Aleir continued devouring everyone in the main hall. Once he was done, he suddenly felt a change. Something he never truly felt before. There was something forming inside him. The amount of life force he obtained gradually formed into a core. The core was black and filled with dark energy.
He felt that the core was yet to be stable so he sit down and started circulating his energy to the core. Aleir didn’t know how exactly it worked but he could feel that if he fully formed and stabilized the dark core, he would achieve a great breakthrough!
The dark core started slowly forming. Aleir was fully focused and ignored all outside elements, so the process goes without problems.
The energy in the core was quite chaotic. He decided that he should slow done the flow of energy in the core, to stabilize it. He didn’t know whether that would work but he believed it would! The energy slowed down until it almost came to a standstill. He then poured more of his dark energy into the core. Whenever the energy entered the core, he slowed it down. He repeated this process several times until his body was devoid of any dark energy and everything was inside his core.
To the people looking at Aleir, it looked as if he was meditating, entering a trance like state. They didn’t know what was happening, but they could feel that something was changing within Aleir.
When he filled up the whole core, large cracks suddenly appeared on it. The energy inside the core started to change. More and more cracks appeared until small strands of dark energy emerged from it. Strands were appearing from the core until they formed a small tree. The tree was completely black and had only one branch, there was rich dark energy at the end of it.
Aleir felt like the more life force he would get, the more branches the tree would have. Now, all he could create was the base of the tree and one branch. Maybe, in the future he would be able to create a complete tree.
Aleir could feel the dark energy flowing through his whole body again. Now that the energy wasn’t contained in the core, it was moving inside his whole body and even outside. The energy underwent a change, it’s amount and power increasing several fold.
At this moment, the main hall of the inn was filled with dark energy. No one but Aleir could see it but everyone could feel it. It felt as if the devil himself was present in that room. That’s how it felt to everyone on the outside. The innkeeper and his bodyguards were involuntarily shuddering, clearly deeply affected by the dark energy.
“Who the hell is this person?!” The innkeeper mumbled to himself as he was hiding behind his bodyguards. He was considering to run away, but who knew what Aleir could have done if he did that. Maybe he would track him down and then absorb him as he did to all of the people here. In the end, his fear was bigger than his courage and he decided that staying here would be better for him.
Suddenly, Aleir opened his eyes which almost made the onlookers jump. As Aleir snapped out of his trance like state, everyone could feel how much different he feels now. The pressure his aura was giving off was several times what it used to be. Even before, they were suppressed by his aura alone but now it was on a new level. Now they felt as if Aleir was the devil himself.
As Aleir opened his eyes he felt that his vision had changed. He could feel energies flowing around him much clearer than ever before. To him, it felt as if he had been reborn.
“S-Sir, C-Congratulations.” The innkeeper squeezed out as he was slightly bowing to Aleir. His bodyguards followed his suite.
However, it seemed as if Aleir hadn’t even heard them. He didn’t even turn in their direction. All he did was getting up and leaving the inn. He knew that he could easily kill the innkeeper if he wanted. But he had helped him and as much as Aleir didn’t care about people, he valued the help. Although he didn’t say it, it was clear to Aleir that all the innkeeper wanted was to live and get out of this situation. In his eyes, there was no reason to kill the innkeeper anymore. He had paid off his debt for trying to rob Aleir by helping him. When everything was finally over, the innkeeper sighed heavily, glad it’s finally over.
When he left the inn, he decided to hide in the city until the army arrives. It should be within a day or two.
“It’s time to prepare. I will make this city into a death trap.” Aleir unconsciously grinned.
He then worked hard on separating his dark energy into several parts. Each part was planted somewhere around the city and waited for its prey. One of the things he didn’t count with, was that the moment he planted the energy, it immediately devoured any life force around it. He couldn’t choose specific targets to devour. The separated energy only acted on its basic instincts, it didn’t comprehend any deeper orders.
After several hours, the city and its outskirts was riddled with the traps. There were several hundreds of traps, spread around the city and more around the walls. Some of the citizens already noticed that people started to disappear but no one knew why.
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Suddenly, a loud noise could be heard from up the watchtowers. It was an alarm bell, only used in the time of emergency.
“An Army is coming this way. It’s the Empire! They are invading!” One of the guards on the watchtowers said, in a loud, panicked voice.
The citizens immediately started panicking. A mass panic filled the city, some people tried to get out of the city and some tried to barricade in their homes, knowing they wouldn’t get far if they were to run. The city wasn’t prepared for such circumstances.
In a luxurious house, near the city hall, the council called for an emergency meeting. Elder Peare was fuming. “How the hell did we not see them sooner?!”
“I-I don’t know, all of the spies we had in the Empire didn’t warn us. Maybe they betrayed us.”
