Although the Red Ant–Black Ant Coalition Army had lost more than a hundred thousand troops, reinforcements had trickled in from their rear territories over the past two days, leaving them with a total force of more than five hundred thousand.
As for Rowan, with various newly matured bugs from his territory gradually arriving at the front, his total force had also grown to nearly three hundred thousand.
The gap between the two armies was slowly closing.
But the enemy finally came to its senses and stopped giving Rowan the chance to wear it down. It gathered its forces, ignoring the cleared underground passage and the harassment around it, and marched past the underground base in a mighty torrent, heading deep into the Swarm's territory.
Rowan hid on the trunk of a tree amid the vegetation, where the Coalition Army was about to pass. He made a rough estimate: the ratio of Red Ants to Black Ants in the Coalition Army had reached one to nine. The Red Ants, which had been at the vanguard, had already lost more than half their number at the entrance to the underground base.
Although their total numbers still exceeded five hundred thousand, their combat strength had shrunk considerably.
However, in the center of the army, Rowan spotted several enormous Red Ants. They were dozens of times larger than ordinary Red Ants, and their long, swollen abdomens gave them away: they were Red Ant queens.
Rowan hadn't spotted them when he'd scouted the area earlier. It seemed they'd arrived with the reinforcements from the rear over the past two days. And these Ant Queens could actually coexist peacefully. Was the Red Ant a species with multiple queens?
Still, the way they'd brought their whole household along struck Rowan as strangely familiar.
After a moment's thought,