After their encounter with Freya, it was finally time for Druak and Isaac to set off immediately, especially since they needed to get to the flower before it bloomed so they could prevent any monsters from devouring it.
Once at the academy gates they met with a guard who noted down that they were leaving the academy grounds.
"You ready." Druak asked as he looked back at Isaac who was fiddling around with his new magic staff.
"Oh. What was that." Isaac responded, only hearing Druak's voice but not what had actually been said.
'Looks like I don't have to worry about him.' Druak thought as he and Isaac walked toward the now rising sun and began their journey to mount du shan.
Bordering the Rose kingdom, one of the Argonaut kingdom's longest standing enemies, a major incident had just occurred which led to a massive meeting amongst all the strongest elves within the kingdom.
Within an enormous forest, there were innumerable buildings which spanned atop each tree. At the peak of the highest tree a meeting amongst the greatest of the elves was taking place and at the head of a table, that stretched through the entire room, sat a slim and tall aged man with long grey hair and long ears. His intimidating aura drowned the entire room leaving only a handful of people that seemed unaffected.
Resting his head against his arm the aged man stared towards one of the individuals who seemed unaffected by his aura. "Trian. Tell me the condition of the border city that was attacked and if anything of value was damaged."
Trian was a slender yet well built elf who carried around a rapier and had long golden hair which was a common thing for elves. The biggest feature that distinguished him from his brethren was the fact that he had a massive gash across his face which went from the top of his head through his eye and past his lip.
Trian lowered his head as he reported. "Your majesty. We have confirmed a total of 184 elven deaths and 360 with serious injuries... We have also lost 3 life trees which were within the city."
Despite the numerous casualties, the entire room seemed unfazed by the devastation that had been caused within the city that was attacked, this was until the trees of life were mentioned.
Leaping out of his seat an arrogant looking elf shouted. "What the hell did you just say!"
This was followed by shouts from multiple other elves who were no longer unfazed and now seemed to be in a panic, almost as if they just found out they would die in a matter of seconds.
*Bang* "SILENCE"
Everyone stopped making any noise, as they looked towards their king who was now standing with an ominous green light fluttering around him.
"All of you are being ridiculous. I expected more from the greatest of the elven race." The king looked around the room till his eyes met a young female elf who had been one of the only ones who were quiet. "Eowyn. My daughter, I would like you to gather a force of nightwalkers to go to the mother tree and try to ease her anger."
Eowyn bowed her head toward the king before exiting the room, not muttering a single word as she left.
"That damned girl can't even speak to the king."
"Have you seen her white her. I heard her hair is white because she's not actually a full elf and just someone the king took in after seeing how pitiful she was."
"She is lucky she has a talent for life magic otherwise I'm sure she would have already been disowned by the king."
It was clear by the atmosphere that Eowyn wasn't liked by many within the elven society. This was normal for the elves, however as they were a race that was incredibly discriminative against anyone that wasn't a pureblooded elf and Eowyn only made their hatred worse as she would never speak no matter who was before her, despite the fact that she still had the ability to speak.
The king seemed unbothered by the elves who were speaking ill of his daughter and merely continued with the meeting as if they didn't exist. "We must remove these monsters that have infiltrated and attacked our kingdom. Is there any among you who has any suggestions for how we could deal with this."
An elf with sly looking eyes stood up and looked towards the king, bowing at him. Once he had bowed, the sly looking elf responded to the king's question. "Your majesty. I have a suggestion that could solve not only this problem but another which we've been having for quite some time."
"Oh. And what might your suggestion be."
A smile grew on the sly looking elves face as he responded. "How about we use those disgusting humans to subjugate the monsters for us."
It seemed the king was interested as he quickly signalled for the sly elf to continue on with what he was saying.
"If we contact the griffon academy within the Argonaut kingdom and suggest a joint subjugation quest with them and provide rewards for the students that do well we could use those academy brats as a way to deal with the monsters without losing any of our men. And with how greedy those humans can be I doubt they'd refuse."
Some of the elves argued against this idea as they didn't want to give away anything to the humans, but after much deliberation, they had finally agreed to the decision. Once the decision was made the sly looking elf's smile grew and as his smile grew so to did the kings, almost as if both of them knew what each other we're thinking.
Now that they had made their decision to (work) with the griffon academy a messenger was soon sent over to the griffon academy who would most likely agree to the offer the rose kingdom made, as they would want the rewards that the elves were offering.
Without Druak knowing an enormous event that could affect both the Argonaut and the Rose kingdom had just begun, and this event was something Druak would have no knowledge of as it was something that never happened in his past life.
Druak and Isaac had been travelling for two days and were finally at the edge of the mount du shan territory. On the first day they had encountered a small group of bandits that had interfered with their travels, luckily all of them were first order class and none of them seemed to be mages so Druak and Isaac were more than enough to despatch them.
They didn't encounter anything else of significant danger after that and made it to the mount du shan territory an entire day earlier than they had originally expected; this gave them plenty of time to prepare before they actually entered the misty fog that surrendered the territory.
The first thing that Druak did was explain what kind of monster they would be facing as he knew that Isaac was the type to only learn about fire magic and ignore anything else. This took up quite a lot of time as Isaac didn't seem at all interested in the topic, but Druak knew if he didn't explain this to Isaac now it could lead to him being seriously injured later on.
"You done with your boring explanation. Can we finally go in now." Isaac was completely uninterested and tried anyway to get Druak to finish explaining about the monsters.
Finally, Isaac's request was accepted as Druak stopped explaining about the monsters and instead walked up to Isaac, giving him a handful of potions.
"What are these."
"They are poison resistant potions. If we encounter any monsters during our mission make sure to instantly drink one, we can't risk being seriously poisoned especially when there are no villages or towns within a day's walk."
Finally, they went into the fog, which made it next to impossible to see what was within mount du shan at least until you entered the fog yourself, this was why everything inside the fog was known as the mount du shan territory.
As they entered the first thing they saw was the forest which encompassed the entire mountain unlike normal trees, each one of these trees had a strange green tinge to them, this was because a lot of poisonous creatures use the trees as a way to test their poison and the trees had to adapt and evolved to the point that they themselves became poisonous. Luckily Druak had already told Isaac all of this before they entered the forest and hoped that something like what happened in the volcanic Isles didn't happen here.
"I've told you what not to touch this time so make sure not to do anything dumb like last time." Druak said as he laughed at Isaac who grumbled back.