Lambert was right to be cautious.
Once an ant infected by a parasitic fungus appears in a nest, a new nest will soon appear, spreading as fast as the Black Death. Rambotu didn't know how bad the situation in this lair had deteriorated, so he could only be cautious.
Before waiting for the protagonist to arrive, he sent out scout troops to continue investigating on the periphery.
After receiving instructions from Rambotu to specifically request information packets to check for parasitic fungi, the Fusarium ant scouts, who have a natural aversion to parasitic fungi, completed their tasks well and made more discoveries.
The hunter ant scouts were ordered to capture and kill several infected ants that were foraging in the wild. However, such a big noise would alert the snake, and some uninfected ants were not attacked and took advantage of the chaos to escape back to their nests.
Lambert didn't care if these ants went back to report the news. No matter whether there was an epidemic in this nest or not, military action was originally taken, but now the alert level was just raised.
The biggest discovery made by the hunter ant scouts came from near the entrance and exit of this nest. There is a common garbage dump for ants here, not far from the entrance and exit. In addition to discarding feces and household garbage, they also discard corpses.
This is a common habit among the auxiliary nests of the big-headed ant kingdom. The inside of their nests is extremely clean, and the garbage is discarded in designated garbage dumps. The garbage dump of the secondary nest in the territory of the God Envoy King will be further away from the entrance and exit, and a lesson has been learned.
Now, the garbage dump here is covered with dense parasitic hyphae. The big ones are mature and the small ones have just sprouted. They are so dense that it makes Lambotu frightened.
After the protagonist arrived, he quickly came here to inspect under escort.
He was also shocked when he saw this pile of garbage full of parasitic fungi. Upon closer inspection, he found that these hyphae were basically growing on the corpses of ants.
The age of the ant's death can be determined by the degree of shriveling and cracking of the ant's body. Among the corpses on this garbage pile, there are obviously many relatively new corpses, which shows that the nest death rate has been extremely high in recent times, far exceeding the normal level.
The protagonist infers from this that the parasitic bacteria have only spread widely in recent days, causing the death rate to rise.
The protagonist ordered the destruction of this dense source of infection. Since they did not carry fire, the ants could only approach cautiously from the outside, bite off the parasites in small pieces, chop them up, and throw them in the sun to dry, so that they could die completely.
Some mature parasitic fungi seem to be able to detect that there is a new suitable host nearby through some means. Their roots will break, and the small caps on their heads will crawl on the ground, searching for the location of the new host. The fungi will twist and turn. When it moves, it looks like a swimming snake, and the speed is not slow. It is really hard to tell that it is a fungus.
Fortunately, the hunter ant scouts were very familiar with their "natural enemies" and worked together to eliminate these mobile adult parasitic fungi.
The protagonist has previously learned from the surrendered male ants that the hunter ants live in the southern hilly area where the hunter ant tribe lives, and a large-scale parasitic fungus epidemic breaks out every few years.
In addition to the sickle-hunting ants, other ant races in the southern hills will also be infected. Finally, the infected ants of various races gathered into a large army, wreaked havoc in the hilly areas, and moved south, attacking and infecting healthy tribes along the way, such as Like hungry ghosts, they swept away all the food and brought a natural disaster to the entire area.
Therefore, the indigenous people in the southern hilly areas are very disgusted with these parasitic bacteria and will destroy them if they see them. And it is precisely because of the frequent occurrence of parasitic infection disasters that consume a lot of the strength of the indigenous ants, objectively speaking, it is also impossible for a force strong enough to challenge them to appear in the southern part of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom.
However, the situation of parasitic bacteria in the territory of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom is not very clear in the Big-headed Ant Kingdom. They know that there have been many cases in history where all the ants in the sub-nest disappeared mysteriously, but there has never been a large number of infected ants actively migrating around. The disaster of the attack.
The protagonist also cannot explain why the parasitic bacteria behave differently after infecting the host in the two areas.
——I am the dividing line——
It took more than half a day to clean up the parasites in the garbage dump.
During this period, a group of ants rushed out from the target sub-nest, numbering in the thousands. Judging from the naked eye, more than half of the people are infected. It is not yet clear whether the rest are infected, but it is possible that there are already bacterial strains in the body.
These ants swarmed out in a chaotic manner, and after roughly forming a formation, they rushed towards the Legion of the God Envoy King.
The messenger who had gone back to report the news had already told them the information about the enemy attack. When the Angel King's army was clearing the pile of corpses, the scouts from the deputy nest had already found them.
Lambert immediately ordered the troops to fight back. He only used half of the legion's strength, and the other troops were still carrying out operations to remove the parasites.
It's not that Lambo Tuto is too big, it's that these big-headed ants infected by parasitic bacteria seem to have lost even the most basic tactics, and they are no different from the powerful parasitic ants they encountered before.
Those uninfected ants gathered at the entrance of the nest and then acted collectively, while the infected ants rushed out of the hole and followed the pheromones deployed by the scouts. The entire team was stretched extremely long and was not in formation.
This kind of chaotic offensive naturally cannot pose a threat to the defense line of the Divine Envoy King's army. The warriors of the God's Envoy King didn't even use their slings. They cooperated with each other in several counterattacks and quickly killed hundreds of parasitic ants.
The only thing you need to be careful about is that the parasitic bacteria may take advantage of the chaos to break away from the original host and try to crawl towards the warrior of the God Envoy King. But under strict monitoring, these parasitic bacteria were also killed.
The healthy-looking big-headed ants that followed closely behind also behaved very "healthy". They seemed to have no belief in fighting to the death with their fellow ants, and were just performing their tasks. After encountering a not-intense stone-throwing attack, he quickly lost his fighting spirit and obediently allowed himself to be captured by the warriors of the same clan, the God-Envoy King.
The protagonist asks a team of ant-hunting ant scouts to closely guard the captive team and check regularly to see if there are new infected people.
At this time, the work of cleaning up the parasites in the corpse pile was basically completed.
After completing the homework, the protagonist was still uneasy and asked the ant warriors to carefully check himself and other companions for signs of infection.
After confirming safety, the protagonist ordered Rambotu to attack the nest of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom, which had become an epidemic area.
He asked Lambert to try to capture the male ants in this sub-nest. Regardless of whether he was infected or not, he was an insider.
The protagonist feels that he needs to solve the mystery of the parasitic bacteria, instead of just thinking that everything is fine after getting rid of the parasitic bacteria like last time.
This mysterious parasitic fungus lingers and always hangs over this land like a haze.
