Fabre in Sacheon’s Tang

A massive basin, carpeted in a dense, crimson blanket.

As the setting sun bathed the land in its glow, the chitinous shells of the ants shimmered, reflecting the light like burnished armor.

It was as if a heavily armored army had gathered to occupy the valley.

At the center, a shifting red mass grew larger and larger, rolling like a snowball.

The ants were forming their night encampment.

Some of them were interlocking their bodies, building a temporary nest—a living, shifting fortress of mandibles and bodies.

That’s when it finally clicked.

All the strange occurrences up until now—this was the answer.

If these things had swept through the land, then of course nothing else was left.

I remembered reading about this kind of ant back in my previous life.

Wherever they passed, all small animals and insects vanished, leaving behind a landscape so eerily sterile it seemed disinfected.

Strangely enough, some indigenous tribes had welcomed their arrival for that very reason.

These creatures consumed over 100,000 insects in a single day.

They were, quite literally, a wave of predation.

[So-ryong, do you recognize these things? The Tang Clan’s records don’t mention anything like this, and I’ve never seen them before.]

Grandfather’s voice carried a rare note of unease as he transmitted his thoughts to me.

I nodded and whispered back.

A type of ant that migrated instead of building permanent nests.

Huge, aggressive, and constantly on the move.

There was only one thing they could be—

[Yes. I’ve never seen them at this size before, but they are definitely Army Ants.]

[Army Ants?]

[They don’t build permanent homes. Instead, they march like an army, traveling in search of food.]

They didn’t always migrate.

Most of the time, they lived in a stable environment.

But when their numbers grew too large and food became scarce, they would begin the march.

They must have originally lived in Venomous Creatures Valley, but their population exploded, forcing them to move out in search of sustenance.

[So that’s why there were no other animals?]

[Yes. Anything caught in their path would have been completely consumed. We need to retreat immediately—these things are extremely aggressive—]

Before I could finish my warning—

—Snap!

The sharp crack of a breaking branch.

I turned sharply.

One of the warriors had stepped on a dry twig and was now staring down at it in horror.

—Snap. Snap.* Snap…

The sound spread like wildfire, echoing through the basin.

‘Oh, hell.’

Army Ants didn’t see their prey.

They felt movement—vibrations.

And now, the very sound that had drawn us here was being repeated.

—Ssshhhhhh!

That sound—what we had mistaken for bamboo swaying in the wind—

It wasn’t wind.

It was them.

The sound of millions of ants moving in unison.

As I watched in horror, the entire mass of ants rippled, shifting direction like a wave.

Then—

I saw them.

The larger ones.

The ones with huge, serrated mandibles.

The Soldiers.

Their chitinous jaws clacked together in an eerie rhythm.

—Snap! Snap! Snap!

The chorus of clicking mandibles filled the air, blending with the shifting rustle of their bodies.

My skin crawled.

No more time for silence.

I shouted.

“We need to retreat—NOW!”

“Fall back!” Grandfather roared.

I turned and saw the warriors frozen, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of what they were witnessing.

As my urgent voice rang out, the wave of ants surged forward like a crimson flood.

—Ssssshhhhhhh!

A tsunami of living, breathing death.

And it was coming straight for us.

The moment I turned, I ran.

Everyone did.

There was no hesitation.

No one needed to be told twice.

To be caught in that red tide meant instant death.

—Crash! Snap!

I tore through the jungle, branches lashing at my face and arms.

Scratches burned against my skin, but I didn’t care.

‘If I slow down—I die!’

I pushed my body forward, sprinting as fast as I could.

Army Ants weren’t fast, but they weren’t slow either.

They didn’t need to be.

They never stopped.

“The river! Cross the river!”

The one thing I had noticed was that they hadn’t crossed the water.

We had to reach the river.

I veered toward it, and without hesitation—

—I jumped.

The moment I hit the water, I felt the cold shock of it seep into my bones.

I surfaced, gasping, and paddled frantically.

One by one, the others leaped in after me.

And just like that—

The chase was over.

—Snap. Snap.

The ants lined the shore, clacking their jaws.

But they didn’t follow.

Whether it was the current or some instinctual aversion to deep water, they refused to cross.

And then, just as suddenly—

They turned away.

As the last light of the sun faded, they retreated, vanishing back into the basin.

Collapsing onto the riverbank, a collective exhale filled the air.

“Hahh…”

“Haah…”

“I—I thought we were dead.”

Lying back on the heated river rocks, I felt a familiar weight wriggling inside my robe.

Cho.

Sopping wet, my little O-Gong crawled out and started licking the water off my face.

—Tssssrrr…

“Cho, are you okay? O-Gongs don’t like water… Don’t worry, Dad will dry you off.”

I peeled off my soaked outer robe, wringing out the fabric before gently drying Cho.

As I did, Grandfather and Gu Pae sat beside me.

“…What monsters,” Grandfather muttered.

“So-ryong, that was… incredible. That sound… I could feel it in my bones,” Gu Pae added.

Both of them looked shaken.

Even Grandfather—who had never feared any opponent—wore an expression of genuine unease.

“This Mandok Shingun has never feared a duel to the death.

But for the first time, I felt something like fear.

