Today I managed to finish connecting everyone. I pushed a little further than I maybe should have and managed to get it done by noon, but I felt so tired at the end of it.

Of course, our enemy had to attack five minutes later. It was a concentrated attack on my forest itself, from a range that prevents me from really retaliating on my own, and in such a way that no one other than a skilled teleporter could bridge the gap fast enough to avoid some serious wounds. There were a lot of crossbows, with every single bolt being enchanted. Some with a simple plant destroying enchantment and others with various offensive enchantments designed to kill my people as they attempted to counter-attack. Plus they also had some enchantments designed to funnel teleporters to particular locations where they can be easily killed. We simply do not have the manpower to overcome this, at least not on this kind of scale. I didn't think the enemy had this many people at their disposal, or enough money to buy this many mercenaries.

My Ents were useless in the fight, which significantly cut down the population that could actually combat this threat. There were a couple adventurers that were willing to assist, but few of those were capable of doing anything. I made sure to rewards the ones that could handsomely.

That really only left my Paladins, with their heavy armor and perfect coordination they are capable of making it through the hail of bolts. And even ignoring that, their abilities with plant manipulation allow them to use portweed well enough to overcome the enchantments the enemy has placed. Unfortunately the attack was spread out over the entire border we share, I simply do not have enough Paladins to cover all of that area. And to make matters worse, the vast majority of them have never seen real combat before, which isn't too big of a deal with their hivemind, but it does matter.

I wasn't really able to go on the offensive, not without revealing my trump card anyway, so I spent most of my effort defending. Preventing my trees from being destroyed and healing the wounded that other healers could not. The bulk of my mana went towards enchantment killers, and it worked, but it didn't work well enough. It takes exponentially more mana the more work those simple enchantments have to do, so I was only able to break the bolts so quickly. I even had other plant manipulators doing similar things, but even with that it wasn't enough and my forest was still being pushed back.

I lost two months of growth today before the enemy decided to run, two months. And they only ran because Par was closing in on them. They still had plenty of enchanted bolts, and my Paladins could only slaughter them so quickly. This time the rage is my own. I wish I could ride out there and grind them under my boot myself, but I can't. I can't leave my forest and beyond that, I need to recover. I need to grow as fast as I can so that I can claim their land and their cities for my own. And so that I can turn their people into my own.

Great, now I'm getting word that they are attempting to purge my people from their cities. All of their cities. At the same time. They should not have these kind of resources. They shouldn't have the manpower alone to conduct either of these operations, and I highly doubt that there are that many mercenaries willing to work for cheap enough to make up the difference. And even if there were, we don't have enough wealth to buy that many mercenaries, I highly doubt that they do. They might be able to pull it off with undead, but they are very obviously not heavily using necromancy. They do have necromancers but nowhere near enough of them.

They have to be backed by someone or something, or otherwise have a near-endless source of wealth. It can't be the scholars, they are very clear about what they tolerate and the enemy has crossed a number of those lines while we have been nothing but helpful towards their order. Could it be another foreign empire? Maybe one that has been around a bit longer than either of us. Possibly, but why would any of them care? I'm under the impression that it is really hard for a government to affect things outside of their own continent. Plus the few foreign powers we have interacted with have at least a small reason to like us and no reason to dislike us. It could be an individual, but outside of people that are running their own governments and organizations very few of them have the resources to fund a war effort like this.

Could it be some higher power? Like someone similar to the creature that allowed me to gain access to Fate? No, I don't think so. If it was they would be able to just simply kill four individuals and completely collapse our empire. They might even get away with only two, but I think Tiddol and Azrezel might be able to stabilize things if Par and I died. Regardless, none of us would be able to resist if something like that decided it wanted us dead.

Anyway, Good Night Diary.