Chapter 1080 - Deep into the Ant Nest

Chapter 1080: Deep into the Ant Nest
In the world Sheyan came from, the habits of the ants in every region were quite different, according to what Sheyan knew.
African ants like to live in
buildings
.
Even if there are no suitable conditions, these ants will still use trees as support to build their own mighty ant hills that could reach up to over ten meters high. The hills are extremely tough, too. An adult male with an axe would find it difficult to chop down the hill.
But most ants prefer to live underground.
Despite the small size of the ants, their underground nest can cover an area as large as dozens of square meters. The nest will have its own storage rooms, nursery rooms, queen’s chamber, other chambers, tunnels, dwellings, and all kinds of suites and facilities of differing functions. The conveniences and amenities available were comparable to the central business district of a major city!
The living habits of the One-Horned Flying Ants on planet Uplos were a combination of both types.
The worker ants would nest on top of the mushroom rock, because that way, they could take advantage of the high ground to monitor the entire territory, acting like sentinels. They could also immediately fly out in groups whenever there was an incident.
As for the queen of the One-Horned Flying Ants and the royal guards (the male ants), they lived comfortably in a magnificent underground nest under the mushroom rock. This nest was warm in winter and cool in summer. They would be taken care of by the worker ants.
If it was not for the collapse of half the mushroom rock and the death of over two hundred worker ants inside, Sheyan’s group would never have the chance to reach the sacred underground nest of the ant colony to clean it up.
Although Aldaris had only hurriedly fled before, and did not have a chance to come this close to the bottom of the mushroom rock, he was still able to find the entrance to the underground nest in no time at all. The reason was simple. The One-Horned Flying Ants flew when they went out hunting, but when they brought food back to feed the queen and the male ants, they would crawl in and out of the underground nest. So, he only needed to find a patch of land where the grass did not grow and where the ground was as smooth as a pathway, then follow it.
The entrance to the underground nest was right at the bottom of the mushroom rock’s
stem
. Because the One-Horned Flying Ants were as big as lions, the entrance had to be high and wide too. The walls were smooth and the inside was dark, but odourless.
The fights so far had revolved around Paul’s powerful robot, Heracles acting as the main force. Therefore, it had been subjected to a lot corrosive venom. The robot’s originally smooth surface was now full of holes.
The surface of the robot was originally engraved with various magic arrays. When the arrays were activated, energy would rapidly flow into them and they would provide the robot with buffs similar to ‘Bull’s Strength’, ‘Anti-Gravity’ and other spells.
Now that the robot was heavily corroded by the ant venom, most of the magic arrays on its body had been damaged. When it moved, it looked a lot heavier and its joints would creak as if they lacked lubricant. The robot’s speed became a lot slower.
Paul’s MP consumption was very high because he had to support Heracles’ operation. When they got here, he could only make a helpless gesture at the other two to show that he could not support the robot anymore. Sheyan and Aldaris both knew that he must have cards hidden up his sleeve still, but considering that he had done most of the work while they fought their way here, they could not ask any more of him.
So Sheyan let Paul unsummon Heracles and asked Ramtas to walk in front of the group.
This was Paul’s calculative side. He had intentionally proposed for Heracles to lead the way here in order to let his robot deal with prolonged but relatively low-intensity battles along the way.
No one knew how strong the ant queen was. The ant queen’s attack could potentially be so ferocious that it may lead to the complete destruction of Heracles. Therefore, Paul claimed that his MP was exhausted before they could face the queen, which was totally reasonable given his robot’s amount of activity so far.
Of course Sheyan knew what Paul was scheming, but because Sheyan was an MT anyway, it did not matter to him. He could not expect everyone to contribute selflessly for his sake. There was a saying that tolerance is a great virtue. As long as Paul did not cross the line, Sheyan could tolerate him.
The ants relied on their sense of touch and their pheromone to move about in their nest, so the inside of the nest was completely dark. Fortunately, the future humans had already expected the possibility of cave exploration in this mission, so among the list of things the contestants could choose to bring, there was a detector called the
ladybug
.
