

This is not a united race—at least not on the continent of Orros. The Mother Nest does not consider humans to be a united race.

But now.

This disunited race didn't actually send a single person into the forest?

Is this acceptable? No... this is absolutely unacceptable, far too abnormal.

Through their study of captured humans, the Old Mother Nest is well aware that... there is a group of humans who regularly enter the forest to hunt when they are not subject to [force restrictions].

But now, that group of humans has not appeared. Their settlement is deserted, and there are no soldiers patrolling in sight.

The soldiers in those villages also showed no intention of entering the forest. They preferred to eat the cattle and sheep in the pens rather than the healthy prey in the forest.

They didn't even bother to enter the forest to rescue their own kind.

...

something wrong.

Although she thought it might be her imagination, the mother nest ultimately decided to restrict the children's activity area—it wasn't safe at this time, and it was best to proceed with caution...

——?

Sudden.

The Old Mother Nest heard the mournful cries of the young demons above.

The old mother nest turned her gaze and discovered that poison gas had been poured into the outer perimeter of multiple tunnels at the same time.

[Impossible... Considering natural gas, I've already instilled resistance in the vast majority of newborns to conventional poisonous gases... Even without conventional poisonous gases, they should be able to withstand it for a while! Why did they lose their ability to move in such a short time? What happened?]

[Above, there are still captive humans. Did the humans attack? Don't they care about the lives of their own kind?]

[No... if it's poison gas that can harm us demons, why is it so mildly harmful to humans?]

Through the constant shifts in perspective, the Old Mother Nest suddenly noticed that the poison gas that could kill demons seemed surprisingly gentle when used against humans.

The demon would convulse upon touching the greenish-white gas, but the captured humans only felt unwell and fainted, and should not be in any immediate danger.

This is how the same thing?

Who attacked us?

Don't humans protect their own kind?

不 ...

What's more important now.

It is necessary to transfer.

The mother nest severed its mental connection with the area ahead. To avoid being located by humans through mental communication, it had no choice but to roll around in the dark.

Fortunately, it has already found a new home... but must it give up everything here?

The mother nest looked at everything in her nest.

There are a large number of demon larvae undergoing a short-term evolution, which will evolve into juveniles in two days, thus providing them with more power.

In addition, there were some smelted ores—although the Old Nest didn't quite understand how the [Mold] should be used on the demon's limbs, on the other hand, after the larvae evolved new internal organs to feed on the molten metal, and finally generated metal carapaces and weapons on their bodies... these ores also became an important asset of the Old Nest.

Moreover, further away, there was a juvenile that was evolving towards becoming a high-ranking demon.

The Old Mother Nest had an idea at the time—to forcibly create a high-level demon through resource allocation and overprotection to ensure its own combat strength.

In doing so, the chosen demon offspring will consume food beyond their physical limits, gaining ample nutrition and energy, and will eventually enter an evolutionary stage to release this energy when they are on the verge of death.

This is forcing growth. The high-level demons that evolve in this way will appear sickly and weak compared to their own kind, but no matter what, they are still high-level demons—although it is heartbreaking that they have gone from being able to easily overturn mountains to being able to flatten a small hill at most when they exert their full strength, the Mother Nest needs this power now.

It has poured a lot of resources into this... and if it escapes, these resources will most likely be wasted.

But if I don't leave, I might die here too.

Therefore, the old nest had to face a choice.

Should we abandon this individual demon that is evolving into a higher-level demon and then evacuate?

Or should we take a gamble? Gamble that the high-level demon we create can protect us from the enemy's attacks?

...

The mother nest didn't hesitate for long.

Gambling is far too dangerous. We haven't reached the point where we absolutely have to gamble yet.

It must leave this place.

【——！】

The Mother Nest commanded her larvae to sever their cumbersome organs and ordered the Burrowing Demons to dig towards another cavity as originally planned, in preparation for the upcoming evacuation.

The burrowing worm's teeth rotated incessantly on the hard rock. These violent vibrations traveled upwards, eventually turning into faint, almost invisible undulations.

On the surface, a neural network generated by flesh magic captured these regular fluctuations. The neural network that captured the fluctuations emitted a scarlet glow, while the siren, who was watching the male dragon having sex with the skeleton booklet not far away, suddenly leaped up from the ground.

Ignoring the booklet in her hand flying into the sky with her movements, and disregarding the fact that her unusual sexual fetish was clearly seen by the astonished warriors around her, the Siren screamed and ran to the elven mage, demanding that the elf immediately report the situation here. Then she rushed to the location of the neural network, placed her hand on the scarlet bubble, and began to continuously observe the underground.

The elven mage reported the unusual activity underground to Yang Hao's command center, while elsewhere, the magical puppets had already infiltrated underground.