Because of the sandy slopes on all sides, the sand and gravel kept rolling down her feet as she climbed, and she went up three steps and slipped down two more steps, as if she were going backwards on a slide.

The rolling sand and gravel soon fell to the bottom of the pit, like a long-awaited signal that woke up a terrible being.

Suddenly, the sand at the bottom of the sand pit tumbled like boiling water, like a celestial phenomenon that had changed dramatically before the Demon King was born, signaling an ominous arrival.

In an instant, a pair of long, sharp jaws suddenly pierced the sand and stretched into the air, the pair of jaws showed an earthy yellow similar to the sand, but the tips of the jaws were sharp and adducted, a reddish-brown after the blood had dried up, which looked hideous and terrifying.

Immediately after the big jaw appeared, a huge head, larger than the size of the two or three Divine Envoy King warriors combined. The head is the same color as the antennae, and it's so smooth that the protagonist can't even see where the insect's eyes are.

The big jaw appeared extremely abruptly, and it disappeared quickly, as if it was a fleeting illusion. But the climbing Divine Messenger King knows that this is a real monster, and that she has fallen back to the bottom of the bunker and is being dragged down...

Such a monster, and this kind of hard-to-climb sand pit, the protagonist recognizes - this is an "antlion", an insect that is good at trapping ants, and is the larva of an antlacewing.

The antlion has a camouflage color like sand, a head much smaller than its body, and a pair of large jaws that move backwards as it moves on the ground, which is peculiar.

The most important feature of the antlion hunting is that it will rotate on the sand and drill down on the other side, creating a funnel-shaped trap on the sand, and hiding under the sand at the bottom of the funnel, and using its jaws to flick the sand outward, making the funnel trap smooth and steep and densely covered with gravel. When ants or insects crawl into the trap, it is difficult to get out for a while, and they will be dragged into the sand and eaten by the antlion.

Although the antlion has huge jaws, it does not chew its prey and eat it, but sucks up the juice of its prey like a spider, and then throws its shell away.

The protagonist recognizes his identity in an instant and wants to order the rescue of the Divine Envoy King warrior who has fallen into the trap, but it is too late.

The antlion is extremely fast, and although the protagonist has good eyesight and can see its appearance clearly, most ants don't see what is happening at all.

After a flash of darkness, the sand at the bottom of the bunker shook a few times, and the Divine Envoy King's belly was half buried in the sand—she had been bitten by the antlion.

The Divine Envoy King Warrior struggled to climb up, but the demonic power hidden under the sand became even stronger, and within two seconds, the Divine Envoy King Warrior disappeared into the gravel, as if sinking into a swamp.

The protagonist looks around, and the outside of [Hive City] is densely packed with large and small antlion pits, and only a few narrow roads in the middle can lead to the front of [Hive City].

It seems that these antlions did not naturally gather here, but were placed here by the Red Fire Ant Country as a guard force of [Hive City], which is why this abnormal density appears. If the antlion did it himself, the traps would be too dense and the antlion would go hungry.

Indeed, among the few insects that can be domesticated in the Red Fire Ant Country, there is the antlion. But if the antlion pupates into a lacewing, the red fire ants cannot be controlled, so the antlion is more of a semi-domesticated species.

The eggs of these antlions are collected by the Red Fire Ants every year by sending burrowing ant slave auxiliaries to the nest laying sites of the antlacewings, and then brought back to the nest to hatch. After hatching, antlions are placed around large nests such as [Hive City], and they make holes to create traps.

The ants of the Red Fire Ant Nation know that you must not fall into these sand traps, otherwise there will be absolutely no companions who can save you. Red fire ants usually drop dying or injured ants into it, keeping these antlions to prevent them from starving or escaping.

With plenty of food, these antlions can stay where they are and become the guardians of [Hive City], and they can be described as the guardian beasts of the Red Fire Ant Country.

During the battle with the leaf-cutting ants, there was a time when the leaf-cutting ant army came to [Hive City], but hundreds of thousands of troops suffered heavy losses in front of the antlion colony, and the corpses almost filled these pits, and finally the leaf-cutting ant army could only retreat.

————

The Divine Envoy King's legion had already retreated to the place of departure, and they had lost a dozen ants in the pit just now, but fortunately they had withdrawn early, so that no more companions had fallen into the trap.

The protagonist didn't know that [Hive City] had this kind of defense mechanism before, he hadn't received information before, and even the "old heart" who was most familiar with the domestic affairs of the red fire ants didn't know about the existence of these antlions.

These antlions are known only to the native warriors of the Red Fire Ant Nation, and to the burrowing ants who collect and care for the eggs, but not to the belly ant slaves, who only know that these pits are not to be stepped into.

The protagonist looks at the pits and suddenly has an idea.

Originally, it was planned to go to [Hive City] to march to put pressure on the Red Fire Ant Country, but now if these antlions that are regarded as a barrier by the Red Fire Ants are eliminated, they will surely be shocked!

The protagonist doesn't know how to kill the antlion hidden deep underground, but he can give it a try.

In the beginning, there was a small group of god warriors who rushed down the pit together, trying to use their numerical superiority to besiege the antlion.

But the antlion hides underground, and the ants have to move away from the sand to find it, and once they find themselves exposed, they will continue to drill down, and the warriors of the Divine Envoy King will not be able to touch the antlion at all.

Instead, from time to time, the antlion poked out its jaws like lightning and attacked, dragging down one Divine Envoy King warrior after another and killing them.

When the squad loses a dozen warriors and still can't find the antlion's true body, the protagonist orders the other troops to reach into the pit road with long stalks of hay and pull the remaining warriors out.

The protagonist then orders the warriors to throw sand into it, trying to fill in the pit and forcing the antlion to climb up on its own.

After noticing that the sand pit was slowly being covered, the antlion finally reached out and threw the sand to the ground with its jaws. It is very fast, and this kind of throwing behavior is instinctive, and the ants are surrounded by it, and the speed of filling the pit is barely the same as the speed of its throwing of earth, and it cannot fill the sand pit at all.

Subsequently, the protagonist has another plan, but this time he needs to wait for some supplies.

So he ordered the Flying Knight to return to [Hive City] and prepare some supplies to bring, while the other gods made the King warriors suspend their attack and began to build a temporary camp outside the antlion trap while searching for hay and dead branches.

The Red Fire Ant Army huddled in [Hive City] without moving, and seemed to be preparing to defend the main nest to the death, with no intention of driving away the Divine Envoy King Legion that was close at hand.