“If it wasn’t for His Highness Wardec choosing your weakest moment to challenge you, how could you have been expelled from the clan! How could he become chief of the Blood Blade Clan!!! If not… if not… he would still just be your elder brother!”
The expression of anger and grief appeared on the bearman’s face. He roared, “His Highness Wardec is too despicable and shameless. Acting so like a human is a disgrace to us beastmen!”
“Hahaha!!! I thank you for giving me your approval. Perhaps my elder brother, Wardec Blood Blade, had some slight inclinations towards humans, but his actions were still in line with the beastmen traditions, were they not?”
Lysfer laughed as if she did not care about the injustice done to her.
The bearman’s face twisted. He opened his mouth to retort, but in the end, he just sighed helplessly and nodded, “Yes, Your Highness. You are right. Even if His Highness Wardec’s methods were a bit shameless, he still followed beastmen traditions. His chieftainship is going to be recognized by the ancestral spirits.”
The composition of the beastman country was completely different from humans. Although the beastman country was unified as a whole like human empires, their rule was much closer to separate kingdoms.
There were countless large and small clans in the Beastman Empire. Their ruling class wasn’t like the humans’ where royal families existed. The Beastman Empire’s great chieftain was equivalent to a human emperor, but the position was not based on inheritance. They followed an extremely fair and ancient way of deciding it – through duels!
If the beastman country was compared to the human empire, then the leaders of each clan were the lords of a territory. The leader of each clan was called a chief, and the combination of the clans was the complete beastmen tribal group.
The ancient beastmen were purely nomadic. With their clans as the foundation, they wandered the fertile grasslands, raising large numbers of cattle and sheep.
Now, they were different from the past. The small clans still lived a nomadic life, but the larger clans built their own cities, and a portion of them even learned to plant, but because of the lands they occupied as well as their lack of technical know-how, their farming productivity was even lower than humans’.
A new great chieftain for the beastman country would be selected once the previous one grew too old. At that point, the chiefs of the big clans would gather at the beastman nation of ‘Aldore’. In the presence of the ancestor of the beastmen, they would carry out a collision of flesh and bone to decide the next chief.
This was the most sacred and most undefilable battle of the beastmen race. It represented the glory of the beastmen. If anyone dared to use petty tricks in this sacred battle, they would immediately be scorned by the entire race.
When every clan chose a chief, they also used dueling to decide. The only thing different from choosing a great chieftain was a right of inheritance. In other words, only the children of the previous chief had the right to succeed the clan. Only when the heir was too useless and could not gain the recognition of the clansmen, then it would be possible to change the chief.
The Blood Blade Clan which Lysfer belonged was a relatively large clan. It had its own city at the east of the country. Each clan was composed of many races. Very few clans preserved the ancient tradition of having only one race.
The chief of the Blood Blade Clan belonged to the wolfman race. Lysfer and his brother were the only heirs with the qualification to become the chief. In noble and royal families, having a lack of excellent heirs was a headache, but in this generation of the Blood Blade Clan, they had two good heirs, which presented their own problems.
Lysfer and her brother were famous in the entire beastman tribe. They were both young for beastmen and had already reached the ninth rank. With their age and the talent that they displayed, the wide road to becoming legendary rank powerhouses was in front of them.
But just a short while ago, the Blood Blade Clan suffered a terrifying disaster. The original chief, Lysfer’s father, died in the calamity, and she was also lightly wounded.
The clan could not remain without a chief, so after the crisis was over, a duel would be held between Lysfer and her brother to choose the new chief.
But no one expected that after the disaster ended, Lysfer’s brother initiated a duel to elect the chief before Lysfer’s wound had fully healed.
Although many people were suspicious of her brother taking advantage of the situation, it wasn’t completely out of the line with their tradition, in which an heir could initiate a duel at any time as long as the chief was killed in action. There was no requirement for both sides to be at peak strength.
That was because, in their dictionary, injuries were not an excuse to escape a fight, only death was!
As a result, Lysfer had to fight. She could have chosen to surrender and be the loser, but that was a great shame to their race.
The two siblings were equally talented and understood each other’s skills. With Lysfer’s injuries, she rightfully lost the right to inherit the clan. She was the complete loser and would become a slave.
But perhaps because the siblings were related by blood, or perhaps because Wardec was a little ashamed of his own methods, Wardec gave Lysfer freedom and exempted her from the identity of a slave.
Although the beastmen were more civilized now than before, they still practiced slavery. The defeated would become the victor’s slaves and would follow the victor’s every command. Lysfer obtaining freedom was a blessing amidst misfortune. Otherwise, with her beauty and strength, it wouldn’t have been strange for her to be sold as a sex slave.
This way, Lysfer was driven out of the clan, but no one expected that a small number of people who once followed her were willing to continue following her. Thus the current scene.
They crossed deadly deserts, walked through dangerous jungles, surmounted poisonous swamps, and finally arrived here.
They were a group of homeless wanderers; losers who had lost their homes.
Lysfer felt sorry for her own clansmen who followed her. So, she tried as hard as possible to look for a new home for them, but doing so was far easier said than done. Countless of her clansmen had died on the way.
As the defeated, there was no place for them in the beastman country. Lysfer knew that if they wanted to join a different clan, they could only join as slaves. For her, this was absolutely unacceptable. It was fine if she was alone, but she could not let these people who trusted her lose their freedom.
It was also impossible for them to join the human countries. The insidious and cunning humans were in a war with the beastmen. Going to them was the same as betraying the beastmen.
Lysfer also thought about grabbing a territory in the war but with only a few hundred warriors, who were hungry and weakened, they would not be able to do so. Even in the off chance that they could, they would not be able to defend it and everyone would just die.
So, Lysfer was thinking if maybe they could live deep in the mountains, swamps, or forests just like those weaker races and monsters, to find a piece of land that could allow them to survive.
“Your Highness, do you remember the information from the caravan we met earlier?”
The bearman looked at Lysfer’s wild yet despondent look and couldn’t help but speak.
Lysfer was moved and raised her head, “Are you talking about Central City? The demigod dragon’s new territory?”
She understood what the bearman was implying.
It might indeed be a way to solve their crisis. If they could not survive in the territories of humans and beastmen, then maybe joining a dragon was a good choice.
Lysfer thought so as well.
