Tales Of The Mighty Dragonair

He was the same mage who spoke with him before. Arthur was astonished, had the ward already started between the two sides already? How much time did he waste out there?!

"Golden lion clan?!" Arthur faked ignorance, "Never heard of it, is this a far clan from the Black raven lands?" he added, while faking his lack of information.

"Oh, it's a long story, the short version of it is that this clan suddenly popped up out of the blue, with a growing army and a unique way of increasing mages' strength. Many bounty hunter mages had already joined them, including the last guild's leader. Now we are here to face them in battle, one day from now. Do you want to join our cause? We just want peace," the mage said.

Arthur knew this was a mix between truth and lies! They weren't here to make peace, they had already sat their gazes upon his lands, using their minion, the white rabbit clan, to try and kill him, or Willy.

"Sure, if you can pay for it then I will gladly fight for you," he said the typical response of any rogue mage. The face of that mage eased a bit, as long as it was a money problem, then there was no problem at all.

"Welcome to our camp, by the way, what is your name?" the mage asked.

"I'm Arthur," he replied, without a flinch.

"He is telling the truth," suddenly the mage standing silently from the beginning beside the talking mage blurted this out. Arthur eyed him, with much suspicion inside his mind. He wasn't telling the truth at all, except for his name.

This mage either was lying about his ability to sense the truth in words, or he knew his true identity and decided not to reveal it. Either way, he had passed the hidden test, as the face of the mage who was speaking with him all along had eased much.

"I'm Aron, the next to be black raven clan leader, a mage from the Dorgazire academy. Welcome to our camp, I will let Kig show you where to stay," Aron beamed with a warm smile, while introducing himself.

He was the arrogant type, or that impulsive one, rather he was quite calm and collected. Arthur added a note inside his mind, as this Aron here wasn't the easy type to handle.

"Thanks," Arthur just replied, while Aron nodded to him before heading to do his own business.

Arthur then glanced at this Kig. There was a veil of mystery around him, but he didn't show any of his doubts at all, as he warmly said:

"Where will I stay?"

"Please follow me," Kig simply responded, turned around and led Arthur inside the camp.

The camp was huger than what Arthur initially expected from the outside. He managed to spot hundreds of mages, living inside hastily built huts. All mages walked fully armed with swords or bows, which made Arthur more vigilant.

He tried to sense the strength of these mages, and he wasn't that surprised when he felt they were all hardly reaching the level of his little gang. That meant these mages were just weaker than his top mages, but not necessarily weaker than his newly trained mages from his villagers.

'That's quite interesting,' he thought to himself, as the sheer numbers of these mages were just inferior to his own. Quantity would accommodate for the strength gap between the two sides, making the upcoming battle's result hard to be predicted at all.

"This will be your place," Kin said, as he took him across the whole camp, till they ended up against a small hut, similar to others, but it was the closest one to the wooden wall surrounding the camp. "May I have a word with you inside?" Kin suddenly asked.

"Sure," Arthur didn't reject this, as he was sure Kin would reveal his true intentions inside.

The two entered the hut, which was only three meters in two, empty of anything but a small bed, where Kin closed the wrecking door of the hut, and turned to look at Arthur.

"Welcome back, clan leader," Kin suddenly knelt on the ground, whispering these words, which made Arthur understand what was going on here.

"Are you one of our eyes here?" he asked, just to make sure of his guess.

"Leader Omgalden instructed me to stay here and relay the intel to them," Kin said, "We all were so worried about you, as we couldn't reach you at all. I'm sure they all will be greatly excited for your return," he added, with his whispering tone, "this hut is quite special, as it hides a tunnel going under the wooden walls, so if you want to leave at any time, you can use it."

Kin pointed to the ground, where he knocked softly on it. a resonance came, showing there was a gap underneath it. Arthur was greatly satisfied by Kin's actions, putting a good note in his mind regarding this mage. "How long was I gone? And what is the current state of the whole war?" he finally asked the most important matters now.

"You have gone missing for two weeks. Everyone was so crazy about it, but they kept acting according to your plan. All the small clans around the golden lion clan was successfully added to your reign. What only misses is the white rabbit and the black raven clans," Kin said, giving Arthur some scare thoughts at first when he heard about the time he went missing.

Two weeks! That was a very long time! The only explanation was the time was lost mostly inside that mysterious dream world, where he fought that bronze giant. This made him recall the previous experience inside the other mysterious realm, where he met that venerable master.

"Now the black raven clan was forced to move their forces, gathering up here to be ready for the fight tomorrow. The Omgalden leader thought of attacking here, but as you can see, the place is quite fortified!" Kin added, with some regret in his tone.

"Don't worry about it," Arthur smiled, as he patted on the shoulders of Kin, "you did a great job, so please stay away from the walls tonight," he added, as he had a plan in his mind, deciding to execute it tonight.

Kin raised his head, looking in question towards Arthur, who just smiled back. "Now go back before anyone could miss you," Arthur said, as he patted again on Kin's shoulders, feeling some strange softness there, but he didn't give it any thoughts at all.

"Be careful leader," Kin finally stood up, and moved outside the hut while muttering these words. He went outside, closed the door and vanished from the sight of Arthur, who sat on the bed, taking out his meat, while chewing it slowly. "So you wanted to play it strength for strength, trying to crush us then," he muttered, before taking out a bird's wing, wrote something, and let it burn, silently, in front of his eyes.

Just as he was lying there, eating, many papers started to appear in front of him. They were all bird's wings, coming from all the top mages in his army.

"Oh, it seems I gave you quite a scare," he chuckled as he read them all, then writing back one bird wing to Amelia, reassuring them all on him and his safety.