That tiny creatures like those… could make me feel this way…”

“Yes. These things consume anything in their path. They don’t stop. That’s why they’re so dangerous.”

As I finished drying Cho, I glanced around.

The warriors lay scattered along the riverbank, utterly drained.

Meanwhile, the sun had dipped below the horizon.

Darkness settled in.

I exhaled and spoke.

“Well… Now that we’ve survived—”

I turned to Grandfather and Gu Pae with a grin.

“—We should check if we can raise them.”

They both froze.

“…You want to what?”

“You’re saying… test if we can train them?”

When I suggested we check if these Army Ants could be raised, everyone’s eyes went wide.

Gu Pae, still in shock from our near-death experience, desperately clung to hope.

“Y-you’re not seriously suggesting… w-we go back in there, are you? We just barely escaped those monsters—s-surely not…”

With a bright smile, I gestured toward the other side of the river.

“The sun’s already set. Let’s sneak in and catch a few.”

Some species of Army Ants were venomous, which meant they technically qualified as venomous creatures.

And if that was the case, then there was no way I, Spicy Fabre, could ignore them.

Gu Pae silently turned to Grandfather with a pleading look, as if begging for help.

I sealed his fate.

“Grandfather, you’ll be coming too, right?”

***

“Huff… Huff… T-this… T-this is madness! I never thought I’d be doing something this insane twice in one night! I—I thought when So-ryong said to go at night, it meant they slept like the Golden Wasp Kings!”

Gu Pae was panting in fear.

His entire body trembled as if he had wet himself.

That was understandable, given that we had just barely escaped after one of the giant worker ants latched onto his back.

Army Ants never let go once they bite—not even if you cut off their heads.

Unfortunately for Gu Pae, one had been perched on a tree branch above him… and it snapped onto his robe.

“Ahaha… Yeah, Army Ants don’t sleep.”

Recent studies in my past life had shown that Army Ants did take rest cycles—every 12 hours, they’d pause briefly.

But they only slept for eight minutes at a time.

And since different groups rested at different intervals, the colony itself never stopped moving.

From a human perspective, Army Ants were practically sleepless.

“But look! We succeeded, didn’t we?”

I gestured proudly toward our prize.

Gu Pae shuddered, his trauma visibly worsening.

But I was thrilled.

In this single midnight heist, we had captured four of the six major castes of Army Ants.

Excluding the Queen and the Males, we had managed to collect:

Giant Worker Ants (similar to soldier ants with massive scythe-like mandibles).Secondary Giant Workers (with powerful, crushing jaws).Medium Workers (responsible for all labor in the colony).Small Workers (specialized in tending to the Queen).Army Ants were born into four distinct worker castes.

The Giant Workers had huge, scythe-like mandibles for cutting down prey.

The Secondary Giants had powerful jaws for snapping and breaking apart their victims.

The Medium Workers handled all miscellaneous labor in the colony.

The Small Workers were exclusively responsible for tending to the Queen.

And now…

We had one of each.

As we laid them out near the campfire, Gu Pae finally regained his senses and asked:

“So… can you train them?”

I shook my head.

As I feared, they were impossible to domesticate.

The small worker ant we had captured—about the size of a fist—showed no reaction to any of my attempts at communication.

— Click. Click-click.

It just moved its mandibles mindlessly.

If we could somehow reach the Queen, maybe there was a chance.

But looking at that ocean of red across the river, the idea of reaching the Queen—and persuading her—seemed absurd.

And even if I did manage to talk to her…

Would I really be able to control an entire Army Ant colony?

Unlike bees, which had strong individual memory and intelligence, Army Ants were entirely dependent on collective instinct.

Their individual memory span was… about three days.

Sure, these weren’t ordinary ants.

They were mystical, perhaps even intelligent compared to their mundane counterparts.

But most Army Ants were blind, relying on vibrations and pheromones to communicate.

Without direct access to the Queen, there was no way to control them.

“So… this was all a waste?”

Gu Pae’s voice was filled with exhaustion.

“Waste? What are you talking about? Look at these beauties! Imagine how incredible they’d look, perfectly preserved and displayed in the Grand Hall of Ten Thousand Poisons!

Look at this mandible! This one’s the very ant that bit onto your robe, right?”

He didn’t seem convinced.

In the flickering firelight, Gu Pae’s face looked somewhat tragic.

‘If only I had picked another member of the Venom Blood Squad for this mission… He looks scarred for life.’

As I chuckled to myself, Grandfather spoke up.

“So then, if they can’t be trained… what’s our next move?

Should we search for other venomous creatures in a different region?

We could head west to Seoryeo or south to Seosangpanna —both regions have denser jungles.”

He was suggesting we move elsewhere now that we had gathered enough samples.

But I just grinned.

“No. We’re going to overtake the ants.”

“…Excuse me?”

“You want to… overtake them?”

Everyone stared at me in shock.

I explained.

“Yes. If we move ahead of them, the creatures in their path will panic and flee in all directions.

That means we’ll have a prime opportunity to capture a wide variety of insects and venomous creatures.

It’s going to be a bit of work, but…”

The reason why so many birds and predators followed Army Ants was precisely because their marching swarm flushed out prey.

I was simply suggesting that we… copy them.

“Doesn’t that sound fun?”

For some reason…

Everyone looked at me like I was crazy.