Chapter 115
Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 115
Chapter Title: Owner (5)
There was a reason Bee Lord never stepped outside the room.
He was observing Vanguard's group.
When he set out for Little Bee, he had brought a large number of ants with him.
There was a cluster of white ants. They were kept inside wooden boxes made of paulownia wood.
There were five such boxes.
It was as if he had prepared tracking tools capable of pursuing every single one of the seventeen stalk operatives.
In the main text, there were two more such boxes like these. And what he hadn't brought... there were five additional pine wood boxes prepared, one for each person.
The white ants in the paulownia boxes were called white elephant ants.
At first glance, they looked like ordinary ants, but two horns protruded from their heads like elephant tusks.
They weren't the kind of ants commonly found in the world.
They were called ants because their shape resembled them. They probably were a type of ant in reality. But their lifestyle and everything else differed greatly from ordinary ants.
Like regular ants, white elephant ants formed colonies centered around a queen ant.
Ants either lived in colonies in nests provided by the queen or wandered homeless. White elephant ants were neither—they fell somewhere in between.
White elephant ants lived in places filled with the queen ant's honey secretions.
If you gently pressed the queen ant's tail, yellow honey would flow out. Each queen produced exactly three bursts in her lifetime, which were placed into pine wood boxes to serve as their home.
The honey had to be placed specifically in pine wood boxes. They ignored boxes made from any other wood.
A queen ant laid tens of millions of eggs over her lifetime.
Once she grew old or lost her ability to lay eggs, the worker ants would drive her out of the nest or kill her. This was known as the queen purge.
White elephant ants did not perform queen purges.
The worker ants loyally served the queen until her death, then died alongside her.
The species propagated through the female ants.
Princess ants became queens and formed their own colonies. After completing their first flight, the princess ants shed their wings. That moment marked their independence from the colony.
And then there was another discovery... that queen ants could live inside a human body.
Ordinary ants needed to breathe to survive. Without air, they died.
Queen ants were the same. They needed to breathe. Thus, they lodged in the airways. They shared the host's breath and consumed portions of the host's food as needed.
They could no longer lay eggs. They merely survived.
The strange part was that even when the queen entered a human body, the worker ants could still detect her scent.
This led to the creation of the stalk sink ants.
Before a queen that had produced five or more princess ants grew frail, she was implanted into a stalk operative's body. The worker ants were confined in pine boxes filled with the queen's honey. Normally, the honey was stored in large vats as a queen substitute. When pursuit was needed, some was ladled into pine boxes, drawing the workers inside on their own.
However, honey was just honey.
When they caught the real queen's scent, they abandoned the pine boxes with the honey and rushed toward her.
Thus, the ultimate tracking technique was born.
The Heavenly Annihilation Division had a dedicated department managing only white elephant ants.
The red ants, blood demon ants, were natural predators of the white elephant ants.
Blood demon ants lacked horns like the white elephant ants. They looked identical to ordinary ants, only blood-red in color.
For some reason, whenever these two types met, they fought until one side was annihilated.
Moreover, blood demon ants didn't just hunt queens. They pursued and killed white elephant ants indiscriminately—queens and workers alike. The white elephant ants did the same.
Blood demon ants could be trained to react only to specific white elephant ants.
In other words, they could create blood demon ants that tracked only one implanted stalk operative.
This was the origin of blood demon ants specialized for Four Thousand Four.
Not only the queen inside Four Thousand Four's body, but even the scent of her loyal workers would make them boil with rage. The paulownia boxes would burst open.
Bee Lord observed the boxes' movements from inside Iron Ball Granny's room.
The white elephant ants ceaselessly reacted to the seventeen stalks. They thrashed as if ready to burst out at any moment.
There was nothing wrong with the white elephant ants.
Therefore, the blood demon ants should be fine too.
Tracking with white elephant ants had never failed. Not once.
Cleaners had failed before.
Even after orders from the main text, there were cases where stalks refused to give up their lives. In those instances, execution squads were deployed, but the stalks, having resolved to resist, fought desperately.
Sometimes they failed.
The tracking never failed, but the cleanup did.
Was this another cleanup failure? If so, then Four Thousand Four... if he was strong enough to foil One Light Flow... how did someone like that end up captured in the Nineteen Hells? With that level of martial prowess, he wouldn't have been caught. Capturing him alive would be a pipe dream.
"Ugh!"
A deep groan echoed through the small room.
"Examine it more closely. Even more meticulously. Assume someone has infiltrated and check."
"Who came?"
"I'm saying assume someone came. Inspect as if the enemy is nearby."
"Understood."
The order was given.
Now, it would spread to everyone in the village. From this moment, anyone heading to the mountains or fields would be on extreme alert.
'If Four Thousand Four is alive... No, even if he is, it doesn't matter. Four Thousand Four as Shadowless Wall? Absurd.'
