Rust - Chapter 705



Only Krnovel

RUST [RUST]-705

The maid ants, each the size of my palm or my forearm, stopped rushing at me like crazy and retreated in a circle. And then, somewhere in my head, I felt a tickle.

?

Maru’s brow furrowed.

So, this felt exactly like telepathy before.

The moment his eyes met the queen ant’s, Maru could tell that the tickling was coming from the queen ant.

[What are you doing?]

*******

The queen ant, who seemed somewhat flustered, sent a signal with her antennae, but Maru’s eyes, who had no way of recognizing the ant antennae’s signal, turned cold.

Does Ant-Yi know how to use mental waves?

I tried to capture it, but it didn’t work.

Why did you breed cannibals and vampires?

They could prey on humans, but more importantly, they could toy with the human mind.

It was not that there were no vampires who sought asylum in the Holy Kingdom, nor was it that there were no cannibals who sought to return to the Empire and live quietly.

But the reason why it was not allowed was because there was a risk that the general public would be unilaterally manipulated. Why did Dan Brown and Maru work together to eliminate cannibals?

But this ant is also a psychopath, and it shows signs of dominance. If not, then why are you saying that you can see the sprouts of the mental world?

The distance to the queen ant was about 50m, and four steps were enough to reach it.

It’s difficult to cut the head in one go, so the first target is the antennae.

First, cut off the wildly moving antennae, and then cut the thin neck joints while the queen ant is struggling.

It would have been perfect if it had been a ripper suit, but Maru focused his mind for a moment after feeling the regret. The ant queen desperately sent out a thought, perhaps sensing the killing intent.

(I have no intention of fighting.)

(···Stop.)

An imagery that felt like a mixture of murderous intent and a desire to kill. It wasn’t language, but something similar.

You don’t intend to fight?

Since it was an idea, not a language, the queen ant’s mental image was mixed and conveyed. As the mutation occurred, the original queen was eliminated, and the princess herself became the leader of the colony.

Memories of herself, who had been a princess and queen in name only as an egg-laying appendage of the ant colony, becoming the real leader of the colony came flooding in.

Then one day, humans who eat humans attacked the colony. They came to capture the princess and the queen. They invaded using poison gas and flames, but they fell prey to the sisters’ endless attacks.

‘The cannibal is after the ants.’

Last year? Maybe the year before last. The queen ant’s thoughts were definitely mixed with her memories.

It was a gap created because he was not human, so he decided to listen to the queen ant’s words. As Maru, who was not affected by the psychic ability, slightly opened the gap, the queen ant’s thoughts became more vivid.

As the murderous aura that Maru had been emitting disappeared, the queen ant that had been sending out fierce thoughts along with antennae signals sighed with an exhausted expression.

‘What the…’

Don’t you need facial muscles and skin to make facial expressions?

Is this an optical illusion caused by ideology?

Maru saw the head of a strange queen ant with a human-like expression, whether it was an optical illusion or a psychotic wave… no. Now he was staring at the face.

(Can you hear me?)

[Oh. I hear you. But do you guys eat humans as a staple food?]

There was a look of bewilderment on the Queen’s tired expression.

The first question you ask is whether you eat humans?

It was difficult to understand the question in the first place.

(stock?)

[Do you eat humans often?]

(Is that what they mainly eat? No, we farm. Of course, we do eat humans when they enter our territory.)

For ants, farming does not only mean growing plants. They consider raising cockroaches as farming, living with aphids as farming, and even growing mushrooms or fungi as farming.

So the story is that the food situation isn’t so bad that they have to actively attack human villages or eat difficult-to-catch humans.

(Humans are not easy to catch because they use fire. Even if they are caught, the exchange rate is often not right.)

Judging from the mixed memories, the queen ant was not lying.

[···What do you mean you have no intention of fighting me?]

(It’s the same. If the war continues, they have to lay a lot of eggs to maintain the colony, and then…)

The memory of the queen ant mixed in with her thoughts. The last of the previous queen ant passed by in a flash.

‘Didn’t they say that ants and bees drive out their old queen and make a princess their new queen?’

Maru had heard a similar story, so he could understand the queen ant’s thoughts. The queen ant, who had become smarter, had no intention of living her entire life just laying eggs and dying.

[Then why did you attack?]

(Because the movements of the humans and the rats seemed like they were trying to attack ‘us’.)

I knew that a preemptive strike would be advantageous. But more than that, the idea of ​​’we’ was strange. It was closer to ‘we’ referring to queen ants than ‘we’ referring to a colony of ants.

At that moment, the image of the winged beast attacking Canada came to mind.

It would be impossible to fly soldier ants from Toledo, south of Detroit, all the way to Montreal or Quebec to attack.

[Us? Are there other queen ants besides you?]

A thought that seems to ask, “What’s so obvious?”

The memory mixed with that thought was not a simple colony of ants.

There was a queen and there was a princess.

As the colony grows, the princess becomes independent and a new colony is created.

As the colony grows, the old queen is driven out.

When a young princess succeeds to the throne, the princesses who failed to inherit the throne become independent and develop new territories.

Yes, that’s right.

The queen ant we are talking about now was just a part of a huge ant empire.

‧

‧

‧

The ant queen was a talkative person.

It was because I didn’t lie, even though there were parts that I didn’t answer.

[Because of the rats?]

The reason the Ant Empire went to war with the Holy Kingdom was simple: because of rats.

