An unnamed forest.
Three Lion-Ant-Bees moved forward slowly. One Lion-Ant-Bee suddenly struck, flicking out the crystal in its hand and hitting a monkey hiding in a tree. The monkey let out a miserable cry and swiftly fell to the ground.
The attacking Lion-Ant-Bee stepped forward, bent down to pick up the monkey, and flung it behind itself. The monkey's corpse flew several hundred meters, landing squarely on the back of a massive beetle.
The enormous beetle's back was covered in densely packed spikes. The monkey was impaled on one of them, while countless other corpses—human and animal alike—were skewered upon the rest. Blood trickled continuously down the beetle's shell and dripped onto the ground.
The Lion-Ant-Bees continued onward. They were actually only the lowest-grade worker soldiers. Though their combat power was terrifying to most creatures, their true task was not fighting, but searching for food.
Though Lion-Ant-Bees were extraordinarily unnatural creatures, the sort that grew stronger the more they fought as a whole, they still needed energy to become stronger. Without sufficient energy, the Emperor Insect could not produce more powerful Lion-Ant-Bees.
From a certain perspective, a world's resources already limited just how strong the Lion-Ant-Bees could become. If properly controlled, there was no need to worry about them running rampant through the myriad heavens.
Of course, if something went wrong and control over the Lion-Ant-Bees was lost, it could still bring about a massive disaster.
The three Lion-Ant-Bees slaughtered continuously, hunting down vast amounts of food. Gradually, they spread apart, keeping at least a hundred meters between one another. One Lion-Ant-Bee passed through a patch of grass and walked by a tree, never noticing a flash of green light across its bark, as though the bark had turned into a mirror.
The Lion-Ant-Bee locked onto a rabbit ahead, failing