Hunter: I became stronger even after I died.

Chapter 358 Malignant Reincarnation
Chimera ants are a first-level designated species for isolation.

What makes this species terrifying is that the queen of the chimeric ant can pass on the characteristics of other organisms to the next generation by eating them.

Therefore, it will consciously absorb the genetic material of stronger organisms and then eat that species to extinction, thereby ensuring the long-term survival of its own species.

According to the habits of this creature, the chimeric ant queen will constantly migrate according to her need for a habitat.

Once a dwelling place is chosen, the queen will continuously lay off large numbers of soldier ants, as well as building ants and miscellaneous ants for nest construction.

Once the queen deems the soldier ants sufficient to protect her dwelling, she will focus on preparing for the birth of the "king".

During this period, the Queen's food intake will increase dramatically, eventually reaching an astonishing level.

Initially, they may only consume food equivalent to twenty times their own volume, but their appetite will continue to increase, reaching about three hundred times.

This means that if the Queen were to eat humans, she would need to consume 300 people a day during her most vigorous feeding phase.

The birth cycle of a king is usually two months.

Once the king is born, the ant colony's hierarchical structure splits.

The queen will remain in the nest to continue feeding in large quantities in preparation for the birth of the next king.

After its birth, the queen ant travels and mates with various creatures to give birth to a new queen.

For a species to ensure its survival, its reproductive capacity is the most fundamental requirement.

Chimera ants are clearly among the best.

However, in the face of a complete human social system, the chimeric ant's reproductive advantage will be exposed immediately.

Because even setting aside the sudden disappearance of large numbers of people, the most basic issues of migration and settlement are difficult to ignore.

It's important to understand that while humans allow the existence of magical beasts, they maintain the highest level of control, including extremely strict regulations that restrict their activity areas and prohibit them from harming humans.

The Chimera Ant Queen's size and intelligence are enough to classify her as a monster, in addition to the Chimera Ant's own species habits...

If humans discover the migratory behavior of the chimeric ant queen, they will certainly eliminate it immediately.

in other words--

For the gigantic chimeric ant queen to safely survive the early stages of reproduction, there are only two possibilities:

One possibility is that they accidentally migrated to the demon realm, which is not under human control, without being discovered by humans, and reproduced by preying on creatures other than humans.

Second, without being detected by humans, we need to find a human society that simultaneously meets the conditions of non-mechanical civilization, prohibits the outflow of information, and is indifferent to large-scale population disappearances.

It is virtually impossible to expect an alien species that knows nothing about humans to do this.

However, if there is external intervention, the occurrence of this "coincidence" becomes very simple.

Because of the accelerated development of the project, Pariston quickly selected a unique stage for the Chimera Ant Queen.

This refers to an autonomous region called NGL located in the Mitne Federation that meets all the aforementioned stringent conditions.

Then, taking advantage of the manipulator's abilities, they directly implanted a false memory into the Chimera Ant Queen's head.

Using her teleportation-type Nen ability, she silently transported the Chimera Ant Queen into the NGL Autonomous Region.

So the Chimera Ant Queen, who had rapidly healed herself by eating Melena, began building her nest in the center of the forest near the teleportation point and preying on various creatures in the forest.

With no one to disturb it and plenty of food, the chimeric ant queen, with her amazing reproductive ability, built a nascent ant nest in the center of the forest in just one week.

The order of the entire ant colony has also basically taken root.

But not enough.

To expand their predatory range, the chimeric ant queen continuously spawns soldier ants.

The ninth day after the ant nest was built.

Countless building ants crawl back and forth above the nest, releasing a mixture of slurry and feces as they go, in order to expand the size of the nest.

at the same time.

Squads of soldier ants, centered on the ant nest, disperse in all directions like swarms of locusts.

These teams consist mostly of lower-ranking soldiers.

They are on par with the ants in terms of shepherd ants, and are also the most numerous.

Large-scale predation activities rely primarily on their numerical advantage.

However, in terms of genes and combat strength, lower-ranking soldiers only retain the genes of various creatures in the forest.

