Hogwarts Raven's Claw

Chapter 434 Ant Factory
What now appears in front of Mike and others is a mushroom forest that is much more sparse than the previous one. But the difference from before is that the reason why the mushroom forest in front of everyone is so sparse is entirely man-made.

Oh no!
To be precise, it should be done by ants.

Because what appeared in front of Mike and others at this moment was a busy construction site scene. Countless giant ants were shuttling back and forth in the mushroom forest, constantly gnawing at the roots of those tall mushrooms.

Once the tall mushrooms are bitten off by them, ants will naturally come and drag these mushrooms to the open space further north.

With their coordinated efforts, the mushroom forest that was supposed to be very densely populated has now become sparse, with only some small mushrooms less than a person's height and countless short and thick mushroom roots remaining on the ground.

"You guessed it right! These ants really are lumberjacks!"

Benjamin spoke slowly in a voice that sounded almost like a dream. Normally, if Franklin had been agreed by a smart man like Benjamin, he would have jumped for joy. But at this moment, Franklin looked at the scene in front of him with a confused face and could not say anything.

While everyone was shocked by the scene before them, Mike took a deep breath and walked towards the "logging site"!
Through observation, he was almost certain that although these ants had terrifying physical strength, they had the same weaknesses as zombies - fear of spells and high temperatures.

Armed with this information, Mike lost his fear of this type of ant.

And judging from the ant's kneeling behavior before, Mike came up with a very interesting guess.

After ensuring his own safety, Mike began to verify his ideas without hesitation.

However, his action scared Benjamin and others. The fifty elite wizards raised their wands almost instinctively, and Arthur even called out to Mike in a low voice. When there was no response, he drew his sword and ran towards the direction Mike was heading!
The movement behind him naturally alarmed Mike. He turned around quickly, put his index finger in front of him, and made a gesture of silence.

Arthur's body froze in place, and seeing this Mike continued to walk towards the 'logging site'.

One step, two steps, three steps...

As the distance between Mike and the ants got closer and closer, the ants who were working hard finally discovered Mike, the human who had come out of his invisible state and was walking towards them openly.

Arthur's hand was tightly gripping the hilt of the sword. If anything went wrong, he would ignore Mike's orders and chop all these disgusting ants into pieces.

But he probably won't have this opportunity.

Because as soon as they discovered Mike, all the ants on the "construction site" stopped their work and knelt down in the direction of Mike just like the previous ant!

Mike smiled happily and opened his arms towards the ants, like an emperor enjoying his subjects' kneeling worship!
Everything in front of him has proved his guess. These ants kneeling in front of him have definitely been trained by humans!
Otherwise, how could a mere ant know how to perform such advanced actions as kneeling down to humans?

At this time, another person who had been hiding in the shadows came out, looking at the ants kneeling in unison, with surprise on their faces.

"How is this going?"

Arthur said this in surprise, breathing heavily, his hand still tightly grasping the silver sword.

"As you can see, these 'lumberjacks' have the habit of kneeling down to people." Mike said with a smile, "Do you know what this means?"

"Does this mean there are wizards teaching them?"

"Hyouka! Right!" Mike snapped his fingers and said excitedly, "If I'm not mistaken, those wizards should be our target of this trip. And now that we have encountered these 'lumberjacks', it means that we will soon reach our destination."

After that, the smile on Mike's face disappeared, replaced by a serious look, and he said to everyone:

"We are about to reach the battle site. Everyone should enter combat mode, turn on the stealth mode, and remember to cover up the smell. Those ants are very sensitive to smell. Got it?"

No one responded to Mike's words, which was a common practice in the team.

Everyone took action the moment they received the order and quickly went into hiding!
In just a moment, the small space next to Mike that was originally full of people became empty, and everyone disappeared.

The corners of Mike's mouth curled up. He took a deep breath, looked at the broad plains in the north, and quietly entered stealth mode.

When he disappeared, the ants that were still kneeling on the ground were all confused.

The two long antennae on their heads kept shaking, as if they were searching for temperature factors in the air, but after a long period of fruitless searching, these ants finally gave up.

They all got up one by one and returned to their posts and became busy, as if Mike and his group had never been there.

But what no ant noticed was that along the road that transported mushrooms among them, a series of tiny, almost undetectable footprints were spreading into the distance.

……

Mike and his crew were moving along the road that the ants were transporting mushrooms on. They used the Disillusionment Charm to become invisible and used the special deodorizer made by Benjamin (it was originally made for Victor, who didn't like taking baths, so he would stink) to remove the smell. Therefore, the ants who were transporting mushrooms along the way didn't notice any trace of Mike and his crew at all.

This made Franklin a little proud. He even climbed onto the huge mushrooms that were being dragged, sat on them, and let the ants drag him around.

Mike naturally didn't care about his behavior. He would just laugh at Franklin and then laugh it off.

But Benjamin obviously didn't think so. He stopped Franklin's behavior almost immediately and waved his arms to give Franklin a silent education!

Seeing Franklin's aggrieved look, the tense atmosphere in the team eased a lot, and many people laughed. However, they soon stopped laughing.

Because on the road ahead appeared a completely new kind of ant that they had never seen before!

Ant-Man to be exact.

