An Owl's Rise

Within just two days Melisandre had received the information on the identities of every owl that had watched her duel in the mission hall along with a list of the members who were in both of the two factions targeting Evelyn.

"Yep, it is as I thought. From the Legget Faction, one of their leaders, a male owl named Serk was in the audience and watched your match with the owl named Declan." Melisandre said.

She was holding a few pieces of paper that were bound together and contained the intelligence that she had gathered for Evelyn.

"Knowing this it seems quite likely that this is where interest in you originated from, and that after observing your battles in the ranking hall and seeing your skill at alchemy through your shop solidified you as a suitable target for the Legget Faction."

From there they led the Devurg Faction to target Evelyn in hopes of forcing her to join their ranks for protection.

"It certainly was a decent plan on their part. As far as they can tell, you have no real backing, so they figured you would rejoice having such a powerful faction on your side. Unfortunately, they had no way of knowing you are my disciple." Melisandre said as she handed over the information she had gathered to Evelyn.

After a quick look through it, Evelyn was able to find out pretty much all the available information on both of the factions after her.

"I see that Legget's faction is within the top one hundred awakened rank factions within the Roost and that the team he leads is ranked number one hundred ninety-eight, along with his personal rating being rank three hundred sixteen." Evelyn observed as she looked over the information of who was likely her most dangerous enemy.

While the Devurg faction was the one showing open hostility there was no doubt that Legget was a greater threat.

He was personally stronger than the owl named Devurg who Evelyn had not met yet, and his faction was easily twice as powerful.

"Melisandre it is safe to say that Legget is certainly among the top five hundred strongest awakened ranks owls in the Roost, right?" Evelyn asked, wanting her master's opinion on the matter.

"Yes, that is fairly likely. There are sure to be some that are stronger than him that are not participating in the ranking hall, so his standing is not exact, but I would say your assumption is correct."

"In that case, in your opinion do you think I could beat him in a fight as I am now?" Evelyn asked with a serious expression.

Holding her left hand to her chin Melisandre contemplated it for a while before answering Evelyn's question.

"Now I will preference this by saying that I have no inkling about how this Legget fights but your chances would not be favorable if the relative level of power of top rankers is around the same as it was when I was still at the awakened rank." Melisandre said. "If you were to use only your wind magic as you have, I would give you maybe a three percent chance at best. As the report on him says he has both an earth and water affinity which typically have the advantage over wind. Should you go all out and not care about showing off your heavenly flame and gravity magic then you probably would have closer to a forty percent chance I would say. You may have managed to beat that peak awakened rank osprey out in the wild, but I can assure you that a high-ranking owl from the Roost is far stronger."

Having received Melisandre's warning and analysis Evelyn frowned and contemplated what to do.

While she was fairly confident that with a bit more training and advancement that she, Bylur, and Rehni would be able to defeat the leaders of the Devurg Faction, it seemed unlikely that they would be strong enough to take on Legget's faction any time soon.

She knew full well that tier and rank did not mean everything having turned the tables on plenty of beasts higher level than her, but She would have hard time dealing with a faction that was among the top one hundred in the Roost.

"I understand that you want to solve this problem on your own and use it as a growing experience. I too do not want you to use my authority and resources to solve all of your problems, but this might be a bit too much for you to handle on your own. I can make some subtle moves to divert the Legget Faction's attention away from you and you can deal with the Devurg Faction as you had planned without worry. Then once you and your friends have built up some more strength you can deal with"

Mulling over Melisandre's offer Evelyn could not really see any downside to it.

"Thank you for the offer. It would really be helpful not to have to worry about dealing with two factions at the same time. But how exactly are you planning on getting Legget and his faction off me?" Evelyn asked, a curios look on her face.

"Oh, it is quite simple. I will simply start up a new faction war among the higher-ranking awakened owls. Things have been pretty peaceful around the Roost, so it is about time things got stirred up a bit." Melisandre said with a nostalgic smile.

Apparently when she was still at the awakened rank battles between factions were more common as every group fought for rewards.

However, the Roost itself was far more powerful and populous than it had been several centuries ago when Melisandre was only at the awakened rank and now their were more resources to go around than before stifling a bit of the competition.

"All I need to do is incentivize the top one hundred factions to start battling it out more than they have been. I have some fairly valuable treasures lying around that should make decent enough bait. Soon the Legget Faction will be scrambling around fighting other faction and have no time to bother you."