A week went by in a flash, and Desmon had finally arrived at the capital. Even before he could bet through to gates, multiple guards surrounded the carriage, ignoring the mages and soldiers around it, with their weapons drawn.
"I am sorry, but we need to inspect this carriage."
And leader of the guards stood in front of the carriage as he spoke with a certain amount of fear mixed into the stiff voice.
"You-" However, before one of the soldiers could lash out, Mason had already leapt out of the carriage, with Don in tow as he walked briskly towards the captain, who was around 2 heads taller than himself, and nearly 4 heads taller than Don.
"This is Duke Bard's carriage. He is inside. This is Don, and I am Mason, the finalists of the tournament held a few weeks ago, who could not complete the tournament due to the explosions. I still need to complete my audience with the king. Are you going to hold me up?"
Mason did not mince any words and straight away mentioned a tonne of important names and positions which he had connections with including the king. Naturally, there was no need to bring in the church of war into such a thing, since some cards would be best left hidden until needed.
Don behind Mason simply nodded and stared at the leader as though he was scum that belonged in the gutters of the slums.
"This…"
Th captain was stunned for quite some time, in which time Mason Fired a few wind bullets into the air and scared off the other guards while speaking with quite a bit of killing intent.
"M.O.V.E"
The guards moved back instinctively and the carriage proceeded forward before the leader could come back to his senses.
Back in the carriage, Desmon asked Mason, "Why?"
"Why did I do that?"
Desmon simple nodded with some amount of curiosity. They could have just allowed those guards to inspect the carriage and then keep moving. There was no need to create so much of a scene. It would just delay then my at most an hour.
"You are older than me. Think about it yourself. Just let me give you a clue. That leader was scared of something."
"Scared?"
"…"
'Scared…Could it be?'
As soon as Desmon's face brightened from understanding something, Mason spoke up.
"You got that right. The fear he was feeling is the same when as the fear you feel when you are doing something you should not do, and might get caught."
"Hmm"
"So, tell me, do you have enemies within the capital that might want to wrongly accuse you of something, or simply drag you away from your mini-army of soldiers and mages to kill you?"
"Hmm. And to do that, they could simply tell one of the soldiers to put something within my carriage during the inspection, and later to 'find' that something, thus accusing me of some sort of crime."
"Yes, they you would be pulled away from your escorts within the interrogation rooms, and could be easily killed, or tortured for something."
Desmon's face darkened as he thought about the trembling hands and sweaty face of the leader, and his right-hand man.
"That should be pretty accurate."
"Keke, my instincts are pretty good. But it was not me who found this out."
As mason said that, he pulled out the little wolf within his fur pocket and pointed.
"This little fellow here told me."
"Told you?"
"Well, it cannot speak. But when we were stopped, it started growling, the same way it was growling just before RedForce did that bullsh*t they did in the capital. It was also growling when that priest from the church of War had tried to poison me while entering the capital."
"I see, it is a rather interesting cub. What is its name?"
"That… I don't know yet."
"Then name it!"
"Hmm, how about Wolfy?"
"Grrrrr"
After getting an angry growl from the wolf cub, Mason coughed once and thought for some more time.
Time kept moving and Mason suddenly jumped up only to hit his head on the carriage ceiling, just as the carriage was nearing Desmon's mansion within the capital.
"How about Nix?"
"Woof!"
Hearing a cute little sound instead of the assuring bark of a wolf, Desmon's stoic expression softened a little as he looked at Mason who was tickling the white wolf in his hands.