@Drinkfist The one carving the statues is the one that MC wants to kill. He's the leader of that other force from a different tribe. The one that was probably at war with them around the time his mother got killed. There's a practice where people responsible for the death of someone where you carve statues that I've seen in another martial arts series, so that whole thing is probably related.
The spellcaster tribe uprising was summarily put down before it even properly started by MC's master. The woman saying she's going to give the warrior challenge participants their rewards now is going to wrap up the loose ends from that right now. That's what she's talking about.
The dragon was summoned by the idiots doing the uprising, and that fucked up this seal.
The one running the trials was one of the knobs MC's master took out.
The person you're saying should be defending the MC's tribe from the kingdom, is literally the person the MC wants to kill, and is in another tribe that is historically on terrible terms with the MC's tribe. No, he isn't going to help them with this.
I'd say fair point on the mage, but the seal was probably not in danger back then so they might not have been camping out on top of it back then. The dragon is the one that damaged it and now the mage guy can't get his buddies to show up and help fix it.
This is all from my reading this up to this very chapter. The story did tell us this stuff even if not in so many words sometimes, like the sudden cut to the guy carving statues. That's probably a cultural difference thing I guess, you wouldn't necessarily be familiar with that practice without being familiar with various religions from Asia and weird things done in some of them that you almost never hear about even in series about the countries there. Like I said, I'm familiar with it because another thing I've read did have that in it, and that one actually went into detail about it.