“It’s ok if you don’t believe me. Several months ago we were on the Nestri continent and met the flame wolf, her name is Scarlet. She is also very beautiful, but in a different way than you. Nick has another friend on the Mainland continent – his name is Angel. He’s a shadow eagle, but I haven’t met him yet.” Female did talk a lot, but it sounded interesting.
So these people were travelers between the worlds. Tiger knew people traveled on big boats between their worlds and called them continents. He had stealthily overheard many conversations over the years and knew a thing or two. And finally everything made sense – these two were very experienced despite being young and knew there was no reason for him to eat them. Thus they were not scared from the very beginning.
‘What a weird couple.’
“Alright. Done, tomorrow will be your turn to wash the dishes.” The male came back and summoned a weird pike.
Snow had seen such pikes in hands of the people in smaller settlements – they made holes in the ground with those. The male also started to make a small hole and then gathered the burnt branches and the pieces of coal in it. Then he went to the place where the broken pieces of barrel lied and gathered those as well. Then buried everything and the strange pike disappeared again.
“Snow, as we said, we are sorry for the intrusion, but don’t worry, this place will be covered in grass within few days – you won’t even notice. Unfortunately I don’t have the snake meat anymore, it was our last barrel.” Male apologized again.
‘I could get used to this. I wonder if any beast king before me had human servants?’
Suddenly both humans looked at the other side of the meadow.
‘Oh? They can sense him as well? Hmm, for puny humans their senses are not half bad. Of course, I heard him already when we just finished eating.’
Snow snickered to himself and looked in the same direction as well. A minute later that ugly lump finally appeared, loud as always.
Over six meter tall black ape dashed out from the woods and stopped in the middle of the meadow, loudly roared and hammered fists on his chest few times. Snow snorted and went to the middle of meadow as well, then roared louder than a thunder and stealthily glanced at the two humans. The two must have been really impressed right now. This was his ‘commanding roar’!
“Will they fight?” Human female sounded anxious.
“Don’t think so.” Male shook his head, “My guess is that they share this fantastic place and the middle where they stand is the border that separates their territories.”
‘He really isn’t simple. I must pay more attention to my thoughts in the future or he will guess all my secrets.’
Snow wasn’t really worried, because he didn’t have any secrets, simply the idea of this strange human reading his thoughts was uncomfortable and maybe even scary.
At this point the large ape closely observed at the two humans. Of course, he noticed them long ago and that was the reason for the flashy entrance. He didn’t understand why these two were still alive though and earlier they even seemed to be talking to the tiger.
“Hello, I understand this is your home as well. Please excuse us for the intrusion.” Nick politely bowed again and smiled, “We already shared our gift with Snow and didn’t know you’ll be coming, so we ate it all.”
Big ape took a sniff of the air.
Earlier he felt there was a pleasant smell lingering around, but now, when he looked at the tiger, he saw that the ugly white bastard seemed to be even more arrogant that usual. They definitely ate something good, even though it was meat. But then the tiger snorted, walked to its favorite spot near the lake and lie down without even touching those two humans!
Did they domesticate him? They even gave a name and called him ‘Snow’! What a terrible name!
“But since this is your home, we can’t really come empty handed. Therefore, would you accept a small batch of fruits?” Nick took a large sack of fruits, put it on the ground and opened the top.
The big ape looked at the sack in surprise. This human didn’t have anything in his hands earlier, where did it come from? But the fruits looked good.
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Since the time he became rank four, it was really hard to gather fruits because his fingers were simply too large and biting fruits off the trees was quite a tedious job. Being able to eat a whole stack in one go like this was really enticing. But what if they were poisoned? Humans were evil and it wasn’t a secret.
Ape looked at the tiger, but the latter theatrically ignored him.
“May I suggest a way to make this more tasty?” When Nick saw the huge ape inspecting the fruits he got an idea, “If you have a way to add wild honey on top of these fruits, it might become a meal to remember.”
The ape looked at the tiger again and this time the latter barely noticeably nodded. He already experienced the mastery of this human and was confident that not only he was harmless, but also a skillful servant. In addition, if they didn’t try to kill him, Snow, then there was no reason to kill that big lump – the ape didn’t have as beautiful fur as him.
The ape stared at Nick for a moment, scratched his head and then like a lightning bolt disappeared between the trees. When he ran back few minutes later, he held two large hives of wild bees, one in each hand. Then he grabbed each beehive in his palm and squeezed out the honey on top of the small fruit pile.
Of course, it only looked harmless to him. But at this moment two other lightning bolts darted towards the lake and directly jumped in. The crazed bees were not capable of harming the big ape, but Nick’s and YunYun’s human skin wasn’t as thick as that of a rank six beast.
