“Are you five planning to fight against this army right now? Why?”

Charlotte Lionelden tilted her head as if she truly couldn’t understand.

“What nonsense! Shut up.”

Tuscan shouted at her. It was unclear whether he had forgotten that Charlotte, despite her young age, was still his aunt, or if he simply didn’t care about such courtesies in this life-or-death situation.

“You be quiet, you thieving tiger!”

Charlotte didn’t seem intimidated by Tuscan’s shout at all. Ignoring Tuscan, whose face was turning red and blue at her retort, she turned her gaze to the royals standing behind him.

“Tuscan Stackston isn’t the legitimate heir, is he? I was the heir, and I gave birth to a successor who would become the next generation’s heir. If you try to save that old tiger, six tigers will die here, but if you abandon that old tiger, only one tiger will need to die today. Even if you all die, Tigrium will end up with a new king far more legitimate than the old tiger anyway.”

Charlotte said, glancing at Chloe standing behind her.

Hugrey could finally solve the last puzzle. The reason they had come all the way to this battlefield, not content with just following to the war zone, was to persuade the royals. To show them the existence of a legitimate new king and to ask for cooperation in executing Tuscan.

In fact, the five tigers were equivalent to the strength of an entire legion. If they all transformed into tigers, they would all die, but the Elaion side would suffer casualties as well.

“Shut up! How long has it been since you fled from Tigrium, and now you dare to spout such nonsense!”

Tuscan shouted fiercely at Charlotte, as if he could kill her with his voice.

“Of course, the fact remains that a new king will be crowned even if only that noisy old tiger dies and five tigers return home safely. I’d like to advise you all to value your own lives.”

Charlotte continued her speech, completely ignoring Tuscan’s words and looking only at the royals.

Charlotte’s appeal seemed to hit home, as the wavering of the five tiger shifter royals was visibly clear. The war was already lost, and the rules of war between shifters that had been observed until now were not being followed in this war. In this situation, if they foolishly stood by Stackston’s side, the result would clearly be total annihilation.

Moreover, Charlotte had given them an appropriate justification for those who found it difficult to betray their fellow king. The existence of Chloe, a tiger shifter heir more legitimate than Stackston.

“Nonsense, I was the most capable king. Handing over the throne to such a young girl who can’t even transform into a tiger. Don’t talk nonsense, hurry up and kill them!”

Tuscan shouted. But it was already a powerless persuasion. It was now common knowledge among shifters that Chloe had transformed into a tiger twice.

“King Tuscan Stackston, we have no intention of laying down our lives for you, whose line of succession has been cut off. We will pledge our loyalty to Princess Charlotte and Princess Chloe, who have the noblest bloodline.”

Finally, one tiger shifter spoke up. In the end, they had abandoned Tuscan.

“You rotten tiger bastards!”

Tuscan roared as if it were his final roar, but his shout was losing its power.

The reason he had tried so hard to kill Chloe must have been because he knew a moment like this could come. In the end, Tuscan would meet his death abandoned even by his own kind because of Chloe.

Perhaps having lost his reason, Tuscan, who had been screaming, changed his form. His screams had turned into a tiger’s roar, and that roar echoed across the Hound Plains.

The eyes of the Elaion soldiers watching the final moments of the Tigrium king widened in shock and surprise at learning that the king was a shifter.

“My knights, soldiers of Elaion!”

Hugrey called out to the shocked soldiers as if to wake them from their stupor. As the soldiers’ gazes turned to him, he was about to order them to shoot arrows at the tiger-transformed Tuscan. But at that very moment, Hugrey felt as if his heart was falling into a bottomless abyss.

Because the tiger-transformed Tuscan had suddenly leaped as if about to fly and started charging towards where Chloe was standing. The fierce eyes of the old tiger were also precisely aiming at Chloe.

“Chloe!”

The experienced old tiger who had been through thick and thin had correctly identified the attack target that was easiest to kill and would cause the most destruction if killed at this moment.

In that brief moment that felt like an eternity, Hugrey felt as if his body was shattering into pieces with fear.

“Stop!”

A cry close to a lament burst from Hugrey’s mouth. If that huge tiger Tuscan pounced on Chloe, she could die from just one attack.