“I don’t think that every single spy we had in there, would betray us.”
“Maybe it had happened too fast for them, to warn us in time. But why so suddenly?”
Elder Peare calmed down a bit. “That doesn’t matter anymore. Question is, how do we get out of this?”
“Let’s surrender, it’s still better than everyone dying for nothing.” One of the council members said dejectedly.
Some of the council members immediately got upset, they would rather die than surrender to the empire!
“SHUT UP!” Elder Peare suddenly yelled out.
Both parties went silent, not daring to make a sound anymore.
“They will try to make an example out of this city. Surrendering won’t work. Our only option is to call for help, and hold up until they come.” Elder Peare said.
The council members all nodded in agreement. Although some wished to surrender, to save themselves, they knew that it would probably not work out.
“B-But there is no way we can defend for that long.” One of the council members opposed.
“We better hope that there is, we got no other options. Send a messenger to the capital. War is upon us!”
All of the council members nodded, their expressions pale, realizing that it’s their only option.
The army was around 2 hours away from reaching the city. The city itself was quite big, however when faced with the army of 100 000 soldiers, it was powerless to defend itself. That was a force of a whole nation against a single city, there was no way to resist.
In the distance, several guards could see that the army was dragging carts filled with materials, they didn’t know what It was for but That sight alone evoked fear in them. They had no will to fight but they knew that there was no other choice. It was either resisting the Empire, or dying while running away. Their superiors had already passed down orders to defend the city to the last breath. A lot of guards were quite unwilling at first, but when they realized that they didn’t have a choice, they decided to follow them.
Even though, most of the guards followed the orders, some valued their life more than anything and chose to run away. They thought that their chances of escaping with their life weren’t high but they were still higher than defending the city and dying with it.
Currently, the city had around 3000 soldiers ready. A lot of the citizens armed themselves with some leftover weapons or farmer tools. They wouldn’t go down without a fight. With that, the city had around 10 000 men and women, ready to defend the city to its last breath.
As the time went by, the army was around a kilometer away from the gate. In the front of the army, a man in a full plate armor was looking at the city in the distance.
“They won’t go down without a fight huh?” He could see that there was a lot of soldiers and militia on the walls, ready to shower them with arrows, the moment they get closer.
As he saw it, he gave a cold laugh, then turned to one of the captains behind him and ordered. “Stop around 500 meters away from the walls. We will show them how wars are fought!”
“Yes, general Dalmar!” The captain then immediately passed down the orders to the soldiers. It was very clear to him what are the general’s intentions.
…
The people on the wall were getting more and more nervous as the army was approaching. However, they had no other option. When the army was around 500 meters away from the city, they suddenly stopped.
“Huh? What are they doing?”
“Look! They are building something!”
They were watching, as the Empire’s soldiers were building something. They didn’t know what, but it couldn’t be anything good for them.
After about an hour, they built a first thing. It was a catapult. The carts the Empire was dragging alone had various materials in it, including ammunition for catapults and ballistas. When the people in the city saw that, they almost fainted on the spot from fear. They knew that it was their end. They didn’t have a way to defend against it. If they charged at the army of 100 000 to destroy the war machines, they would just get overwhelmed by the numbers. If they tried to destroy it with fire arrows, the would have to get closer, outside the gates which would be their end, due to the enemy cavalry. All they could do now, was to hold up behind the walls and hope that the Empire didn’t have enough ammunition to actually breach the defense. But no one thought that was the case.
The people who were still on the wall, immediately started running down and focus the choke points, the city had. The first one was behind the gate.
As they waited behind the gate, there were loud sounds of huge chunks of rock crashing against the wall which resounded throughout the whole city.
In one of the higher buildings in the city, there were a lot of older men and women, trying to solve the situation.
“They got goddamn catapults! How are we supposed to defend against that?!”
“We are doomed…”
“What do we do now?!”
They were all talking in desperate manner as they didn’t think they would make it through this siege.
“Elder Peare!” Everyone turned at the elder.
“It’s your fault! I knew this would have happened but I still believed you! There is no way we can defend against this for more than few hours! We should’ve left this god forsaken city!” A lot of them agreed with the man. They still valued their life and this situation seemed unsolvable.
“If you ran away then what? Ten thousand citizens would either die or be enslaved. Is that worth your life?! You goddamn coward!” Elder Peare yelled. He too was desperate, he didn’t have plan anymore. The war machines were outside of his calculations as he didn’t expect the Empire to have them. It was a miscalculations that ruined his plan.
Some of the council members stepped back when the Elder reprimanded them. But some didn’t care, they kept pressing on. “At least I would be alive!” The ones who disagreed with the elder then wanted to leave the room, when out of nowhere, a loud, ear piercing scream resounded throughout the whole building.