Chapter 910

Chapter 910

It was surprising for the Son of the Queen to find himself still alive. At least getting off of Rotaire had been easy enough once the planet had been taken over, as they merely had to find their nearest allies. Humans were very useful for moving far.

The war was over officially. However, that didnt mean people like himself could rest. He wasnt going to be spying on their new planetary neighbors, not yet at least. But just because there were no major planets under control of these particular factions didnt mean they were completely gone.

Obviously humans were best equipped to find enemy bases and the like, and they could deal with those easily enough as they scoured the surrounding systems. But they had allies or at least potential allies still in a difficult situation. The faction that been the first ready to resist the insanity of the Void Scrying Sect and Twin Soul Sect mostly controlled smaller, less populated planets. And it was those planets that most likely still had Twin Soul Sect members hiding among them.

The Shimmering Spears had heard of spies among them, and perhaps they had managed to remove all of the problematic intruders but void ants could help quite a bit. All they had to do was take a little nibble of everyones energy, and they would know for certain who was tainted with the cultivation of a foul sect.

Unlike his previous mission, this was a joint effort between humans and void ants, so extraction would be much simpler. The only issue was that most of the local humans werent supposed to know they were there. That was because the Twin Soul Sect might choose to hide away if they thought void ants might be coming for them. Also the part where people were afraid of the void ants.

Which was silly, because the only threat void ants posed was potentially killing people, and humans did that to each other all the time. But humans were silly like that, so he didnt worry himself about it too much.

-----

It was weird to think how fast human ships were. Obviously they were blindingly fast when traveling around a planet, but between planets or especially between systems? The Son of the Queen couldnt comprehend it. A ship might go between planets in the time it took him to walk from the bridge to its storage at the back- though there werent many particularly large ships that were also fast.

The point was that it didnt take long, but it was long enough that void ants got restless just standing around. Humans too, but humans were better at relaxation.

Ultimately, the void ants filled the time by mixing among each other, not even really socializing but just meeting each other to recognize later. The Son of the Queen passed a particular other without much thought. He wasnt dismissive of this other ant, but she would not be giving him orders nor would he be receiving any from her. Thus, with her place in the power structure irrelevant, so was she as a whole. The same with most void ants, and they would think the same of him.

But something stopped him. She was small, as warriors went. Yet she exuded authority and confidence. The Son of the Queen himself had not been a particularly large void ant before, and now he still wasnt as big as the royal guard. Who was that? he asked one of the others. They didnt know, so he asked more until he found one with an answer.

Sergeant, she replied.

Oh. So not that important then. Wait. You mean the Sergeant? he replied.

-----

Chidi had grown quite used to having a handful of void ants riding around on him at all times. However, he could only stay with them for so long before he had to attend to other matters. Now that he had developed methods to pick them out better, he didnt find them so disconcerting. Most people could just see them, but he had to use his energy senses to search for nothing.

As for understanding the ants as an intelligent species, he didnt have trouble with that. After all, some of his earliest acquaintances and his current best friend were wolves. The potential for them to bite through his energy defenses didnt bother him as much as it might others, since hed probably gotten too used to placing his hands in between sharp teeth. Though in his defense, the first time he hadnt known that what he was feeling was Spikes mouth. That was why he was feeling it, after all.

Chidi couldnt sense the movements of void ants very well except in very particular circumstances. Those circumstances being when they used sword related insights to attack with their mandibles.

If Crossed Antennae had been hoping for a battalion of trained warriors, she was hiding her disappointment well. As it turned out, most void ants werent weird enough to want to try sword techniques, nor crazy enough to want to learn how to use poisons. As a group, they had taken in quite a bit of Aconites knowledge about poisons, but mostly for the sake of colony avoidance. Only a few very ambitious ones were learning to carry small packs of extremely condensed toxins.

Still, Chidi and Aconite had a handful of disciples each. Just because it was out of the rapidly growing population of void ants on their few planets didnt mean that the disciples werent still valuable as individuals.

The only weird part was that they didnt have or want names. So any names Chidi had for them were personal nicknames to differentiate them with Aconite. Snips and Chops were probably the best of the bunch. The others had certainly grown stronger in their own way, but Snips had cut a branch as thick as Chidis finger in half. Pretty impressive since her mandibles couldnt even fit around something that size. Also dangerous for anyone who got in her way. Chops was no less amazing in her own way, having carved a line in a stone with a single attack as long as Chidis palm.

Given their relative sizes, Chidi thought it wouldnt be long before they were doing the equivalent of cutting mountains in half. Assuming their growth continued, which might be difficult as they couldnt use energy. Only insights about cutting and the sharpness of their own tiny mandibles. Then again, they might also simply grow larger and maintain proportionately scaled attacks. If that was the case, if they could manage to get to even half of the size of the Great Queen then Chidi feared for their enemies' necks.

Was it ultimately valuable for the colony? That he was uncertain of. A few hundred traditional void ants would probably be a better combat force in the long run. Several standout individuals would hardly sway things either way, given the population explosions the void ants were experiencing.

But Chidi learned something. And Aconite as well. Not about negating energy, unfortunately, but trying to teach those quite different from themselves let them learn more about their own abilities. Chikere would doubtless be proud of him for making sharp ants. She had an indirect disciple in the lower realms that used a sword, and she was quite proud of that.

As for Aconites disciples, the best two she had named after two sorts of mundane ants that used venom. One was Bullet, the other Fire. Chidi didnt quite understand how their particular specialties differed. All he knew was that together they carried tiny packets of extreme danger on each others backs, and they could bite deep enough to reach a persons bloodstream directly.

Like all void ants, the actual danger of the tiny disciples was not that they could kill someone, but that they could kill anyone. With the potential exception of Augmentation and Domination cultivators, they would likely be equally deadly- and there was no saying that they couldnt take out the most powerful cultivators. It was just that the stronger a cultivator was, the more likely they had some sort of countermeasure or simply being fast enough was a solution. Cultivators didnt need to augment their damage against void ants, merely the speed. So even if a void ant might negate the extra impact force of an attack, they could still just be squashed normally as a palm nearly instantly reached them.

Still, Chidi could imagine them taking out some Integration cultivation cultivators by surprise, which would be a huge boon. Preferably ones who were planning to go to the lower realms and invade. That was what the colonies were all for, after all.