The pair of tattoos were the writings of two words, master and slave, with some garniture surrounding the two words, making a very eye-catching blue and red tattoo.
The contract process was completed, and Arthur now could feel this vague connection between him and that snake. The picture he last saw was still lingering in his mind, and he hesitated to ask the snake about it, before he decided to wait and see the final human form that the snake would take.
"Come, eat this part," he said, as he took out another long icy ore from his ring, marking the area where the snake should eat. The snake went ahead, chewing the part of this rock, in a strange docile way.
Arthur knew this wasn't the true sly nature of the snake, but the effect of this contract, which would affect the true soul of the contractor, making him very obedient and easy to handle for the master.
It might be a sly move from Arthur, but he wasn't feeling any guilt at all. He would go to any lengths to just make himself stronger, and this chance he would never let it slip by his fingers, not if presented to him easily like this.
The next moment he took out one of his storage rings, which was full to the prim with icy ores. He knew the energy required for the final evolution wouldn't be this easy to accumulate, and any missing amount, no matter how tiny it was, would threaten the whole process.
So, giving extras was the only guarantee for the evolution to succeed.
"Get in here, it's a good place for you to reside," he said as he pointed to his necklace, the heavenly garden he had acquired from before, as he put his hand over the head of the snake, who just lowered his head without any delay, acting very gentle and docile to him.
"Inside you will find many ores and potions ready for you, ingest them all, and keep your hands off the plants and flowers there."
"Hmm," the snake nodded, before Arthur sent him into the necklace, while he finally heaved a long sigh of relief.
He checked the garden and found the snake had done what he just asked him to do. He watched him getting weaker and sleepy, before he closed his eyes and slept, starting his evolution process.
After finishing this process, he was now ready to finish this battle here. Lily and her team had already arrived here last night, as he told them about his plans for ending the fight this morning, so they didn't leave and stayed behind, waiting to take all the mages back to camp.
"Alright, let's call it off here," Arthur muttered, before pointing to the carcass and taking it back inside one of his storage rings.
The moment this happened, the whole noisy place got silenced at the next moment, like a silence spell was used over the place.
From their high up position, they all could spot the monsters leaving in batches, making everyone realize this training session had already ended.
Arthur waited for roughly an hour, before he started descending the mountain on the back of Lily's Birdy. The rest of the mages started their evacuation already, while Amelia and Noura stayed back, as Amelia wanted to help, while Noura wanted to observe.
Arthur didn't pay any heed to Noura's action, knowing what he was doing wasn't a big secret. He was just collecting dead and injured monsters bodies, as he put each in separate rings.
The collecting process took the whole day, as he was much interested and focused on collecting ores. After five days of fighting, and with many explosions, the amount of ores here was really unimaginable, exceeding what he initially thought.
So, he started collecting them, feeling happy to fill two rings wholly with ores. This wasted most of the time, but he knew this wasn't for nothing.
He also collected burnt down trees, the charcoal he would use in making elixirs later. Also any strange plant or tree still alive he wouldn't hesitate to move them into his heavenly garden, enriching its content, helping these promising treasures to grow.
When the night fell upon them, they were ready to leave. The whole mountain, which was once full and majestic, was now tattered in fighting injuries, with many holes and missing pieces everywhere.
It wasn't an exaggeration to describe the mountain as losing one fourth of its mass, which was something unbelievable, and all of these missing pieces were now residing inside Arthur's three rings.
Arthur returned on the back of Amelia's flying monster, while he left Noura to Lily, asking her privately to make friends with her. In fact he already sensed the invisible tension between Amelia and Noura, so separating the two was better to avoid any further troubles.
The journey back to the camp didn't take long, and once they reached there, they found the place brimming with many preparations.
They were ready to full back towards the golden lion clan main residence, where the leaders of his small territory would start building and planning for a massive expansion and building process.
Arthur knew it was time for him to leave, as the competition had less than ten days to occur.
"Amelia, bring everyone who would leave with us now, we will start moving at dawn."
Amelia nodded, as she went to inform the others, while Omgalden stood with the other three, Od, Torend, and Lendy who just jumped over him the moment his feet touched the ground.
"Are you leaving so soon, hon?" Lemdy asked in a very soft tone, while whispering in his ears, making his whole body ignited with desire. He just took a deep breath, while turning to smile to her as he said:
"I won't be late, it's just one year."
Her face showed her discontent, as she complained:
"That's too long, why can't I come with you to this academy? I already hate it for taking you away from me!"
Arthur just chuckled, as he patted on her head while saying:
"Just be a good girl and wait for me here."
For others, he was so young and she was much older than him, so this picture of him lecturing her seemed a bit off. Arthur just acted with his real self with her, acting much older with a much younger mage. He then turned to look at the three standing in front of him, as he said:
"Do you have any problem dealing with things here?"
"Nothing to worry about," Od said, as it seemed he regained the former position of being the leader, of course the leader of the top mages under Arthur.
"Good," Arthur nodded, before taking off one ring as he gave it to Od as he added, "this has a lot of different types of ores, monsters dead and alive. Just use it to build the foundation first, then depend on yourselves to survive. I want every child here to live only on monsters' meat, understood?"
This point was so critical for him, as he wanted most of the children here to turn out to be mages. If he succeeded to do that, then his whole territory would be brimming with mages in the few upcoming years, turning this place upside down, toppling with the power balance in this world.
"Understood," they all replied, while Lendy refused to leave his side until he took her to a small tent, and kissed her a fiery one, while making her body ache for his soft touches that told a lot about his rich experiences.
Dawn appeared fast, and one hundred groups of mages stood on the edge of the forest, watching the other mages, numbering in thousands, going in the opposite direction towards the plains.
"Let's go," Arthur said, as he stood over Amelia's flying monster alone, while others were residing over their own flying pets. Noura stood over Lily's pet, while she stole glances from time to time towards Arthur, who was just looking towards the faint lightened sky, feeling more excitement for his next journey at the academy.
'Dorgazire academy, here I come!'
He thought to himself, feeling already agitated by this.
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