CHAPTER 497: FIRE ANTS.

Once the mission to hunt the fire ants has been put on hold, nobody is allowed to hunt them. Anyone who does will have to pay a heavy fine.

The respite will allow their population to recover. In the meantime, disciples can hunt other creatures that inhabit the inner sect.

There are giant bees, giant boars, and giant spiders in the forest. There are also giant sand worms and giant lizards in the desert.

There are many other creatures available for hunting. They range from mammals and reptiles to insects. What all of them have in common is that they reproduce and grow quickly.

The sect wants to hone the fighting skills of their disciples. It is clear that they are willing to go to great lengths to achieve that goal.

His mission to hunt the fire ants required him to go to the lava and mountainous region. So his destination is the outskirts of this region.

He doesn’t need to reach the core of the region where the lava is. This is also the region where the lava fishes and the fire lizards that hunt them reside.

The fire ants also like lava. But they don’t like to swim in it like their neighbors. They live next to lava due to the heat that it provides. The heat helps to incubate and hatch their eggs.

As soon as he passed the energy barrier that separated the cool and humid forest from the hot and dry volcanic environment, he saw traces of the fire ants that he came to hunt.

There were many fire ants on the mountain slope. They were planting and tending to the special trees that they like to eat.

There were also fire ants tunneling in the ground or moving items back to their tunnels. As far as he could see, there were fire ants everywhere.

The foot of the mountain was littered with them and their tunnels. If he were scared of ants, the sight of them would make his skin crawl. The sight of their large, blade-like mouthparts might even make him faint.

Fire ants are red. He wasn’t surprised by that.

They have red carapaces that gleam in the light like metal. This is because their carapace is metallic.

They enhance their exoskeleton with the minerals they gain from eating rocks. This makes them very difficult to kill.

Not only are fire ants highly durable, but they are also large creatures. The smallest of them are the sizes of mortal dogs. These small ones are just rank 1. They are the workers.

On the larger side are the soldiers. These ones are the size of cars. They are rank 2.

These soldiers are not the biggest or the strongest kinds of ants available to fight. There are still the champions.

The champions are rank 3. Each one of them was specially enhanced by the queen.

The champions are the size of houses. As large as they are, they move faster than cars. If they collide with someone, it would be as if a train had collided with that person.

The rank 3 champions are his main objectives. They are the only ones that will earn him killing points.

He can kill the weaker ants. No one will penalize him for doing that, but the sect doesn’t encourage killing the weaker ants, which is why the killing points earned for killing them are little.

No matter how powerful the rank 2 fire ants are, he will only earn 1 killing point for 100 of them. Meanwhile, he can earn 10 to 100 killing points for one rank 3 fire ants.

So it would be a more efficient use of his time to to kill the rank 3 fire ants. This is how the sect discourages killing them. The sect does this because the rank 2 fire flies are needed to replace the rank 3 champions.

While he was observing them, the ants were also observing him. Not only that, but they had recognized his identity as an enemy and had begun to prepare for a fight.

The fact that they noticed him so quickly was inevitable. After all, he was riding a shining dog in the sky.

Apart from his identity as a disciple of the Blood Skull sect, they also had another reason to want to fight him. That reason also happened to be the reason he was so noticed so quickly.

A few minutes ago, a glowing dog had pestered them by dropping flash bombs on them. They had to call a champion over to rebuff the dog. Now the dog had returned for the second round and had even brought a helper.

Nothing he could say could convince the fire ants that he wasn’t their enemy. They simply had too many reasons to want to fight him.

After noticing him and determining that he was an enemy, they were also quick to react to his presence and produce a fighting front. Roar is also to be blamed for this.

Usually, a disciple like him would have a brief period of time to kill the fire ants uncontested after finding them. His sudden appearance would make it difficult for the fire ants to provide strong resistance to him quickly.

During the period that the fire ants were calling for reinforcements and escaping, he would be able to kill the weak ones quickly. But he wasn’t allowed to do this now because the fire ants had only recently repelled a great enemy.

Roar had teased them for a while and set them on edge. So he didn’t get to bully them as much as he wanted because the weak fire ants scattered and escaped quickly while a champion quickly appeared to send him away or kill him.

The once busy mountain slope quickly became deserted as Arthur watched. He saw this and said, "I guess I don’t have to decide if I want to spend my energy on the rank 2 fire ants before I fight the rank 3 ones."

He was being sarcastic, but Roar didn’t notice it. Roar just nodded in agreement and said, "Yes, yes."