Chapter 16: City Under Siege (Part 1)
Kaladia City
Day and night sound of screaming coming from the soldiers fighting at the walls alongside the clashing sounds of weapons against one another, explosions caused by magic in the not so distant location shook the city day in and day out .
It was the absolute sight of carnage blood lust has taken over both defenders and its invaders their lives now lie at the hands of their leaders who simply pointed at a location where soldiers die. Sera Hawke is currently inside Banshee as she surveys the battlefield and occasionally throw sonic attacks at the enemies when they are off guard .
Just beneath her at her section of the wall are hundreds of thousands of Golems ranging from the basic Stone Golem to the more advanced Knight Golems made purely out of steel. She and her army of golems have been facing the mixed force of Lavant soldiers and Eastern Immortals which is taking a toll of thousands from her golem army each wave and each encounter .
But, by the power of magical industry she created this past 9 years all she needed to do was literally pick up the pieces and reassemble them and they would be ready to charge out at their opponents once again .
The reason for her massive army of golems is simply she does not make them individually but rather from an industrial assembly line powered by magic in which case allowed her to create a massive amount of golem army at any given point in time provided that there are materials .
This magi - tech type of industry is also her biggest advantage. Some thing that the current era could not even fathom or comprehend perhaps excluding the Dwarves in which case are more or less in a industrial revolution kind of thing, but because of the existence of magic industrialization will be most likely hindered… oh how convenient it is the thing called “magic” .
Beyond the walls killed enemies are all burned with the exception of elite Magic Knights, Wizards and Eastern Cultivators, their bodies are kept in a freezer to preserve as samples for future experiments. Meanwhile capturing Eastern Cultivators are proving to be a futile act as they just detonate their “core” to a devastating effect.
“Was it an act of bravery or did they know of their fate should they get captured? Regardless of the true reason with the amount of samples and “loot” from the dead Cultivators is already more than enough”
During these 9 years many upgrades has been added or replaced parts from the Sentinels like Vulcan for example, it no longer relies on conventional weapon system but rather a Gatling Rail Gun which is powered by Magic as an energy source. This is also true for the rest of the Sentinels they have all been upgraded with a mixture of magic and advanced modern technology .
Banshee where Sera Hawke currently reside although uses modern propulsion system, it can now create and manipulate any form of sound waves from music pleasing to the ears to sonic attacks that synchronizes with the bodies molecules destroying the enemies from the inside out.
“Although both the Dwarves and Elves have been fighting in a guerrilla style because of the Lavant Kingdom’s sudden increase in power due to the Eastern Cultivators giving them their secrets has become quite the turning point in this war. In the past the Lavant Kingdom’s soldiers were treated as canon fodders or scouts at best but now they have become quite a pain to deal with”
“hm!” Sera barely dodged a sneak attack from the Eastern Cultivators side. “sigh, I guess it’s their turn to attack now huh .”
The City of Kaladia has been tightly defended from its materials to its defensive and offensive magical enchantments carved down to its foundations. The City is a very formidable defensive structure that only now people realized, in the past nobody managed to attack the City simply because most if not every Kingdom in the area has some dealings with Kaladia City and with some money or favors a puitive force would be sent to harass the invading army making them to injured to attack a fortified city.
Now that the Lavant Kingdom has the full backing of the Eastern Continent and its allied cultivators the Continental Isle were simply shocked and awed to form a proper counter attack. But of course the limiting factor of the main reason they could not repel they enemies in the first place was the Human Kingdoms always at war with one another ranging from honor to territories.
“oh? What is this zombies?” as Sera saw the dead both invaders and defenders alike rise up from the dirt.
“they really are going for a classic war of attrition, this zombie wave is not only going to demoralize the morale of soldiers but also tire the living daylights out of us”
Even though the allied defenders knew fully well what their enemies are doing they are still forced to fight head on and see through this war until the end on whether who taps out first. A gruesome strategy but in the end it is simply a numbers game.
It would not have matter if an individual is powerful as long as that person is injured enough even low level soldiers could take their life, a story that many people knew all too well.
With Sera’s Magi - Tech golem army very few enemies even managed to reach the wall much less breach it and have started sending Golem reinforcements to the other side of the walls where they would be much needed.
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The cultivator’s battleships were fortunately being held back by the Dwarven fleet otherwise this would be a very short war. Dead bodies fell one after another down the walls as the battle became more intensified as the day near its end.
“GRAH! Why don’t you stubborn fools surrender! Its already over you’re surrounded!”
“Never! Go back whence you’ve came from!!”
With the war taking so long to end the soldiers on both sides no longer just threw spell and weapons at one another but also insults in hopes to provoke each other into making a mistake.
The young soldiers were indeed provoked and had it not been for their more sensible commanders they would have charged headlong to a trap while being led by their emotions.
In just a few hours the sun has finally set and both camps ceased fire. Many of the refugees and the non combatant nobles have long retreated to the other Kingdoms which have not been invaded by the main invading force.
In the past kaladia’s rich natural deposits were the envy of the entire continent but… no longer.
Patrols were rather lax during the night, simply because of the enchantments once activated the walls and towers would incinerate intruders via lasers who came from outside courtesy of Lady Sera Hawke’s invention and because of this feature people are able to relax and somewhat enjoy the evening unlike the invader who need to constantly put up double patrols during nights after a catastrophic sabotage in the past.
Even though the night has a relaxed atmosphere nobody was laughing or smiling they are just recuperating their body and mind after the gruesome warfare that they have to experience in the past 5 months since the City of Kaladia has been put under siege.
Even after 5 months the allied forces still has yet to send reinforcements. This is the very flaw the Human Kingdoms have the very reason this invasion is edging towards success, their selfishness, greed and stupidity. Should they send a full army each this invasion would be repelled very easily but reality of often cruel.
