Hunter of Mysterious Creature

Chapter 865 - 103: Annihilation of the Convoy

"Sorry, old friend." Sitting in the White Tiger’s cockpit, Nagano Souta let out a sigh, reached out to grab the iron chain tied to the metal crate, then loosened the hand that had been holding onto the heavy trailer.

"It’s been an honor to serve under you." The accountant’s relieved voice came through the comms channel, followed by a dull gunshot.

The heavy trailer’s speed suddenly dropped, falling behind the White Tiger that was still gliding at high velocity. Then the trailer skidded sideways, flipped, rolled several times, and slammed heavily into an armored off-road vehicle rushing up from behind.

With a thunderous bang, flames shot into the sky. Innumerable flesh-eating ants frenziedly gnawed on the blazing corpses in the fire—they did not feel pain, did not fear death, and had no sense of self. The sole mission for which they had been hatched was to extract as much biomass from this world as possible and deliver it to the Queen hidden deep within the nest.

The Dragon City Defense Army had once launched two "extermination operations" in this area—the first operation deployed dozens of bunker-buster bombs, directly killing the Queen located deep in the nest.

The second extermination operation used drones to pour large quantities of gel-like incendiary mixed with oxygen down those shafts into the nest, burning it clean.

But it was useless. After only a short period of time, the flesh-eating ants would reappear in this region and once again proliferate into a massive colony.

Researchers discovered that once the Queen died, the strongest surviving flesh-eating ant would immediately undergo mutation and turn into a new Queen.

At first, the researchers thought this was due to some kind of pheromone, but they soon found that this mutation had nothing to do with pheromones. Even if the surviving flesh-eating ant was far away from the nest, it could still sense the Queen’s death and complete this "inheritance-style" mutation.

This seemed to be an underlying logic embedded in the flesh-eating ants’ memetic layer—these flesh-eating ants were more like a single entity than a group of organisms, and the so-called Queen was not the leader of the colony, but rather the reproductive organ and energy-matter storage organ of this whole.

Later, the researchers came up with a method: instead of directly killing the Queen, they captured and contained her—this way, the Queen would not die and trigger the birth of a new Queen, and at the same time, the growth in the number of wild flesh-eating ant colonies could be curbed to the greatest extent.

But forty-two hours after the flesh-eating ant Queen was contained, all of her bodily functions failed. No matter what methods the research team used, they could not save her... and at the same time, a new flesh-eating ant Queen appeared in the desert once again.

"Aside from death, if a flesh-eating ant Queen is unable to properly perform the tasks of concentrating biomass and reproducing normal flesh-eating ant individuals, the Queen will die on her own, thereby allowing a new Queen capable of executing these tasks to be born among the remaining flesh-eating ants. Therefore, relying solely on controlling the Queen cannot control the entire flesh-eating ant population." — Excerpt from Chapter 6, Paper 14 of the Flesh-Eating Ant Research Report.

"To exterminate the entire flesh-eating ant population, every single flesh-eating ant must be killed. In fact, given the current situation of the Federation Government, we believe there is no need to do this. Flesh-eating ants almost never leave their inherent territory in the no-man’s-land of the Hexi Corridor. According to the results of the third special experiment, even if a flesh-eating ant Queen is released in another location, she will try every possible means to return to that region. For this reason, we can conclude that this uncanny entity currently has almost no impact on human civilization." — Excerpt from Chapter 1, Paper 16 of the Flesh-Eating Ant Research Report.

"Dr. Carlton believes that there may be a special uncanny entity beneath the territory of the flesh-eating ants, and it is precisely because of this uncanny entity that the flesh-eating ants remain entrenched in that area. We organized three survey missions for this, mobilizing all the resources we could muster in Dragon City, yet still found nothing. Chang’an suggested we terminate this research project on the grounds that flesh-eating ants have no research value. Dr. Carlton insisted on continuing the research. Chang’an did not overrule Dr. Carlton’s request but did stop allocating funds to this project." — Excerpt from Paragraph 4 of the Supplemental Document on the Flesh-Eating Ant Research Report.

"The Dragon City Defense Army agreed to Dr. Carlton’s request. Mr. Xv believed uncanny entities should be eliminated, and that wiping out the flesh-eating ants could at least open up a safer route in the no-man’s-land. (Note: Mr. Xv is a hawk within the Dragon City Defense Army, firmly believing that the military should not passively hold Dragon City, but should take the initiative, reclaiming the Hexi Corridor no-man’s-land, which in essence is now no different from the Surrendered Area.) But after three special military operations, the soldiers discovered that flesh-eating ants deliberately buried their eggs in every corner of the desert. Even if every flesh-eating ant within the territory were wiped out, those hidden eggs would immediately hatch and give rise to a new Queen. They’re like cockroaches—impossible to kill off completely. Dr. Carlton requested that the City Defense Army continue to cooperate with his research and promised that he could use memetic-level techniques to eradicate these bugs entirely, but the City Defense Army refused." — Excerpt from the diary of Dr. Carlton Noren’s assistant, a Level III encrypted file.

After learning that Nagano Souta’s convoy had been wiped out by flesh-eating ants, Candle Dragon couldn’t help but sigh and say, "This is the norm for a Free Hunter... Many people think Free Hunters are like the espers in novels, not only possessing all sorts of abilities far beyond ordinary people, but also able to easily use those abilities to earn rewards far higher than ordinary wages. But in reality, being a Free Hunter is absolutely a high-risk profession. Death is an everyday occurrence for them... I used to know quite a few Hunters operating around Dragon Gate, but less than one in ten are still alive now... A lot of Hunters actually regret it not long after they leave the job, but trying to become a registered Hunter again is far harder than going from registered Hunter to Free Hunter. Ninety-nine percent of Free Hunters can’t meet those conditions."

"Don’t I see plenty of Free Hunters living the good life?" Sun Hang asked.

"That’s just survivor bias. Hunters like these, who get eaten by flesh-eating ants or die in Giant Hill, people living in the inland will never know their stories," Candle Dragon said. "Only that tiny handful of the strong or the lucky will have their stories spread by word of mouth."

"Although those Hunters eaten by flesh-eating ants are quite pitiful, this can be regarded as a kind of natural selection. If they can’t even deal with an uncanny entity like flesh-eating ants, going to Egypt with us would only hold us back... and they might die even more miserably." Sun Hang said calmly. "Candle Dragon, do you think this kind of assessment is a bit too cruel?"

Candle Dragon: "This world has always been cruel."