Chapter 12: Attacked by Night
According to last year's harvest and this year's feeding and sowing situation, the protagonist plans to start bursting the ant mouths with all their strength after the beginning of spring.
As long as this year's year is not too bad, as the most remote sub-nests have begun to have farms and farmland, and the exchange of materials within the territory has never been more active. With the current territory and production of the Divine Envoy King Legion, it is enough to support about one million ant mouths.
Of course, in order to stock up on enough food to deal with unexpected situations, the protagonist can't explode the ant's mouth to a million at once.
After the protagonist unified the south bank of the Great River last year, in order to strengthen the control of various places, he made great efforts to rectify the antway transportation network between various places and strengthen the logistics capacity between them.
All the nests have set up a special team, on the one hand, to maintain the smooth flow of the ant road on weekdays, to update the pheromones on the ant road in time, but also to open up some new and faster ant road out.
On the other hand, the full-time transportation team of each secondary nest is responsible for the transfer of materials in the area of the nest, which improves the transportation efficiency.
Now, if the materials from the most remote sub-nests are to be transported to the main nest [Qingqiu City], there is no need to organize a special team, and then carry the supplies all the way to the long distance, replenish water in other nests along the way, and spend days or even weeks to return to deliver the supplies.
The full-time transport team only needs to transport the materials to the nearby sub-nest, and the transport team of the adjacent sub-nest will take over the materials and relay the transportation until the materials arrive at their destination.
In this way, all nest transport team members can return to their nest within two days at the slatest, which not only greatly improves the transportation efficiency, but also reduces the consumption on the way, and is safer.
The number of convoys for each sub-nest is not fixed, and nests like [Sitong City] located on the main road have a lot of transshipment tasks, so the convoy is as large as 500 birds. And because there are too many fierce insects around [Hunting Ground City], it is not safe enough, and the transport team has to prepare a lot of garrison soldiers as escorts every time.
Now, thanks to the new transportation system, specialties from other nests can be found in the main nest [Qingqiu City] or [Dongyang City] or [Linshui City], and even in any of the secondary nests under the control of the Divine Envoy King's legion.
For example, the dried banyan fruit that cannot be consumed in the [Waterfront City] is sent to other places in large quantities, and this sweet and sugary fruit is regarded as a luxury second only to honeydew. The abundance of honeydew in [Southtown] also complements some nests that are not suitable for grazing aphids, ensuring that all males are adequately supplied. In addition, pottery and metal tools from Dongyang Castle, copper ore from Malachite Castle that could be used as decoration, and salt from Shinyanseong were all shipped along with the territory's original and strengthened transportation network.
The prosperity of logistics has made each nest abundant in materials and a wide variety of varieties, providing a guarantee for the protagonist to burst the ant.
- I'm the dividing line -
The first group of Bee Flying Knights who went to the north bank of the Great River to reconnoitre, after more than three long days of reconnaissance, finally returned to [Waterfront City].
The protagonist quickly checks the intel:
The densely forested area to the east of the north bank of the river next to the [Linshui Castle] was originally occupied by scattered Japanese black brown ants and black-headed sour ant tribes, but now it has been reduced to a dead silence.
Even after the beginning of spring, there is no scene where a large number of indigenous ants are busy foraging. Only a small number of indigenous ants still roam the ground, and mysterious ants have not been seen in the area.
The protagonist judges that the mysterious ants may have swept the area during the winter, and only a few lucky tribes of indigenous Japanese black brown ants and black-headed sour ant tribes escaped by not discovering their nests.
However, the mysterious ants do not appear to have resided in the area, for unknown reasons. It's possible that they, like the paver ants, don't like the dark environment in the woods, but that's just speculation.
The Flying Knights ventured north into the edge of the Paving Ant Barbarian's original northern territory, which had been overrun by mysterious ants.
Here, they once again saw a large group of mysterious ants, of which the large mysterious ants were the majority, and only a few small mysterious ants.
The mysterious ants marched in an army line, all the way to the south, and the direction of their advance was the direction of the main nest of the paving ant barbarian country.
It seems that after being repelled from the main nest of the paver ant barbarian country last year, the mysterious ants have once again attempted to infiltrate the core area of the paver ant.
While scouting for mysterious ants, the Flying Knight unit also had an accident and suffered heavy losses. That night, the marching party of the mysterious ants captured a secondary nest of paving ants, and after evacuating a large number of corpses and ant eggs, the main force of the mysterious ants was stationed in this secondary nest.
As it was getting late, the Flying Knights planned to return the next day, so they gathered their mounts on a tall tree hole not far from the mysterious ant's station. The environment resembles a wild beehive and is also leeward, and the bees love the environment, huddling together to keep warm overnight.
The Flying Knights also gather together to rest, and it should be safe to live far from the Mysterious Ant Lodge as a general rule of thumb, and that no ants will come out at night.
But in the second half of the night, a large number of mysterious ants suddenly entered and woke up the flying knights and panicked. What's more, the combat power of those big mysterious ants is not an opponent even for the most elite Divine Envoy King warriors.
Due to the haste of the incident and the surprise attack of the enemy, many flying knights could not find their mounts and died tragically in the enemy's mouth. Of the fifty flying knights of the last regiment, only half of them escaped, and they were more alert, not obsessed with finding their mounts, and flew away with a random bee. Some didn't even climb into the saddle, holding the bee's legs and fled.
After a short night, the remnants of the Flying Knights finally gathered and ventured back to the tree hole, where they saw only the corpses of bees, and the bodies of the Flying Knights were invisible, apparently carried away.
The next day, the Flying Knights hastily ended the reconnaissance and returned to [Waterfront City].
The protagonist is saddened by the heavy losses of this reconnaissance operation, and has to start filling the lack of flying knights.
And the incident of the mysterious ants fighting at night also makes the protagonist vigilant, this is the first time she has discovered that there is an ant race that has the ability to fight at night in addition to her own. And how did the enemy find out about the temporary station of the flying knights, who were supposed to be in a safe position? It's also a mystery.
There is no clue from the information packets provided by the flying knights, but the protagonist turns up the threat of the mysterious ant by one level, which is definitely the most difficult enemy the protagonist has encountered since he came to this world.