Therefore, they have low intelligence and rely more on commands and instincts to do things.

However, the chimeric ant queen's size advantage has been passed down to them, giving them the physical advantage to confront humans head-on.

The rank above a junior soldier is the army commander, who has inherited both human and forest animal genes.

Starting from this class, all soldier ants possess distinct human characteristics, including, most importantly, humanity and intelligence.

Furthermore, due to the residual human memory, they are born with the ability to master human language.

The chimeric ant army is structured around a division commander of about 50 ants.

Each division commander commands four to five army commanders.

Each army commander has 10 to 15 subordinate soldiers.

That is to say, the size of a soldier ant team, including the division commander, is usually around 50 to 70.

The chimeric ant queen will expand the soldier ant army to about 50 units, and then cultivate direct guards whose rank is higher than that of the division commander.

At that time, all our energy can be focused on the birth of the king.

Currently, there are only 23 soldier ant teams in the ant nest.

However, with the expansionary predation of soldier ants and the availability of high-quality prey such as humans.

Given an environment with abundant food and nutrition, the chimeric ant queen would likely be able to rapidly expand the number of soldier ants to 50.

Such a rate of reproduction and development is terrifying.

If the ant colony were allowed to devour all the humans in the entire NGL autonomous region, the consequences would be unimaginable.

Byron De, who was in charge of the plan, was certainly well aware of this.

Therefore, in order to prevent the situation from getting out of control, there must be an external force to break NGL's rule against information leakage.

This external factor is precisely the nature of the work of a wildlife hunter, which is beneficial to the natural environment.

As early as three years ago, Byangde initiated long-term commissions for some amateur and professional wildlife hunters under the guise of biological surveys.

Then, following this line of commission, at the beginning of the plan, this group of creature hunters were sent into the NGL Autonomous Region under the guise of work.

The mission of these "pawns" is to send the message out of NGL in time before the situation gets out of control, so that other countries can react and quickly form a regular punitive force.

To complete this step,
You can't put the pieces like the Biological Hunter in too early, but you also can't put them in too late.

If it happens too early, other countries will quickly take action against this biological disaster, thus nipping the threat in the bud without any pressure.

If it's too late, and the situation escalates to a point where V5 has to take it very seriously, then it will be difficult to obstruct or reduce Nitero's support, given that Nitero is leading the effort to resolve the issue.

How can we best seize this opportunity?
For Pariston, however, it was not a difficult task.

As the chimeric ant soldier ant army began to hunt humans indiscriminately in the NGL autonomous region, teams of biological hunters entered the NGL autonomous region one after another.

Because the NGL Autonomous Region rejects mechanical civilization and proclaims its reverence for nature, it is particularly welcoming to creature hunters.

Even though most of them were unlicensed amateur creature hunters, they could easily obtain entry permits. In just two days, nine creature hunter teams entered the NGL.

Only three of them are professional hunters: Pokkuru, Pons, and Barbara.

The three were licensed hunters in the same year and had similar professions.

Due to the nature of their work as creature hunters, the three of them each formed their own teams.

After all, most professional hunters who specialize in this field need to work in a team.

Therefore, both amateur and professional creature hunters will consciously form teams.

This leads to the fact that creature hunters operate in teams.

Furthermore, each team usually knows each other.

However, the fact that the teams of Pokkuru, Pence, and Barbara all converged on the NGL Autonomous Region was largely due to the high degree of overlap in their commissioned objectives.

NGL Border.

Barbara led her team to this place.

"I didn't expect so many colleagues to come to NGL together."

Before entering the country, Barbara already knew that four teams had entered NGL before her.

Of these four teams, two were ones she met while carrying out biological investigation commissions in Kakin, and the other two were Bokoo and Pons, who participated in the same Hunter Exam as her.

"Haha, quite a lot of them have come."

One of the team members chimed in.

Another member added with a chuckle, "However, the content and regions involved are different, so there shouldn't be any competition."

"If things really turn into a competitive relationship, who will have the leisure to appreciate nature?"

"Hey, we're here to work, not for vacation!"

