Sensing Nola’s evil eye on her, the giant ant gingerly pulled itself out of its hive and slowly crawled towards us, body shaking with every step.
This ant was completely different from the other Black Blood Ants in terms of size; it was at least the size of a small calf and I could tell that the hole was made just to fit it. As it finally emerged completely out of its hole, I was able to get a glimpse of its belly…it was familiar…just like a termite queen’s abdomen except that she was entirely black.
With how big her belly, there was no doubt in my mind that she was the Black Blood Ant Queen.
With a submissive look on her face, she slowly crawled up to Nola. As she did so, she had to drag her body through countless charred ant corpses; who knew how she must have felt then.
Truth be told, we didn’t intend to enter her hive at all. Our original plan was merely to eat our fill and then run away. Yet for some reason, the queen of said hive came out to meet us herself…exactly what was she up to here?
Nola wasn’t all that interested in the Black Blood Queen Ant. She merely gave her a quick glance and upon seeing that she wasn’t going to resist, continued lapping up the roasted ants while lazily throwing the queen ant a look from time to time.
Unlike Nola’s nonchalance, I could tell from just a quick exchange of glances that both Sinmosa and I viewed this matter seriously.
It had to be said once more that we honestly had no intention of wiping them out. The fact that she came crawling to Nola with a scared to death expression was beyond our expectations.
Even without my command, No.3 and Big 4 had already abandoned their feasting the moment the queen ant came into view. Having been my bodyguard from the very beginning, this act had become a habit for them and had instilled a strong sense of self-awareness in them. Their eyes stared squarely at the Black Blood Queen Ant as they guarded me from my flanks. Given their position, they could easily rush out to kill that queen ant while still being able to defend me. Assuming the queen ant even dared to make a move now…
With just three to four meters left between her and Nola, the Black Blood Queen Ant knelt in the most submissive manner possible…though she technically was kneeling to begin with… Once she finally pulled herself up to Nola, I could feel her soul shiver slightly before freezing up. Simply put, she was deathly afraid that Nola would gobble her up in one bite.
She lowered her head completely till it tapped the ground and then closed up her pincers. Then came a slightly hoarse but clearly female voice: “Esteemed…Invader…please…spare my hive…”
Her words weren’t smoothly delivered and often she had to pause between each as if she was stammering. However, that should have either been because of her lower intelligence or because she wasn’t used to communicating verbally with the tongue of the devil.
“We were merely hungry, even if you didn’t come up, we would have just left after we had our fill.” Nola stopped her feasting and arrogantly looked down at the Black Blood Queen Ant. “Even if you had just stayed down there, I wouldn’t have gone down to find you.”
“…” Hearing that, her face…to be honest, I couldn’t make out a blasted thing on her face but I could ‘see’ that she wanted to kick herself for digging this grave.
“Please…spare…me…”
“Spare you? Why should I?” Nola’s lips curled into a devious smirk: “You’re the one who offered yourself up, I didn’t force you to do it.”
“…” Truly, this grave was one she had dug for herself. If she was able to cry, she would have probably done so by now.
“I’m willing to…offer…up…tribute…”
“Tribute? Well then, let’s have a look see.”
As she said that, Nola entered a negotiating mood, clearly interested in what this queen ant potentially had to offer.
“Under…stood…” From start to end, the Black Blood Queen Ant maintained a calm demeanour, even in the face of Nola’s taunting. There was no sign of resisting or anger whatsoever in her eyes. Since she came up of her own volition, she knew full well how huge the gap in power was between the two of them. She was worried that we would dig all the way to the bottom so she decided to just come out and beg for mercy. With that in mind, I wasn’t all too worried that she would try to pull anything funny now.
Having accepted that request from Nola, the queen ant then opened her mouth and let forth a strange, piercing cry that penetrated through the ground and into the deepest depths of her hive. Soon after that, her cry stopped and it was then that a huge swarm of ordinary worker ants came crawling out of the nest. Each had a particular similarity shared between all of them: they had on their heads a strange, uneven and reddish rock that was roughly the size of a soybean.
The reddish hue on those rocks looked rather familiar as if I had just seen it somewhere before and yet I just couldn’t put my finger on where I had done so. Why? Because I was very sure that I had never seen this particular rock before and yet it still felt so familiar…
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login