The investigation team jumped into the air from the branches near the entrance and exit of "Linshui City" and flew toward the northeast.
When the protagonist was attacked by a wasp and fell into a strange forest, he first went south to the river in the woods, and then followed the river west back to the "Bridgehead".
The protagonist did not find the pavement ant barbarians in that forest. Considering the living habits of the pavement ants, the protagonist believed that the edge of the forest in the northeast was the territory of the pavement ant barbarians.
In the ant world, the boundaries between colonies are not obvious, unlike the human world, which is generally strictly divided by favorable terrain (such as rivers, hills) or longitude and latitude.
The boundaries of ant colonies are more of a customary activity range formed after battles between adjacent colonies. This boundary is not mandatory. Workers and scouts from one colony will often invade the activity range of another colony until they are driven away.
If a community declines to the point where it is unable to stop an invading enemy, it will soon encounter a large-scale enemy attack.
There is relative peace only at the borders between groups with different terrain preferences.
For example, Big-headed Ants like plains, while Hunter Ants like woods on hills. The two have coexisted harmoniously near "Dongyang City" for a long time. It was not until recently that a conflict broke out due to the establishment of "Stump Fortress".
The protagonist led the scouts and flew toward the northeast at low altitude along the edge of the dense forest that he identified as the border of the paving ant barbarian kingdom.
Without additional guidance, the reconnaissance team can discover a sub-nest of the pavement ant barbarians every half hour or forty minutes.
The secondary nests of pavement ant barbarians are easy to identify. They are always located at the highest point of a nearby terrain, which is beneficial to flood control. The entrance and exit of the auxiliary nest is built at the bottom of stones, dead wood and trees, with a cone-shaped eye-catching ant seal formed by accumulation of soil and gravel.
The most eye-catching thing is that there will be a vacuum zone of vegetation around the secondary nest - to ensure safety, the worker ants destroyed the nearby vegetation.
Following these obvious traces, the reconnaissance team quickly found several sub-nests. The protagonist took the location information of these sub-nests into his mind and gradually pieced together a map.
After studying several sub-nests, the protagonist found that the size of the sub-nests of the Pavement Ant Barbarians seemed to be about half larger than the sub-nests of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom: a normal sub-nest of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom has about 3,000 to 10,000 ants. , on weekdays, 30% of the ants will be active near the secondary nest.
Extrapolating from the number of active pavement ants observed on the ground, the size of the sub-nest of the pavement ant barbarians is approximately 5,000 to 15,000.
Moreover, the density of secondary nests in the Pavement Ant Barbarian Kingdom is also higher than that in the Big-headed Ant Kingdom. In the Big-headed Ant Kingdom, the protagonist usually needs to fly for about an hour to reach the next sub-nest. There will also be a vacuum zone between the two secondary nests. There is almost no ant activity here, making it a paradise for insects.
In the Pavement Ant Barbarian Kingdom, the flight time between two sub-nests is shortened to about forty minutes, and the vacuum zone is also narrower. Some densely populated areas of the sub-nests do not even have vacuum zones, and the activity areas between sub-nests also overlap with each other. .
Based on this calculation, the distribution density of the sub-nests of the Pavement Ant Barbarian Kingdom is more than twice that of the sub-nests of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom.
Taking into account the difference in the size of the colony of a single sub-nest, if the territory of the pavement ant barbarians is equivalent to that of the big-headed ant kingdom, then the number of colonies will be more than three times that of the big-headed ant kingdom.
In fact, based on the protagonist's previous investigation experience, he felt that the territory of the Pavement Ant Barbarians was far larger than the Big-headed Ant Kingdom.
The ignorant King's Council of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom has always believed that as long as they can cross the river, they can completely eliminate their old enemy.
This understanding is based on the fact that the Big-headed Ant Kingdom has finally won every year in the past recapture wars, and that the Big-headed Ant Kingdom completely wiped out the power of the Pavement Ant barbarians on the south bank of the river hundreds of years ago.
But this is still due to the fact that in three seasons of the year, the river becomes a natural barrier blocking the barbarian army of paving ants.
In terms of pure national strength, the Big-headed Ant Kingdom is the weak side. If there was no barrier from the river, it might be the Big-headed Ant Kingdom that would be wiped out in the end.
The only advantage the Big-headed Ant Kingdom has may be their ability to use the strategic resource of fire.
According to the information the protagonist received from "Black Pearl", the main nest of the Pavement Ant Barbarians has no fire source. Considering the inheritance time of the ant queen's successor, the protagonist believes that this information is reliable.
The protagonist did not inform the king's meeting of this important information. A war is bound to break out this year. Let's make the fight between the Big-headed Ant Kingdom and the Pavement Ant Barbarians more violent, so that the protagonist has time and opportunity to expand his power.
The reconnaissance team moved along the edge of the woods. This forest was very large and stretched roughly to the north. The protagonist looks far to the east and can only see the endless forest and swamp extending to the end of the fog.
At the junction of woods and plains, there are often sparse woods with a few trees and many shrubs.
Scouting teams found pavement ants battling native ants from the forest on these edges.
It seems that the barbarian army of pavement ants and the native ants from the woods often clash, at least at the edge of the woods.
Such battlefield reconnaissance teams discovered four or five places, and there were two types of indigenous ants in the woods.
An indigenous ant is black in color, has a slender body, is dark and matte, has few erect hairs, and has dense pubescence on its hind abdomen. These are Japanese black brown ants. They are generally two or three times the size of pavement ants, and the male ants are even bigger.
The Japanese black brown ant prefers to nest on the edge of the forest on land with sparse surface vegetation, near water sources, and soft soil. Therefore, it fights endlessly with nearby pavement ants all year round.
They mainly feed on aphid honeydew, plant gland secretions, and also hunt prey such as small arthropods and pine caterpillar larvae.
Due to their small numbers, they are generally on the defensive when facing the Pavement Ant Barbarian Army.
Another indigenous ant is the notorious sour ant.
These are black-headed sour ants that often build nests in decaying tree roots, shallow soil, and stone crevices.
The colony of black-headed stink ants is relatively large, with the number of queens often reaching nearly a hundred, and the number of colony members reaching tens of thousands. They like to migrate, and in the summer their marches can be as long as tens of meters.
Black-headed sour ants reproduce and spread very quickly and move quickly. They usually feed mainly on honeydew, etc.
During the battle, the black-headed ants are not only numerous in number, but also spray formic acid at their enemies. The hit pavement ants will rub their tentacles and limbs on the ground in agony.
These large-scale wandering sour-smelling ants have become a headache for the paving ant barbarian army.
