Having been partners for so many years, Eric understood Max extremely well. Seeing his appearance, he found it funny and comforted him:
"Consider it a honeymoon. In the place I used to live, after becoming partners, people would choose a time to travel to places with beautiful scenery."
"So, do people in your place bring others along on their honeymoon and travels too?" Max said gloomily.
"Um, well, usually it’s just the couple." Eric had nothing left to say, so he had to use his ultimate move, reaching out to pull Max’s neck down and sharing a lingering kiss.
Max breathed heavily, picked Eric up horizontally, placed him on the large bed, and with eyes burning with flames, pressed down directly.
After sacrificing a bit of his charm, Max finally wasn’t so depressed anymore.
The price to pay was that Eric’s waist was still sore before departure, so when they left, he unceremoniously rode on Max’s back.
Having held back for decades before finally getting to "eat meat," Max had always restrained himself, fearing Eric’s small body couldn’t take it. It wasn’t until last time that he let Eric taste the true strength of the Wolf tribe, and that taste was truly...
Eric grimaced as he changed his posture.
His magical talent was high, but this body had been injured in the womb. After many years of being nourished by magical elements and the Dragon tribe’s soul contract, he wasn’t as frail as the original owner, but his beast origin power was very weak, and his physique was naturally not as strong as beastman warriors.
This also made him somewhat unable to withstand Max’s enthusiasm, especially the lower half.
Leo was already a large lion, his body only slightly smaller than other adult Snow Wolves, but standing in front of Max, whose body had exploded in size after condensing the beast core, he still looked like a cub.
Arthur crossed his arms and flew in the air; beside him was Gray, flying vigorously.
Gray was a size fatter than other Marble birds; there was no helping it, the children in the tribe all liked it, and whenever they saw it, they would feed it. Eric was worried it wouldn’t be able to fly sooner or later, so he took this opportunity to let it out for exercise.
Leo’s speed naturally couldn’t match Max and Arthur. He originally wanted to sit on Max’s back with Eric, but Gray acted spoiled, rubbing its beak back and forth, so Leo had to sit on Gray’s back.
They moved very quickly.
When they approached the kingdom’s territory, Eric keenly smelled a stench; the closer they got, the stronger the smell became.
Both his and Max’s expressions became serious.
They were too familiar with this smell; it was the smell of rotting flesh.
For the rest of the journey, corpses of beastmen and magic beasts began to gradually appear before their eyes. Eric silently buried the beastmen.
Beastmen valued their companions greatly. To discard companions’ corpses so casually, leaving them for magic beasts to gnaw on—such a scene was truly incredibly chaotic.
No wonder Sunflower had proactively asked to go to the Hadu tribe to trade for food; presumably, regardless of which side, after years of tug-of-war fighting, they had reached the point where the oil was dry and the lamp was burning out.
Starvation and endless war meant no outsiders set foot on this land anymore; the Halun caravan had also not been to the Golden Kingdom to trade for a long time.
But the Halun caravan still had to pass through the kingdom’s defense line to enter the Illusory Dream Continent; who knew whose hands the gold they paid had fallen into?
Collecting many beastman remains along the way, everyone’s mood became depressed.
Arthur didn’t have much feeling about this, but since Eric was sad, he couldn’t be happy either.
"So many beastmen died. It seems that no matter where, there is no shortage of victims for power struggles," Eric said helplessly.
He couldn’t bear it, but in historical dynasties, there were many scenes crueler than this. It was just for the two words "power" and "profit"; it had been this way in every world since ancient times, and beastmen were no exception.
If the Golden Kingdom wanted to overthrow the brutal rule of the Beast King, they had to be prepared to pay the price in blood.
Worried about being attacked by both sides, Eric had long since had Leo ride Gray to observe from the air and see which path had no beastmen, and they would follow that path.
The Beast King and the remnants of his army were driven out of the capital, which was now occupied by Leo’s mother’s faction; they just needed to head in that direction.
Last time Sunflower came, he mentioned they had fought another battle in the outskirts of the capital; the Beast King couldn’t match them and led his people to retreat far away. Waiting for the capital’s beastmen to rest and reorganize, the next battle would be the moment to completely end the Beast King’s rule.
The previous battle was fought very bitterly, which was why they saw so many unburied beastman remains on the road. Perhaps most of them belonged to the Beast King’s faction, as they were all far away.
Sure enough, the closer they got to the capital, the less the stench became, no longer so pungent, and only then did Eric dare to breathe deeply.
Before that, he just wanted to pinch his nose. The weather was hot, and the Snow Wolf people’s noses were as sensitive as detectors. He saw that even when transformed back into human form, Max’s face was paler than before; he must have been very uncomfortable from the smell too.
Fortunately, Leo was in the air, where the smell wasn’t as strong.
"There’s a Tiger tribe person ahead, looks like he’s still alive!"
Leo suddenly shouted loudly from the air.
Eric stood up on Max’s head, looking from a distance to see only a small black dot in the direction Leo pointed, still moving.
The other party seemed to have seen them too, stopping in place to wait. Getting closer, they could even see the other party waving at them.
"It’s a Tiger tribe person, looks quite familiar."
Eric looked ahead, carefully observing the other party’s figure and said.
"It’s Clitus, Sunflower’s capable subordinate." After condensing the beast core, Max’s five senses became extremely keen; this distance was enough for him to clearly see the person’s face.
Eric suddenly realized, it turned out to be Clitus. He remembered that was a very straightforward Tiger tribe person who had a very good relationship with Sunflower. Called a subordinate, but they were more like friends.
"Little Patriarch! Max! Why are you two here?"
Clitus was carrying a large bag of wild fruits on his left shoulder, both surprised and happy to see them.
But this was the capital of the Golden Kingdom; it was really strange for people from the Hadu tribe to appear here.
Eric jumped down, pointing towards Leo who was jumping down from Gray’s back:
"You still remember we have a Golden Lion cub in our tribe, right? I recall instructing Sunflower not to reveal news of Leo to the people of the Golden Kingdom."
Clitus scratched his head and said: "Of course I remember, just didn’t you want to keep him out of our mess? Why bring him here now? Let me tell you, this place isn’t safe yet, or maybe you should wait until we completely deal with that..."
He swallowed back the words "Beast King" that almost blurted out: "Au still hasn’t given up, he’s been sending people to harass us these past few days."
Max, unbeknownst to when, had transformed back into human form and quickly put on clothes, walking forward: "It’s fine, don’t worry, we came well prepared."
"True, with you here, no matter how many warriors Au has, it wouldn’t be enough for you to fight," Clitus said enviously. After so many years, Max was the first Snow Wolf to condense a beast core; his combat power didn’t need much emphasis.
Moreover, Max’s strength was still increasing year by year. Every time he and Sunflower visited, they were jealous to death.
If one of the two of them were that powerful, the war situation in the kingdom wouldn’t have dragged on for so many years; the winner would have been decided long ago.