“i would not be surprised if they did were not even planning to send any reinforcements at all” Sera said to herself with a big sigh
Back at her underground laboratory which is currently being excavated just in case this place crumbles Sera would have a means of an escape. In these 5 months of siege more than 300,000 garrisoned soldiers from the allied kingdoms are now reduced to no more than 160,000 in just 5 months.
Even though the invading forces of the Lavant Kingdom and the Eastern Cultivators are also taking catastrophic casualties they could not retreat… no, like a gambler who lost their life savings they are also now gambling with their lives betting it all in the success of this war.
Should they win the richest resource node in Continental Isle would now belong to them giving everyone a big fat paycheck on the other hand should they lose the small Clans, Sects and basically the middle class and below organizations would likely experience bankruptcy unable to maintain even the basic necessities for them to function, not to mention the most likely case to happen… internal rebellion in each of their factions.
Should they lose this invasion that they started they would face criticism on all directions. Some may even under the pretense of justice attack them and should they lose their weakened state would be nothing but a deathblow to them.
Even the invading forces are bleeding with soldiers and resources they just could not back off in all sense this war of attrition has become an intercontinental staring contest and everyone does not want to blink first.
Every now and then Sera would check her test subjects currently 500 of them some of which are death row criminals but most of the criminal test subject have perished due to the experiments and although she gained a lot in them the source of death row prisoners have stopped coming due to the siege.
But Sera Hawke always has plans when the criminal prisoners ran out she started recruiting orphans and cripples. Unlike the death row test subject these new test subject received a safer type of experiment Sera intended to create a private army of her own personal cultivators .
Currently Sera is at the bottleneck of the 9th layer of QI refinement but her strength is already reaching that of a Magic Knight missing only a step forward. By rescuing the orphans and the cripples in their darkest hour they would not betray her and perhaps even lay down their lives for her .
She never really believed in casual sacrifice unless absolutely necessary but in the recent years Sera noticed that she cared less and less for Human lives at least to the strangers she won’t exactly harm her employees or friends .
But the experiments did force her to be numb at human death her experiments at first resulted in grotesque mutations although powerfully exceeding the Magic Knights being uncontrollable became a major flaw. It’s not exactly ideal to unleash a mad beast of an experiment .
The underground laboratory has been long expanded into a solid enchanted steel of a fortress the former plane like design has been scrapped after she saw an old model of the flying mountain strongholds in the legends .
The flying fortress is already completed and only needed to be unearthed from deep underground, and because of the siege the golems working on digging were instead sent to the front delaying the progress .
“no matter. it’s not like the City is going to fall so soon”
Next Sera visited her treasure vault which contained her most precious resources and materials. The entire vault is jam packed by magical inscriptions and enchantments that might put the other wizard towers to shame .
Currently Sera could be considered to be one of the few dozen of the richest individual in Continental Isle the loot from the killed invaders are really mounting up high especially the loot from the Eastern Cultivators each of their spatial pouches really contains mountains of random assorted items and curiosities .
“Some of them might be unknown but I can feel power radiating in each of them, how exciting to find out what they actually do”
The mana stones piled neatly like a pyramid similar to the control crystals the gold coins, gold bars and other mundane materials made of gold and silver are just piled in a mountain haphazardly even this things currently have no value due to war, “one of the information from the spatial pouches from the dead Eastern Cultivator is that I can get the essence of gold and silver and make a really powerful magic artifact. Only thing is I don’t know the method of doing so .”
“Regardless these things would eventually be useful in the future and there no harm keeping them here .”
Outside of Kaladia City
Eastern Immortal and Lavant Kingdom encampment
“After all this time why has this damned City not show any signs of falling yet!!this war has gone long enough unlike the war 800 years ago we do not have the full support of the Eastern Continent and a lot of the old timers still alive from back then were completely against this invasion. Look at this! We are only winning on paper but we have lost momentum and their forces are gathering as we speak! ” shouted General Yohmu as he smashed the table
One of the Sect representative from the alliance then said “ W-well we can always go on a full offensive… but as always we will suffer immense casualties even if we win”
With a heavy sigh General Yohmu could only say “fine! We will plan where to make our point of entry tell the scouts to look for a suitable location!”
“yes, General!” said by the commanders and sect representatives
“this war…. even with the amount of blood sacrifice we have gathered I seriously doubt that we can fix every dragon vein back home” the General shook his head as he contemplated the aftershocks of this war regardless of victory or defeat
“Dragon Veins” one of the Eastern Continents source of energy and by extension every cultivators “life blood” with the dragon veins cultivation has been made easy and with them being damaged it was only natural for the cultivators to use every method in their arsenal to fix the problem.
If the dragon vein could not be fixed in time it would go dormant for countless years and most if not all known dragon veins already has owners from various clans, sects to empires. General Yohmu is part of the Fou Empire and because of frugality their dragon veins is almost still in perfect condition.
Mostly because the Fou Empire nurtures its cultivators through natural gathering of energies without using external aids, and the dragon veins are only used to the elites of the empire that would become the pillars of its support.
General Yohmu was sent here only to join in on the opportunities of an invasion. Never would he thought that it would all come to this disaster even if the Fou Empire has no real stake in this it would be a huge blow to his reputation as a General of the Fou Empire this types of mistakes are usually for the General to carry.
“in the following days I will order a final assault to take the city. I have confirmed reports that deep underground has a faint sensation of a dragon vein! Should this report prove true I will gain enormous merit in capturing this place!”
With that General Yohmu has finally psyched himself to come to a decision to make a full scale assault and finally capture the City of Kaladia.