He stood shocked for a good minute with his eyes shaking wildly, which was already a bit of an overreaction, but then opened his mouth as if to say something but no sound came out. He closed his mouth, reopened it and even held a hand to his chest as if he was in pain, but still he didn’t say anything.
For a good while he would repeat the action of opening and closing his mouth, looking like he was choking on something that was clogging his breathing. Honestly it was quite concerning.
But then all of a sudden he snapped his teeth together with a ferocious *tak!*, spun around and stomped away. “Leave me alone, Beast!” He had viciously roared.
Bellatrix could only watch with a bewildered expression.
To say that she had been surprised would be putting it too lightly. She hadn’t expected such a crazy reaction, and she consoled herself with the very possible thought that the boy might have a few issues that the Elven kingdom didn’t need, when she eventually left to head deeper into the Blazing Nines.
She continued to investigate the different rings, striking up conversations whenever she felt necessary by utilising her charm, spying on unique creatures/resources and altogether learning about the whole situation. It was during this time that she learnt just how much she had underestimated the Ants. Not that it was hard to find out; They certainly weren’t hiding, and just the sight of even 4th Realm life forms like her avoiding a group of 3rd Realm Ants was heart-stopping to say the least.
She would even later witness a 3rd Realm Ant arrogantly summoning a 4th Realm Salamander as if the little thing couldn’t be crushed by a single bite, and yet the Salamander humbly obeyed without fuss! Horrifying!
It was after seeing that that she thought she might have been too careless with her decision to come so close, the 3rd Ring to be specific. She wanted to retreat, especially since she knew that she was drawing attention with her unique appearance, powerful cultivation and most importantly her water affinity. But she didn’t want to quit so easily.
Nevertheless, she chose to go on in a far more discreet manner. She was already discreet before but now she was practically living in the clouds, only coming down occasionally to make inquiries and leaving the Blazing Nines entirely whenever she needed to rest.
Alas, it didn’t last long before she herself received an unexpected summoning.
She had been floating in the clouds, deep in thought, when all of a sudden she noticed a powerful presence steadily approaching her location. The aura belonged to an entity in the 4th Realm and that was not someone who could be ignored. However, she initially kept calm, after all, although it was strange that she had been found, there wasn’t much that she was really afraid of.
At most, it would be another conversation, and at worst, she would have to fly away. Her charm was very good at defusing hostility most of the time. Although it could sometimes have the opposite effect if she wasn’t careful, she wasn’t an inexperienced child anymore.
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But only a short moment later, her indifference to the approaching entity melted.
The being that had been approaching was none other than a Blazing Ant, and it had wings. That would mean it was either a male drone… or a Queen. But it couldn’t be a Drone if it had cultivation that advanced. She had obtained a lot of information concerning the Ants and knew about the various castes, especially the more important ones.
Apparently, there were only 3 castes of Ants that had wings.
The first was a Queen Ant. They were born with wings but shed them off whenever they got mated and started their own colonies. However, if they entered the 4th Realm and gained the rights to be called a Supreme Queen, they would evolve and regain their wings. But the wings would be incomparable to the former; Not much was known to the general public but it was said that the wings could absorb Mana, could assist in amplifying magical attacks, and could even be used as effective shields. They were called Supreme Wings.
The Empress of the Blazing Ant Colony had been the first to evolve upon entering the 4th Realm, gaining her Supreme Wings and setting a path for all those who shared her blood. However, hers were allegedly different from the Supreme Wings that her descendants had, and everyone else called them Empress Wings. Whether that was out of respect or a real thing could not be known. Nobody dared to fight her and test out her abilities.
The second caste of ant that had wings was of course the male drone. Their sole purpose was to mate with a virgin Queen during the mating season nuptial flight and start a new colony, shortly afterwards they died. Apparently they could cultivate like anyone else and the higher their cultivation the longer they could survive after mating, but their cultivation talent was just too low to take into consideration.
On the bright side, they were taken care of because the better their cultivation, the better the resulting hatchlings as well. It would be too cost effective to nurture all of them to a high cultivation but a few of them did receive that treatment and they would go on to start powerful named colonies. (A named colony is a branch colony that was strong enough or useful enough to be named by the Empress).
Finally, the 3rd Caste of Ant that had wings… was the Ant Kings. The rarest caste of the Blazing Ant Supercolony. They had the strongest fighting and cultivation talent below the Empress, they didn’t shed their wings and instead got a 2nd pair of wings (the Supreme Wings) at the 4th Realm, they were rumoured to have ‘terrifying intelligence’, and most importantly, they not only had the ability to impregnate females from other races (unlike the Ant Queens who could only get impregnated by an Ant Drone or Ant King), but the resulting child will always be born as an Ant Queen with characteristics inherited from the mother.
The only downsides to the Ant Kings was that they were just too rare, with only about 30+ of them in existence compared to the thousands of Queens, and that whether they were impregnating a female from another race or a fellow Ant Queen, they would only give birth to 1 female Ant Queen.
An Ant Queen would not be able to store the semen of an Ant King like she could with a Drone, so there would only be 1 birth. Naturally, it was inefficient for the Kings to mate with Queens since all it did was produce another Queen, so it wasn’t done a lot and not much was known as a result.
But there was all sorts of information and rumours about special branch colonies that had been started by the daughter of a King and a female from a unique and different race.
And as the 4th Realm flying Ant got closer to her, she soon noticed the presence of 2 sets of wings. The hallmark of a Supreme Ant King. And as far as she was aware, the only one currently in existence.