After the remaining six unfinished tunnels were allowed to change their excavation direction, good news about their completion soon came one after another. Subsequently, more and more teams devoted themselves to searching for the auxiliary nest of the Pavement Ant Barbarian Army.
The legion of the God's Envoy King still stood still.
The protagonist is constantly surrounded by messenger worker ants that emerge from the ground to report on the progress underground:
Report: A large number of ant pupae were found and destroyed.
Report: Found a nest of young ants and all have been killed.
Report: The team encountered several enemy interceptors and is fighting.
Report: The team encountered a large enemy force and was unable to move forward. We requested support.
One information packet after another is passed on by messengers. The protagonist can feel that the initial advantage of the surprise attack has gradually disappeared, and more and more reconnaissance teams have been blocked by enemy reinforcements.
However, there has been no word from the queen yet.
We can only continue to wait patiently for the expected news to come.
At this time, the eight legions had already dispatched a large number of troops from the large tunnel to the bottom of the sub-nest according to the plan. Countless teams searched and advanced along the discovered main roads, forked roads and paths until they were blocked by the enemy.
These big-headed ant warriors have destroyed hundreds of eggs, young ants, and pupae, but if they fail to kill the queen, then the results are meaningless.
More and more news shows that underground troops have encountered obstacles, but there is no good news yet.
Finally, the protagonist decided not to wait any longer. The opportunity was fleeting. He wanted to personally lead an elite team down to the bottom of the enemy's sub-lair. He had a strong intuition that he could only find it if he went there in person. The goal he seeks. Since that strange dream, the protagonist feels that he has become more passionate and brave. After becoming the God Envoy King, he has a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment that he has never had in the human period.
The protagonist immediately asks Hua Mulan to bring the elite team that has been assembled in advance. This is a guard team composed of twenty strong soldier ants. Hua Mulan is also among them. The protagonist will lead them underground to search for pavement ants. The position of the queen ant.
Bringing only such a small number of guards is not because the protagonist is taking risks or entrusting himself, but in the narrow and complex underground environment, too many troops cannot be deployed, and it is not conducive to command. Moreover, the protagonist has very good eyesight in the dark underground environment and can be discovered before the enemy, which greatly ensures the protagonist's survival probability.
In addition, all the remaining members of the Divine Envoy King's Legion gathered at the entrance of the large tunnel. If a signal for help comes from underground, these legion soldiers will go down to provide support as soon as possible.
After making arrangements, the protagonist climbed down from the last large tunnel with twenty personal guards. Where this tunnel connects there is still a lot of unexplored territory.
Go all the way down along the large tunnel, and then turn horizontally forward at the end. The tunnel is only about four meters in total. The protagonist and the others quickly passed through it and entered the auxiliary nest through the wall of a nest room. This nest chamber is relatively narrow. There is a corpse of a pavement ant worker on the ground, which was killed by the big-headed ant construction team that dug through this place. Other than that, there is nothing in the entire nest except fluorescent bacteria.
There are two exits to the nest, and both of them contain pheromones left by the advance team of the Big-headed Ant Expeditionary Force. Apparently, other teams have already set off before. One of the two exits is upward and the other is downward.
The protagonist decided to continue searching downwards based on his previous judgment. Two soldier ants opened the way at the front, followed closely by the protagonist, and then followed by the remaining eighteen soldier ants as guards. The entire team formed a column and moved forward.
Not long after advancing, a branch road appeared. According to the pheromones left on the ground, the advance team in front detoured into the branch road, but the original passage was not explored. The protagonist then continues to lead the team along this passage.
After continuing for a while, the sharp-eyed protagonist discovered two pavement ant worker ants in front of him. The other party has poor eyesight and has not noticed the protagonist and his party not far away. They crawled forward quickly, and soon they would run into the protagonist's small team.
Two pavement ants cannot be let go, otherwise they will attract a large group of enemies. The protagonist thought to himself, and then he immediately gave orders to the four soldier ants around him. The four soldier ants who received the order quickly moved forward based on the location information in the protagonist's information package and pounced on the two pavement ants that had not noticed anything unusual. Because the underground was too dark, the two pavement ants didn't discover their enemy until their tentacles came into contact with the nearby Big-headed Soldier Ants. However, it was too late. They didn't even have time to sound the alarm, and were killed by four soldier ants. Torn into two pieces.
The protagonist ignored the two dead pavement ants. He urged the team to move forward. Whenever there was a fork in the road, the protagonist would temporarily abandon the fork and move forward along the current passage. After advancing like this for ten minutes, the protagonist was disappointed. The road in front of him had reached an end and merged into a narrow, almost straight passage deep into the ground. The passage in front of him was a drainage channel.
The protagonist had no choice but to lead the team out of the drainage channel, and then went back to search for the forks one by one that he had missed before. But the results were extremely disappointing. The end of each fork in the road was not the target he expected. Some were collapsed and abandoned passages, and some were nests filled with dead big-headed ants and pavement ants (these corpses were used as food).
Finally, after searching all the forks on this route and killing more than a dozen lone pavement ant queens without any injuries, the protagonist and his party returned to the original nest. It seems that the way down leads to nothing.
The protagonist decided to continue taking another upward path, but not long after entering, he found that the front was occupied by big-headed ants and pavement ants who were fighting fiercely, and this path was impassable.
Hua Mulan looked a little discouraged on the side, and the protagonist was also a little irritable. Is it necessary to crawl back to the ground and search through another large tunnel? If the longer the time drags on, the more likely the other party will move the queen ant to a safe area, and then his plan to raid and kill the pavement ant queen will be completely ruined.
The protagonist forced himself to calm down and reorganized his actions after entering the sub-nest. Have I searched everywhere along the way? Is there any missing information? Is there a fork in the road that I forgot to search for?
Suddenly, the protagonist slaps the carapace on his head: there is indeed a place where he can still move forward, but the protagonist does not search for it. So the protagonist and his men hurriedly walked the same path they took for the first time.
They soon came to the end of the passage, where it emptied into a drainage ditch.
Yes, gutters. All ant nests have gutters that go deep into the ground for drainage. And upwards, these drains would be adjacent to some important nest cells to prevent these cells from being flooded. These important nest rooms include conference rooms, incubation rooms for young ants, and bedrooms for queens and kings!
The protagonist decided to climb up the drainage outlet and try his luck again.
