A hunting party of big-headed ants is on the march.

This hunting team was organized according to the organization of the army of the Divine Envoy King, and there were fifty ants in a team, including twenty soldier ants and thirty worker ants. There is also a male ant as the conductor.

Male ants did not often participate in production activities in the past, but hunting is more special and has a certain military training nature, so unmarried male ants often join the hunting team to accumulate military experience.

When the protagonist first crossed into this world, he participated in a hunt, when he commanded ten ants, but unfortunately encountered the apex predator, the praying mantis, and almost died.

In order to prevent the other males from repeating the same mistakes, the protagonist now requires the males to go hunting, and they must be accompanied by a whole team of fifty ants. Such a hunting party is already a force to be reckoned with, and few insects can threaten the heavily protected males.

The leading male ant is still very young, has just hatched, has not participated in the marriage flight within the Divine Envoy King Legion, and is considered to be underage. There are fifty such young male ants this year, and he is just a very ordinary member, and he has not left an impression on the protagonist's heart, nor has he been given a name by the protagonist.

Compared to the other males, he is slightly larger, but only slightly, and it is difficult to see the difference if he does not stand side by side with the other males. However, this is already his most unique trait, so let's call him "Nobita".

The core of the hunting team is the soldier ants, and among the twenty soldier ants, half of them are retired warriors and half of them are reserve warriors. Retired fighters tend to be older or have limb disabilities, so they don't move very fast, or even stagger a little.

But these retired warriors are the core of the hunting team, they have fought out of the sea of corpses and blood, and have rich experience and tenacity. Even if you are no longer fit to serve in the Divine Envoy King Legion due to physical reasons, you can still contribute your combat experience here.

Many of the young reserve warriors break their pupa after the beginning of spring, and they must first experience a period of time in the hunting party, and after learning from the experience of the retired warriors, those who pass will wait for the right opportunity to be substituted in the legion.

In recent years, the Divine Envoy King's army has expanded very rapidly, and there have been many battle losses, often requiring a large amount of fresh blood to replenish. This is also the reason why the hunting party should be organized according to the military - the hunting party is the training base of the army's reserve soldiers.

In order to produce a large number of soldier ants and worker ants, after the beginning of spring, the queen ants who had stopped for a winter adjusted the hormones in their bodies again, and their abdomen swelled little by little at a speed visible to the naked eye, and countless ant eggs were constantly transported to the nursery room by the nursery worker ants as if they were produced from the assembly line.

The many worker ants in the hunting team are tasked with the soldier ants, and when hunting, they can work together and use their jaws to contain their prey. After the hunt, they also have to carry the prey, so that the soldiers can be idle to save energy and deal with emergencies.

Today, the target of this hunting team is the south of "Dongyang City".

Dongyang Castle goes all the way south to the hilly area where Nanbu Castle is located, and the two places are separated by more than half a day's time. Of course, this is measured by the speed of the ants, and if it were a human, it would not take a few minutes to run back and forth between two nests.

Between the two nests, there is an open area with sparse trees, lush shrubs, and equally lush herbaceous vegetation.

This lush open area is a paradise for plants and insects, where a large number of different species of insects feed, rest, reproduce and hide. Even a sparsely vegetated patch of saline land, which is the only source of replenishment of salt for arthropods that are not picky about bitter salts, is just as vibrant.

Due to the long distance, the various hunting teams did not consider this place as a destination at first.

However, as the hunting team swept away the vicinity of "Dongyang City", there were few insect traces in the suburbs, which were not too densely vegetated. Insects either fall prey to ants, or they find it inappropriate to stay here for long and run away.

The only thing that can live very well near "Dongyang Castle" is the bees on the big poplar tree. However, the protagonist has been thinking about this place for a long time, and if he hadn't been concerned about the combat effectiveness of the bees, he would have sent troops to attack the hive.

Turning back to the topic, it was precisely because of the shortage of prey in the suburbs of "Dongyang City" that the hunting team had to travel longer distances to hunt.

This is also a common problem faced by many large-scale hunting ant communities. The solution to this problem, such as the African marching ant, is to constantly migrate, and after depleting the prey in one place, move to another area where food is abundant to continue hunting. This style is very similar to that of the hominids of the wandering hunting groups of primitive societies.

But there are too many bottles and cans in Dongyang City to be moved, and the farmland where crops are grown, an equally important source of food, cannot be moved. Therefore, in order to obtain more prey, the hunting team can only choose to expand the hunting range.

Against this background, the hunting party decided to march south. This is bound to be a difficult journey, and it takes most of the day for the hunting team to go back and forth, leaving them with a short time to actually hunt.

If they can't get back to Dongyang City in time, they will have to spend the night at a temporary settlement nearby.

These temporary settlements are the fortresses and material transfer stations built by the protagonist when he was originally confronting the parasitic ants of the current "Southern City" entrenched in the hills. After the fighting subsided, a small number of ants were left in these strongholds for messengers and convoys to rest and avoid danger.

Because hunting requires a lot of physical energy, and it may not be possible to return to the nest for the night, these hunting team members set off with a full meal.

The male ant walked in the middle and early part of the line, and ten young soldier ant reserve soldiers guarded him, in addition to the young soldier ants, there were also two older retired soldier ants on the side to serve as his escort and teacher.

The other eight older soldier ants are scattered around the front and back of the group, and they have to take on the heavy duty of scouting and restraining the worker ants in the team to prevent them from falling behind or getting lost.

The hunting party headed south, passing under the leaves of various vegetation, over dirt and semi-decaying litter. The dutiful older soldier ants leave short-acting pheromones at every striking landmark, guiding the route back to the nest.

The male ants and the young soldier ants learn and understand on their own from the practices of the older soldier ants. They have received all these packets of knowledge, but only by deepening their impressions in practice can they become qualified commanders and fighters.

At first, there were occasional encounters with other hunting or gathering groups, but as they progressed further south, they became rarer.