Gravis only looked at the green monkey with cold eyes. Venting had not helped him at all, and he needed to get to the war as soon as possible to become a level five Lord. Right now, he was very impatient as he waited for the green monkey's answer.
Meanwhile, the green monkey was still stunned by Gravis' performance. This fight had been way too one-sided. Additionally, Gravis was growing and mutating while he spoke, and he didn't even seem to care about his growing power. Normally, beasts that reached the next level were always excited and tried to revel in their newfound power.
The monkey shook his head a little bit to regain his bearings. Then, he looked at Gravis with furrowed brows. "You still haven't fulfilled your duty as a breeder. Joining a war is too risky for you right now," he said.
"Then don't count me as a breeder anymore. I want to temper myself, and if my status is in the way of that, it's nothing more than a hindrance to me," Gravis said coldly.
The monkey was taken aback again. Did this beast just throw away one of the most illustrious positions in existence without thinking?
The monkey wanted to argue more, but he quickly got a message from the Grand Elder, who said that Gravis was allowed to take part in the war. The monkey didn't know Gravis' personality, and the white ape knew that, which was why he had interfered.
Allowing Gravis to temper himself wouldn't be an issue. Gravis would fulfill his duties anyway when he realized that he couldn't become a King like this. They just had to wait.
The monkey nodded a bit towards the Mountain of Pride and then turned to Gravis. "Alright. The next group will leave in two weeks. You can join them," the monkey said.
"That's too long," Gravis answered immediately. Was this a joke? Gravis was barely able to contain his anger and frustration already. He couldn't wait for another two weeks. "Point me towards the direction, and I will go by myself."
The monkey didn't like Gravis' tone at all, but he kept himself in check. "That won't be possible. We need to be careful of spies, which is why we always need to send a powerful escort with the group as proof of their identity. Otherwise, some sea beasts might infiltrate our army," he explained.
"And if I go either way?" Gravis asked with narrowed eyes.
The monkey looked back with narrowed eyes. "Then the surrounding Kingdoms will kill you since they don't know who you are. You might be powerful for your level, but you can't fight a Kingdom yet."
Gravis clenched his fists and teeth as he heard that. His frustration grew as he realized that he couldn't even temper himself without someone more powerful allowing it. If he just charged off like this, he would run into several Kings that would kill him. Gravis was angry, but he hadn't lost his rationality.
This was also a form of suppression, though not an aggressive one. Yet, Gravis still hated this feeling.
"Alright," Gravis said with barely contained rage. "Where do I need to wait?" he asked.
The monkey was growing more annoyed with Gravis' tone. This Lord was looking at him like he wanted to kill him, and the monkey didn't like that one bit. Yet, the rules of the Empire didn't allow the monkey to just kill Gravis like this, even if he wanted to.
"Go to the east. After around a day of travel, you will find two high and thin mountains. As long as you stay near them, you will hear the announcement when the time comes. Everything else will be explained then," the monkey explained coldly.
Gravis nodded and immediately flew to the east, leaving the monkey behind without another word.
The monkey quickly tried to forget Gravis and left to deal with Gravis' mess. The monkey would need to send someone to the Blue Scaly Kingdom to let them know that their envoy had died.
An envoy's death was not a small matter. Generally, the envoys from the Kingdoms staying in the Empire were the most talented Lords of that Kingdom. They mainly came here to comprehend some Laws, which was the incentive that the Empire used to keep the Kingdom's loyal to them.
If the Empire didn't offer enough benefits to the Kingdoms, they might decide to join another Empire. One would think that this wouldn't be such a big issue. After all, the Empire had hundreds of affiliated Kingdoms under them. What did one Kingdom matter?
There were two reasons why such Kingdoms mattered.
One reason was a cohesive territory. By having all Kingdoms follow one Empire in one cohesive pile, it would be easier for the Empire and other Kingdoms to transport and transfer weaker beasts and Lords through them.
