Twigs focus shifted from his problems towards his scouts again. While the soulbinding was a problem, it was not a immediate threat to him. Unlike the army his hobgoblins just stumbled upon. The three previous minions of his must have approached the area from another direction and thus had clearly missed it. All around the roads leading towards the city there were camps with countless humans to be found.

Quickly Twig ordered his hobs to scout the area more diligently. He wanted to know what he was dealing with before further searching for Teiming. The prince was certainly inside the city right now and sooner or later he would come out again. Unlike him, this army could pose a immediate threat. Not to Twig’s life directly, but to his master. And due to the soulbinding death would come to the both of them.

In quick succession Twig ordered different scouting strategies to his minions. From the remaining seventy seven hobgoblins, he ordered twenty to count and measure the enemies strength from a distance. Another 27 were ordered to shadow lookouts and kill them should they suspect anything. Two goblins were told to just walk into their camp and not resist should they be attacked. If lucky they would hear something interesting from a captive point of view.

The rest would circle around the swamplands in the area to find any other troops that his minions had missed. Awaiting their report Twig browsed his monster book for further scouting options. Reading through them Twig suspected all options to be battle orientated. All but one. [Abyss Raven] sounded like it could provide at least aerial scouting, so Twig immediately inspected the option further.

[Abyss Raven: A black feathered raven from the deepest depths of the Rav Shinkan tunnel network. These tunnels formed bottomless chasms where creatures evolved without the light of the sun to guide their paths. Oddly enough these ravens could not be touched by sun rays even outside their homeworld, rendering them entirely invisible. With the size of a common raven their battle power is still hardly noteworthy but they are excellent for carrying out sneak attacks or theft.]

[Manacost: 1.000 Mana]

[Monster Core Cost: 9.000 Mana]: Limited.

Current Mastery Benefits:

1 Abyss Raven

Flight Speed Bonus: +6% Flight Speed in dark places.

Monster Core Bonus: Invisibility. Only one Abyss Raven Monster Core can be active at the same time.

Twig frowned upon reading the restrictions in numbers. It would have been great to send out hundreds of these invisible birds. Hearing everything, everywhere from anyone. He could have been a literal god in this world. Annoyed he summoned one raven with the monster core and a few normal ones as well. They took off as soon as he presented them with their mission and went back to the pavilion. His student was still sleeping and Mira was also not around. Only the pyromancer was still inspecting the water elemental and drinking the potion. How much did she want to drink?

Annoyed he ordered a few skeletons to refill his little pond and stalked over to the girl. “What are you doing?” - “This is amazing. It is healing my back pain. Slowly, but it’s healing! Even that military cleric hardly made a dent back in the city!” Curious about the injury Twig asked: “What happened to your back?” - “The trial. I burned one of the officers quite a bit, but they stabbed me from behind with a weird spell. Luckily I still managed to win after that. I lost a lot of blood.” - “Huh. I see. Drink up then.”

Apparently this trial was quite rough on the rookies. But if this experienced pyromancer girl had such a hard time how did his own disciple survive the whole thing? Was it the dark energy he had felt? Putting the thought aside for later he remembered about his fire elementals. It was fun seeing things burn, vanish in a beautiful red, orange and yellow light and all that’s left was shining, dark ash. As a dragon Twig had relished in this experience and he would love to return to it.

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[Fire Elemental: A tiny elemental spirit with fire affinity, caught in a crystal. It can control fire to an extend, shape it’s paths and form, but most use it to store the dangerous element for later release. A fire elemental can also be used for cultivation, but if the users body is not trained sufficiently their body will start to burn. A skilled user might also use them to extinguish fires.]

[Manacost: 200 Mana]

[Monster Core Cost: 300 Mana]

Current Mastery Benefits:

1 Fire Elemental Crystal

Cultivation Speed increased by 20%.

Monster Core Bonus: Can store up to 200% it’s original capacity for fire.

Huh. Twig was really intrigued by this one. He had expected something similar to the water spirit. A entity that controlled a source of fire and attacked at will. Or something more battle oriented. But it was still too early to tell. He would have to try this one out and he had the perfect testing subject. Marcella would become his second disciple. Another human minion. It was not like he liked humans or anything.

