The battle lines were drawn, and the Human Crusades began constructing their siege works. Despite being part of the Crusade, the different Human nations only partially cooperated. Each one was out mostly for themselves, and thus if one nation was struggling the others didn’t usually help. In their eyes, the fewer nations that succeeded meant more plunder for the rest. Of course, they all had to assist the Theocracy and the Holy Crux Empire whenever they needed assistance due to the power of the Church, but the other Human nations would just as easily let their ‘allies’ fall behind just so they had a better chance at the best plunder. It was up to each individual nation to secure their own prizes so in their eyes the less competition the better. Therefore, as each nation sent materials for the construction of their own siege works there was no uniformity of design. Each nation had been given a section of the wall to assault by the Church, with the most pious nations given the ‘easiest’ ones.

When the first of the siege towers, siege ladders and battering rams were completed, the Holy Crux Empire made its move. The Holy Crux Empire was the largest human nation, and the one with the only border with the Theocracy. The Church held so much influence there, that each Emperor was personally appointed by the Pope, rather than through birth or election. They were the most pious nation in the human lands, second only to the Theocracy and thus they were always given special permissions and conditions whenever they did anything. This is what allowed them to build their siege works the fastest, as they were given special treatment due to their close ties with the Church. Their troops were the first to arrive, their supplies were always the best and they were always first on the list to be resupplied. They had always been given special treatment, and always had their claims of territory and loot granted to them by the always victorious Theocracy after a Crusade.

And so, like the spoiled little brats that they were they went ahead without caution, wheeling their rams and towers toward the wall and gate. They also sent their other troops in long columns with large ladders to help them scale the wall, but they were likely not going to be needed as the top of the wall didn’t look defended. They didn’t even view the ‘battle’ as a real fight, they had never exerted themselves in combat before, why would they now? In fact, they rarely ever lifted a finger in a Crusade due to the Pope always giving them what they wanted. They had only ever fought battles they knew they could win without taking moderate casualties, so since there was no one on the wall, there shouldn’t have been a problem.

They were dead wrong, of course.

Almost on cue, as if their troops crossed some sort of invisible line, the ground they were treading on erupted and body parts went flying. While not everyone was affected, the screams of agony and sight of men with torn and missing legs sent shockwaves through the Holy Crux Empire’s forces. But that wasn’t the end of it. Soon smoke trails appeared from behind the wall, tracing a curve through the sky until they reached the ground and explosions rocked the earth. Suddenly, the previously unmanned wall was now bristling with men in bizarre armor, with either glowing, cyclopean eyes or glowing visors.

They were carrying some sort of stick, but these sticks were hurriedly rebranded as mage staves after they began launching death from afar. As word reached the commanders of the Human Crusade, those in the know about Rock Midgets (Racial Slur for Dwarves) identified the weapons not as mage staves, but some kind of ‘infantry-portable miniature bombard’ that could fire rapidly with short reload times. The troops in the siege towers and battering rams tried to vacate their wooden coffin before they were buried in them, but this was too little, too late as a barrage from the infantry on the wall and artillery from behind the wall tore the hide-covered wooden siege works into broken timber and ground meat.

With the display of what happened to the unfortunate Holy Crux Empire’s forces in front of everyone’s eyes, there were only a few leaders of the Crusades who thought that a second, but more unified assault would be a good idea. Despite being terrible people to any Non-Human or Non-Believer, they did care for the lives of their troops but not in the way it would appear. It was not that they valued their lives, they just didn’t want to risk their forces being utterly destroyed and their chances at getting loot reduced. Each nation advocated for their rivals to take the field as ‘probing attacks’ in full knowledge that they would likely be torn to ribbons in the process. Then, the Holy Emperor himself struck upon two ideas that would be so unexpected that they would never be thought of by barbarians and sub-humans.

A night attack, and if that failed then digging under the walls to collapse them. Both were so completely unheard of that it was assumed that they would definitely work if done. Night attacks were completely against the Religious Code of War, which stated that one should always do battle with the divine light of the sun, the window into heaven, falling upon you. Under that rule, no battles were ever fought when it was cloudy, or in inclement weather. Only when the sun shone freely could true, honorable warfare be fought and digging under the ground like Rock Midgets was just preposterous. However, it was because of these things that they were likely to succeed, so claimed the Holy Emperor who advocated them.

The person advocating for this type of combat was an odd fellow from the Holy Crux Empire. He had been hand-picked by the Pope to become the next Holy Emperor of the Holy Crux Empire due to his knowledge of economic, political and military arts that he claimed came from his dreams. He claimed his dreams showed him a world where there were only humans, and that technology had made magic non-existent there. His capabilities were far beyond what even the strongest of humans were capable of, and he claimed that he was this way even before he started to fight.

He was a man of decent height and build, with only the shape of his eyes different from a normal human while sporting black hair/eyes and an uncommon skin tone. Only the Theocracy knew his true origins, although Arkhan would immediately discern his origin if he saw him. The man was named Hiroyuki Miyamoto, but to those who lived alongside him and shared in his glory he was just known as ‘Hero’ Yuki, the perfect ikemen.