They gathered on the wall. Helen looked to her sides and saw Marcy, Cloude, Alvus, and her father.

Her heart sank when she saw the column crest the horizon. The cavalry came first like a swarm of ants crawling up and promising doom. And after the horsemen, the soldiers. Footmen marching in synch, sending vibrations through the ground like it was an earthquake. Helen took a deep breath. Rows upon rows of soldiers marched, flooding out of the road and skirting the path leading to the town walls, moving north, parading, and making a show of force. Heavy infantry with shields protected the column from stray arrows, although they should be out of arrow range.

Some of them would wave a flag or raise an arm, taunting them. Others would do some obscene gestures Helen cared not. In fact, the outrage at the soldiers' depravity inflamed her and she broke out of her fear-induced stupor.

Helen: Marcy, please give our unwelcome guests a warning shot.

Marcy: I bet I can kill ten with a single shot the way they are lined up in rows. Any takers?

Helen: ... without any range improvements from your Skills.

Marcy: Spoilsport.

Helen: 😛

An arrow flew from the wall and landed a hundred feet from the line of heavy infantry. The marchin men cheered, both relieved that they would not be under fire and to show bravery.

Even so, Helen thought it was strange how fast they were moving. She pondered for a while and decided they must be using the advanced wind spell, "Tailwind" to speed up the troops. It meant they had a very strong mage with them. Wrothgar was sparing no expenses, it seemed.

"Time to show some hospitality," She mumbled to nobody in particular.

Helen took a knife and eyed the bowl of herbs and other materials she gathered. She poured fresh morning dew from a vial, a pinch of salt, some crushed, dried herbs that greedily soaked the dew, fish scales, and a potion of water breathing into the bowl. Next she cut her wrist with the knife, adding her own blood. She activated [Druidic Magic] and sacrificed a half plus one of her HP to invoke the effect she wanted.

The price of her sacrifice hit her. She staggered and almost lost her footing. But the magic worked. Dark clouds gathered in the sky out of nowhere, as if they were there the whole time but made invisible. Heavy rain started to pour all around Mirfield, skipping the inside of the city walls. The deluge quickly turned the recently-harvested fields into mud. Here and there mages raised a personal rain shield but Helen knew it was a waste of their magic.

[Weather Magic] - Tier C - Awakened. {Predict Weather} learned.

she was startled when the System rewarded her with a new skill. She had a lot of Skill points left so she invested to max it out.

{Rain Shield} learned.

Create a shield over the caster to protect from rain, snow, or hail, but not other fluids. {Call Lightning} learned.

While the spell lasts, charge electricity in the sky and call it down when charged. Charging speed increases with more cloud coverage. {Control Weather} learned.

Allows the caster to increase or decrease heat, humidity, and wind speed over a large area. {Cyclone} learned.

Summons a Cyclone to cause havok and mayhem. Cyclone has a will of its own and might go where it wants. Caster must concentrate to control the Cyclone or it will run wild. {Thunderstorm} learned.

If the weather is rainy or stormy, increase downpour and charge several {Call Lightning} effects to strike at random in the area of effect.

Truly, creating the rain cut off fire as a viable weapon to use against the invaders but they didn't have oil to boil or much flammables to spare. And the rain would spell havok to their logistics. From soggy boots, no campfires, to wet wood hindering the construction of their siege engines, camping in the torrential downpour wouldn't be fun. It also gave their mages a thing to tinker, attempting to dispel her magic. Now that she knew weather was a proper school of magic, they would try to dispel an advanced tier spell and they would fail.

Druidic magic was quirky. Since she sacrificed more than half of her lifeforce, the only way to dispel it would be for another caster to double up the cost. Well, doubling a half plus one meant they would have to kill themselves. Between figuring out what was required to actually enacting it would waste them a lot of time and probably take out a tier four mage out of their equation.

Helen knew they were past the point they could be picky about killing or not. This was war. Everyone inside the walls knew what fate awaited them if they fell. Probably a long exile inside the dungeon for most but with Grendel evolving in the underground, she couldn't abandon him. So all of these troops would have to either die or surrender.

The clouds also blocked sunlight. While there was a hole above Mirfield, they were too tall to allow the sun to shine in. Some light came down reflected on the walls of the hole, creating the illusion of a glowing white cylinder over the city and allowing enough light to see but the frillbush the bees were using to build their hive would require magical help to keep growing as fast as it was.

Now it was a waiting game. Some drizzle would reach her on the walls as she couldn't afford to leave a dry zone outside. The invading army probably knew the city was mostly dry and it could prompt them to attack sooner but to the defenders, a haphazardly thrown offense was a blessing in disguise.

And after an hour, four horsemen approached. Two of them were new faces, a knight-commander and a civil servant in courtier clothing. But the other two were well-known to Helen. The first one was the guildmaster Grendel expelled from Mirfirled after taking his Guild Crystal. And the second one sent a shiver of fright through Helen's spine.

The old wounds, the old trauma of her childhood, the man that shaped her self-image she was trying to leave behind. Gruenwald, her master.

"White flag!" Cloude shouted. "Don't shoot!"