He summoned a few dozen crystals, spending all his leftover mana. 29 crystals. Not too bad. Before he could focus his attention on his newly found pet project Marcella, he was interrupted by one of his hobgoblin scouts. It was one of the two suicide goblins. The second had been killed but apparently the humans had noticed that he was not a threat right after killing it.

“Wait, wait, wait! It’s not moving!” The soldier called out to his fellow colleague, which just raised his axe to another strike. “Huh?” - “It’s not moving, look. Let’s tie it up.” - “Why? Just kill it. These creatures are dangerous! They come during the night and snatch your children to eat them!” - “Those are kids tales. Don’t be a fool. It clearly means something if a hobgoblin just walks in our camp letting us kill it. Let’s take it to Dorthur. Maybe we get a reward?”

Apparently reconsidering in their argument the two soldiers tied the goblin up and dragged him along towards the center of their camp. Twig’s minion counted everything on the way in, from weapons to people, saw what they ate, where and how they slept and most importantly: how many there were. Being brought to the camp’s leader was just a added bonus. Scouting and gathering information was the most important thing.

The chieftain was nearly three times as high as the hobgoblin, towering at nearly two and a half meters. A giant of a man. And broad as a troll. Maybe a half troll? Twig shrugged and used the goblin eyes to further investigate the area. “What’s that? Why do you catch this creature and then bring it to me? Don’t you have enough shit to do? God damn. I will make you dig some new shitters later, you lazy-” - “Sir, we didn’t. It’s just…” - “The thing just walked up to us and let us tie it up. We thought it was weird so we brought it.”

The giant man frowned. “Ahh, you idiots!” Quickly pulling his sword he cut down the goblin where he stood. Luckily for Twig his Abyss Raven had arrived just moments ago, sitting on top of the chiefs tent. “That’s obviously a possessed one then. Most likely the prince had sent one of them. Fuck. Send me Marquez and Diaz. Hurry! Or I will cut you down next.” Movement came into the soldiers and a few minutes later two druids in robes appeared before the giant man.

One a woman and one a man. The woman was young, looking scared while the old man next to her radiated power and importance. His long grey beard did help and supported his image. “Can you determine where the summoner or sorcerer is that controlled this goblin?” The girl knelt down, inspecting the corpse. The old man however frowned. “Well, if it wasn’t dead for sure. Like this… I’m not sure. Let’s see.” A few minutes later they had to disappoint their leader. “No. Sadly there is not a clear enough trace left.” - “Fuck. Go tell the lookouts to be on guard. There might be more. Catch me one alive.”

Twig immediately pulled all his hobgoblins back from their shadowing duty. If these druids could really determine his location off of one of his minions he could really not afford that to happen. Luckily he had a new spy inside the camp, that would not be discovered. “Do you think the prince would be so stupid as to provoke us in our own territory, Dorthur?” - “Yes. The wars may be over, but they know we don’t bow to them so easily. If they are respectless, or demand something unreasonable my brother will send a signal from inside the city. We will capture the prince and hold him hostage. Or kill him. We will see.”

Twig knew now that he really could not let that slide. Threatening Teimings life, was like they were threatening his own. He would need to prepare a fighting force. Ordering his goblins on standby duty and distance scouting, his Abyss Ravens were ordered to infiltrate the city.

But what would be the best solution to fight these swamplanders? Twig wanted to avoid confrontation if possible, but how could he possibly make his master cancel his diplomatic mission and just leave the area? That would calm the local forces as well as diplomatic relations, more so than war negotiations, that basically were a list of demands from the Antalian kingdom to the swamplands. Hopefully his master did not do anything stupid…

While Twig waited for his mana pool to recover, he spent most of the mid day exploring the use of his fire elementals. Marcella was quickly able to make good use of them, but to himself they were basically useless. Unless he was in a situation where he was attacked by fire. Marcella was able to store several fireballs inside, making them quite a force to be reckoned with. Sadly Twig himself was not able to reactivate the crystals to use that firepower himself.

While exploring the crystals Twig spoke a lot to Marcella, teaching her the basic concept of cultivation and now he had another silent human, just sitting inside the pavilion, hardly moving. Well, she moved a lot more than Daz, as she always had a burning outburst with a lot of flames and fire when she couldn’t handle sitting around anymore.

Twig smiled when Daz finally came outside in the afternoon with Mira in tow. Time to teach his two new disciples how to use the fire elementals for cultivation.

Hopefully the made up concept that Twig thought up wouldn’t hurt them too much…