Using bees and flies to pull ships is like using horses to pull vehicles. It is a way of using animal power in addition to its own strength and wind power. It's just that the human world does not have draft animals that can swim in the water or fly in the sky. They once tried to use cattle to drive ships, but the ant world has more suitable draft animals.
Of the two solutions, bees and flies, the former is the most suitable. Compared to flies, bees are accustomed to moving in groups and are more powerful.
After experiments, it was found that to pull a walnut boat forward in still water, at least three bees or nine flies are needed. If you want to get enough power, the number must be doubled.
Nine flies will fly around together, and each fly needs to be equipped with a flying knight to effectively control it. This is a huge waste for the rare and precious large worker ants.
But as long as the bees gather into a swarm, after simple instructions, only one flying knight is required to control the frontmost bee, and the other bees will follow closely. This is the advantage of social creatures.
Finally, after various experiments and improvements, the formed walnut boat looked like this:
An oblong walnut, slightly larger than a ping-pong ball, stands vertically on the water, with the tip of the walnut pointing down, and the draft reaches almost half of the walnut.
Two slightly sloping wooden sticks as thick as toothpicks were fixed to the waist of the walnut with ropes and glue, and then stretched out to connect a thicker piece of floating wood with the diameter of a chopstick to the walnut boat.
On the top of the walnut, where the original bud eye is now the entrance, a straight mast protrudes from it. The bottom of this mast is fixed in the ballast stone, and the top protrudes about half a centimeter from the walnut.
The mast itself is hollow, with openings outside the entrance and inside the walnut boat. This is a passage for ants to enter and exit the walnut boat. It is safer and faster than the original direct entrance and exit.
There is also a bamboo hat-shaped rain shelter not far above the entrance and exit.
At the top of the mast is a horizontal pole with a cloth sail. The cloth sail is woven by ants from hemp fiber. This horizontal pole can be easily raised and lowered with a rope. When the sail is not in use, the crossbar and sail will be lowered to the position of the rain shelter. If necessary, the ants can also remove the cloth sail from the crossbar and store it inside the walnut boat.
A fully loaded walnut boat could carry up to a hundred ants, but that would make it overcrowded inside. Taking into account the comfort of long-distance voyages and the need to carry enough food, the protagonist's plan is for each walnut ship to carry a squad of fifty warriors.
Then a full fifty-two walnut ships would be needed to transport an entire legion, and the walnuts currently stored in [Great Lakes City] are not enough to build enough ships for one legion.
Fortunately, there are many walnuts in the walnut forest that fell to the ground last fall. Although they were not collected and stored in time, some walnuts have inevitably cracked and sprouted, but the huge base allows the ants to find enough raw materials for the walnut boats.
What is relatively troublesome is transporting the walnuts back. Compared to the size and strength of the ants, the walnuts are huge monsters that are difficult to conquer.
Last fall, the protagonist also used the beetles of the first army of rolling, and a large number of ants to assist and cooperate, and he was able to transport less than thirty walnuts back.
Fortunately, the parasitic ants are not yet able to break through the defense line of the united indigenous scythe-hunting ant coalition, and the protagonist still has plenty of time to build a fleet.
The protagonist's plan requires at least 60 walnut ships, which are enough to carry a legion and sufficient supplies. They can also provide a safe camp for the flying knights to prevent the flying knights from taking off from [Southern City].
These sixty walnut boats will be linked together by ropes to prevent them from being scattered by the current. Anyway, the Divine Envoy King's army is not threatened by enemy fleets on the water, and there is no need to worry about the serial ship encountering fire attacks like the Battle of Chibi.
The construction of sixty walnut ships is a huge project. With the support of the scientific research team, although shipbuilding experience has begun to accumulate and efficiency has gradually improved, it still takes two to three months to complete.
Before that, the protagonist can only hope that the indigenous coalition of hunting sickle ants can sustain it for a while longer.
——I am the dividing line——
Fortunately, the protagonist still has an eye in the aboriginal ant-hunting coalition.
With its fifty fierce subordinate warriors, Kite has gained a certain amount of respect among the coalition forces that value combat effectiveness, although this respect also contains the usual disdain for the male ants that the female ants of the Scythe Hunters are used to.
But Kite doesn't care about this. These bumpkins have never seen real power. Kite firmly believes that the power of the Divine Messenger King and his subordinates is the greatest. The scene when his tribe was destroyed will always be engraved in his mind. A kind of Stockholm Syndrome emotion makes him loyal to the Divine Messenger King. He stood up, not wavering because he was a foreigner.
Once, in his own tribe, he was just an older male ant who was discriminated against everywhere. Now, he has gained the trust of the great God Envoy King and has become the leader of fifty warriors.
Only the great envoy king who represents God can value himself so highly - this is the idea of kite.
He led his subordinates to actively perform in the coalition forces, and fought bravely to take the lead in every battle with parasitic ants. The warriors of Kite's subordinates who have received formal training from the Angel King's legion are not only slightly better than other members of the same race in individual combat due to adequate nutrition, but are also very good at team combat. In addition to protecting kites, he can also achieve outstanding results repeatedly.
This allowed the warriors of this "tribe" to gain respect and prestige, even surpassing those warriors from the legendary tribe deep in the hills they had just arrived that were said to be able to suppress parasitic bacteria, and became the eyes of the scythe-hunting ferocious ants who respected warriors. star.
However, Kite doesn't pay much attention to these. He just collects intelligence from the coalition forces according to the protagonist's request. Then every night when the soldiers of other tribes hide and rest, he sneaks near the coalition camp, finds the flying knight who is the contact, and passes the information over. .
The flying knight will spend the night in a safe tree hole and return immediately with the information after dawn the next day.
It is thanks to Kite's efforts that the protagonist is able to grasp in detail the latest trends of the indigenous ant-hunting coalition and parasitic ants.
At present, with the joining of some tribes deep in the hills, the Sickle Ant Hunter Alliance has stabilized its defense line.
The protagonist noticed that those tribes from the deep hills that had just joined the coalition army, and based on various intelligence combined, inferred that not only were they larger, but parasitic fungi appeared more frequently in their territories, so they were better at fighting parasitic ants. It is the backbone of the coalition forces.
It was their joining that made the situation of the once passive coalition begin to improve.
