Chapter 183: The Final Victor
The reason Joo Joowon had entertained such thoughts earlier was entirely because of his own weakness.
Deep down, he instinctively believed that others would eventually surpass him.
That was why he had wanted to eliminate potential threats before they could grow.
For the queen ant, however, the situation was entirely different.
He was like an emperor of ancient times.
As long as the emperor remained healthy and strong, no one could rebel against a ruler who held absolute centralized authority.
Naturally, he had no reason to fear capable offspring.
Under the influence of the pheromones, the final round of the competition quickly came to an end.
Only a little more than one hundred female ants remained.
This time, the queen ant no longer needed to urge them onward.
Without the slightest hesitation, they all rushed toward the crystallized heart and instantly burying the bright crimson crystal beneath their bodies until it looked as though a layer of black moss had grown over it.
The slaughter, however, did not end because of this.
Every one of them wanted to obtain a larger share of the resource.
As a result, rather than coexisting peacefully, the victorious female ants immediately began fighting each other directly on top of the crystallized heart.
Some of them rapidly tore off their own wings before punching and kicking the other survivors around them.
There seemed to be a difference in physical ability between winged and wingless female ants.
After shedding their wings, their strength appeared to increase noticeably.
Compared to the battles in the air, they now relied much more heavily on their legs.
Ants were capable of lifting objects more than four hundred times their own body weight.
Their physical potential was undoubtedly astonishing.
After discarding their wings, their fighting became even more brutal.
Some grabbed their own kind and smashed them around like stones.
Others swung them like giant hammers and treated their fellow ants as food.
Joo Joowon had originally thought that the remaining hundred or so female ants were already the final victors.
In reality, by the time the crystallized heart had been completely devoured, only a little more than a dozen female ants remained on the spot.
Moreover, these surviving female ants still stared greedily at one another, clearly intending to devour the rest so that every bit of energy contained within the crystallized heart would belong to themselves alone.
It was a somewhat unexpected ending, yet at the same time, not unexpected at all.
Since ancient times, the distribution of benefits after victory had always been far more likely to spark conflict than the struggle itself.
This held true no matter the race.
The only exceptions were groups like wolf packs, where the internal hierarchy had already been firmly established.
Weaker wolves simply had no right to object if the distribution was unfair.
These female ants, however, were all beings of the same rank.
None of them accepted the authority of the others.
Naturally, unequal distribution of benefits was inevitable.
The queen ant clearly had no intention of allowing them to continue fighting.
A wave of Mental Power spread out from the nest once again.
The momentum of the dozen surviving female ants immediately faltered.
They instantly abandoned their confrontation and scattered in different directions.
According to the ant documentaries Joo Joowon had watched in the past, when starting a new colony from nothing, several princess ants would usually work together to construct the nest.
Once the nest had been completed, the queen ant with the strongest pheromones would command the workers to eliminate all the other queens, allowing the colony to fall completely under her control.
The worker ants and soldier ants born from the defeated queens would not resist this outcome.
They would simply submit to whichever queen possessed the strongest pheromones.
Now, however, these female ants had no intention of cooperating for mutual benefit.
Each of them tacitly chose a different direction and departed alone.
Before the apocalypse, princess ants worked together because they lacked the strength to survive independently.
Now, however, that limitation no longer existed.
They were still too young.
They had yet to understand that the rules passed down through countless generations had never existed without reason.
Joo Joowon was convinced that once they left the nest, he would not be the only one waiting to make a move.
After consuming the crystallized heart, the bodies of these female ants were no longer small.
Each of them had reached roughly the size of a human fist.
Unlike ordinary ants from the past, they were no longer inconspicuous.
Naturally, this also made them far more likely to attract predators.
Joo Joowon already had a target in mind.
Without the slightest hesitation, he followed one of the female ants.
To guard against failure, however, he also planted Mental Power marks on the other female ants as well.
As for whether those marks would eventually be discovered, he left that entirely to fate.
After all, these female ants seemed to possess fairly high Mental Power themselves.
The one he had chosen to follow was the largest female ant among the survivors.
He had begun selecting potential targets while they were still fighting and had already prepared several backup options.
In the end, this particular female ant had successfully fought its way through the competition.
This female ant was not especially intelligent, nor was its Mental Power particularly high.
When the queen ant’s Mental Power had first spread outward, the more spiritually gifted female ants had all remained around the outer perimeter.
This one, however, had charged directly into the fiercest part of the battle.
Because of that behavior, Joo Joowon had not initially included it among his preferred candidates.
Even so, its physical strength was exceptional.
Combined with a bit of luck, it had not died during the first round of fighting.
Instead, despite carrying numerous injuries, it had successfully advanced into the second round.
Perhaps because of its earlier injuries, the female ant’s resistance was not particularly fierce.