(Rats invaded the territory and ruined the crops.)

It was a story from last year or the year before. It was a story about a group of traitors who had broken away from the Sacred Rat due to a lack of tribute.

He recruited new field mice and created the Inquisitor system to punish the group of rats that had betrayed him. At that time, the group of rats that had betrayed him scattered in all directions, and it seemed that some of them had joined forces with the ant colony.

To the ants, they would have been the same rats as the group of rats that had abandoned the Holy Kingdom or the field rat inquisitors chasing them.

[······.]

(And this winter, there was a massive attack by field mice on colonies along the river.)

Plural clusters, not singular clusters.

Ant colonies nestled on a riverside hillside were attacked by a large group of field mice moving along the frozen river.

‘Is this really it?’

It was like moving down the Hudson River to help New York. How did a herd of voles numbering in the hundreds of thousands or even millions move along the frozen river and supply supplies?

I thought they would just catch and eat the animals around them, but it seems like they even cleared out an ant colony while they were being distributed.

‘Is this connected like that?’

The ant empire set out to find the culprit. They pinpointed an area where rats were concentrated in large numbers, which was the southern border of the Holy Kingdom and the area around Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

(I created a buffer zone to avoid fighting the rats, but seeing groups of rats that seemed to be scouts keep appearing, I concluded that I couldn’t avoid fighting.)

The incident where all the field mice sent out as a scout went missing.

The reason the Holy Kingdom leadership thought the ants might attack the Holy Kingdom was because the ants thought the rats were a sign that they would attack the ant empire.

Moreover, the same was true for the ant expedition. The ants did not expect the firepower of the humans to be that strong.

Although there were some strong individuals among the humans, the Ant Expedition was strong with each and every member armed with the new exosuit.

So they tried to capture him, but that also failed.

I wondered where he was going, but he was going to the human kingdom?

After investigating the movements of the field mice, I found out that these little mice were on the same side as humans.

Even the crows that have been flying around in the air recently were all on the same side as the humans.

The ant empire concluded that they must attack the human kingdom located in the north.

Since it seemed clear that rats and crows were connected to humans, the calculation was that if the human kingdom was attacked, the rats and crows would naturally come out.

[But you don’t want to fight?]

(You fight to live, not to die, right?)

Even if you win the fight, if you end up being kicked out and starving to death because your productivity is low, or if you are dismembered alive and turned into meat balls, is there really a need to fight?

The smart ant queen wanted to live.

Not as part of a colony, but in the position of queen.

I was finally starting to feel like life was worth living, but then came war.

Since it was a colony at the forefront, the damage was bound to be great. They had to give birth to as many as the number reduced by the war, and they would be consumed quickly.

If only I could survive by doing that, but that wasn’t it.

Even looking at it now, it was like that.

Something that looked like a human cut through all the guards and cavalry and descended into the innermost part of the nest. You want me to fight this thing and die?

The Queen had no such intention.

‘We communicate well.’

Maru thought the same thing.

Why did you become king? To survive.

I did not ascend to the throne to risk my life.

It’s the same now.

I didn’t come into the ant hole alone to die.

I came in to survive.

I just followed my gut feeling and went with what I thought would have the highest probability of success.

[Okay. I understand that you don’t want to fight us. We don’t want to fight you either. But can we stop the war now? There are fights here and there at the same time?]

(I will send my opinion that it is advantageous to have a ceasefire with other groups.)

The Ant Queen’s judgment is that a truce is possible, as the other queens are likely to be thinking similarly.

But Maru’s thoughts were different. The bigger the size, the more difficult it was to choose war, and conversely, it was also difficult to stop war.

I don’t know how the ant colony is run, but if there are many queens as smart as the one in front of me now, there is a high probability that there will be some individuals who insist on continuing the war.

If we start a war like this, it won’t be easy to turn it around.

The longer it took to decide on a ceasefire, the more the Holy Kingdom would be drained of its energy. So it seemed certain that they would secure the pheromone as originally planned.

[Will that work? Why don’t you just hand the princess over to us?]

(princess?)

It would be nice to be able to drag the queen along, but honestly, it was difficult to drag a queen ant that was 3 meters in diameter and the size of a small tanker truck.

It would have been more advantageous to take the princess who had finished preparing for independence and conduct a pheromone analysis.

(That’s difficult.)

[Why?]

(Because my sisters and children are against it.)

[···You don’t listen even when I give you orders?]

(It’s a little different. For sisters and children, the thing that matters most is the group itself.)

Maru’s brow furrowed at the queen’s remark that ordinary ants think of the colony. So you’re going to be against handing over the princess to form a colony?

[What if I kidnap you?]

(The crowd will move to get it back.)

After a moment of thought, Maru nodded.

[Okay. I accept the ceasefire offer. Try contacting the other groups.]

(Understood. We will call a ceasefire by stopping the attack and retreating to the middle ground.)

Maru agreed with the queen ant’s thoughts.

Although the Queen’s Middle Territory included some Canadian territory that had been ceded to the Empire and then reclaimed, Maru coolly passed over.

‧

‧

‧

It was fascinating how ant colonies communicated with each other.

I wondered how they could convey messages without letters or sounds, but they did so using pheromones and antennae signals.

In addition, the communication speed was incredibly fast. The communication network using the wings transmitted the ceasefire proposal at an incredible speed, like falling dominoes.

And after a while,

The Holy Kingdom and the Ant Empire have agreed to a dramatic ceasefire.