Chapter 376 The Queen effec (1/2)
When the monsters pushed forward over the lines of traps and climbed over each other to ascend the wall, they found a ravenous wall of ants waiting for them. The soldiers were desperate, frantic for the opportunity to tear their opponents apart. From a distance, the wall appeared to have gained height. Ants stood atop each other, lunging forward to seize an enemy and dragging them back into the solid ma.s.s of monstrous insect.
When the Queen herself arrived at the front, the ferocity of her soldiers increased. She pushed through the ma.s.s of her children until she reached the edge of the wall and looked out over the horde that threatened her nest. Somewhere out there was the mastermind of this attack, the Queen's blood boiled with anger at the thought. When would they come forward and suffer her wrath?
Until then, she would have to sate her hunger on these minions.
The Queen's legs were no longer tipped with standard claws, but rather a new version that she could close together to form a fearsome spike. She extended her front legs over the edge of the wall and began to spear monsters as if they were fish.
*Stab!* *Stab!*
The Queen had dutifully examined the skills she could purchase after her evolution and indeed a stab related option had unlocked for her. The knowledge of how and when to most optimally strike had been trickled into her mind and now she put it to good use.
Every time she stabbed down she pierced a monster straight through. She would then lean back on her rear legs and haul the now valuable Bioma.s.s back over the wall to pa.s.s to her children before turning back to stab once more. It was easy. The monsters were packed so thick that it wasn't as if she could miss.
The Queen felt elated. For so long she had been trapped in the nest, hearing about her children striding forth to do battle with their enemy but she had been unable to help. Now, she was here, she was ready. She would fight alongside her children and shoulder her portion of the burden. It was gruesome and difficult, but it made her glad. She couldn't help emitting pheromone waves of satisfaction and savage joy that radiated over the wall and struck the antennae of every ant on the wall.
It was a feeling they reciprocated. But there was a deeper emotion that possessed them. The ant colony would fight at their fiercest for two things, the brood, and their Queen. Ingrained in their instincts was the need to defend the future generations, they would sacrifice anything to protect them. The brood, the next few generations of the colony, was safely tucked away in the nest, as secure as the colony could make them, whilst the Queen, who embodied countless generations of colony members, was exposed to tremendous danger!
Newfound intelligence battled with inborn instinct and the intelligence was losing. In the face of the threat to their mother, their sense of self-preservation began to fall away. What replaced it was pure, ferocious and unthinking aggression.
All along the wall, the colony members took dangerous risks to put their mandibles on the enemy and around the Queen the fervour reached feverish levels. Even the non-combat castes had emerged from their secure chambers within the nest to follow their Queen into battle.