Ant Acid Researcher's Journal

Finally! Finally, I figured out how to harvest ant acid!
The key was to use hungry ants!
I'd been searching for a powerful yet safe dissolving agent for my sample collection, and the discovery of ant acid was like a godsend. It dissolves even the toughest fibers in an instant. Einar must have taken pity on me, because I stayed up all night melting down dratted pieces of wood and scales.

The problem is, when you hunt ants, in theory you should always get ant acid. But, for some reason, it doesn't seem to work that way. At first, I thought the clumsy mercenaries had crushed the glands when they caught the ants, because special acid like this has its own glands, and they're usually located around the mouth.

I dissected the glands of ten ants, and I couldn't find even a trace of ant acid! I've never been so frustrated as I was at that moment. It turned out that ant acid was their stomach acid, combined with the fasting substances that they produce when they're starving! No wonder I couldn't find it, no matter how many glands I searched! It was worth it to listen to that deceitful vendor and visit the Blood Mushroom colonies myself.
Now the only problem is to catch the ants alive while they're starving and harvest the ant acid. There aren't many reliable mercenaries these days, so I'm not sure how much I'm going to wind up paying for this little adventure. If my overtime pay isn't enough to recruit them, I'm afraid my plan to buy time with money will fall apart...

If all else fails, I'll try the Resistance. If I can convince them of the noble purpose of this work and my research track record, maybe Jacque Hander will send me some Resistance fighters... Maybe... I hope...