According to some common sense he had learned in his previous world, the habits of the ants in each region were different.
The ants in Africa liked to live in "buildings".
Even if they did not have the conditions to do so, these ants would use trees as skeletons to build their own towering ant hills. Ant hills ranged from a few meters high to more than ten meters high, and were extremely hard. An adult would only be able to cut them with a big axe without damaging their surface at all.
Most ants, on the other hand, preferred to live underground.
Compared to their small size, the area of an underground ant nest could even reach tens of square meters. It was similar to a storage room, a nursery nest, a queen's palace, a tunnel, a small room, a residence, and so on. It had all kinds of supporting facilities. In modern terms, it was even better than the CBD.
For the group of One-Horned Flying Ants on planet Uplos, they had the habit of having both of them.
The worker ants made their nests on top of the mushroom rock. By doing so, they could make full use of the advantage of having a high vantage point. They could monitor their entire territory like sentinels, and if there was any accident, they would swarm out in groups.
The queen and the male ants of the One-Horned Flying Ants lived comfortably in the magnificent underground nest under the mushroom rock. It was warm in winter and cool in summer, and they were fed by the worker ants freely.
If half of the mushroom rock had not collapsed and the two to three hundred worker ants hiding in it had not been wiped out, Party Ace would not have been able to come here and clean up the sacred nest of the One-Horned Flying Ants.
Although Aldaris had only escaped in a hurry before and had not gone so deep under the mushroom rock, this did not prevent him from quickly finding the entrance to the underground nest. These One-Horned Flying Ants crawled here all day long. They flew when they went out to hunt, but when they brought food to feed the male ants and the queen, they crawled in and out. Therefore, they only needed to find a place where not even a blade of grass grew and was as smooth as a path, then they could just walk along it.
The entrance to the underground nest was right under the mushroom rock. Because the One-Horned Flying Ants were similar in size to lions, the entrance to the nest was also tall and spacious. It was very smooth and flat, and there was no bad smell. It looked like a dark hole.
Until now, Paul's powerful metal puppet, Hercules, had always been the main force in the battle. The surface of this huge puppet had also been corroded by a lot of ant acid, and the originally smooth surface was now full of bumps and hollows.
More importantly, there were many magic circles engraved on the surface of the metal puppet. Once it was activated, those magic circles would quickly show signs of net-like energy flow and emit bursts of red light, which would enhance the effects of 'Bull's Strength', 'Anti-Gravity', and so on.
After being corroded by the formic acid, more than half of the magic array on the metal puppet had been destroyed. When it walked, it clearly felt much heavier. Its joints would also make ear-piercing creaking sounds as if it had not been oiled. Its movement speed was also extraordinarily clumsy.
At this time, Paul had to support the operation of the metal puppet, and the consumption of mental power was also very large. After coming here, he could only look at the two and make a helpless gesture. Both of them knew that Paul must still have some trump cards up his sleeve, but after all, it was Paul who had put in a lot of effort all the way here, so they could not possibly ask for more from him.
Therefore, without saying anything, Sheyan asked Paul to keep his metal puppet, Hercules, and then let Ramtas out to stand in front.
In fact, this was also part of Paul's scheming. He deliberately suggested that his metal puppet, Hercules, should be the vanguard. His purpose was to let his puppet experience a relatively low-intensity but long-lasting battle.
And no one knew how strong the ant queen was. It was very likely that she would attack wildly and cause the metal puppet, Hercules, to be completely destroyed. Therefore, it was only natural for Paul to pretend that he could not hold on any longer before facing the ant queen.
Sheyan was of course very clear about Paul's plan, but because he was an MT himself, he did not really care about Paul's actions. After all, there was a saying that tolerance was great. You could not expect everyone to be selfless for you. In short, as long as Paul's actions did not cross a certain bottom line, Sheyan could tolerate his actions.
Because the ant colony relied on their sense of touch and pheromones to move around in the nest, the inside of the nest was dark and did not have any illuminating objects. But before they set off, the future humans had already anticipated the possibility of exploring caves, so they had included a special detector called a "Ladybug" in the menu given to them.
This high-energy special detector was about the size of a tennis ball. It could float in the air using gravity-defying technology and fly at high speed and agilely. It could also scatter ultrasonic network exploration and mapping rays up to 50 meters in length around it, accurately mapping out the geological condition of the cave and the relevant creatures. (Well, it's actually the same thing as the one in Prometheus.)
