The siege started around 2 hours later, right after the Dire’s forces finished setting up all of their siege weapons and making sure that the rest of the city was securely locked down.
Maria’s forces had essentially taken over the entire city now, except for the castle, and she had to make sure that the Lycan citizens, the soldiers that were captured, and the enemy players that had respawned or retreated back into their private houses or guild houses, didn’t try to cause anything.
She had to keep a close eye on the city’s teleportation gate, the player’s respawn area, and the guild district, since the players were the biggest headache out of the 3 groups she had to monitor.
3 of the objectives that Maria had established in the second phase of her battle plan was to secure those 3 aforementioned areas to prevent the players from intervening even further with the war.
The guild district already had guild houses on almost every plot of land available, so the hostile guilds that had aligned themselves with the Lycans had to be kept under strict watch and lockdown. If any guild players leave the houses, Maria ordered her soldiers to immediately kill them on sight.
The same went for any players that teleported into the city via the teleportation gate or respawned at the respawn point. She wasn’t going to take any chances now that she was on the crux of finally ending this long war.
For the players, Maria’s war with the Lycans had only lasted a few weeks, but for her, it was a war that spanned a few months already. A lot of her nation’s resources were spent on this war and the longer it continued, the more funds and manpower she would have to burn.
The players were the chaotic factor in this war that could turn the tides against her. She didn’t want any further interference, so she did things thoroughly and as cruelly as possible. A few players and even 1 guild had already fallen victim to Maria’s extreme command because they tried effing around.
The players that had just respawned inside of the city saw that they were surrounded by enemies and they started attacking, but were immediately logged out of the game again by the Dire’s soldiers.
Some guild players tried acting smart, believing that their guild house was indestructible and tried to mount guerilla attacks on her forces. In the end, however, once Maria found out which guild they came from, she ordered her soldiers to level their guild house into the ground and hunt the rest of them all down.
Unlike ordinary buildings, it wasn’t an easy feat at all to destroy a guild house. The system gave the guild houses extremely high durability and, with their high defense, they seemed indestructible.
However, that was far from the truth. Guild houses–like any other building–could be destroyed. No one had tried destroying a guild house before because it wasn’t worth the effort, manpower, and time to even try, since the guild house’s residents could repair it from the inside, but Maria proved everyone wrong by completely destroying a guild house and leveling it to the ground.
The players that were inside the guild house were immediately ejected from it once it was destroyed and now that they were outside, they were mercilessly exterminated by Maria’s soldiers.
Guild houses were expensive to buy, and they were even more expensive to rebuild if one was destroyed. The guild that had their house destroyed by Maria’s army would have to bleed their pockets dry to erect a new building.
It was much cheaper to just buy a new guild house instead, but the guild district already had every plot of land bought by various other guilds, so it was impossible for this guild to do that.
Maria used that guild as an example and the rest of the enemy guilds inside of the city quickly fell into line and stopped trying to do anything funny. Some guilds even had all of their players leave the houses and let themselves be taken into custody by Maria’s forces.
At least this way, their guild houses would be spared from destruction and their wallets safe from having to do any repairs. They understood that Maria didn’t want to destroy the city, so this was the safest way to keep their guild assets safe.
Since they were surrendering, Maria decided not to kill them and confined them inside of a hastily made prison in the eastern district of the city. This was the only form of leniency she was going to give to the players, but if they so much as even moved or breathed too loudly, Maria ordered her soldiers to immediately kill them without mercy.
It wasn’t like Maria could just prevent them from using their weapons all of a sudden, so she couldn’t take any chances. She was able to, however, seal all of their skills and spells by keeping them permanently debuffed with the [Silence] status effect.
The land where the large prison camp was made had special iron fences set up surrounding the area. A complete encirclement made by these fences cursed the area inside of it with a status effect and in this case, it was the [Silence] debuff.
This was something Maria had her dwarves hastily create during the war after she had been caught inside of Zhuge Lan’s Formation Arrays. His prank on her gave Maria the inspiration to hatch the idea of creating these fences as an experiment to emulate his Formation Array.
The fences were easy enough to create and enchanting them with the status effects that Maria wanted was even easier. The product was a success, but since they were hardly usable in an actual battle, Maria thought them to be useless. Of course, that was until she found other uses for them instead.
