Chapter 63: The Queen’s Rage
The ant colony was in absolute disarray as they hurried around their cavern and tried their best to bring up their defenses and protect their Queen! They had received a message from one of the scouts about an attacker that had taken out both the northern and western entrances, and they knew for a fact that any intruder capable of doing something like that was too strong for them to take on in a straight fight!
So, the Queen had ordered all of them to begin mounting defenses inside the tunnels. First, they began to block the tunnel entrances with as many rocks and hardened mud balls as possible to keep the intruders out, then they started breaking the tunnel ground apart to make sure that the intruder couldn’t get to the Queen.
The soldiers and scouts were constantly flying around to supervise and make sure that workers were moving as quickly as possible while the Queen focused all of her energy on sending mental signals to her children and telling them what to do.
The ant colony was shaped like a large ball in the center of the hill, with four large tunnels protruding out from the four axes of the ball and spreading out in the north, east, west, and south directions. Those four tunnels were then spread out into many smaller tunnels that allowed the ants to move around freely between tunnels. But for the most part, the ants always stayed in their own main tunnel and worked on getting leaves and dead animals to the Queen, who was located in the middle of the colony ball.
The Queen of the ants was a large, majestic-looking creature with a silvery exoskeleton, large, dangerous mandibles, and two long antennae on its head. It towered over the other ants, standing at nearly twelve feet, and it possessed strong mental abilities that allowed it to communicate with almost a hundred ants all at the same time, sending signals and orders to them with quick signal bursts.
The Queen had ten strong ants surrounding its resting place as guards and breeders. These ants were the strongest soldiers of the colony, with each one possessing the strength of at least three soldier ants. Their job was to impregnate the Queen and to make sure that the other ants never got near her without invitation.
Inside the colony, the Queen’s life was perfect and there were no dangers that could ever harm her, but now that they were under attack, the Queen was in turmoil. She was sending signals very quickly to try and make all the ants prepare themselves for the intruders.
The Queen had been suspicious for a while now that there was something wrong, but she hadn’t been sure because her signal didn’t allow her to reach all the way outside the cavern. The Queen could give the ants orders to go and gather food from outside, but once they were out there, it was impossible for her to know what was happening. She could only find out what was happening if they came back and reported it.
So when many ants suddenly didn’t return to the colony after going out to bring back food, the Queen became suspicious that there was something wrong. For a moment, the Queen thought that the ants had planned a revolution and wanted to create a new Queen to usurp her rule, but now that she was hearing the scout’s signal about an intruder, she finally understood that they weren’t going away from her control, they were being killed!
The Queen’s mind raced as she tried to understand which monster could do something like this. Not only did it kill more than a hundred ants, but it also did it in such a short time. If the monster had killed only a few ants quickly, then the Queen would have thought it was the Rabid Tigers that sometimes attacked her colony, or maybe the Giant Ant Eaters that were their eternal enemies. That would have been an understandable situation.
But none of those beasts possessed the ability to do something this horrible. The monster was killing them all without any reservation; it was almost like the monster wasn’t killing them for food, instead, they were being killed for some other reason.
The room that the Queen was in contained hundreds of eggs that were still going through gestation. She was lying on the ground calmly, and the large guards surrounding her came over and told her that the scout had given more information about the dead ants. It turned out that the monster that was killing them had the ability to resurrect the dead ants and add them to his personal army.
For a good long moment, the Queen was shocked into silence once she received this new information, but then a deep, raging anger filled her heart once she realized what was happening! This monster was killing her own children and taking them as its own! It was taking her colony away from her! How dare it!?
The Queen shouted to the guards, ordering them to go out and join the efforts to kill this monster once and for all! They couldn’t lose any more of their numbers to this beast!
’Kill it and bring me its head!!’
The ants in the colony all felt the anger of their Queen, and that anger only served to drive them to work even faster. They began to form into large groups as they waited inside the tunnel entrances, anticipating any attack. Outside the tunnels, there were twenty soldiers waiting at each entrance. The soldier ants had formed a protective line in front of the tunnel entrance, and their job wasn’t to stop the enemies from making their way into the tunnel. Instead, they were there to kill as many of the enemies as possible to make it easier for the workers and other soldiers inside the tunnel to handle the remaining enemies.
As Jason made his way to the eastern entrance, he could immediately see the large group of soldier ants waiting for him outside the tunnel, and he narrowed his eyes and tapped the Adamantine Ant Rook on the side to tell it to begin the plan. The Adamantine Ant Rook quickly screeched out to its subordinates! The subordinates all raced out from the Alternate Dimension and quickly went in front of Jason as they began heading straight for the soldier ants.
The Rook subordinates were all buffed with extra defenses, so Jason didn’t have to worry about them being killed easily by the soldiers, even though they were weaker. The soldiers would tire themselves out fighting against the Rook subordinates and make it easier for the other ants to kill them.
The twenty soldier ants at the entrance noticed the enemies heading their way and immediately raced forward to intercept them. The ants didn’t hold any false hope that they would be able to stop the enemies here. Their aim was to destroy as many of the attackers as possible before they could get to the entrance. So basically, they were willing to sacrifice their lives to ensure that they slowed the advance of the enemies.
But they had seriously underestimated the strength of the enemies coming for them! The subordinates that Jason had sent forward were all Rook Subordinates, and so they possessed a strength and durability that was far ahead of what any of the ants could handle!
The first soldier to reach the enemies immediately used its mandibles to bite down hard on the ant’s wing in an effort to throw it to the ground, but it was shocked when its mandibles didn’t even tear through the wing! It was like biting down on steel!