Because they were completely upright, their bodies were covered with a layer of black insect armor, a pair of huge black serrations opened and closed, and some mucus kept dripping onto the ground with their movements, making a corrosive sound.

What shocked Mike and others the most was that these ants were actually wearing clothes and holding weapons in their hands!

Although it was just a crude vest made of the fibers from mushroom rhizomes, and although it was just a crude bone spear made of the bones of unknown beasts, there was no doubt that these ant-people were intelligent and they had mastered the skills of using tools!
Mike and the others almost instinctively concentrated and held their breath. Everyone knew that this seemingly intelligent ant-man should be the soldier ant in this ant colony.

These intelligent soldier ants would never be so foolish as to salute these strangers. If their whereabouts were discovered by these soldier ants, then let alone whether they could defeat the siege of these soldier ants, their infiltration plan would be ruined!

Everyone continued to move forward cautiously, and as the distance they advanced got farther, more and more soldier ants appeared in front of them.

The job of these soldier ants seems to be to watch over the worker ants while they work. They stand on both sides of the avenue with weapons in hand, their antennae touching each other from time to time, as if they are chatting.

Fortunately, the perception ability of these ant-men is not much stronger than those of the worker ants. Facing Mike and others who are trying their best to maintain their hidden state, they are like blind and don't notice anything, which makes Mike and others breathe a sigh of relief.

Ten minutes later, a building finally appeared in front of Mike and others.

It was a nondescript square building, standing abruptly in the empty mushroom forest, and seemed so out of place with the surrounding scenery.

The moment Mike saw the building, he knew they had arrived at their destination. This huge building with strong human characteristics was definitely not something that the ants could build.

The only people who can build such a building are humans, or to be more precise, wizards!

Everyone's pace couldn't help but quicken. After so many strange things happened, everyone's nerves had been in a highly tense state. Now they couldn't wait to complete the mission and return to their base to relax.

After a while, everyone arrived at the bottom of the building. There was an extremely spacious exit at the bottom of the building, which was also the end point of the journey for the worker ants.

As soon as he entered the building, Mike found that there were a lot more soldier ants here. They were holding weapons and staring at the worker ants dragging the tall mushrooms into the building. Then they turned around and returned to the mushroom forest to resume the previous dragging work.

The hall on the first floor of this square building is also filled with countless worker ants. They take over the huge mushrooms brought by other ants, and use their sharp teeth to completely cut off the mushroom's cap and rhizome. They then cut the two parts of the mushroom into small pieces of varying sizes and throw them into the two machines in this huge hall.

The roots of those giant mushrooms were turned into rough fibers and white paste after being processed by the machine, while the caps were classified by the machine into different categories of blocks according to their colors.

Soon, another group of worker ants will rush over and carry all these things away.

The fibers and umbrella cubes were carried upstairs, while the white paste made from the root waste was spread by the worker ants into a pond in the lobby on the first floor.

At first, Mike thought it was just a waste pool, but when he found that worker ants would crawl over the edge of the pond from time to time to suck the paste inside, he realized that the paste-like waste was actually the food of these worker ants, and this entire huge square building was actually a huge mushroom processing factory!
Wow, letting these worker ants feed themselves, Mike was completely impressed by the pure-blood wizards who built this factory. They were even more heartless than him!

After taking a quick look at the work of these giant ants, Mike and his companions began to walk towards the second floor. Unlike the almost undefended first floor which was only guarded by soldier ants, Mike discovered a very obvious magical restriction as soon as he arrived at the stairs.

Although he couldn't understand the true purpose of this magical restriction, these simple magical restrictions were obviously not enough in front of Mike, who had mastered the power of all curses.

After easily breaking the ban, Mike and others finally reached the second floor smoothly.

The layout here is almost the same as that of the first floor. A huge platform that is fully connected is filled with densely packed machines, and the worker ants holding colorful mushroom cubes and mushroom fibers are moving among these machines in an orderly manner, and finally put these raw materials into different machines.

After observation, Mike found that the fibers separated from the mushroom rhizomes were put into an old and dirty machine and then made into rolls of white cloth.

Mike was very familiar with these fabrics. This was a special fabric called Avery Magic Cloth, which had excellent anti-magic effects and heat resistance, and was extremely tough. These excellent properties made it very expensive. The lining of the combat uniforms worn by Mike and others was made of this special fabric.

The mushroom cubes of different colors will be crushed according to the pre-classified colors and mixed with many materials that Mike is completely unfamiliar with, and finally made into bottles of viscous liquids of different colors.

Mike is also familiar with this thing!

Avery Magic Liquid. They had used these things in the magic class last year. The blue magic liquid has the ability to improve the effect of the magic liquid, the red one increases the success rate of making it, and the yellow one increases the shelf life.

Like the Avery Magic Cloth, these magic liquids must also be of great value, because Snape was very careful when handling them and even warned everyone not to knock them over.

Both of these items are exclusively operated by a pure-blood family named Avery. Since it is a monopoly industry, it is understandable that the prices are a bit higher.

However, many people are very jealous of the huge profits of these two products and have tried many means to explore the production methods and origins of raw materials of these things, but all to no avail.

Mike didn't expect that he would accidentally discover the production base of these two things today!
Thinking of this, Mike's heart couldn't help but get hot.

If we can take over this base intact, the size of the Los Santos Group will definitely increase dramatically!

(End of this chapter)