We walked through the doors to the 10th floor. Immediately our eyes were filled with dancing flames and rows upon rows of golden doors. At the far end of the room sat what looked to be a little girl upon a throne of golden flames. She was petting a small three headed dragon in her lap.
"So, you have completed the labyrinth." she started.
"Indeed we have, I trust you are the bodyguard of fire?"
"I am, my name is Fenik, and this is my dragon, Kusu. He is a three headed dragon. He breathes fire, lightning, and a little something I call bomb." I look at the small dragon.
"What about the one I nailed to the wall?"
"Oh that, it was a salamander that I just tweaked a bit."
"Well then, I would like you to join me in service, so that I may win this competition."
"Well, you did clear the trial, and you seem capable. Oh why not." She hops off the throne and it disappears.
Fenik skips over to me and jumps onto my back.
"Where to?" she declares.
Naitsu gives her a glare and is about to protest but I hold up my hand.
"First we need to explore your treasury here. We can always come back for more as the labyrinth is now under our control. This place might be good in case of emergencies or storing extremely valuable items we don't want to keep on-hand."
Fenik nods her head. "Indeed sound reasoning."
We begin searching the rooms. Many are filled with gold and platinum coins. Looks like our treasury just expanded massively. After counting all the gold and platinum, there ended up being a total of 500 platinum, 900 gold, as well as 700 silvers we found.
In other rooms we found many different objects, ranging from golden chalices, to siege weapons made entirely from glaxium. The stuff in this labyrinth alone could guarantee my win.
"With this alone, we could take over every kingdom" my mouth agape.
"I wouldn't think so" Fenik began, "the other kingdoms have many secrets, don't belittle them".
I nodded my head and kept searching the rooms. We eventually stopped and then took a rest.
The next day we left the labyrinth, since we completed it, as long as we were in the labyrinth we could teleport anywhere we wanted inside the labyrinth.
Once we were out of the cave, Kusu flew into the sky and grew to the size of a very large dragon. Enough for everyone to ride.
"All the dragons can change their size for convenience sake" Fenik explained.
We all climbed on and Naitsu used some water magic to conceal us in a mist. A dragon sighting could scare the people and it might also get out to our enemies that we have a dragon on our side.
The long trip only took us a matter of hours to get back to Corcia. The people looked confused to see the rapid moving cloud coming for them and alerted the people at the castle, or what had been built anyway.
Archers lined the walls and courtyard, taking aim at the cloud. Seemed a bit foolish as it was a cloud, but a normal cloud didn't move 100 miles per hour.
Just as they were about to fire I jumped from the dragon. The second my feet made impact with the ground I used to modify to soften my landing.
"Hold your fire!" I shouted.
The men stopped and looked at the cloud that was now slowly descending. When the cloud touched the ground it dissipated to reveal Katy, Yumi, Naitsu, Asterian, and the new member Fenik. I had made sure to tell Fenik to keep Kusu a secret as we never knew if we might have a traitor.
The men all lowered their weapons and Lillith along with Reynard came out. They hurriedly rushed forward to me and greeted me.
"Apologies for almost shooting at you and your companions my lord" they said together.
"It's fine, you were only doing your jobs" I replied scratching the back of my head.
"Anyway, we completed the labyrinth, our new companion is Fenik, she wields fire magic" I gesture towards Fenik.
"Hmph, it's not that lowly fire magic, it is emperor fire magic, all fire bows down to my flames!" she corrected.
"Mine is known as empress water magic, it's basically the same as her's, but with water." Naitsu said.
Reynard nodded his head, "as expected of the bodyguards.".
Although he had a tone that said 'Yes! A great addition to the kingdom!'. His eyes said differently. I had already noticed that he often took sideways looks at Naitsu, and now that Fenik was here, he looked at her hungrily, but he hid it well enough for nobody else but me to notice it.
Reynard always seemed a bit power hungry, and seemed to have his own self-interests in mind. I didn't see him as trustworthy. It was the main reason I invited the former minister of the Silver River kingdom.
I needed to keep an eye on Reynard, and make sure we never tell him something I don't want him knowing.
"The castle is progressing nicely." I looked around the courtyard, it would only take 2 months more for it too be completed.
Wait, a month!? Didn't we have 5 months when we left, we were only gone for 2 weeks!?
"Wait a second, how long were we in there for?" I looked to Lillith for an answer.
"3 months my lord." she answered flatly.
I looked at Fenik and she glanced around dodging and whistling.
I grabbed her cheeks and started pulling on them, "Why didn't you tell me this when we spent days exploring the treasury. You just leave out the fact that we were speeding through time!?".
"Ish showwy mashter, bush I hash forgoshen" she tried to speak through my incessant squeezing and pulling of her cheeks.
"Why is it accelerated?" I let her go.
"Hmph, magic items take time, so all it does is make all things that enter move through time faster. Without actually aging, so 3 months still passed in the labyrinth, it only seems like 2 weeks. But don't worry, you won't age, but you will mentally." she seemed a bit flushed but also a bit angry I grabbed her cheeks so roughly.
'I guess that might be useful. But that would have really sucked if we aged in there' I thought to myself. We all went into the castle and ate some food. All the maids were very excited I finally came back safe and sound.
That night I slept on a bed of… more like forced to rest on many, many, good god many, sets of thighs and breasts. Once again, comfortable, but I'd rather go to hell then admit that to them.