The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 29 The first group fight in history

The distance between the two sides is getting closer and closer, and in Bing Hao's compound eyes, the blood-red lines on the shell of the helical stone are clearly visible.

The sharp tip of the shell rotated slightly, cutting through the blue waves, and rushed towards the group of soldiers at an astonishing speed.

The adult snails waved their tentacles. Between the ten arms and legs, one or two meter long snail larvae separated from the adult's tentacles. The water-jet propulsion system was fully activated, drawing water lines, like torpedoes breaking away from the fleet. Launched the first round of attacks on the soldiers at a speed slightly faster than that of an adult.

In the group of frogs, half of the soldiers suddenly changed their movement trajectory and pulled their bodies upward diagonally. Their flat tails and four paddle-shaped paddling feet swung, pushing their bodies straight up to the surface of the water.

The larvae of Orthospermum at the front have already rushed into the group of soldiers. They have a clear goal. Their thin tentacles wrap around the appendages of the soldiers in the front row, pulling hard to restrain the soldiers' movements.

The second-generation soldiers waved their smaller sickle limbs, clamping and tearing the larvae of the snails into pieces, but some soldiers were still grabbed by more larvae of the snails that came forward. , unable to move.

Despite this, the most developed pair of sickle limbs of the soldiers are still wide open, waiting to meet the adult and sub-adult snails rushing from behind.

As the water waves swayed, the huge shell of the adult helical stone broke through the waves. A cold light flashed from the tip of the shell, and it stabbed directly at the soldiers whose appendages were entangled by the larvae, unable to move. The strong exoskeleton was easily penetrated, and half of the body was hung on the horn stone shell. The spreading blue horseshoe crab blood drew a long line as the horn stone continued to move forward.

The luckier soldier escaped from the entanglement of the larvae and swung its tail to avoid the sharp edge of the adult helix. Then the body turned backwards, and the sharp sickle limbs slashed towards the exposed soft tissue behind the shell.

The water-jet propulsion system of the Helical Stone was operating at full power, and behind him, ten tentacles were waving. Some soldiers who attacked the soft tissue of the Helical Stone were entangled in the tentacles, and were then violently torn in half by the horny beak.

Some were lucky enough to successfully avoid the tentacles entangled by the straight spiral horn stone. The sickle limbs covered with blades and thorns are slashing at the soft tissue of the straight horned stone.

The specially modified blade spikes on the limbs of the second-generation soldier's sickle immediately drew hideous scars on the defenseless soft tissue.

Blood surged out, and each straight helical stone struggled painfully. A pair of smaller but equally sharp sickle limbs were piercing and pulling. The scorpion tail was raised above the head, and the tail clamp tightly clamped the tentacles, and the tail spines The outer skin is pierced and a large amount of digestive juice is injected into the body of the Ortholith.

A brief confrontation left more than ten corpses on each side.

The remains of the soldier's body that had been pierced or torn apart by its horny beak were dragging down the trail of gushing blue horseshoe crab blood, while the huge corpse of the straight spiral horn stone was still floating in the water, supported by the gas in the air chamber, but it was not. Then he swung his tentacles and looked down at the seabed like an old god coming to this world. Instead, he floated powerlessly with the waves.

The funnels of the right spiral stones rotate, spraying water and pushing back, slowly slowing down the huge body. The special body structure of cephalopods allows them to save the step of turning, retract their tentacles, and face their heads forward. The shell faces backwards and then attacks forward again.

They gave up on continuing to charge repeatedly, and instead planned to directly confront the soldiers.

The soldiers also swung their tails, flipped backwards and upwards, then rolled 180 degrees along the central axis of their bodies, changed direction, and opened their sickle limbs to attack the group of straight-horned rocks again.

At the same time, the other half of the soldiers that had swam diagonally upward to the surface of the water also attacked at the same time. They swung their tails and paddling feet to cut through the water and waves, rushed down from a high place, and slashed at the fragile soft bodies of the straight-horned stones with their sickle limbs. part. In a head-on confrontation, neither side had the slightest intention of evading. The tentacles waved, the sickle limbs opened and closed, and the sharp edges of the horny beak and chitin blades emerged, fighting in one place.

The tentacles wrapped around the soldier's body, but the sickle limbs also clamped the soft tissue of the helical stone at the same time. The horny beak opened and closed to bite down, the blades and spines interlaced and cut open the flesh, and blue and red blood surged out. The mixture spread among the blue waves, turning the clear water into turbidity.

Even if the head was completely bitten by the horny beak of the horned stone, the soldier's sickle limbs still tightly clamped the opponent's soft body. The curved blade hooked into the flesh and blood, and the wound gradually expanded with the movement of the horned stone.

Some of them move quickly. Before dying, they bend the scorpion tail and pierce the tail stinger into the soft tissue of the scorpion stone, injecting a large amount of digestive juice.

Although it does not have the barbed stinger like later generations of bees and American ants, the soldier's tail clip can also fix the end of the scorpion's tail, allowing the venom sac to continuously inject digestive juices under the action of the remaining nerve tissue.

And the half of the soldiers above were also killed. The Tentacles of the Straight Spiral Stone, whose tentacles were wrapped around other soldiers, had no power to fight back against the top-down attack. The sickle limbs slashed hard at the head behind the Tentacles of the Straight Spiral Stone, which was also the most fragile and fragile part of their body. Fatal location.

Compared with later cephalopod relatives, the tentacles of Orthohelix are stiffer, and the top of their heads is the dead center of their attack range.

The soldier's sickle limbs were intertwined and torn apart, and the clustered blades cut vicious lacerations on the soft tissue of the snail stone.

The scorpion's tail was curved, and its sharp sting stabbed hard into the straight-horned stone's wide eyes. The narrow pupils that always seemed to be filled with contempt were no more defensive than the compound eyes of arthropods. Serum surged out along with blood, and he was easily blinded like this.

The other soldier was still hung between the tentacles of the right spiral stone, so that they could only run the water jet propulsion system crazily and struggle, but because the tentacles were restricted in movement, they could not balance their bodies, and they could only change direction. It can rush around like a headless fly until the last trace of life is lost with the injection of digestive juices.

……

As the huge body of the last helical stone gradually stopped struggling, the first group fight in the history of life on earth ended with the destruction of one party.

In the thick blood waves, the remaining soldiers barely gathered together, swung their tails and paddling feet and swam up to the surface, using their compound eyes to look at the countless huge corpses drifting with the waves below.

Most of Bing Hao's corpses had fallen to the seabed, but Zhiluojiashi's corpse was still floating in the water, supported by the gas in the chamber. Some bold Sakaban soft-shell turtles and Aranda soft-shell turtles have already moved forward to devour the remains.

Zhiluojiashi was completely wiped out, but Lin Yi's troops were almost completely wiped out.

Just from the perspective of this battle, a miserable victory is as bad as a defeat. However, the resources required to cultivate a soldier that was transformed from the feather-winged horseshoe crab template are far less than that of a straight spiral horn. In the long run, it is a victory for Lin Yi's army's nest group.

What we have to do now is to continue to advance and take this opportunity to capture the floating mother nest of the Straight Spiral Stone Nest Group!
  (End of this chapter)