Laws of the Insect Hive

The small insects that inhabit the ground are naturally able to sense earthquakes. In the past six months, a small earthquake occurred in the Liert Forest.

That time System happened to be in a deep sleep, but he was still awakened, and then he directed some of the ant people to escape from the nest.

However, the earthquake that time was actually not that big. The ground only shook a few times before it was over.

In fact, although his ant people were a little flustered, if System hadn't been too nervous to command, the ant people wouldn't have evacuated from the ant nest at all.

...

But this time, System and his ant people didn't feel any signs of the earthquake.

Even System's [intuition] was only slightly felt a few seconds before the earthquake.

The sudden earthquake was extremely strong, and the small meat ball next to System was like a bean on a hot pan, beating constantly because of the tremors of the ground.

The surrounding loose soil that was not frozen kept falling, and in less than a second, the connection between System's empty room and the tunnel of the nest collapsed.

[Spiritual Network] Activate!

System instantly activated the ability of [Spiritual Network] to connect the spirits of dozens of ant people within one meter.

System felt the panic and anxiety of the ant people. Several ant people also expressed pain, and two ants completely lost their movement during this period.

After that, accompanied by a strong sense of unease from [intuition], the empty room where System and the little meatball were located collapsed in the violent shaking, and System was also buried in the soil after a while. middle.

The magnitude of the shaking of the earthquake became larger and larger, and System faintly felt that the epicenter of the earthquake was to the west.

But there was no time for System to think about how the earthquake occurred. The violent shaking of the soil squeezed System's body and the small meat ball into the soil.

The trembling soil seemed to be boiling, rolling back and forth beside System.

System could feel the clicking sound of the exoskeleton on the wings on his back, and it was some frozen mud fragments that cracked his exoskeleton under the heavy pressure.

Even the pressure of this kind of soil caused some damage to him, and it was obviously unbearable for the ant people who had not pupated for the second time.

[Mind Network] There are more and more ant people in System who feel the pain, and nearly ten ant people have completely lost their movement.

It seems that most of the empty chambers of this underground lair have collapsed due to the sudden earthquake.

The strong vibration and shaking made System wrapped in the soil more and more tightly, and the breathing hole in his abdomen was also tightly wrapped.

If it goes on like this, even he will die of suffocation.

System swayed the surrounding soil with his tentacles indiscriminately. It took a lot of effort to make his abdomen touch a gap, temporarily losing the danger of suffocation.

But the violent tremors of the earth continued...

System felt that something was touching him around him. It turned out that the small meat ball changed shape and turned into a strange shape with several claws, and dug beside him during the earthquake.

...

The strong earthquake lasted for ten minutes, and System finally felt Shava's spiritual message when the earthquake ended.

After another three minutes, Shava, who was emitting a faint white light, finally broke through the soil and came to System's side.

"Little Meatball, follow the directions of [Mind Network] to rescue the injured worker ants. Shava, you and I go to Queen Linda's empty room to see the condition of those ant larvae and Queen Linda."

...

Nearly two hours of busy work, more than a hundred ants living three to five meters underground have basically been rescued by the ants.

The ants themselves are masters of digging. After rescuing an ant, the ant will immediately become a member of the rescue team.

Of the 127 adult ants in the entire nest, 67 ants, including the Knights of Ants, suffered no obvious damage, 19 were seriously injured, and the bodies of 17 ants were found by System.

Some of the remaining twenty or so ants may have been buried in the soil as corpses and have not been found. Others may have escaped the nest because they escaped from the upper layer of the nest, or were searching for food outside the nest when the earthquake occurred.

Through his [Teleportation], System could feel that a few worker ants were digging down above the nest that had not been fully dug through.

Compared with the adult ants, the 23 larvae of the ants in the empty room of Queen Linda were severely damaged.

However, although the ant queen Linda and the 12 ordinary ant pupae next to them were also squeezed, they all survived intact because of their hard shells and low requirements for breathing.

...

However, just as System led the ant team to save themselves and prepare to dig up and return to the ground, the ground trembled again.

Although it was not as violent as the first earthquake, System's ant people still got into a lot of trouble, and many ant people were buried in the collapsed soil again.

Fortunately, the aftershocks were not too strong, and his ant people basically did not suffer any casualties.

However, the aftershocks seemed to never stop, and every few minutes of rest, the tremors would continue for a few minutes, and the progress of System's excavation had also been stagnant.

System was also unable to transfer the ant people from the relatively dangerous underground to the ground...

Eight full hours passed, and after the aftershocks completely stopped at night, System took his ant people and dug from the ground to the ground covered with ice and snow.

System found the two soldier ants guarding the entrance of the cave and five worker ants digging from the top to the bottom. It seems that including the ant larvae, more than seventy ants were lost in this earthquake, including some Severely wounded is a dead ant population, and his ant population lost nearly half.

System did not pay attention to the ant people for too long. By digging through the gaps in the nest, System smelled a strange smell of gunpowder smoke, and found the orange fire in the sky, which was the direction of the Lilte Mountains. .

As System climbed out of the lair, the fallen trees and the broken and uneven snow-covered ground also came into view.

It seemed that the earthquake was much more severe than what he felt underground. Fortunately, there was no stratum fracture near his lair, otherwise the consequences would have been disastrous.

But compared to these, System's attention was all focused on the firelight coming from the west, as if it was what happened to the Liert Mountains.

In the direction of the Lilte Mountains, System found orange firelights in the sky and thick black smoke...

System spread his wings, and he found that there seemed to be more than a dozen active volcanoes in the Liert Mountains thousands of kilometers away. These active volcanoes erupted flames at the same time, and fiery red magma flowed from the Liert Mountains covered with ice and snow. down...