Iron Ball Granny shook her head vigorously.
She knew Four Thousand Four better than anyone.
Four Thousand Four had been beaten bloody even by Jaja. It wasn't intentional mercy. The clear gap in martial arts left him unable to resist.
She had tested Four Thousand Four herself.
He couldn't block even a single strike. He tried his best, but couldn't handle her.
Her sole purpose in testing stalks was one: whether they could perform assassination duties. If marked for Volume Six, they had to fulfill that role; if One Scout, they needed scouting prowess.
She judged only that.
Four Thousand Four's martial arts were very weak, but his adaptability was exceptional, so she deemed him fit for assassination.
Honestly, many had infiltrated through Three Breaths, but Four Thousand Four was the only one to pass the Twelve Stems Formation.
And he did it by killing all the Twelve Stems assassins.
Four Thousand Four wasn't strong in martial arts. He killed with senses alone. Animalistic instincts... plus heaven-sent luck. Insanely fortunate.
But if he truly was Shadowless Wall...
There was no way, but if he was...
How to explain it? How to understand? He had no reason to hide his martial prowess.
An old village man ambled down the path.
He would stroll to the fork where it met the main road, then return, checking all his markers. Having heard of a possible intrusion, his walk would take twice as long.
'No way it's Four Thousand Four.'
Iron Ball Granny couldn't smooth her furrowed brow.
"Is it time to die?"
"You're glancing away mid-fight! Do I look that easy to you?!"
Screeech!
Jaja swung her sword ferociously.
Hanbi quickly retreated.
Not just defending Jaja's sword path... but far back, fully withdrawing from the battlefield.
Of course, Jaja didn't pursue.
This wasn't a life-or-death duel. It was just killing time, a desperate struggle against the fear of death.
"Doesn't it feel off?"
Hanbi said, scanning the surroundings.
It was quiet. No different from usual. Snow blanketed the mountains white, and the passing wind was cold.
"They come when it's time, go when it's time."
Jaja muttered dismissively.
"No. Something's definitely wrong."
Hanbi narrowed his eyes, scrutinizing the village.
"These people are extremely tense. If it's just the cleanup crew for us, they have no reason to be."
"Th...at's true."
Jaja belatedly frowned.
All the villagers had wide eyes. They moved casually as if nothing was amiss, but experts like Jaja could clearly read the tension.
"Looks like we have a guest."
"Might already be here."
Hanbi and Jaja stood side by side, looking around.
No one was nearby. Same as before or now. Utterly still.
"It's possible!"
The middle-aged man muttered, eyeing the blood demon ants.
Blood demon ants had never been deployed in actual combat. White elephant ants sufficed for tracking. They'd never even used all three prepared white elephant ants. Two at most perfected the cleanup.
Once cleanup ended and the stalk died, the remaining white elephant ants stopped moving. Specialized blood demon ants halted too. They all starved.
That had always been the case.
In short... they'd never used all three white elephant ants, nor deployed blood demon ants in the field. Only controlled indoor tests.
The field might differ.
What if the queen implanted in Four Thousand Four mutated unexpectedly?
They'd considered that. But workers outside the body shouldn't mutate. Yet if even they had...?
It explained why the lively blood demon ants weren't reacting.
What mutation had the queen undergone?
It wasn't related to implantation duration. Among the seventeen stalks, Vanguard had the queen longest. No mutation there. Workers boiled over.
'Should've brought all the blood demon ants.'
They needed to confirm if the queens in the seventeen stalks truly mutated.
No. No need to test.
The Heavenly Annihilation Division main text had plenty with queens longer than Vanguard's.
When they entered range, blood demon ants boiled, desperate to burst out. Their frenzy was obvious without opening the boxes.
Whether queens mutated needed checking... but realistically impossible. Yet without assuming that, the blood demon ants' silence made no sense.
Four Thousand Four was definitely nearby.
'One way to confirm if he's here or not...'
The middle-aged man twisted his lips into a grin.
Creak!
The door opened, and the middle-aged man emerged.
Iron Ball Granny followed.
No one had seen the man enter the house. Yet he appeared from inside.
Even stranger: a white-haired granny bowing respectfully to a middle-aged man who looked just over forty.
The man said,
"Still no thought of entering the main text?"
"Heh heh! Crowds make me nauseous."
"Plenty of people here too?"
"Senior Brother, just one word..."
"What?"
"Please stop the Rejuvenation Technique..."
"Don't like looking at it?"
"..."
"Hahaha! I'm off."
The middle-aged man glanced at Iron Ball Granny, then strode away briskly.
Iron Ball Granny stared vacantly at his retreating figure. Vanguard and the others watched the man curiously too... but no one dared speak to the man Iron Ball Granny respected. They could only watch him go.
'Who is he?'
It was the unanimous question.