What took place next was the most horrifying chase she had ever been subjected to. Iyo’Karag was fast, very fast, and although she was slightly faster than him at max speed, Iyo’Karag’s acceleration, deceleration and overall agility were just too unfair. It had taken her much more time to reach max speed than he did and in that time she had suffered a few injuries that had managed to breach her defences. Iyo’Karag was powerful.
He was in the 1st Stage like her but his magical might surpassed hers greatly. Long ranged attacks were typically weaker than close range ones if you didn’t charge them, and yet Iyo’Karag’s fire projectiles had managed to cause her notable damage.
But although that had been painful, that wasn’t what had been so terrifying. No, the real scare had been when all of a sudden, Queen Ants had begun to fly in her direction with other castes of Ants marching below. They had to be Virgin Queens since the mated Queens mostly spent their time giving birth, but it still didn’t make sense.
The Queens had not been weak, with a few of them being in the 4th Realm, but how could there be a 4th Realm or even 3rd Realm Queen that wasn’t mated? Moreover, she found it inconceivable that they would fly out to attack her without any regard for their lives when they were usually so protected. In fact she had never even seen a Queen Ant before that moment because mated or not, none of the royal castes were something that could be easily sighted. Every Ant took their safety very seriously and they were kept away in very secure locations.
So how could they suddenly become so free to see that a bunch of them would fly out to attack her like lackeys? Also, weren’t they supposed to have much bigger abdomens? Their primary duty was to lay many eggs a day and it was said that they looked like it. And yet, the abdomens of these Ants hadn’t been too different from Iyo’Karag’s, although the ones in the 4th Realm had seemed more bulkier than him, something that also conflicted with her knowledge about the Queens.
Were they even Queens?
They seemed to fit the description of the royal guards more than Queens. She didn’t know the specific name of their castes but there were a few rare castes that were dedicated to working for the Kings and Queens, the Empress too obviously.
Naturally as a result of that there was not much that was known about them, but she had been told that none of them had wings. Only the drones, Queens, Kings and Empress did. Had that been a lie?
Perhaps, but lie or not, whatever those ants were, they were flying and they had all launched attacks at her as soon as they were close enough. They had all been fire attacks because the earth and magma attacks were too slow to be used in such a high speed chase, and for that she had been lucky.
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But still, the next few hours had been the 2nd most terrifying moment of her life. Having had to repeatedly dodge attacks, she had been forced to drop her speed again and again, never gaining the chance to reach maximum speed. Inevitably, this kept her in sight of her pursuers with no chance to ditch them.
They didn’t even stop when she left the Burning Nines, and it was during this chase that she truly discovered how vast the territory of the Blazing Ant Supercolony was. After all, whenever she passed a branch nest with sufficient strength, they would somehow detect what was going on and join the chase as if they had been lying in ambush the entire time.
Thankfully, whatever caste of Ant was chasing her wasn’t high in number, otherwise things would have been over for her. She could just imagine the scene of being surrounded by thousands of ants that covered the sky and it was a terrific thought.
Speaking of scary thoughts, she hated to think about what would have happened to her if she was a land-bound creature that couldn’t fly.
One had to use their imagination to conjure the sight of thousands of ants covering the sky, but that had been the actual reality on the ground below. Hundreds of thousands of ants crawling across the land, following her trail and waiting for the moment she became tired and fell to the ground. Petrifying.
What’s more is that for some reason they had begun to emit smoke as if they were burning, and the more ants there were the more smoke there was, creating a horrific scene that she would not soon forget.
Flying above had been scary and difficult, but it had been a haven compared to what had been going on below.
Fortunately she didn’t have to experience it. But not everyone had been that lucky. There had been innocent bystanders that she had flown past in her quest to escape and she was pretty sure that every land creature that had been caught up in the path of the ant army were dead. There was no hope for survival. And all this because she had refused Iyo’Karag.
It didn’t make sense to her. Why had they pursued her so crazily? She could understand the appeal of a new unique Ant Queen but did they have to go that far? They had kicked up a fuss across half of a Major Continent just because of that? How had they even communicated with each other to start such a thing?! Nothing made sense!
In fact, the only reason she had escaped is because she would eventually cross into the territory of… the Humans. If not for that, she would have eventually fallen into the waiting mandibles of the Ant army. She probably wouldn’t have been killed considering their goal, but with the way they had been acting you would have never believed it.
Perhaps she had hurt their pride by running away for so long, and some way along the line their goal had switched form capture to extermination. You never know.
Anyways, the land of the Humans. Haha. It was actually in this place that she would experience the greatest fright of her life.