Even under water they could clearly hear the huge ape laughing while, shouting ‘u u u’ sounds towards the sky, and from time to time even Snow joined him while weirdly coughing. Both youths understood how miserable they looked in this scenario, but there was nothing they could do.
Only half an hour later they braved out.
“I have to give it to you, it was kind of funny.” Nick laughed as well, looking at the ape’s amused expression. He saw that the fruits were gone and ape has licked his hands clean, “Although your prank was good, if you had waited, I would've shown you how to make the food even tastier. Doesn’t matter, we can do it the next time.”
Ape looked at Nick in confusion, then at the spot where once fruits were. They could have been even tastier? Was that even possible? But then he noticed disdain in tiger’s eyes. The white bastard spent more time with this strange couple and definitely knew they could improve the food! The earlier smell of the meat was a clear proof!
Nick saw how ape did a beckoning motion and pointed at the spot with the empty fruit sack that was now dirty soaked in different juices and honey.
“Sorry, I don’t have fruits anymore. If we find some later, I’ll show you the trick, of course, only if you promise to not set wild bees on us. You clearly know that our skin is not as thick as yours.” Then Nick smiled again and decided to introduce themselves, “My name is Nick and this is YunYun. It’s not convenient to call you ape, maybe you would like to have a name as well? We called the tiger king ‘Snow’ and he really liked it.”
The big ape made ‘u u u’ sounds to the sky again as if he was laughing. Why would he need a stupid name like that? These people evidently were bad at selecting names – even their own names sounded funny.
“Oh, so you don’t want to? Alright.” Nick nodded, “Although I thought that a king like you should have a good name, like, for example … ‘King Kong’! What do you think?”
Snow snorted to himself – this was a very stupid name for a very stupid monkey and he’ll probably like it.
Indeed, the big ape scratched his butt while thinking. Even though he wasn’t happy with these little humans, the name was grand and he liked it a lot.
When Ape nodded, Nick smiled again, “Alright, King Kong, let’s be friends!”
YunYun came over as well and with shiny eyes said, “You sure are huge, King Kong!”
Ape was happy at the praise and hammered his chest while roaring in the sky. At least these humans understood ‘what was what’.
“Would you like me to teach you something?” Nick asked, “We friends usually bump our fists like this.”
He bumped fists with YunYun to show an example.
“Come, bump fists with me!” Nick stretched out his hand that compared to the King Kong’s huge extremity looked like a thin and brittle branch. Even Snow got curious at this ritual, but nothing much really happened.
When they bumped their fists, YunYun cheered, “Alright! Me too!” and stretched her hand out as well.
But at this moment King King’s eyes narrowed as if turning sly and when his fist almost bumped YunYun’s, he suddenly flicked his index finger at her chest and YunYun tumbled tens of meters away finally landing in the water.
“You motherf*cker!” Nick shouted and suddenly both rank six beasts felt as if the temperature in the valley plummeted.
Nick jumped up towards King King’s chest and kicked it while swiping at his hand. To the great shock of the two beasts the kick was so strong that the huge ape had to take couple of steps back to not fall over. But Nick didn’t stop. He furiously jumped up again screaming, “Why do you have to attack a weak and friendly human? We are not even Qi masters yet!”
The ape wanted to slam the annoying human away, when he suddenly noticed that his finger was cut to the bone.
Snow noticed that as well and both were stupefied? How was it even possible? Some rank five beasts can’t bite through their skin, but a weak human cut it easily? And he didn’t even have a sword in his hand!
What tiger didn’t know was that currently a terrible stinging pain assaulted King Kong from the spot he was cut.
Thus on pure instinct the large ape didn’t strike back but retreated while avoiding furious slashes, trying to protect his eyes. After few seconds Snow and King Kong finally noticed a black light under Nick’s right hand, or rather it was something black that was absorbing the light and they both felt a gave danger from it. It was even more unbelievable than the weak human cutting the ape king’s skin. How could rulers of the world fear something?
“Nick! Stop, I’m fine!” Suddenly a voice came from the shore.
YunYun, although bruised, was actually all right and climbed out while holding her chest. When Nick heard her, the terrifying killing intent in valley dissipated as if it was never there in the first place. Nick dashed over to check how she was while the stunned ape looked at his enemy’s back with a stupefied look. Just a second ago this guy came at him without regard to his own life, but as soon as he heard that the female was fine, he forgot the fight and simply showed his back?
Snow was similarly puzzled – this was already fight to the death and he felt it, but suddenly human didn’t care about it at all. What happened next, stunned both beasts even more.