Chapter 99: Pacifying the Southern Hills (1)
(The Scythe Hunter's view ends, and it begins to turn back to the protagonist's view)
The protagonist sets foot on a newly conquered territory, and at this moment he is full of ambition, and a vast territory is under his control. It will be a long time before the new territory is generally settled, but the stage is set.
For more than a month, the Divine Envoy King's legion under the command of the protagonist began to conquer the land that they had coveted for a long time after crushing one of the largest joint attacks of the indigenous tribes in the hilly region.
In the first stage, the Divine Envoy King cleared the hilly areas within half a day's distance of the "Southern Fortress", destroyed eleven indigenous scythe-hunting tribes, and killed and captured more than 1,000 sickle-hunting warriors or larvae.
On the side of the Divine Envoy King's legion, there were only less than a hundred soldiers killed and wounded, and there were only more than ten soldiers killed in battle. In the face of an enemy with strong single combat power and a battle of trapped beasts, the Divine Envoy King Legion still showed extremely strong combat effectiveness.
Later, since there was no longer an external threat near the "Southern Fortress", the protagonist rebuilt the "Southern Fortress" into "Southern City" as the base camp of the Divine Envoy King's army in the hilly area.
In the "Southern City", ant queens were dispatched to station, a certain scale of breeding farms and farmland were built, the scale of aphid and scale insect herds was expanded, and the resident worker ant population was increased.
And the paving ants under the command of the protagonist and the colony of hunting sickle ants that have just been ambushed have also been placed here.
At this point, the "Southern City" has begun to take shape and has become an important strategic base under the command of the protagonist.
As a supporting defensive measure, the protagonist chooses three nests with moderate distances and dangerous locations from the old nest sites of the eleven indigenous scythe hunter ant tribes that have been destroyed, and establishes the outer fortress of "Southern City".
In the second stage, the Divine Envoy King's legion launched a sweep and sweep on the outskirts of the existing territory.
This time, the target is some of the denser valleys and mountain basins within a day's distance of the "Southern City", where there are a large number of scythe-hunting ant tribes, and the focus is on the larger indigenous tribes with many ant populations.
In order to achieve the effect of deterrence and threat, after the elimination of the indigenous tribes, all the corpses of the enemy were discarded on the ground, creating a scene of slaughter, and the scene was extremely bloody.
At the same time, after exterminating the indigenous tribes, the Divine Legion also implemented a scorched earth policy - hunting heavily in the tribe's territory, killing and transporting the prey back even if it did not need food, and even discarding it into rivers and lakes.
In this way, when the hilly areas are in autumn earlier than the plains, the winter food reserves of the new tribes who have migrated here can be effectively reduced, and the strength of the indigenous tribes can be weakened in disguise.
The third phase of the protagonist's plan was supposed to take place the following year, when the Divine Envoy King's legion had greatly weakened the natives through a constant policy of clearing and scorching the earth. Then you can further control more territory with the attack of ploughing and sweeping.
This is also because the indigenous tribes have the characteristics of being too scattered, and in case of danger, they will be mobile and uncertain, and it is difficult to exterminate them on a large scale.
However, the fighter plane appeared much faster than the protagonist expected.
For some reason, the indigenous tribes gathered an unprecedentedly large team and took the initiative to attack the outer fortress of the "Southern City".
Veterans stationed in the outlying forts fended off the Native coalition with their well-fortified defenses, while the patrolling Flying Knights spotted the alarm and led reinforcements to crush the enemy.
After launching a tentative offensive and aerial reconnaissance of the Indigenous Alliance's assembly area, the protagonist finally gathers almost all of the forces of the southern hilly region - three fully formed and adaptively trained Divine Envoy King legions to completely defeat the Native Alliance in a decisive battle.
The Indigenous Coalition suffered heavy losses in the decisive battle, and in the ensuing escape, they were slaughtered by the Divine Envoy King's legions, which were guided by the Flying Knights.
After the battle, the protagonist and the legion commanders interrogated the captives and estimated that the hundreds of indigenous tribes close to the Divine Envoy King's territory had lost their best warriors because of the defeat, and the time had come to conquer and destroy them.
In the following period, the three legions of the Divine Envoy King, under the guidance of the flying knights, continued to pursue and kill the fleeing native warriors, while continuing to conquer and expand along the way.
To this day, the three legions under the command of the protagonist have destroyed more than 200 indigenous tribes, killed thousands of scythe hunters, captured a large amount of food, and captured many ant eggs, larvae and ant pupae.
There are even some queens who have been captured, and among the many captives, there are finally two scythe-hunting ants that are not so strong, and they choose to obey after being threatened by the protagonist, saving their lives at the cost of losing their freedom.
The protagonist is bent on ambushing the Scythe Hunter and providing excellent scout warriors for his legion.
Scythe warriors who rely solely on capturing eggs, larvae and pupae can achieve their goals in the short term, but they are not sustainable.
Previously, the protagonist also captured several queens.
However, the protagonist's attempt to ambush the scythe-hunting ants and queens in the same way as the Black Pearl fails. These queens, who can fight in peacetime, resist very resolutely, and are often captured after being wounded. But they refused to surrender and showed great aggression.
The protagonist had no choice but to kill most of the queens, leaving the only queen ant who had all her limbs and antennae amputated, blinded her eyes, and imprisoned in the deepest cell of "South City". Feed her every day to make sure she doesn't starve, and they will bring hormones that stimulate egg laying to smear her, and then take the eggs they lay. In this way, the protagonist treats the queen ant as a living egg-laying machine.
Now, with a queen ant willing to join her, the queen ant, who had been crippled and had an unstable egg production, was immediately killed.
The Divine Envoy King's legion also suffered losses in a series of battles, and a large number of elite warriors suffered casualties in pursuit, anti-ambush, and encirclement battles, and even suffered heavy casualties when encountering fierce insects such as bark mantises.
There were many dead fighters, and many wounded. Although the vast majority of the wounded soldiers were treated with saliva from the Foreman Ant Doctor, they were able to avoid dying from infection (which had previously had a very high mortality rate).
However, only a small number of soldiers were able to return to the team after recovering from their injuries, and most of them had to retire due to physical disabilities or serious internal injuries, and then take on the task of garrisoning fortresses in some remote areas.
Based on heavy battle damage, the protagonist finally stops the military operation and begins the next step of the plan.
The plan includes how to consolidate the newly acquired territory and how to reorganize the legions of the more powerful Divine Oracles.