The shadow clone instantly flicked a kunai straight at the massive ant's head. But as the projectile closed the distance, it began to shrink rapidly, dissipating into absolute nothingness before it could even connect.
What just happened?
Before the clone could process the bizarre phenomenon, the ground beneath its feet erupted once more. The three-tailed giant serpent had snapped out of the genjutsu and locked onto its target again. This time, the gargantuan tail offered no room for evasion, slamming brutally into the clone's raised guard. The sheer kinetic force of the blow was overwhelming. Unable to withstand the impact, the clone dispersed into a cloud of white smoke mid-air.
The giant ant watched the spectacle, a flicker of confusion passing through its eyes. Its swollen abdomen twitched slightly, as if the entity gestating within also sensed something amiss.
Miles away, the true Ronin, who had yet to reach the cavern, instantly received the flood of visual and sensory data returning from the dispersed clone. The distended abdomen was a dead giveaway, signifying its supreme status as the Chimera Ant Queen. After all, within the entire Chimera Ant hierarchy, only the Queen possessed the ability to reproduce.
Yet, despite having zero trace of Nen, it wielded an ability that rendered it utterly immune to attacks. Either the Queen had forged a terrifying set of Vows and Limitations, sacrificing all offensive power for absolute, specialized defense—which made sense. As long as the Queen survived, she could birth an infinite army. Or, the second possibility: she genuinely couldn't use Nen at all, and some other entity was protecting her. An entity that the shadow clone had failed to detect entirely.
Ronin leaned heavily toward the latter. The Queen truly didn't seem to possess any aura of her own. However, her ability to use telepathic communication made him second-guess himself. According to his knowledge, even a highly intelligent Queen lacked the biological traits to communicate with humans; at best, she could only use telepathy to issue commands to her own progeny. Whatever this entity was, it clearly defied everything he thought he knew about Chimera Ants.
As for the three-tailed serpentine ant, Ronin barely gave it a second thought. It might be one of the den's elite guards, but its presence felt utterly insignificant compared to the crushing dread of Royal Guards like Neferpitou from the original story.
Why is this timeline so skewed?
Ronin quickly relayed his findings to Mashuel and Vanessa. Unfortunately, their knowledge regarding Chimera Ants was virtually nonexistent, leaving them unable to offer any meaningful insight.
"If you really think this 'guard' isn't as strong as you feared, we could just head over there and test the waters ourselves," Mashuel suggested.
Ronin was conflicted. While the snake posed little threat, the hair-raising chill his clone experienced the moment it neared the cavern entrance demanded his utmost caution.
"Based on the timeline, Bencot's group should be closing in on that cave soon," Ronin said, holding off on a final decision. While the clone was infiltrating the perimeter, the main squad had already marched past the trio's hidden position. Ronin, Mashuel, and Vanessa had masked their presence perfectly, ensuring the vanguard remained blissfully unaware. Furthermore, the path ahead had been thoroughly cleared and agro'd by the shadow clone's earlier rampage. The remaining stragglers wouldn't be enough to halt Bencot's advance. In fact, the devastation left behind by the clone effectively obscured the fact that Ronin's trio was now trailing from the rear.
Mashuel and Vanessa weren't exactly bleeding hearts. Since Bencot and his team were so eager to push forward and play detective, the mercenaries were more than happy to use them as canaries in the coal mine. Anyone who stepped foot into this Beast Den had already accepted the risks. Besides, if things truly went sideways, the trio lurking in the shadows might just be the trump card needed to pull the squad back from the brink.
Bencot was indeed still leading the charge, though the sudden desertion of Ronin's trio and the reveal of the Chimera Ants had briefly rattled his pacing. He had also noticed the glaring anomalies in the creatures. The resident biology expert, after examining the two ant corpses Ronin had left behind, proposed a working theory.
The evolutionary path of this specific colony had seemingly diverged entirely from the standard Chimera Ant species. Phagogenesis typically allowed the Queen to consume different species and meld their genetic material into the next generation. Yet, the traits exhibited by these ants leaned heavily toward arachnids. Thick, bristly legs, clusters of compound eyes, and spinnerets located on their abdomens—all eerily similar to the grotesque spiders that had swarmed the underground city earlier. The primary catalyst for this stagnation was likely a localized, homogenous food source.
Interestingly, the tiger-like beasts and giant scorpions roaming the ecosystem possessed biological markers completely incompatible with the ants. It appeared the Queen couldn't assimilate their DNA. In fact, when someone had tested a flamethrower on the feral beasts, they ignited like dry tinder. This meant these creatures were likely plant-based bio-constructs, similar to the wooden monsters spawned by the giant tree in the underground ruins. And the Chimera Ants simply couldn't digest or integrate botanical genetics!
"If they are evolving, it's highly probable that they've been feeding on the human explorers who stumbled into this zone after the ruins were unsealed," the expert deduced, piecing the puzzle together.
"But the steles in the Blood-Red Forbidden Zone mentioned the Kurta Clan's trials. They must have entered this exact space," Bencot pointed out, leveraging his superior intel. "If the ants had hunted down the Kurta, shouldn't they have rapidly evolved centuries ago?"
He was well-versed in the secrets of the Kurta Clan ruins hidden in the rightmost corridor. After all, it was his own squad that had extracted the steles containing the Kurta Clan Prayer and handed the translation over to Ronin.
"I have no idea," the expert shrugged. "Perhaps there's a deeper secret at play. Maybe the Kurta weren't here for trials at all, but for a completely different purpose? We still haven't located the botanical source—the 'giant tree'—that's allegedly churning out these combustible monsters. It doesn't add up, especially since the massive waves we fought earlier were composed entirely of them."
Bencot fell silent. The Mahavi Ruins were still hiding far too many secrets. And it was their job to drag every last one of them into the light.
A heavy drone descended from the sky. Flying ants. The winged squadron had poured out of the cliffside fissures near the cavern, swarming aggressively toward the trail of carnage left by the shadow clone!
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