Infiltration

“It's the signal flare! Everyone, charge!”

“The great counteroffensive!”

As the signal flare rose at the agreed time and location, the battle officially commenced.

Upon seeing the signal, the beastkin and the Dwarven Alliance, who had been on standby in the south, launched their counteroffensive with all their might.

【Kerrigan froze for a moment】

Kerrigan could not help but be surprised.

Just a short while ago, she had used the mage legion sent by Elise to catch the enemy off guard and turn the tide of battle.

She had expected to press her advantage, crush the chaotic enemy in one fell swoop, and enjoy the thrill of slaughter and the fruits of victory. Instead, the enemy had abruptly halted their retreat and launched a full-scale counteroffensive.

Furthermore, this counteroffensive was by no means the desperate, dying struggle of a cornered beast.

The beastkin and the Dwarven Alliance, who had always been hostile toward one another and lacked any coordination, were now attacking simultaneously with precise cooperation.

Up until now, Kerrigan had exploited this very lack of communication between the two factions, flexibly deploying her forces to reap the greatest benefits from their discord. Now, that advantage was completely gone.

【Kerrigan ordered a retreat】

Kerrigan hurriedly ordered her troops to fall back.

The current migratory colony did not have enough forces to simultaneously fend off two factions working in unison.

The Cordyceps mages, who served as their core combat strength, were consumables to begin with. Moreover, most of them had been created from enemies captured during the battle with the Elven Second Legion, so their numbers were limited.

【Elise confirmed that the enemies had joined forces】

Witnessing this, Elise also realized the severity of the situation.

The main reason she had previously ignored the military situation of the migratory colony was that the Beastkin Kingdom and the Dwarven Alliance kept each other in check and remained hostile.

Even if they were backed into a corner and forced to launch a joint attack, they would fight independently and leave numerous openings, which the Great Devourer could always cleverly exploit to hold the line.

However, Grimgor's sincere persuasion had convinced the Dwarven Alliance's command, forging a dramatic alliance between the frontline forces.

This was undoubtedly an emergency for the Great Devourer.

【Elise suggested retreating further back】

【Kerrigan firmly declared that she would never give up this place】

Elise suggested pulling the front lines further back to reorganize, waiting to launch a counteroffensive until she could mobilize more forces.

But Kerrigan was unwilling to abandon the land she currently occupied.

This was the city she had captured after driving the beastkin out of the plains, and it had been the spiritual home of the grassland beastkin tribes since ancient times.

To Kerrigan, this was the symbolic city of the first hostile faction she had personally destroyed as queen.

Furthermore, its significance was not merely symbolic. The migratory colony's primary resources, including the decomposers, were also concentrated here.

Even a migratory colony could not carry everything with them as they moved; they needed a foothold to serve as their core, and Kerrigan had long since established this place as her base of operations.

If they abandoned this place, the migratory colony would not only suffer a massive drop in strength, but even its very purpose of existence would be shaken.

As the queen of the migratory colony, this was a bottom line she absolutely could not compromise on.

'It seems her primary objective is to defend this place to the death.'

Lin Miao watched with a grim expression as Kerrigan deployed all the garrison forces around her to the front lines to construct a defensive barrier.

However, as long as they set up webs in advance to block the enemy's advance, dug traps, created venomous swamps, and made thorough defensive preparations, they should still be able to stall for some time.

Still, Kerrigan, who had originally intended to use the Cordyceps mages to launch a counteroffensive, had undoubtedly suffered an even greater blow to her pride.

“Is everyone's stealth working fine?”

“No problems. They haven't detected us so far.”

While the Great Devourer was busy mobilizing its forces, a small squad was quietly making its move.

“Though we don't know the exact details of how they do it, they possess an extremely tight communication network. If even a single Great Devourer spots us, the operation will be an utter failure.”

Grimgor looked at the few elite warriors he had personally selected, scanning their surroundings nervously as he warned them.

In stark contrast to the tense atmosphere, their current appearance was utterly ridiculous. Every single one of them wore a strange black cloak and giant iron boots.

The cloaks were adorned with antennae and legs severed from the corpses of the Great Devourer, swaying in the wind, and their bodies were thoroughly coated in pheromones extracted from the same corpses.

Their goal was to achieve perfect stealth and infiltrate the location where Kerrigan was stationed.

“The real test begins now. From this point forward, we are entirely in their territory.”

Grimgor swallowed hard as he stared at the dense, terrifying webs stretched out before them.

These webs, covering every intersection, were woven by a spider-like race known as spider ants.

The moment any creature other than the Great Devourer made contact with them, the spider ants lying in ambush nearby would immediately rush out to verify their identity. This was the Great Devourer's security system.

Currently, most of the areas occupied by the migratory colony were blanketed by these dreadful defensive installations.

“Activate the Shadow Mark.”

Tensely, they activated the function of the bizarre cloaks they wore.

Hanging the antennae and legs of the Great Devourer on the cloaks was not for amusement. The spell woven into the cloaks was an illusion that could perfectly replicate the appearance of the target they were disguising themselves as.

In other words, as long as they wore these cloaks, they would look visually identical to an actual Great Devourer.

Meanwhile, the massive metal boots on their feet were engineered by the dwarves, designed to minimize vibrations and sound to the greatest extent possible.

They knew nothing about the Great Devourer's indescribable hive mind, so they had no choice but to make the most thorough preparations possible.

“Let's go!”

Grimgor took the lead and stepped forward.

A winged scouting ant flew across the distant sky, but fortunately, they went unnoticed.

'Can we truly succeed in assassinating their queen?'

Begrun, who had volunteered to tag along, swallowed hard beneath his cloak as he gazed at the grassland city drawing closer in the distance.

Most of the Great Devourers that should have been teeming here had been deployed to the front lines to fight the main army, which was why their journey had been so smooth thus far.

...

At this very moment, the entire migratory colony was locked in a fierce battle.

Queen Kerrigan's attention was almost entirely focused on the soldiers fighting on the front lines. In the Sacred Beastkin City, which had been converted into a nest by the Great Devourer, only a few worker ants remained busy.

“?”

Just then, a worker ant carrying food in its mandibles suddenly stopped and twitched its antennae.

It saw a group of worker ants, but there was something off about them.

Their mandibles were completely empty... and despite the hive mind having issued an emergency order to gather nutrients, these fellows were arrogantly neglecting their duties, running around in other directions instead.

...

The worker ant quietly crawled over and waved its antennae.

Its message was: What are you doing?

These suspicious individuals shrank back, wriggling about in confusion.

Visually, they indeed looked like worker ants, and their pheromones were detectable.

Furthermore, judging by the shape of their exoskeletons, they seemed to be newly born juniors with less seniority than itself.

Thus, without thinking too much of it, the worker ant tapped them with its antennae, sending a directive through the hive mind.

It demanded to know why they weren't working.

Among the Great Devourer, supervising the work of juniors was the right of senior individuals on the scene, with no need to report to the queen.

Thus, the worker ant "lectured" its juniors for a full minute, but the other party showed absolutely no response.

It was as if they couldn't understand what it was saying at all.

At that exact moment, the worker ant suddenly realized that these individuals were not connected to the hive mind at all.

Even if they were worker ants with congenital defects or had been injured later in life and could no longer work, they should still be able to communicate through the hive mind.

It immediately sounded the alarm, and an emergency signal rippled through the hive mind, spreading across the entire colony!