When Rowan returned to the Branch Base, he happened to see the Black Ants crawling out of the cave one after another.
They weren't just carrying food. They were also carrying out Insect Eggs, pupae, and larvae, and they didn't seem to have any intention of killing them.
"Could they be planning to adopt these larvae?" Rowan wondered.
At the same time, he noticed something else strange.
Only the Black Ants were working. The Red Ants stood by watching, without the slightest intention of lending a hand. They looked rather idle.
An uncontrollable thought popped into Rowan's mind. Could that half-joking idea from earlier actually be the truth?
He changed his pheromones to disguise his identity, then slowly edged closer, watching for their reaction and ready to run at any moment.
Fortunately, the pheromone disguise still worked on the Red Ants. They didn't react at all to Rowan's approach.
But for some reason, some of the Red Ants suddenly started fighting each other.
More than a dozen Red Ants grappled like wrestlers, their mandibles locked together as they struggled for dominance. A large circle of Red Ants gathered around them.
"Could this be their idea of entertainment?"
The minds of these little creatures were a bit muddled, and Rowan couldn't yet figure out their behavior.
To be safe, he didn't dare venture into the enemy ranks. If some idiot noticed his size and decided to test their strength against him, his disguise might be exposed.
He circled the enemy forces and discovered that all the ants, whether black or red, used the same form of identification.
That meant they were on the same side. The Red Ants weren't reinforcements that had been called in at all.
This discovery lent even more credence to his earlier suspicion.
A little while later,