"Oh, I was just saying it casually, why are you taking it so seriously? No wonder you're over thirty and still can't find a partner!"

"That was my choice to be single, okay?"

"Oh, really?"

The team members chatted amongst themselves, creating a relaxed and harmonious atmosphere.

This is typical for a team of creature hunters.

Everyone gathers together for the same purpose.

Therefore, the longer you work together, the more harmonious and profound your relationship will become.

Barbara glanced at her chatting and laughing companions, a smile playing on her lips, before handing over her entry documents to the border staff.

"Stop chatting and come over here."

After handing the documents to the border staff, Barbara turned around and called out to her companions.

"I'm coming!"

The companions walked over with smiles on their faces.

They were full of expectations for this mission, completely unaware of the consequences of crossing the border.

........................

A village in NGL.

"Haha, hunting humans is so much fun."

A squadron of chimeric ants is hunting down fleeing villagers.

The village was littered with the mutilated corpses of the elderly and children.

Judging from the extent of the damage to the corpses, these soldier ants were not hunting for prey at all, but were simply enjoying the pleasure of torture.

"Don't kill them all. If we don't meet the quota, we'll have to go even further to catch them."

"Haha, what are you afraid of?"

A chimeric ant army captain, with long, sharp tusks and a mix of wild boar and human genes, opened his blood-stained teeth and laughed loudly: "Humans, such inferior creatures, are as numerous as you want; we can easily gather enough numbers!"

“I think you’re getting a little too excited, Fergus.”

Another chimeric ant army leader carrying the pangolin gene clearly prioritized hunting metrics, and therefore disliked Fergus's hunting behavior, which was primarily for amusement.

Fergus easily pierced a fleeing villager with his sharp fangs, and seemingly sensing his companion's displeasure, he suddenly shook his head.

A snort.

The villager hanging from the fangs was instantly torn in two.

The sticky entrails splattered onto the ground, and warm blood splattered all over Fergus's pig face.

"Isn't it enough to just meet the targets?"

He slowly grinned, revealing a ferocious smile amidst his blood-stained face, and said, "Besides, Lady Morina herself said that we can slaughter humans to our heart's content. If you have any objections to this, then you'd better go to another team as soon as possible."

"..."

When the army commander named Casey, who possessed the pangolin gene, heard Fergus mention the division commander's name, he immediately suppressed his urge to object.

He could only turn around and, in a fit of rage, slam his thick, scale-covered tail heavily onto the ground, raising a cloud of dust.

He then directed several lower-ranking chimera ants to capture the scattered villagers as quickly as possible.

To ensure the freshness of their food, soldier ants typically use neurotoxins to subdue humans when hunting, and then bring them back to their nest.

When the Queen was ready to eat, the meat was slaughtered and chopped into meatballs.

Fergus's acts of cruelty and murder of humans were purely for his own pleasure.

This behavior, which wastes a lot of food and nutrients, is normally impossible to occur in chimeric ant colonies that have a high demand for food.

However, after chimeric ants incorporate human genes, they also inherit the dark side of human nature.

The higher the proportion of human genes in the body, the more pronounced this trait will be.

Moreover, even memories are inherited...

While NGL is ostensibly a non-mechanical civilization autonomous region that reveres nature, it actually uses this name to cover up its large-scale construction of drug manufacturing plants.

Therefore, when the chimeric ants expanded their predation range, the militants representing the dark side of NGL would naturally grab their weapons immediately to fight against these terrifying creatures.

Even with the aid of firearms, they were powerless to change their fate of becoming food.

Thus, when the ferocity of these humans was inherited with the birth of soldier ants, it naturally manifested in their daily behavior.

Judging from Fergus and Casey's personality traits, the former is very likely to have inherited the thug gene.

But regardless of whether their personalities are good or bad...

When human genes take control, the leadership and discipline that ants should possess will gradually be lost under the suppression of human nature.

However, for the Chimera Ant Queen, it doesn't matter what personality or autonomy her soldier ants possess, as long as they can accurately carry out the orders she gives, that's enough.

(End of this chapter)