Hao Ren and his group spent the half the day doing nothing in their guest room. While they had marched through the night across the Gnarled Grove, none present were normal beings, and they were not exhausted by the journey. A short rest was all they need to recover and they started busying themselves.
Y'zaks and Wuyue had no interest in running about and so they stayed in their rooms to nap. Vivian took the free time to knit a scarf for Hao Ren using Lily's shed fur. Becky was still fantasizing on how she would soon be a filthy rich noble and mindless walked around in her room in that state. It took a while before she got on Wuyue's nerves and the siren went to complain before Becky piped down. It was Lily who was ever capable of finding something to do. After a short while in her room she ran out to play. Who knows where she went as she was lugging a whole bag of food items when she got back. She started yapping happily as she saw Hao Ren, "Mr Landlord! Mr Landlord! I brought good stuff to eat! There's a market on the southwest side of the town!"
Hao Ren was busy going through some clearly aged tomes and on his table was a mess of scrolls and books. It was tough work trying to research these old tomes from a different world. Even with the translation plug-in helping him, it took a lot of concentration to even remotely understand the arcane language used. Being deep in concentration, he did not even lift his head when Lily called. "I know I know. You and your food. Just don't get stomach ache."
Lily didn't not thought too much of it and happily stuffed a sweet pastry into Hao Ren's mouth. "Eat! Eat! Say, Mr Landlord, what are you looking at?"
Hao Ren pointed towards the scrolls and tomes on the table. "Books about the Dragonspine Ridge, and the chronicles of the Beinz region."
Lily flipped over a few books. "Oh, they are. Where did you get them?"
"Borrowed them from the monks. There's a library in the church." It was only then Hao Ren lifted his head. "This are all books open to public. I just said that I'm a magician who is interested history and legends and they got me the whole stack.... Oh, that pastry is pretty good."
Lily then joyfully stuffed another piece into his mouth. "Right? Right? I have exquisite taste you know! Say, Mr Landlord, what did you manage to get out of this?"
Hao Ren gobbled down the pastry and simply grabbed Lily's tail to wipe his mouth. "Nothing special so far. The legends behind the Dragonspine Ridge is the same, an ambitious mage emperor twisting nature to his fancy, and in the mountains were cursed with the mage emperor's hatred. The power of the goddess in the Beinz Blood Lake had counteracted the power for ten millenniums. The legend are all somewhat like this, but some less popular stories are just as interesting. Some say that the Dragonspine Ridge and the Blood Lake are the same thing. Some say that the Gnarled Grove is a seal of another creation of the mage emperor. Some even say that the mage emperor did not die and is simply entombed in ice under the mountains. Once the mountain has collapsed, he will resurrect and renewed his reign of terror. Of course while these stories don't contradict the doctrines of the Disciples of Glory, but because of the unease they bring, all of the have been labelled as baseless and are brought under control..."
As he said, he lifted the big tome in his hand, "Like this one, it's pretty much baseless claims from head to tail, without much details to boot."
Lily just gave a long, "Ooooooh".
"Oh... this could explain the stuff that happened lately. Almost everyone is on the edge. I even heard on the streets that a couple of reinforcements had already been sent there and the threat of the rock monster is still present. Even with more numbers it's still a stalemate."
As the two chatted, the the shouting of men and neighing of horses were heard from the window. It seems like something happened on the main road of the town. Hao Ren pushed open the window and saw a group of lightly armoured soldiers and a group of mages on the street. There were no toiling of bells so it wasn't an attack. Hao Ren knew Lily had just came back from outside and took the opportunity to ask her. "What's the ruckus?"
Lily popped her head out of the window under Hao Ren's arms as she tried to get a good look. "Seems like the royal knight's patrol unit had came back. Oh yeah, oh yeah! I met my kin on the street. Was a lady werewolf. She is a vanguard in the royal knights. We talked for a bit, she looked so good in her armour!"
