NOVEL NEXT Chapter 56: Siege 2
"Soldiers of the empire! I am Ludwin Seraphim, the second Prince of the Althemer Empire! The empire is now being attacked by these Elderan scums. I will be here with you. Now, I order you to fight! We will not give an inch of our land to them," Ludwin rallied the troops in the barracks. I wondered where he copied his lines from. He sure has a talent for rallying the troops. I could see the royal guards seemed to be encouraged by his speech. Their roar reverberated.
As if on cue, an alarm resounded from the wall, and we marched forth to it. The attackers were the same cannons from afar and goblins as vanguards. After they lined up, they ran towards us in abandon. Prince Ludwin smirked at the action of these monsters. It was the first rule of military tactics: do not waste your stamina.
"Stupid monsters."
"They are monsters, Prince Ludwin. While monsters could feel fatigue, they are different from humans. They seem to have more stamina than most humans," I replied.
"Oh. Really?" His smirk was gone, and he looked toward the battlefield.
"Yes."
"Ready your arrows! Arrows only!" Thor and Gladeus shouted as they prepared their arrows. Like in the movies, the royal guards finally showed their discipline. But I soon realized that their skills were subpar. Half of their shots missed, even among the goblin crowd.
"Urgh. I am not very good at archery. I wish Lily was here," Gladeus said. The prince cast an icicle magic and flung it into the goblin crowd. Oh yeah, I forgot that he was a triple-element mage. He hasn't learned to control his third element though, so he couldn't help John Sark with the castle walls. I wanted to learn my second and third element too. But my talent for them was only four. Let alone manipulating them, I couldn't even feel it like I did with my dark tentacle.
"Prince, get back. The cannons are targeting you," Thor and Gladeus pulled Prince Ludwin as he inched closer and closer to the battlements so he could shoot at those goblins more easily. As they predicted, a cannonball flew just below Prince Ludwin's position. The battlements cracked and crumbled with it.
"Wah!" the prince screamed as dust and some shrapnel were thrown at him. He soon got up and looked around like an idiot, but thankfully, Gladeus and Thor were at his side, and they ran toward the safer place. Like yesterday, the cannons disturbed the royal guards, letting goblins climb the walls. As they climbed the walls, I threw them off with my numerous tentacles.
When the prince saw how effective my tactics were, he started to mimic them. It was slower, and he could only control five, but it was compelling enough, as Thor and Gladeus didn't allow him to engage with goblins and orcs directly no matter what. With Prince Ludwin at the walls, the other royal guards charged like maniacs. All trying to show him their valor and be promoted by the second prince. While their motives might be questionable, it was effective nevertheless as we repelled the goblins and orcs with ease that day.
Just several more days before the next supply arrives. I wanted to sneak out of this city to scout the forest; however, I couldn't find the right timing as Alicia and Ludwin kept sticking beside me like glue. Moreover, Narwhal also hadn't given me a commission. Should I leave this city to gain internet access (Wind magic connection) to access quests from headquarters, or should I outright go to the forest and destroy the jamming machine?
"Lady Elidranthia, Narwhal wants to meet you," Alicia informed me as I doodled away in my book, trying to study. My mind kept wandering on the siege, but I have to study for the finals. The finals might be months away, but we didn't know how long this siege would make us stay. We could and should technically go home today or tomorrow, but the prince still wanted to see this war to an end.
"Alright! Nice work, gentlemen!" The prince was having a cheer with John Sark, Zach, Father, and his royal guards as I passed down the dining room to the door. Even though it was a small skirmish, he was elated to have won his first battle. He acted like he had won a decisive war.
"Greetings, Lady Eli. Could we have a drink outside?" R663, aka Narwhall, said. He then peeked and glanced through his surroundings. "I have a mission from R25B."
"I see. Let's go then." I followed him alone, asking Alicia to pick me up later after she had done her task.
"Very well, here are the files. R25B couldn't call you in this jammed zone. We first needed to fix that," Narwhal said as he handed me files of what the jammer looked like. Along with it were the cafe and toy store's finances.
"I see. Thank you for giving it to me, R663."
"You are welcome. I got 4 points just to walk away and then came back with a rented horse. It was no big deal. By the way, this quest was worth 400 points the last time I checked with R25B. It was commissioned by the military." I blinked at the absurd price. He shrugged and smirked at me. "You are going to infiltrate a fortified enemy position. It can't be cheap. I am sure I couldn't do it. I am still skillless and have no magic. This world isn't fair sometimes."
"Are you jealous?"
"Yes. But I was told by my father that I should be grateful to have a capable ally. We are a team, right? Other reapers might get jealous, but I know even without you, my wage won't increase within the guild. In fact, it might decrease, or I might lose my life instead."
"I see. Thank you." I smiled. A sense of camaraderie grew within me. I adored his honesty. When I was sickly on Earth, some of my friends were whispering behind my back because I had passed the exams, but they didn't. They thought I didn't study and was just sleeping all day. I hated those types.
"You are welcome."
"After destroying the jammer, I have another commission. It was to investigate their HQ. This one was worth 150 points."
"Hmm? Was the jammer so important?"