This special, high-energy detector was about the size of a tennis ball. It would suspend itself in the air using anti-gravity technology. The detector could fly dexterously at high speed and could spread up to fifty meters of ultrasonic network around it to accurately map the geological condition of the cave, as well as detect the living beings inside (Um….it’s actually that thing in Prometheus).
Because the price of a
ladybug
was quite expensive, Sheyan only used one. It was currently flying a few meters in front, also doubling as their source of light. The quality of the air was still very good after forty meters into the nest, and wind would blow from time to time.
The cave walls were quite smooth despite the claw marks of the worker ants that were clearly visible on them. It could not be compared with human architecture, of course, but the walls were still hard and smooth as if they were coated with a layer of glaze. When they knocked on the walls lightly with their fingers, it would make a dull sound of hitting something hard. Even when they splashed water onto the walls, the water would drip down without seeping inside.
After continuing about 100 meters in, they came to an open space. The passage they traveled in was as wide as a train tunnel, and at this moment, it was as if they had reached a station. The
ladybug
flew about thirty meters into the air to illuminate the whole area. The place was revealed to be something like a storage room for the ants.
An abundance of plant roots and fruits were piled up here. Of course, there were also animals carcasses, furs and so on. Edible meat were cut into fist sizes by worker ants and dried like beef jerkys. The contestants only smelled the decay after they got very close to them.
They felt chills creeping down their backs when they saw the dense footprints left by the ants on the ground, because there were a LOT of them. If the ants had laid a trap here and suddenly rushed out from all directions to ambush them, the contestants would be in real danger.
The most regrettable thing was that there were many beast furs here that were originally quite precious, but were unfortunately corroded by the ants’ acidic venom when they were hunted down. Otherwise, these furs would have been a huge fortune for Sheyan and the rest. They still had some value as they were now, but considering the huge cost of bringing these damaged products back to Alps Base 7 from Uplos, and the fact that they would need to reserve the space for better loot that they might get in the future, the contestants could only give them up.
Ahead of the storage room was a fork in the tunnel. When they reached the fork, Ramtas twitched its fat nose, then started howling and grunting in excitement in the direction of one of the paths like there was a sow in heat there.
Sheyan had planned to take the bigger path, but under the strong request of Ramtas, he could only change his decision.
This time, about 50 meters into the passage, they could already smell a hard-to-describe odour. It smelled like urine scale that had been washed with hydrochloric acid. The sour stench was suffocating, and the deeper they went inside, the stronger it got. Aldaris and Paul had both put on gas masks because they could not stand the smell.
At the end of the passage was another spacious cavern. Many holes had been excavated on the walls of this cavern in the form of lattices. When they arrived in this cavern, Sheyan’s mind was finally put at ease. It seemed that this was not a trap; he could tell that the ant colony was truly in a desperate situation because no ants could afford to lay down such a costly trap.
The cavern was the incubation room of the ant colony.
After the queen had laid eggs, the worker ants would carry the eggs here to hatch. The larvae after the eggs hatched would also be cared for by them here.
Because almost all the worker ants had died, the
nursery
had been left in disorder for a long period of time.
According to the information provided by Cyborg No. 1, the larvae of One-Horned Flying Ants ate nearly ten times a day. They would be fed different kinds of food according to the orders given by the queen through her pheromone.
The vast majority of larvae were fed with
chyme
processed by the strong jaws of the worker ants. After chewing on fruit and meat, the worker ants would mix its saliva into the
chyme
and store it in their pouches to feed the larvae. The larvae needed to eat at least four kilograms of the
chyme
at one time before they were full. The larvae that fed on chyme would eventually grow into worker ants.
Very few of the larvae would also be fed with
ant nectar
for at least one meal a day in addition to
chyme
. The
ant nectar
was something similar to royal jelly, it was the exclusive food of the queen under normal circumstances. These larvae would grow into male ants (drones) that existed for combat and mating purposes.
Only when the queen died or the colony split up would a larva be eligible to have its diet consist entirely of
ant nectar
. It would grow into a new ant queen.
The incubation room had not been cared for by the worker ants for dozens of hours. The hungry larvae, driven by instinct, had naturally started to feed on the eggs and the other larvae around them. The smell emitted by the rotten larvae and eggs was the source of the stench which assaulted the contestants.