"Let's go, let's get a closer look." King gave the Horse King's rounded haunch a light pat, and the magnificent beast understood instantly. It gathered its powerful haunches and leaped, propelling them skyward in a single, fluid arc.
In just a few bounds, they ascended thousands of meters, landing with preternatural steadiness upon a massive branch. This was merely a minor offshoot of the First Cry Tree, yet its diameter exceeded a hundred meters—wide enough for an entire armored column to parade across its surface.
King surveyed his surroundings, his gaze settling on a nearby [PAIR]. The fruit glittered like a captured star, its translucent skin shimmering with an inner rainbow light, breathtaking in its beauty. He mused that these would make perfect gifts back in his own world—whether for Tornado, Fubuki, or even Mosquito Girl. Women, in his experience, always appreciated beautiful, shiny things, and these were delicious to boot.
Crucially, these [PAIR] from the First Cry Tree were not the infamous gourmet ingredient [PAIR] (Monkey King's Testicles). They were merely decorative fruits used by the Monkey King in courtship displays. Therefore, gifting them to female companions carried no awkward subtext. Things like animal testicles, King thought with masculine solidarity, are for men to eat, for fortifying the kidneys!
Crack!
A crisp sound shattered his thoughts. The moment the [PAIR] was plucked from the branch, it fractured in his hand. Precious juice rained down like liquid gemstones, refracting the sunlight into dreamlike halos.
"Tsk. So brute force doesn't work," King frowned slightly, examining the fractured husk in his palm. With his level of control, accidental damage from excessive force was impossible. "Let me think… what was the harvesting method from the manga? Ah, forget it. Can't remember. I'll just ask."
His gaze, sharp and deliberate, snapped to the empty space on a branch to his right. "Hey! Friend," he called out, his voice cutting through the rustle of leaves. "How long are you planning to hide and watch?"
!!
In the inner world—a dimension imperceptible to ordinary beings—the true Gourmet Seeker, the "Silver Chef" Kaka, shuddered violently. Her iconic, long-lashed eyes widened in disbelief. As one of the rare Nitro capable of moving freely within the soul-realm, she had never imagined being detected by a human.
Impossible… she screamed internally. How can he perceive through the barrier of the inner world?
Her critical mistake had been misjudging the mount. At its current height of 2.2 meters, she had mistaken the Horse King Heracles for a stunted cub, leading her to grievously underestimate the man riding it.
As shock still coursed through her, something even more terrifying occurred.
King's right hand suddenly glowed with a dark, golden light. It pierced the spatial barrier between worlds as if it were mere gauze, seized her firmly, and yanked her into the material realm.
Kaka tumbled onto the rough bark, her mind reeling. But in the next instant, a chill of unprecedented depth froze the very blood in her veins.
Without the insulating barrier of the inner world, she could now sense with horrifying clarity the terror contained within that golden-maned "pony." It was not a matter of visual size, but a vital, overwhelming blood energy—a life-force so potent it burned like a captive sun. She knew the legends: the hoofprints left by a displeased Horse King could stifle all plant life in an area for millennia, saturated with that domineering essence.
And the Pym Collar, a marvel of technology akin to the sorcery of Ant-Man's gear, possessed a singular, magical property: it shrank the wearer proportionally, altering size but not an iota of intrinsic power.
The realization struck Kaka like a physical blow. That is no cub. That is the Horse King himself, Heracles!
Though she didn't understand why one of the Eight Kings had become so small, the implication was devastatingly clear: any man who could tame the Horse King and use him as a mount possessed strength beyond fathomable depths. He was a being more terrifying than the Gourmet God Acacia himself. And she had been foolishly spying on him, relying on the veil between worlds for protection!
It's over… I'm finished… Kaka wailed internally. She let herself go limp, sprawling flat on the branch. She even adjusted her position slightly to ensure she'd look somewhat presentable in death.
King looked down, amused by the female Nitro's dramatic performance. Just lying down and waiting for the end?
He dismounted with the casual ease of someone pressing a button and lightly prodded the prostrate Kaka with the toe of his boot. "Get up. The chef isn't here, and I can't be bothered with plucking and processing anything right now."
So you really were planning to eat me! Kaka's long eyelashes fluttered twice, but she kept her eyes screwed tightly shut, her posture one of stubborn, resigned defiance. Do your worst.
King shook his head in mild exasperation. "I only pulled you out because I wanted to ask you something."King followed Kaka's trembling gaze and saw it. Perched on a gnarled knot of wood, barely ten meters behind them, was the ruler of this entire continent. It stood only about one and a half meters tall, its compact body a tapestry of dense, crisscrossing scars that spoke of countless battles. A palpable aura of primal ferocity radiated from it, thick enough to taste. The Ape King Bambina, one of the legendary Eight Kings, had arrived without a sound.
Its burning crimson eyes were not fixed on King, nor on the terrified Kaka, but were locked with intense focus on the Horse King Heracles. An invisible pressure began to condense in the air, making the very sunlight seem to dim.
The Horse King, for its part, did not rear or snort in challenge. Instead, it took a single, deliberate step forward, placing its bulk slightly between King and the Ape King. It lowered its magnificent head, its own eyes meeting Bambina's gaze squarely. There was no fear, only a deep, ancient recognition—the acknowledgment of one sovereign to another.
King felt the shift immediately. The playful energy from moments before vanished, replaced by the static charge before a cataclysmic storm. He remained utterly still, his expression unreadable. A direct confrontation between two of the Eight Kings here, on this branch, would not just destroy the Tree of First Cry; it would likely shatter the mountain range beneath it.
Bambina's scarred lips peeled back, not in a snarl, but in something more unnerving—a silent, evaluative baring of teeth. Its gaze flickered from Heracles to the human on its back, and a spark of something like cold curiosity entered its crimson eyes. This was an unprecedented scene: Heracles, the untamable king of the plains, bearing a rider.
Kaka had stopped breathing altogether, frozen in a paralysis of pure dread. This was beyond her worst nightmares.
Then, Bambina moved. It didn't leap or charge. It simply tilted its head to the other side, the movement unnervingly human-like. Its eyes swept over King again, and then back to Heracles. The fierce pressure in the air fluctuated, ebbing slightly from an imminent explosion to a simmering, watchful tension.
It was waiting. Assessing the anomaly before it.
King understood. Protocol here was everything. He was in the domain of another King, and his mount was its peer. The next move would set the tone for everything that followed—harvest, passage, or annihilation.
Slowly, without any sudden gestures, King raised his right hand. But he did not reach for a weapon. Instead, he opened his empty palm towards Bambina, a gesture that could be read as peaceful, or merely as showing he held nothing. His voice, when it came, was calm and measured, cutting through the heavy silence.
"Heracles is my partner," he stated, the words simple and direct. "We are here for the [PAIR], not for territory."
Bambina's eyes narrowed. The scars on its face seemed to deepen in the dappled light. It let out a short, sharp puff of air—not a huff, but a sound that carried the weight of a question and a warning all at once. Its gaze slid past King, towards the glittering, star-like fruits adorning the branch above them.
The meaning was clear. The fruits were the key. The purpose would dictate the permission.
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