"Yes. With the jammer, the royals didn't know whether they should support County Shadowstep or muster their forces in Alrisa to retake the county. Their army could be ambushed if County Shadowstep didn't send them any words. Without the jammer, Count Shadowstep could reorganize their troops to patrol and clear any ambushes the day the royal army arrived. That could minimize casualties, unlike now, where he had to periodically clear the supply lines. Moreover, you guys were still ambushed yesterday."
" I see. Father has been getting a lot of heat clearing the supply lines because of it. It seemed useless."
"Yes. But He was forced to. If he didn't, the ambush would be more severe as the enemy would have encamped in the area."
"All right. I will do this tonight. Thanks, R6—" Lady Eli. We arrived!" Narwhal" Alicia cut me off as I was about to say his codename. I immediately called his alias to mask it.
"Who is this guy? You shouldn't be dining with manaless commoners so nonchalantly, Eli," Prince Ludwin said as he glared at Narwhal.
"Greetings, Prince Ludwin. My name is Narwhal." R663 knelt and bowed. "Lady Eli has graciously invested in my shop. I invited her to this restaurant merely to inform her how the toy stores she invested in went."
"Toy store?"
"Yes. It was a dark magic virtual glasses used to train knights. But we dumbed down the monsters so even children could play with it."
"I see. Let me take a look!"
The prince then wandered through my toy stores as he tested all the toys. This prick sure was easy to steer. My images of him as a devious and evil orchestrator were shattered.
Elderan's Basecamp
"Why can't we breach that damn wall!" an Elderan officer ran through his troops in anger.
"Sir, they have several earth mages supporting those walls and towers, sir. If we have more cannons, we might be able to breach it."
"We had over 100 cannons when we arrived here! That already put us in debt. If we don't win this, we are going to be a laughing stock for the Western Alliance.
"We only have 15 cannons now."
"That's your fault for getting them bunched up close and being shot by their cannons! I shouldn't have accepted that idea from the beginning. Even though we have an overwhelming advantage with monster taming, they still have the high ground!"
"If we don't get that close, we couldn't do significant damage to their cannons… look, 85% of our shots missed."
"Don't worry. We have spent their ammunition. We already studied the spawner our intelligence department secured. By injecting it with mana from our mages, we could make 2 thousand monsters daily." Another officer, the one in charge of monster taming, finally showed themselves.
"Greetings, General." The officer turned meek and saluted. His angry voice turned 180 and became a saccharine-flavored smile as he kissed his superior's butt.
"But I must agree, these Althemerians have quite the spirit. To withstand our assault day after day. I thought they would be out of ammunition by the third day." The general, who stood at the back and never saw the frontlines, commented.
"Sir, they have begun to use bows and javelins, sir. Moreover, I see some small handcrafted ballistae on the wall lately."
"Huh? I see. If it was arrows and pikes, they could recover them after shooting, unlike bullets. Hmm? Does that mean they already ran out of ammunition?"
"Yes, sir! We should crush them right now!" the officer agreed and smiled. However, the cannon engineers shook their heads.
"Yes. Do you have anything to say?"
"They just had supplies yesterday, sir."
"What! Didn't the fourth company waste over 400 Elderan soldiers and over 3000 monsters to disrupt the supplies? They still let the supplies in?" the general panicked. "Worthless."
"Hmm… if they kept getting supplies, our dream would be finished. We can't control more than 6 thousand monsters, and the fort was well-equipped to fight against more than 10 thousand without cannon support. What do we do, general?" an officer in charge was getting impatient. "The spawner we captured was also starting to show some degree of degradation due to us force-feeding it mana to spawn monsters. The quality of monsters produced has been dropping."
"What? Goblins are goblins, right?"
"Their strength still varies. Some goblins born in a natural mana-rich environment could take two or three arrows, while ours will almost certainly die with one. They were weaker too. Ours have an average lifting strength of about 25kg, while the first ones had almost 35kg."
"Damn. What are our options? Should we go charge with our measly 1000 troops? We had more than 10,000 soldiers, but we only barely had 500 guns. If we lose, our country will collapse due to insufficient manpower."
"Maybe we should retreat? We could work the monsters to drive up the economy and pay debts. Can we, general?"
"No! Without the breadbasket in Althemer's region, food prices will stay high, and we will have no chance of repaying our debt. Moreover, do you think those Althemerians will leave us alone if we retreat? They will surely invade us as they did to the former Luna Nation, which they renamed Shadowsteps now. And we are losing ground day by day on the Western Front."
"We are taking too many risks invading Althemer," the officer complained.
"If we succeed, we Elderans could become the next Althemer! Those Althemerians were once smaller than our kingdom. But after they won by risking their lives, they managed to break free from their master, the theocracy. And now, they are considered a major power in the east. If we win, Elderans will be considered a major power, and we no longer have to pay support for the Western Alliance. Those crooks were corrupt. They kept asking us for money and didn't even gain ground on the Western Front." The general exclaimed. His passionate speech went in one ear and out the other, though, as the engineers and officers knew their victory would cost them a lot.
"Hey, how about the traps? If the garrison received supplies and reinforcements, they might dare to launch an attack on our camps. If they did, we must be ready for them." The general then walked away to find his other officers to preach. The engineers moaned as they would have more to do setting up the siege.