"That's done." Helios sighed in relief after successfully pinning the giant ant to the wall with its own horn.
It is a difficult thing to incapacitate a strong foe instead of killing them when it will be much easier to kill them. The ant calmed down after realizing it couldn't get out easily.
"That should hold you down. If you're desperate enough, you can push yourself against the wall but the horn won't go out gently. It will rip a giant hole in your thorax. I doubt you can survive that. Even if survive it, you will not be strong enough to stop me anymore. Are you desperate to stop me?" He asked the royal guard.
He is still pinning the ant down with four arms. If the ant refuses then he will kill it. He already tried his best not to kill it. He doesn't have much time on his hands to spare.
Number 1 replied, "I am not that desperate. I have done the best I can do without endangering my life."
"That's good."
He took away his hands and stepped away carefully.
Number one said to him. "Tell them that I am sorry."
"You tell them yourself when you see them," Helios said as he turned away.
Then he picked up speed. He is running out of time. He knows that the demigods have run into the ambush prepared for them. He won't have much time to create trouble. Reinforcements are sure to be coming too.
He found his target. It is a giant open cavern with no worker or soldier ant in sight. The only giant ants here are the moldy royal guards.
"Or should I call them former royal guards?" He shouted but they didn't move.
The cavern is filled with these former royal guards that are sleeping. Their minds and body have been frozen by the fungi growing on their bodies. It is what they get for their disobedience to the queen.
Royal guards are created from mutant grubs that were fed the flesh of giants. The very first royal guard is always difficult to make, but once one has been made, it becomes easier to make others. That royal guard will be able to hunt giants and supply the colony with the flesh needed to create more. But nothing about managing royal guards is simple, easy, and cheap. Apart from the amount of giant flesh needed for them to evolve and feed, there is also the problem of insubordination.
Royal guards aren't like mindless workers and soldiers ants. They have a mind of their own and it is intelligent. It makes it difficult for the queen to control them. They won't risk their lives to obey the queen even when they are under her control. It gets worse when they decided that they've had enough.
So the queen created a sabotage protocol to control the royal guards. The protocol is a fungus that she implants into the body of the royal guards. She engineered the fungus specifically to target royal guards so it is very potent. The fungus is implanted when the royal guards are still young without a diamond carapace to protect them.
The fungus will attach its hyphae to the nerves of the royal guards and grow with them. This forms a connection between their minds to the queen through their nerves. It will allow the queen to have a strong hold on their mind. The fungi can easily go out of control, but the preventive method is a regular visit to the queen to have the fungi culled.
This necessity completed the doom of the colony. The presence of royal guards led to the creation of larger entrances and tunnels. Those giant tunnels don't need to reach the queen and endanger her, but the queen's control method of the royal guards necessitates that they come to her regularly for the fungi to be kept under control. If the royal guards can reach her, the giants can too. This created direct access to the queen for threats to reach her and sometimes the danger to the queen isn't worth it.
"All this for power. So unlucky." He commented as he began working on freeing the royal guards.
This is what he meant when he said the existence of the royal guards endangered their queen. The risk the queen is taking is understandable. Everything will be worth it too if the ant queen breakthroughs to transcendence. But the gods of the plane have been known to crack down heavily on transcendents of other races. If a race can't have transcendents, they can't have gods and they will never amount to much in the plane. This ensures that the supremacy of giants of Order remains uncontested.
Since the queen isn't transcendent, she has a limit on her control of the royal guards. They are mana entities just like she is. It is only because of her position in the hierarchy that she can control them and even that is very difficult. Sometimes, they become willful even with the fungus in them and decide to be independent.
The ant queen loses control of the willful ones. They get independence for a while before the fungus goes out of control and freezes their nerves because they don't go to the queen to update her control. They know that going to the queen to cull the fungus means they will remain under her control.
It's not like the queen likes what she is doing either. The royal guards want independence and she wants power to gather enough resources to become a transcendent. The giants of Order are in total control of the plane so the queen needs a group of ants that can fight them. It is the natural order of the world made manifest by competition and survival of the fittest.
"This should do it." He said as he created a ball of fire.
Fire burns a lot of things and one of those things that are especially susceptible to flames is fungi.