Since it had to be set up beforehand, it was hard to lure any enemy into its enclosure because it was an obvious trap if they paid attention to their surroundings. Only an idiot kind of enemy would let themselves fall for such a thing, but it had many applicable uses elsewhere, such as the formation of a prison camp or specialized training grounds.
In the present scenario, Maria erected a prison camp that silenced every NPC or player that was detained inside of it. The imprisoned players couldn’t believe that Maria had created such a thing and they truly had to put out all the fires of rebellion that were still in their hearts.
The Lycan soldiers were being held in a similar prison camp and they were also feeling the same thing as the players. Fighting back was not an option anymore. If they tried to do anything, they’d just die a meaningless death.
Naturally, the NPCs’ camp and the players’ camp were separate. While the players’ prison camp was in the eastern district of the city, the NPCs’ camp was in the western district, opposite of where the players’ camp was located.
Maria wasn’t going to keep the lycans and players together because who knew what they might try to do if they were kept together, even if they were silenced by the prison camp’s effects.
Once the players and NPCs started behaving themselves, Maria finally turned her attention to the castle. Before starting the siege, she had sent a messenger to the castle, but unfortunately, negotiations couldn’t even start since the lycans were acting so hostile.
Since they didn’t want to surrender, Maria immediately began attacking the castle with her army’s siege weapons. She even used her airships to attack the castle.
The castle had many defensive enchantments cast on it and it was reinforced with many great materials, so it had a lot of durability. Even after being bombarded for a few hours, there was hardly a scratch on its walls.
“Tsk, if it’s this hard to destroy the castle, then the only thing to do is starve them out,” Maria clicked her tongue in annoyance after she used her [Inspect] skill to see the condition of the castle’s walls.
“Our attacks hardly made a dent in its durability points!”
Lizzy noticed that as well and sighed, “At this rate, Mary, we might burn through all of our resources before we take that castle down.”
“...”
“We could try and storm the castle. That’s also an option, is it not?” Emily asked.
Maria shook her head and said, “That is an option, but we’ll experience too many casualties if we do that. With this damned moat around the castle, there’s only one path available to us, so we can’t effectively use all our forces.”
“We can always try and fill in the moat, no?”
“...That’s actually a pretty brilliant idea.”
“Shall we get to it then?”
Maria nodded and replied to her friend, “We’ll have to grab dirt and rocks from outside of the city. Em, you take a squadron and do this for me, okay? The rest of us will start building barricades in front of the moat to prevent you guys from being attacked once our enemies see what we’re trying to do.”
The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.
“I’ll get to it then. Amanda, care to join me?” Emily turned to her friend and asked.
“Sure, let’s go.”
Even though they had a new plan, Maria didn’t stop her soldiers from attacking the castle with their siege weapons. The moat was quite deep and it would take a long while to fill it up.
The task was a bit dangerous too, since you needed to get close to the wall, which put the soldiers transporting the earth and rocks in range of the enemy’s attacks. To keep the enemies off their backs, Maria needed her other soldiers to keep the pressure on them with attacks from their siege.
-------------------------------------
Just before the siege began, Beowulf and his cohorts–who were in the middle of their meetings–received the messenger that Maria sent to them asking for them to surrender and the terms of the surrender.
The terms Maria gave were the standard, nothing too outrageous. She just wanted the Lycans to cease all military activity, surrender their weapons and other military assets to her, and kick out all of the guilds that were in the guild district of their city.
As the City’s Lord, Beowulf had the means to do this, and since the previous conditions weren’t too unfavorable, it was a good deal. They might suffer the humiliation of losing against the Dire, but at least they could leave.
Maria didn’t demand that Beowulf and his family members be killed or anything. All she wanted was their military actions to stop and, finally, the Lycans would have to submit themselves to Maria as citizens of her nation–that’s right, citizens, not slaves.
The terms were extremely favorable. Despite being subjugated by the Dire, the terms of the surrender didn’t have anything detrimental to them, like the genocide of the Lycan royal family or the enslavement of their race.
The terms actually moved all of the Lycans in the meeting, including the ones that were initially opposed to it and things would likely have proceeded smoothly if Maria had chosen a different messenger to send to the Lycans.
