Insect Tamer's Ascension Chapter 556. Breeding lines of the new insects, time for industrializing it!

The next morning, Theo didn’t have to go to training for yet another day, and when he asked Velra about it, the professor only said one thing.

"They are still not ready. Don’t worry, student. You will be called soon too."

Theo didn’t like the smile the professor had when he said this, so he decided to ignore it and move on to the next step.

What he focused on was not another evolution but a much simpler problem.

He did not know which of the newer insects were male and which were female.

That, in itself, sounded stupid in his head.

He wanted the Ant Queen to build breeding lines for him in the future, and here he was, not even able to tell the sex of some of these newer insects.

The Ant Queen and the older colony had always made such things feel easy because the hive simply functioned on its own.

But now that Theo was trying to bring outside insects and newer lines into a more organized structure, that ignorance had become a wall right in front of him.

"Young master, is there really no easy way of knowing?" Clara asked while looking at the beetles and millipedes with a slight frown.

Theo shook his head.

"Maybe there is for people who have raised them for years or for those who already know the species from experience. But I don’t." He said honestly while picking up one of the beetles with a cloth and bringing it closer to the candlelight.

He had spent most of that morning doing something that looked much less grand than evolution. It was observation.

He checked the shape of the lower shell, the width of the abdomen, differences in movement, and how they reacted when placed near another one of the same species.

For the earthworms, things were even more annoying.

They all looked like living pieces of moving flesh, and Theo could only go by size, response, and vague structural differences that even he was not confident about.

The millipedes were slightly better.

At least there, he could notice that a few had broader segments or subtle differences on their undersides when he turned them over carefully.

Still, it took him many tries and a lot of muttering before he felt confident enough to separate them into pairs.

By the time he was done, even Elias had a headache just from looking at the boxes.

"This is somehow harder to watch than when you make them kill each other." Elias muttered.

Theo chuckled tiredly.

"At least when they are killing each other, the answer comes faster."

Once he had what he believed were proper male and female pairs, Theo did not waste any time.

The easier ones were the earthworms.

Those did not need much from him once the soil and conditions were right. Theo only made sure the richer soil was used and left them alone after marking the box properly.

The real thing he was curious about was the millipedes.

Specifically, what would happen if an evolved one was made to mate with the original form.

Theo did not know if the offspring would inherit the stronger traits.

He did not know if nothing would happen.

He did not even know if the two would accept each other at all.

But if it worked, it could become a shortcut.

He first tried the Cragcoil Millipede with one of the original larger millipedes he had kept aside.

Nothing happened.

He gave them time.

Then more time.

Then he changed the soil, gave them a darker environment, and even added compact earth and shell powder around them as if trying to make the surroundings more comfortable.

Nothing happened.

Theo looked at them for a long while before frowning.

"Either I am wrong about which one is female and which one is male..." He muttered.

"Or the difference after evolution is enough that it doesn’t recognize the original one as a proper mate anymore." Elias spoke after listening to Theo’s explanations many times by now.

Theo looked at him with a little surprise before nodding slowly.

"If they didn’t react to each other, then it means they still think they are the same sex. Otherwise, they might have attacked each other by now." Theo tried to explain, which made sense.

It did not take him long after that to make the next decision.

"We don’t have this much time. We can experiment with this later when it’s needed." Theo thought out loud. "For now, we will assume they are two different species and that the original cannot mate with the evolved one."

Theo selected another original millipede that he was fairly sure was the opposite sex and started guiding it down the same evolutionary path.

The process was not as slow as the first time because his notes were already detailed enough.

The same heavy impacts, the hardened shell material, and the same rough treatment later, the evolution came naturally.

When that one too became a Cragcoil Millipede, Theo separated the pair and watched them with much more patience than before.

This time, things did not stay still for long.

By the end of the day, Theo saw enough movement and interaction between them that he finally leaned back in his chair with satisfaction.

"Good." He muttered.

The Rotfume line had to be handled more carefully, but the problem there was the same.

The evolved one wanted nothing to do with the original form.

So Theo did what was becoming a pattern already and evolved the second one too.

Only then did he stop pushing.

What he needed was not instant results in front of his eyes but proof that matching evolutionary lines would cooperate better than mismatched ones.

And with the beetles, the answer became obvious without even waiting very long.

The size difference alone was enough to make Theo stop before trying something stupid.

The newer beetle line was already broad enough that placing a smaller original one beside it looked ridiculous.

He still tried out of curiosity, and the bigger beetle simply went over and snacked on the smaller female one as if Theo had sent it there as prey.

He could not make the beetle understand what he wanted, so he gave up.

For some lines, the first evolution itself was not just an improvement but the birth of a new species. Just like the Embermaws and the Aquamandibles had nothing to look forward to in terms of mating with their original forms.

Just so he would not repeat the same mistake again, Theo wrote it down in his journal, which had been proving quite helpful these days.

One more journal entry later, Theo sighed in relief.

The days finally felt as productive as they had before.

But the problem now wasn’t the evolutions or the insects.

It was timing.

His fight with Valerya was close, and Theo didn’t know why, but he was looking forward to it.