Because the Ladybug was quite expensive, Sheyan and the other contestants only used one Ladybug to fly about 30 meters ahead of them and illuminate the area. After walking about 40 meters into the nest, they could feel that the quality of the air was still very good. There were even occasional gusts of wind.
Although the claw marks left by the worker ants on the cave walls were clearly visible, they were also quite smooth. Although they certainly could not be compared with human buildings, upon closer inspection, the walls looked like they were coated with a layer of glaze. They were hard and smooth. When they gently knocked on them with their fingers, they would even make a dull sound. Even if they splashed water on them, the water would just flow down and not soak into the walls.
After walking for about a hundred meters, the path ahead of them suddenly opened up. The tunnel of the ant nest was originally the size of a train tunnel, but it now looked like they had entered a temporary stop. The Ladybug flew about 20 to 30 meters in the air and illuminated the whole area. They could clearly see that this was the storage room of the ant nest.
Many plant roots, fruits, and of course, animal carcasses, furs, and the like were piled up in a pile. Edible meat had been cut into fist-sized chunks by the worker ants and was piled up together like beef jerky. One could only smell the rotting smell when they were close enough.
Looking at the dense crawling marks on the ground, a sense of fear rose in their hearts. If this was a trap set by the ant colony, and dozens of worker ants suddenly rushed out from all directions to surround them, even if they did not die, they would at least lose a layer of skin.
The most regrettable thing was that many of the animal furs here were quite precious. Unfortunately, they had all been corroded by the ant acid when they were hunted down. Otherwise, they would have been a huge fortune. Although they were still valuable now, considering the huge cost of bringing these damaged goods back to Alps Base 7 from Uplos, and the fact that there might be more and better loot to take up space in future adventures, they could only give up on them.
They continued to move forward from the storage room, but a three-way fork appeared in front of them. At this time, Ramtas's fat nose kept twitching, and it began to roar excitedly at the road on the left. At the same time, it also let out a series of grunts, as if there was a female wild boar in heat in the middle of the road.
Sheyan originally planned to take the biggest fork, but under Ramtas's insistence, they had no choice but to change their path.
But this time, when they walked about 50 meters into the tunnel, they smelled an indescribable smell. The smell was like the smell of urine being washed with hydrochloric acid in a urinal. It was so sour that it was suffocating, and the further they went in, the stronger the smell became. Both Aldaris and Paul could not help but put on their gas masks.
When they reached the end of the tunnel, they arrived at a spacious hall. Many lattice-shaped caves had been dug out in the hall. Sheyan was relieved when he arrived at the hall. It seemed that the ant colony had indeed reached the end of their road. They had no more tricks up their sleeves, because no ant colony could afford to pay such a price to confuse the enemy.
This was the ant colony's nursery.
After the ant queen laid her eggs, the worker ants would bring the eggs here to incubate them, and the hatched larvae would be taken care of by them.
Because almost all the worker ants had died, this place had been in a state of disorder for a long time.
According to the information provided by Cyborg No. 1, after the larvae of One-Horned Flying Ants were born, they had to eat nearly ten times a day (24 hours), all of which were fed by the worker ants. They were fed different foods according to the orders given by the ant queen using her pheromone.
Most of the larvae were fed "mince" processed by the worker ants with their strong jaws. After the worker ants chewed the fruits of plants and a large amount of meat, they mixed it with their own saliva and stored it in their sacs to feed the larvae. The larvae had to eat at least four kilograms of mince at a time before they were full. The larvae that ate "mince" would eventually hatch into worker ants.
A small number of larvae, while being fed "mince", would also be fed "ant dew" for at least one meal a day. The ant dew was similar to royal jelly and was the exclusive food of the ant queen under normal circumstances. These larvae would then be hatched into male ants that could be used to fight and mate.
Only when the ant queen died or when the ant colony split up would the larvae be eligible to enjoy all the "ant dew". The larvae would be the ant queen as soon as they hatched.
At present, the incubation room had lost the care of the worker ants for dozens of hours. Driven by their instincts, the hungry larvae naturally attacked the eggs and their siblings around them. Oh, no, they ate them. The smell of rotting larvae or the corpses of eggs was the source of the stench that Party Ace smelled. (To be continued. If you like this work, you are welcome to come to qidian.com to vote for me. Your support is my greatest motivation.)
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