Helen was on a time crunch. She wanted to break the siege before Grendel woke from his evolution. She wanted very much to just murder the four coming to parlay but the reaction of the army was unpredictable. She failed to see how killing the envoys would make the siege any worse. Would the soldiers just swarm the walls like ants, without any preparation? If that was a proper reaction to utter failure of negotiations, she had no idea why they wouldn't just do so. Since among all the stories of sieges she heard from Imayne that never happened, it wasn't.

"Marcy, what are you seeing?" Helen asked after casting off the useless worries.

"They're illusions," she replied. "They aren't registering in the City Core. I tried to mark them as enemies as soon as they entered the field."

That explained a lot.

"Shoot an arrow at their feet. That's far enough to talk."

"Right on!"

Marcy laid one arrow in front of each rider, faced Helen, and grinned.

"Welcome to Mirfield, gentlemen!" Helen shouted over the roar of the downpour. "Unfortunately the city is closed for Hrothgar's lackeys. Please go away!"

The riders didn't react to her words. The one in full plate armor shouted back, "By order of King Hrothgar, you rebels are to surrender and submit to justice! Lay down your weapons!"

"Sorry, your request has been denied!"

Gruenwald cupped his hands, "Stupid Apprentice, don't tarnish my reputation any further! Surrender, you imbecile, and I will be merciful in your re-education!"

Helen shuddered at the thought, her old trauma resurfacing. That grumpy mage was never kind to her. Not once.

"Come here yourself, old master. Let's duel, you and me and let the best mage win. If you do, Mirfield will surrender."

Her defiance irritated the mage. He shook a hand in anger."You useless girl! You couldn't even handle magic when I picked you up after your father begged me! Of all the apprentices I had, you were the slowest one!"

"I am sure I was the only apprentice you ever had. Technically I was the fastest too. If insults are all you can do, we are done talking." Helen withdrew slightly from the wall but didn't break line-of-sight.

"Come down here and fight me!"

"No. I'd rather fight you from up here. It seems you brought a nice army, please make use of it. We are eagerly awaiting."

Gruenwald seemed to want to talk more, but the armored knight silenced him with a gesture. They turned around and rode away. Helen sighed and spun to meet Cloude.

"Report, Captain."

"Milady! We have thirty guardsmen on the walls plus a hundred militia volunteers. Evacuation to the Dungeon is complete, all the mansion staff plus four hundred thirty-seven civilians," The bearer of the Shining Blade shouted. We are using refurbished demon equipment for them. The guild receptionists plus some other adventurers are hunting in the first floor of the Dungeon. Your father is overseeing the construction on the foyer hall."

They were outnumbered by more than thirty to one. Less if you counted the bees but Helen would rather not deploy monsters unless necessary.

"Zahariel and the fairies will help patrol the walls for intruders. Petal and Sepal will set sentry wards overlapping through the perimeter. The fairies are to remain invisible and not engage. Let Zahariel handle infiltrators. You can heal him from a safe spot if there is a need."

"Roger, wilco, general!" Petal held a knife hand next to her brow and vanished.

"I'm on it," the Seraph flew up and went on his way circling the town wall.

"Cloude, you set a schedule. I want them to think the walls are well-manned. We cut off the reports of the spies but they didn't reveal how much information leaked."

"Right!" Marcy shouted out of nowhere. "I knew he would've done something like this!"

After swallowing down the heart that almost jumped out through her mouth, Helen blinked. "What?"

Marcy was with a detached sigh, as if she was browsing System windows. "The CIty Core has a siege mode. It cuts off some functions, blocks citizen registration and raises MP tithing. It also speeds up the repair of walls and buildings. It is as if the whole city became a troll."

"Good. Keep an eye on the army and manage the Core. Tell me what they are doing."

Marcy turned around with a hand shielding her eyes from the drizzle. "They are making camp. Badly."

"Keep doing it. I'm going to Mirfield. Call me in party chat if something happens."

Helen went down the stairs back to street level. Putting aside the troops and the siege, she fled to the deserted Adventurer's Guild. Once inside, she took her passbook and activated the glyph for Willow Hill. She was startled when she felt the sun on her skin and sucked in the air that felt almost dry, compared to Mirfield. She turned around and saw the cylinder of heavy clouds covering the city and its outskirts. It was huge, several miles in diameter.

'Mittens, I need you. Come to the Hill House. Caramel, I'm going to need two hundred bees. And probably more, I need you to focus on growing more larvae.' She told her bonded monsters through their telepathic link.

The insectoid creatures buzzed their agreement and Helen sat on a bench to bask in the sunlight. The toll of sustaining the weather spell plus keeping the state of having half her vitality missing wasn't something she could just ignore. She made a mental note to cycle the inner circle here so they too could relax for a bit and sunbathe. Then she remembered that maybe the army could send people nearby to patrol, forage for resources, or just look for the Hill. It wasn't strainge to think that the spies have learned about the monster settlement. She needed to coordinate their initiatives with the monster leaders.

'Mittens, tell Shraaizar and Kochurearc to meet me here', She added and the Mantis Knight replied promptly.

After a brief chat with the two monsters, she took her own and teleported back along with four Shadow Goblins, ready to cause some mayhem.

It would be a long sleepless night.