If one Kingdom in the middle of that pile decided to join another Empire, all neighboring Kingdoms would need to move around the whole thing so that they didn't trespass and enrage the affiliated Empire of that Kingdom. When a time-sensitive situation occurred, this could cost the Empire a lot more.
The second reason was the territories of the Kingdoms themselves. What did that mean exactly, and why was this different from the first reason?
The difference was that those Kingdoms might hold areas that helped in Law Comprehension. In fact, most of the Law Comprehension Areas that belonged to the Empire were located in a territory of one of their Kingdoms. The Empire simply had control over these areas.
The Empire could send their beasts to these areas inside the Kingdoms to learn some Laws. If a Kingdom with such a Law Comprehension Area joined another Empire, the Empire would lose one of its areas.
And it just so happened that the Blue Scaly Kingdom had such an area. It was some kind of underground lake with insanely strong currents. This was also the reason why the crocodile had been able to understand its Law.
Obviously, the crocodile hadn't had as much combat experience as Gravis' usual opponents. A beast like the crocodile wouldn't have been able to comprehend a Law without the help of a Law Comprehension Area.
So, the green monkey had to deal with the Blue Scaly Kingdom delicately and explain to them that one of their most talented beasts had died inside their Empire. Sure, all of this was within the rules, and the crocodile had accepted the challenge, but not all beasts were the same.
The fact that such an inexperienced beast had been chosen as an envoy already showed that the Blue Scaly Kingdom had a kind of different mindset from the usual beasts. Obviously, the crocodile hadn't gone through a lot of genuine life and death tempering but had still been chosen to be an envoy, which was basically a waste of an envoy's position.
This meant that the Blue Scaly Kingdom probably valued the number of powerful beasts over their individual Battle-Strength. The bigger picture of the Kingdom was more important to them than to risk losing some beasts to make them go through tempering.
Of course, if the Blue Scaly Kingdom left, the Empire wouldn't be too sad. After all, the Kingdom just had one Law Comprehension Area of many. Sure, the Empire might help the Kingdoms here and there, but the Empire wouldn't change and ignore its own rules just because some Kingdom threw a hissy fit.
This was one of the crucial differences between humans and beasts.
Humans might have forced Gravis to spare the crocodile to keep up their good relationship with the associated Kingdom. After all, on paper, a whole Kingdom with a Law Comprehension Area was more valuable than one Lord, right?
Meanwhile, the Empire was a bit annoyed that Gravis had killed an envoy, but they wouldn't stop him from doing it again. He was the more powerful beast, and therefore, he was allowed to kill the crocodile as long as Gravis kept following the rules.
That's why the green monkey hated having to explain this situation to the Blue Scaly Kingdom. Gravis was the more powerful beast out of the two, and everything should have ended with that fact. Yet, because of this political mess, the monkey still had to talk to the Kingdom, which felt incredibly unnecessary to him.
Meanwhile, near the Mountain of Pride, the Grand Elder and the Empress talked to each other.
"He has a lot of mysterious abilities," the Grand Elder said to the Empress. They had watched the fight, and they had already talked a lot about Gravis.
The Empress nodded. "He has also said a lot of confusing things in the past week. It was almost like he was talking to someone. Yet, I didn't feel the presence of any being," she answered.
"I have noticed," the white ape said. "As far as I see, he thought he was talking to some kind of being called Heaven. I've never heard of that before."
If Gravis heard that the white ape and the Empress had never heard about Heaven, he would become shocked. Yet, after thinking about this for a while, it actually made sense.
The Heaven in this world kept itself completely out of all affairs. There were no Heavenborn or beasts suddenly getting struck by lightning. The beasts had never seen Heaven do anything, which made them not even think about the possibility that some powerful being controlled the entire world.
Everything they had seen had been natural and made sense. As far as they knew, the whole world was just a construct made out of many different Laws.
One had to remember that the existence of Heaven had only been public knowledge in the lower world because Heaven had actively interfered with nearly everything. It had created Heavenborn and had killed people. In the lower world, it had shown itself as the hegemon that it had been.
In this world, Heaven was so silent and distant that nobody knew that it even existed.