Moreover, there were too many soldiers with bows and spears to aim accurately at just the tiger. If even one of those arrows or spears went astray and flew towards Chloe…

“Don’t shoot!”

Hugrey shouted at the soldiers who were already aiming their bows at the tiger and immediately transformed into a wolf. It was an instinctive reaction. The only thought left in his mind was that he had to stop the old tiger. Calculating the distance between them, Tuscan’s huge fangs would tear into Chloe’s neck before Hugrey could restrain Tuscan. Every blood vessel in his body felt like it was bursting as he ran to stop the tiger.

Thud!

But just before Hugrey could reach Tuscan, just as Tuscan’s terrifying fangs were about to sink into Chloe, Tuscan’s body that had been leaping through the air fell to the ground with a dull thud.

Another tiger, Charlotte Lionelden, had blocked Tuscan with her own body.

Transforming into a tiger with maternal instinct as strong as Hugrey’s imprint on Chloe, she had barely managed to protect her daughter from Tuscan’s attack.

Hugrey, feeling as if he had escaped from the fires of hell, immediately pounced on Tuscan who had fallen to the ground.

I will definitely cut off that tiger bastard’s breath!

Because two tigers and one wolf, three beasts, were entangled in battle, the human soldiers could neither aim their bows nor approach with swords, and could only watch their bloody fight.

But not long after the three beasts had been fighting like that, the eyes of the soldiers, who thought there would be nothing more to be surprised about, grew even wider.

Tuscan, realizing that Charlotte was weak, had latched onto Charlotte, but seeing Charlotte being attacked, the Emperor of Elaion, Calcus Tracan, transformed into a lion.

The King of Tigrium, the Emperor of Elaion, the Duke of Ulpaz, and even the former Princess of Tigrium, all of them were shifters!

And it didn’t end there.

As Calcus Tracan also changed his form and now three beasts attacked the tiger Tuscan, Tuscan instantly became staggering and unable to use his strength, at which point even the head of the Lionelden family changed his form into an eagle and took to the sky.

The eagle began circling in the sky as if waiting for the corpse that would soon be created. As if to say that although he couldn’t join the fight of the beasts, he would take care of the aftermath.

Pwahahaha!

Tuscan, who had clearly lost strength and seemed to have given up on counterattacking, suddenly made a strange sound as if mustering his last bit of strength.

Was it an expression of will to kill at least one before he died?

Despite being a tiger whose skin had already been completely torn off, Tuscan, with strength from who knows where, once again grabbed Charlotte and threw her down.

Thud. Crack!

“Mom!”

The terrible sound of something breaking as Charlotte was thrown, Stackston’s roar, and the scream of Chloe Ulpaz seeing her mother injured all mixed together, and then Chloe transformed into a tiger as well.

She immediately pounced on old Stackston and bit his face.

Whether throwing Charlotte Lionelden had been Tuscan’s last bit of strength, the old tiger was now being torn apart by the attacks of the remaining three beasts, excluding Charlotte who had been thrown down.

But then a strange thing happened. Even Reina Tilbet, who had been watching the beasts’ fight as if it were someone else’s until now, transformed into a wolf. She pounced on the old tiger who now barely had any parts left to be torn.

The soldiers had seen Reina Tilbet unconditionally begging for forgiveness after surrendering to Hugrey. But the fact that a woman who had been fighting on Tigrium’s side until just recently was now fighting for Elaion, and the fact that she had only watched when help was needed but jumped in when the tiger’s life was already over, was too bizarre, leaving everyone dumbfounded.

However, regardless of the uncomfortable feelings of the onlookers, Reina Tilbet was calmly participating in the attack, carefully biting the head of the dying tiger king.

Less than a minute after Reina Tilbet had latched on, the old tiger’s body finally went limp with a groan that seemed to signal the end.

But at that very moment, the tiger Charlotte, who had been knocked down after being thrown by Stackston, rose again and rushed into the group of beasts.

The soldiers, who had been tilting their heads wondering if she was going to attack the already dead tiger again, widened their eyes as much as possible when they saw the target of Charlotte’s attack.