At this time, the queen ant finally lost her composure, and her instinct made her aware of the danger.
The parasitic fungus twisted closer and closer. This parasitic fungus was different from the ones I had seen before. The stipe was thicker and the cap was larger, but the overall length was shorter and its movements were very slow.
Although it seems to feel slower than ordinary parasitic bacteria, the direction it moves is itself. Any creature that faces a strange species that leans toward it will instinctively detect whether the other species is hostile.
The queen ant now senses hostility!
If the target of the parasitic fungus is not the egg-laying queen ant that cannot move alone, any ordinary ant can easily escape due to its slow speed.
But this queen ant was in tragedy.
She twisted her upper body in vain, but she could only struggle in place on the bedding woven from ant silk and grass silk. Her bloated abdomen made it impossible for her to move.
Her violent movements disturbed several worker ants who were waiting to lay eggs. The worker ants immediately ran to the queen to find out the cause.
The queen ant seemed to have grasped a life-saving straw. The protagonist read from his memory that the queen sent a distress message to the worker ants in front of her.
But the two worker ants whose antennae intersected with the queen's only responded with unusually confused emotions. No matter how the queen ants indicated that a strange thing was approaching, they seemed unable to see the unusually thick moving hyphae and did nothing.
Like a ghost or ghost in a thriller that only the victim can see, the parasitic fungus seems to be able to confuse ordinary worker ants and soldier ants. Only male ants and queen ants are somewhat resistant to this fascination.
Under normal circumstances, if the male ants or the queen specifically give orders, the worker ants and soldier ants can also eliminate interference and face the existence of parasitic bacteria.
But the queen's pleas for help were of no use.
At this time, the protagonist had already sighed in his heart. He could see that the two worker ants, no, almost all the worker ants in this cave, had small mycelium sprouts emerging from the gaps in the carapace. If you don't look carefully, it's easy to miss their status as infected people in this low-light environment.
These worker ants still retain the consciousness of being ants, but as the parasitic bacteria grow little by little on the ants' bodies as nutrients, these ants will eventually lose themselves.
The tragic queen ant did not realize that the worker ants in front of her could not save her. Her call for help failed. She did not notice any "abnormal" worker ants and quickly left to do what they were supposed to do.
The queen ant could only watch the strange and terrifying hyphae getting closer and closer to her, alone and without any resistance.
She twisted her body, trying to get as far away from the hyphae as possible, and her upper and lower bodies were almost bent at ninety degrees.
The giant compound eyes reflected the figure of the God of Death, which was getting closer and closer. The tail end of this hyphae was surprisingly still stuck with the remains of tissue fluid and muscles from the previous victim's body. It was the stipe that was forcibly forced from the inside of the host's body. Ironclad evidence of pulling out.
Soon, the parasitic fungus was no longer visible to the queen, but the cold touch on her body told the protagonist that the parasitic fungus had climbed onto the queen's back.
As a heartbreaking pain came, the queen ant trembled violently for the last time. But then, there was a numbness like an anesthetic. The queen ant calmed down and no longer felt anything strange on her back.
The queen's palace returned to calm. The dead ant's body was finally discovered and carried away. The ants were still coming and going. The queen also regained her composure and started eating. All the abnormalities seemed to have never happened before...
But the protagonist knows from the memory of the queen that this queen is gradually losing herself. She began to lose consciousness frequently, retaining only emotions and instincts, and the memory of wisdom was being fragmented.
Since there is no timing tool, the protagonist does not know how often the queen will lose consciousness, but the memory she can maintain when she is awake is getting shorter and shorter, showing that her condition is deteriorating rapidly.
The scary thing is that the queen ant seems to have forgotten the terrible scene she encountered not long ago. The protagonist can read the memory of her being parasitized, but the queen herself never thinks about it again, as if everything does not exist.
The memory images that can be read are becoming more and more fragmented, but from these fragments, the protagonist can see more and more parasitized ants, and the parasitic bacteria are growing bigger and bigger.
The proportion of parasitic ants appearing in the queen's palace was obviously higher than the statistical results after the Angel King's army conquered this sub-nest. It seemed that the parasitic ants also realized that the queen was their companion and began to gather here.
Although the protagonist cannot see the situation on the queen ant's back by reading the memory, the queen is now his prisoner. He observed it with his own eyes and found that except for the ferocious appearance of the queen, there was nothing visible on the back. The appearance of mycelium is very different from that of other parasitic ants.
Could this be a new strain of bacteria? It seems to be completely assimilated into the body of the queen ant, like a parasite rather than a fungus. But the parasitic bacteria on ordinary ants are the same as those the protagonist has come into contact with before!
The remaining memories of the ant queen don't have much reference value, but there is an increasingly strong desire in her consciousness to leave the nest and move in a certain direction.
Her goal is the south, the warm south, the south where the sun is strongest.
This explains why the queen left the nest with some followers.
So, is this also the case for "Dongyang City" that once mysteriously became an empty nest, and for those sub-nests that mysteriously disappeared in the history of the Big-headed Ant Kingdom?
But judging from the current situation, this queen obviously only took away a small number of ants. Where have the other parasitic ants gone? Is it because without the queen, all of them will die at the end of their lifespan?
This also makes no sense. The interval between the protagonist's departure from "Dongyang City" and his return was only a few months. It is impossible for all the ants to die in such a short period of time, and the protagonist was not in or near "Dongyang City" at the time. Find the carcass of the parasitized ant.
There are more and more doubts surrounding the parasitic bacteria, which makes the protagonist's head hurt.
After returning to the main nest, the protagonist always feels that the desire of the parasitic ants to go to the south is a breakthrough direction. In addition, the parasitic fungi seem to be most active in the southern hilly areas. Parasitic fungus natural disasters often break out, making the local indigenous ants regard it as a huge threat.
Perhaps the key to solving this mystery lies in the southern hills, or the mountains further south.
Thinking of this, the protagonist sends a messenger and orders the ruling male ant Gardenia of "Southern City" to pay close attention to the situation in the southern hills.
At the same time, he also gave an order to the first male ant to surrender to him, asking them to form a small team and go out to explore the secret behind the parasitic fungus!