Hao Re muttered to himself that this husky could really just ignore her actual husky origin and call pureblooded werewolves kin. But he knew that her fangs with sharp and did not dare to voice it out. He wasn't surprised that Lily ran into her kin here though, the Plane of Dreams was the home of the unusual creatures. Vampires, werewolves and the likes were all common races here. While it's harder to tell a vampire from your usual man, some of the werewolves in town had their wolf ears out in full view. The only thing is that the Kingdom of Holletta is a nation of man, and most unusual creatures were either migrants, or descendants of scholars who had stayed. Having an unusual creature in the army was even more uncommon, and Lily was naturally happy that she ran into one of her kin in the royal knights.
The husky lass noticed that Hao Ren wasn't interested on the topic and she used her tail to smack the latter on his back to show her dissatisfaction. "Can't you just play along? You're not interested to know what we talked about?"
"The taste of bones and how to sharpen your fangs?" Hao Ren surmised.
Lily's tail bristled as she bore her fangs at Hao Ren. "What? You think I'm all about food?"
Hao Ren quickly denied and the husky was happy again. "While we did talk about pork ribs... but we mainly talked about the fighting in the past two months. I told her I was the deputy of a mercenary company and the werewolf happily talked to me about the fighting. She even grumbled to me about the church military being old stubborn fools, and the royal army doesn't seem to be all too happy about how things are going..."
Hao Ren was originally not interested in what nonsense Lily had ran into when she went out earlier, but the last part piqued his interest. "Stop there, what did you say happened?"
"Seems like something to do with the mission allocation." Lily's ears twitched. "The church forces were in charge of the fighting within the sacred lake's vicinity while the royal army is fighting at the Dragonspine Ridge; The more pious in the royal army think that it was unfair for them to be relegated to just sweeps in the mountain range. And Oh, I heard that Marshal Ophra had already tried to speak to Bishop Gelton on this a few times, to let a part of the royal army assist in the fighting around the Blood Lake. It seems nothing had came from that. Something to do with doctrines..."
Hao Ren thought of the situation at the Gnarled Grove yesterday. Most of the soldiery in the Leyton defensive perimeter were almost ninety percent comprised of the white robed church army. The 'government's military' royal knights were only allowed to operated on the outer perimeter because of some religious doctrines. He ruffled his chin as he laughed. "Seriously... but those knights are looking for a fight eh. There's actually people who complain that the fighting is too easy. Won't most people would scurry away to the safest possible posting if possible?"
Lily wagged her tail. "Religion. Who knows what they are thinking anyway. The whole Blood Lake is sacred ground after all. Even if a blood toll needs to be paid everyday, both armies will be fighting for the right to go in first. It also seems like whoever dies here will get the tile of 'Martyr', a pretty glorious one by the sound of things."
Both Hao Ren and Lily agreed that they probably will struggle to ever understand the mindset that is so dictated by one's religious doctrines and after a short while they stopped bothering about the small friction between the two forces. They then started on the matter of pork ribs and Lily was soon to drool all over the floor before they heard clanking footsteps along the corridor. At the same time the voices of the servants greeting and welcoming was heard.
After a moment a servant pushed open the room door announcing, "Lady Ophra visits, and wishes to see the captain and the deputy of the Dogs Have Gotten All the Good Names Mercenary Group.
"Marshal Ophra?!" Hao Ren was surprised but he quickly recovered. "And I told you how many times not to mention our company's name!"
The arrival of the marshal herself had shocked everyone into motion and Becky had ran like a whirlwind to bear the message to everyone else. Hao Ren got to the small parlor in the room and saw that the marshal was already seated on the centremost tall chair. Her poise heroic as ever.
Ophra was blunt, "I'm here to inform you. Get ready tomorrow, we will depart the next day to the royal city, the reward and knighting will also be done in the royal city."
Becky literally lost it when she heard the news as she leapt up and down cheering. Hao Ren was however perplexed: Just because of this, that the marshal herself needed to personally come to the quarters of some new mercenary group?