An Owl's Rise

Thanks to Melisandre's assistance, the Legget Faction that had been targeting Evelyn using underhanded tricks soon had more pressing matters to deal with.

All of a sudden, a large-scale faction war broke out when the ranking hall received highly valuable resources to be distributed to the top fifty factions in the Roost at the end of a yearlong period.

Every faction that believed they had even the slightest chance of rising up the ranks began mobilizing all of their resources and those that were already in the upper ranks prepared to defend their standing.

The entire Roost was turned on its head practically overnight and the once fairly peaceful Roost became quite frantic.

Scuffles were now much more common than before, with rival factions often attacking each other outside of sanctioned matches.

Of course, the Roost's police force was doing its best to keep order, but around seventy percent of the Roost's population were awakened rank beasts and many of the guards that were supposed to be keeping order were members of the factions that were doing whatever it took to be within the top ranks by the end of the yearlong period.

This had caused the tyrant rank owls that were not involved with the faction wars to have to be more active in keeping the peace, but there were simply more awakened rank owls than they could feasibly keep up with.

The first couple of weeks in particular had been quite hectic but things had settled down a bit once the Roost got used to the stir Melisandre had caused.

Her actions did have their intended effect though. Evelyn now no longer had to worry about being targeted by two factions.

Legget's faction was now completely disregarding her in favor of putting their all into rising up the faction ranks.

If she had been easy to recruit as they had hopped, Legget's faction likely would have tried to get Evelyn on their side to bolster their forces, but they simply did not have the resources to try and force her to join while also dealing with the large-scale faction war.

On the other hand, the Devurg Faction, which was the other group targeting Evelyn had not been distracted very much, just as intended.

They were not a low-ranking faction by any means, but they were still far from being strong enough to try and claim a top fifty spot within a year.

However, the Devurg Faction was involved with the faction war to a degree, having to support one of their allies.

Thankfully this made them open to dealing with Evelyn in a hastier manner, and she had managed to secure a meeting with their top brass to discuss the terms of their battle.

Evelyn had actually begun harassing them back for the last month in return for their faction constantly skulking around her store.

She had left horrible smelling alchemical creations in their bases, released a slow acting poison in the form of an incense that left most of the Devurg Faction members that had been in her store with horrible stomach aches, and was supplying an enemy faction with wholesale alchemical items for cheap.

Naturally they had tried to get back at Evelyn, and while they had successfully managed to inconvenience her along with Bylur and Rehni a bit, they simply could not inflict more damage than Evelyn was able to.

The Devurg faction had simply not expected a single team to actually be willing to stand up to them and now they had obtained more troublesome enemies than they had bargained for.

'Melisandre really came through for me this time. Her help and advice has been invaluable.' Evelyn thought as she prepared for the meeting with the Devurg Faction

Not only had she created chaos through the faction wars, but she had also advised Evelyn on what was to approach her battle with the Devurg Faction.

Melisandre had had to deal with her fair share of similar fights back when she was around Evelyn's ranks, and she was more than willing to share her experiences with her disciple.

Once Evelyn was satisfied that her preparations were sufficient, she left Melisandre's estate and headed to where she would be meeting Rehni and Bylur.

The two of them would be accompanying her to the meeting with the Devurg Faction as it involved them as well.

"Let me apologize once again for dragging the two of you into this. I am their primary target but because you are a part of my team you both ended up being targeted as well." Evelyn said to her two friends.

"It is fine, we decided to join you knowing full well that something like this might happen." Rehni said, an exasperated expression on her face.

Evelyn had already apologized to them a half dozen times and Rehni was starting to get tired of it.

"I do not care what kind of enemies you attract. I will always be there to support you as best as I can." Bylur said stoically.

He saw Evelyn thought thick rose-colored glasses and, in his eyes, she could never do anything wrong.

"Thank you both for your support. Now let us go and settle this."

With her teammates in tow, Evelyn headed towards the Ranking Hall where they would be meeting with the Devurg Faction.

The Ranking Hall had been chosen as the destination for their meeting since it was a public place, and no matter what, no one would try to cause any major trouble within one of the Roost's major Halls.

If the Devurg Faction tried to attack Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni within the Ranking Hall, it would not be long until they were completely detained, and their lives ruined.

'Looks like only the three leaders came as promised. And here I expected them to come with a huge group to try and intimidate us.' Evelyn thought, seeing the three top owls of the Devurg Faction waiting for them.

Looking them over, this was actually her first time seeing two of their top leaders.

Among them the only one Evelyn had met before was Trine as she had been the one tasked with harassing her.

Sitting in the middle of the three was the leader of the faction Devurg and sitting to his left was an owl named Kless.

All three of them were at the peak of the awakened rank while Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni were only at the mid-tier.

'So that is what Devurg looks like. He is as rough as Bylur described him.'

All over Devurg's body were areas that were scarred, and his left eye was even missing with a long claw mark going across his face.

It was clearly made by some type of beast other than an owl as there were five distinct cuts.

Just from a single glance Evelyn could tell that he had been though a great number of battles.

"It is nice to finally meet you Devurg. As I am sure you know, I am Evelyn, and my two companions are Rehni and Bylur." Evelyn said, introducing herself politely.

As expected, this only served to anger her enemies and Trine who had been on the receiving end of Evelyn relations snarled at her.

"Calm yourself Trine. This young upstart is clearly just trying to rile you up. We have no need to stoop down to their level. Our victory is already assured." Devurg said, turning his gaze towards Bylur and giving him a confident smirk.

He had already beaten Bylur in a one-on-one match and was certain that any head-on confrontation would end in his team's victory.

"Now let us get down to business." Evelyn said, once they had finished posturing.

Swiftly she took out a long sheet of paper and handed it over to Devurg.

This was a magic contract she had prepared with Melisandre's help.

With it the terms of their battle would be upheld no matter what.

"This is absurd. You really except us to disband our faction and hand over Twenty million credits to you if you win." Trine shouted after reading part of the contract.

It detailed that Evelyn and her teammates would battle Devurg's team and that should her team prevail it would mark the end of the Devurg Faction along with a sizable payout to Evelyn's Team.

Of course, it was not a one-sided contract.

Should Evelyn, Bylur, and Rehni lose, all three of them would have to join Devurg's faction until they reached the tyrant rank.

This would practically make them slaves to the faction as they wanted, and it was likely they would be worked to death long before they were able to reach the tyrant rank.

Along with these clauses the contract prohibited the Devurg Faction from antagonizing Evelyn further and had the same stipulation for Evelyn.

"We accept your terms. In five months, our teams will do battle and when we win, I will be taking the three of you into my faction and working you to the bone." Devurg said, not even acknowledging Trine's protest.