The messenger that Maria had sent was the Lycan King’s own daughter, Lucille, and that–unfortunately–was a terrible move on her part. Lucille was the werewolf that had sided with the Dire and essentially betrayed her own nation.
Beowulf and every Lycan in the room were furious when they saw her appear as a messenger alongside Ash.
If it wasn’t for Beowulf calming down the entire hall, his retainers would’ve likely just torn up the document that Ash and Lucille were sent to deliver and tried to kill her on the spot. They didn’t try that because of Ash’s oppressing presence.
Ash was the actual messenger and Lucille was only there as an accessory to show the Lycan King and his cohorts that Maria was a benevolent Empress since she did not kill her or the werewolves she had taken in.
That backfired quite terribly and Ash had to leave with Lucille prematurely before any negotiating started because he sensed that the Lycans wanted to rip her apart and not conduct any sort of negotiation with them.
Since they couldn’t attack Lucille with their weapons, the lycans attacked her with their words.
“Are you mocking us by bringing this heinous traitor here with you?!”
“Bringing the traitor here means you’re just gloating now that you’ve won, huh? Just know that we will not surrender! To take this castle, you’ll have to kill us! All of us!”
The only person in the hall that remained silent was Beowulf. He didn’t say anything but was glaring daggers at his daughter who was staring back at him with a cold look in her eyes.
“...”
“...”
Lucille didn’t want to come precisely because of this, but Ash had fetched her and, since it was orders from her benefactor, Maria, she complied and tagged along. The result was just as she predicted, though deep down in her heart, she didn’t want it to be this way.
Sure, she may have been a traitor in the eyes of the Lycans, but in her eyes, as well as all of the oppressed werewolves, the Lycans were now just getting their just desserts for all the horrible treatment they did to them over the many years since the Kingdom’s segregation began.
Years of oppression and fury that was kept bottled in slowly erupted as she continued to hear the insults and slander from the lycans in the hall. Ash was frowning when the lycans started attacking Lucille and just as he was about to say something, Lucille suddenly started laughing.
“Hahahaha!”
“!”
“You!”
“This wench dares to laugh?!”
“My King, they’ve only come here with contempt! We should send their heads back to that invader!”
Lucille slowly began to stop laughing after a while. Once she was done, she lifted her head and looked up at all the Lycans in the room, glaring at them with disdain and schadenfreude.
“Never thought that you’d be in this situation, huh?”
“Silence wench!”
“How dare you!”
“You see me as a traitor, but I know I’ve done nothing wrong. Rather than continue to be mistreated by you bastards just because we werewolves were just born slightly different from you guys, I’d rather join Her Majesty, Empress Maria! At least she advocates for the equality of all races, unlike you buffoons!”
“Mistreatment?! You lowly werewolves and your disgusting–”
“See! There it is again! Do you people really have the nerve to believe that we werewolves would continue to side with you when you treat us so terribly? Like your slaves?!” Lucille yelled, silencing the Lycan that had just spoken up. “Even though I’m supposed to be one of the princesses of this nation, not once in my life have I received the due respect that should’ve been given to me by any of you Lycans!”
“...”
“Yet you see the werewolves as traitors? Stop with your convoluted misconceptions. In a war like this, it is only natural that we choose the side that will treat us better! While you fools were worrying about your lives and wealth, did you even care for the lives of the werewolves that you’ve abandoned in the outlier areas of the Kingdom?” Lucille looked around and asked. She received no answer, only scoffs and silent jeers, so she continued, “You didn’t! None of you did! Including you, father!”
“Traitor! How dare you raise your voice against the King!” One Lycan stood up and roared.
Beowulf turned to his vassal and immediately roared, “Silence!”
Lucille scoffed and continued, “You didn’t care that our enemies were already knocking on our front doors! You didn’t care at all! If Empress Maria hadn't been a benevolent ruler, all the werewolves living in those far-off towns and villages would have long since ceased to exist already! Hundreds of thousands of people dead! Exterminated! Did any of you people care about that? About us?!”
Beowulf only silently listened to his daughter and the rest of the lycans did so as well.
“Her Majesty offered us amnesty and a chance to start anew, so we simply took it. Why did we do that? Is it because of our hatred for you bastard lycans? No! It’s simply because not one werewolf in this kingdom actually cares for the kingdom. Now, why do you think that is? Hm?”
“...”
