Force Astral Plane: Starting with the Chimera Ants

Chapter 43: Concept - A Brand New Combat Method

As night fell, on a rare full moon night, the moonlight shone brightly on the cleared ground.

Perhaps because her consciousness was strong after the initial stage of the third age and she no longer needed to hibernate for a long time, Ye Zhi did not fall asleep at night on time for the first time after coming to this world.

Ye Zhi pulled back the ant silk "curtains" in her own room in the tree nest and peeked out, her pair of dark compound eyes surveying the scene before her.

The pitcher of the two-toothed pitcher plant, the divinely bestowed seed "Chimera," emitted a hazy, blood-red glow under the moonlight, giving it an eerie appearance.

The enormous insect trap faintly exuded an attractive aura, seemingly similar to the scent of ripe fruit from the divinely bestowed seed. At this moment, countless nocturnal flying insects were already hovering around the trap.

Every now and then, greedy flying insects would land on the top of the cage lip, then slide into the digestive fluid inside the trap. What awaited them was the entanglement and absorption of countless root-like things, until only a broken exoskeleton remained.

After evolving to the third instar, the Chimera somehow learned to use trapping techniques. Although it only attracts small flying insects, if there are enough of them, they are obviously a good source of nutrients.

Ye Zhi simply climbed out of the tree nest, flapped its wings and took flight, landing on a broad branch at the other end of the banyan tree. Under the moonlight, it moved its body, which had no deformities after the third instar, and made a series of pouncing and biting movements in the air.

The thick, serrated jaws on her mandibles gleamed coldly in the moonlight, but Ye Zhi did not intend to practice biting tonight. Instead, she shook her abdomen and skillfully flicked out a thread of ant silk, which wrapped around another thin branch above.

A wisp of primal force flowed smoothly into the ant silk. Ye Zhi slightly contracted her abdomen, but with a soft sound, the twig that was caught in the ant silk was cut off at the point where it was caught.

Ye Zhi was surprised. She flapped her wings and flew up, picked up the fallen half of the branch, and looked at the cut surface where she had cut it with her ant silk by the moonlight.

The cut surface was smooth, and the bark and the internal cut surface were connected as one. Only now did sap begin to seep out, showing that it was cut off almost instantly.

Ye Zhi's mind immediately started working. Her ant silk, after being infused with the Force, was incredibly tough and could even be as thin as a hair. It seemed that it could be used as a weapon.

As he pondered, his body reacted swiftly. The original ant silk rope broke, and the finest ant silk, which he could now control and secrete, was pulled out from the end of his abdomen.

A wisp of primal force was injected, and then the abdomen contracted and stretched, the extremely fine ant silk taut, flashing a cold light under the moonlight - so thin that it was difficult to detect except at a certain angle of reflection.

Choose a relatively thick branch, and simultaneously channel your mental energy into the ant silk for fine-tuning and control, straightening the ant silk diagonally across from above.

With a barely perceptible, slight tearing sound, the thicker branch snapped in two, the process smooth and effortless.

The cut at the end of the branch remained smooth until several seconds after it was severed, when sap slowly seeped out, silently testifying to the resilience and sharpness of the extremely fine ant thread after it was infused with primal force.

Ye Zhi gently stroked the severed wound with her tentacles and suddenly felt that this was much more promising than any pouncing or biting.

Compared to the previous cutting of tree branches with its mandibles, it can be seen that the extremely fine ant silk injected with the Force is definitely sharper than the biting of the mandibles, and its absolute strength is obviously not inferior.

The ant silk used for cutting is extremely fine and difficult to detect at first glance. In addition, the starting action is similar to spraying formic acid, making it very suitable for confusing opponents and launching a sneak attack.

In battle, if a surprise attack can be launched, an insectoid warrior of the same rank could very well have one or two limbs severed by this move, or even be decapitated.

Of course, this is, after all, the Dragon Bamboo Continent, where ant kingdoms are everywhere and large-scale ant kingdom wars are the main focus. We also need to consider how much of this ability the worker ants produced by our golden egg queen can inherit.

Based on experience with the production of combat worker ants by the Queen Ant, elite combat worker ants inherit about one-fifth of the Queen Ant's abilities. They are weaker in individual combat but have the advantage in numbers.

The slender ant does not have strict worker ant size differentiation regulated by pheromones; the size difference is only determined by food intake during the larval stage. This data comes from the largest fighting worker ant.

The situation is different for weaver ants. Based on the inherited memory records and the regulation of pheromones, worker ants can be differentiated into three types: large, medium and small. On this basis, further regulation can be achieved by feeding them during the larval stage.

Small worker ants are relatively short and stout, making them suitable for living in compact nests and taking on the task of caring for larvae. These are the earliest "miniature" worker ants produced by the leaf weaver, and they have virtually no fighting ability.

Medium-sized worker ants, also known as "core" worker ants, are the most standard form of leaf weaver ant worker ants. They are the core of the work outside the nest, and under normal circumstances, the work of foraging and weaving leaf nests is done by these worker ants.

As for the last large worker ants, they are the main force in the ant kingdom war, the most elite fighting worker ants. They have long and strong limbs, and their tubercles are flexible and adept at bending in all directions to spray formic acid. Their heads are already biased towards a triangle or a trapezoid, with slight angularity, and accommodate well-developed masseter muscles.

Next, Ye Zhi needs to test whether the elite combat worker ants in the third instar can inherit some of the strength and sharpness of his extremely fine cutting ant silk, and research and develop a combined attack tactic in which multiple worker ants work together to use ant silk.

Thinking it over, Ye Zhi retracted the extremely fine ant silk and focused her consciousness on the golden egg queen ant that had been produced during its first instar to check on its condition.

This queen ant can lay about ten eggs a day, but they are only at the first instar. The largest worker ants produced are only a little over two centimeters in size and have extremely limited combat capabilities. It would be better to cultivate more medium and small worker ants.

The third-instar semi-primitive queen ant should be similar in length to the current leaf weaver ant, and the elite fighting worker ants she produces should be four to five centimeters long, thus possessing considerable combat value.

However, considering the development time of the queen ant and the worker ant, it would take at least two to three months to see the worker ant emerge from its pupae. By then, I would probably have already entered the fourth instar, or even be in the early stages of the fifth instar.

Ye Zhi pondered for a moment, then made up her mind – the test should be done as soon as possible. She might as well work hard these two days and personally “spit out” four or five ordinary ant eggs for testing.

As for the golden eggs, he plans to produce two more during the third instar, adding them to the current one, to raise three semi-force queen ants in the early stage of the third instar, after which he will stop producing golden eggs in the early stage.

Having made up her mind, Ye Zhi flapped her wings again and landed on the top of the tree nest. She then climbed over the "window" and entered the nest, lying on the soft cushion to prepare for "self-cloning" the two golden eggs later.