“None of us are traitors. If we were traitors, then it meant that we betrayed the kingdom that we held dear because of fear for our lives. Unfortunately, we did not love this kingdom at all. I can speak for all werewolves when I say that NO werewolf cares for this damned kingdom,” Lucille wanted to spit on the ground after saying her piece, but it wasn’t worth it, so she decided to just hold back her contempt-filled action. “I advise you all to surrender because Her Majesty’s patience is limited. Continue with your stubbornness and find out what it means to truly face the fear of extinction, just like we werewolves had to face when we saw Her Majesty’s vast armies march right up to our towns and villages without any form of protection whatsoever.”
The Lycans were very loyal to each other, but unfortunately, they treated the werewolves like dirt because they viewed them as the inferior side of their proud warrior race, so even after hearing all of Lucille’s words, not one Lycan in the room–even those that wanted to surrender to Maria–had their hearts moved.
They only saw Lucille’s ranting as excuses, the words of a typical traitor. All except for Lucille’s father, Beowulf the Lycan King. Only he was the one who acknowledged her words and it wasn’t only because they came from his daughter.
Everything Lucille said was true. He had once been in love with Lucille’s mother, who was also a werewolf, and he wanted to change the kingdom for the better, but unfortunately, the discrimination and segregation within the kingdom ran so deep that as time passed by, even he was slowly corrupted by it.
He had transformed into a version of himself that he swore to his wife that he would never become, but in the end…he had broken his promise, his vow.
When Beowful thought about it again, it had been a long time since he had even seen his werewolf family. He didn’t even know when they and the rest of the werewolves in the castle had disappeared from the premises.
He also didn’t even know that his daughter had been missing from the castle and had been with Maria for quite some time already.
‘Maybe this Kingdom and I are truly damned…’
Beowulf silently made his decision then and ordered his people not to do anything, allowing Ash and his daughter to safely walk out of the castle after rejecting the surrender offer.
Lucille clicked her tongue in disdain when she heard her father’s decision, but Ash was able to read something in Beowulf’s eyes. He gave him a slight nod and left the castle with Lucille in tow.
Fast forward to the present, Maria was calmly watching as her soldiers were running back and forth on the field in front of the castle, carrying earth and rocks to fill in the moat that was protecting it.
She was recalling the detailed report that Ash had given to her after he had returned from the Lycan castle. Maria didn’t regret sending Lucille with him at all, even though the outcome might have become different.
“The only way to truly start anew is to destroy the old values and replace them with new ones…You’re saying that was the intention that you read from the Lycan King’s eyes?” Maria asked, giving Ash a side glance.
“Yes, Your Majesty. It seems that the Lycan King has resolved himself in his own way after hearing his daughter’s words.”
“...He plans to bury the old values of his kingdom along with himself and those that are adamantly still clinging to it, huh?”
“Yes, that’s what I believe his intentions are,” Ash answered.
Maria clicked her tongue in annoyance and said, “Tch, I don’t care what his resolve is or what the lycans’ values are. I just want this damned war to be over with! He should’ve just surrendered and saved me the trouble of all this!”
“Y-Your Majesty–”
“Be quiet, Ash. As noble as Beowulf is trying to be, he’s still a failure who couldn’t even understand his people’s plight and the cancer that was growing within his kingdom like an infestation.”
There was only contempt and disdain in Maria’s words. For a ruler to become closed-minded because of the people he surrounded himself with and allowing himself to fall victim to the cancer of his own nation through them, he was a goddamned failure in Maria’s eyes.
“If every nation had a ruler like that, I’d be able to take over quite a few planets thanks to their stupidity. I’ll have to look into some things and try them in the future.”
Ash scratched his head and remained silent, unsure of how he should respond to Maria’s words.
“...”
“Ugh, why did that coward have to make things more difficult for me?” Maria moaned in distress.
It wasn’t until 3 hours later that her forces were finally able to fill up the moat surrounding the castle and a new phase of the siege began.
With the moat now more or less filled, Maria ordered her soldiers to start scaling the castle walls with ladders. Since her soldiers had to move up, she had to stop the bombardment on the castle or else her forces might get caught up in the attack.
This gave her enemies the opportunity to finally mount a defense on their castle walls, so scaling it was no easy matter, but after a few hours of fighting, Maria’s forces were finally able to capture the walls.