《Arcane Cycle》Sile, True Paladin of the Holy Empire of Ivalice. (XV)

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After “discussing” terms with the enemy, Sile returned to the army with a promise of freeing the survivors that the demonkins captured in her heart. She knew that her current forces were far from enough to be a threat to that imposing citadel, but if she just camp there and stares at the wall while waiting for reinforcements, many lives will be lost.

She needed to at least create some sort of distraction in order to disrupt whatever they are doing inside those walls. The moment she neared the citadel, she could hear the plea in her heart of innumerable voices that were praying to the gods in order to be rescued. Those demonkins were not just slaughtering them, it seemed that they were holding them captive for some reason.

Without losing much time, after discussing strategies with the highest ranked officers of the army, they decided the course of action they would take during the siege. Eighteen divisions of ten to twelve thousand soldiers were formed from the original two hundred thousand man army, taking specific emplacements alongside the wall.

Each division was evenly distributed with experts to fulfill all the necessary rolls: ranged attacks, melee attacks, defense, and support. There were only four of the eighteen divisions that were slightly different. Three of these four were division that had men that specialized purely on support and fast speed.

The final different division was the one that was in charge of Sile. It had fewer men than the rest, only about four thousand, and all of them were cherry-picked by Sile herself to fulfill very specific rolls.

Her division settled near the center of the army, setting up a huge tent that could accommodate about one hundred persons. Outside the tent numerous spell formations were deployed by some wizards and the rest of her group remained vigilant guarding that tent with a very tight protection.

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Similar scenes of huge tents being set up could be seen in some of the other divisions. With Sile’s division at the center, seven division at her right, seven at her left, and three divisions that could move freely, the sound of the war bugles could be heard, declaring the start of the siege.

On the other side, Isiurem had long ago since he took defensive measures. Countless defensive spells radiated an oppressive aura and an astonishing amount of archers occupied the top of the walls of the demonkin citadel.

From afar it is nearly impossible to tell the difference from a demonkin and a human. The more impure ones would have more demonic characteristics that they could not normally suppress, as horns, claws, fangs, etc., but the purer ones would only have to distinct characteristics: Their eyes are pitch black with no pupils, and they have a tattoo in some part of their body that represents the demon with which they made pact.

Shockingly, all of the archers in the top of the walls didn’t show signs of demonification, all of them had pure demonkin blood. They stared down with disdain, ready to taste the blood of any human bold enough to get near their shooting range.

However, the scene they were waiting to unfold never happened. After the sound of the war bugles, not a single soldier of the human army took one step forward. Instead, elemental essences started to madly coalesce around them, and numerous rays of bright colors could be seen everywhere.

Huge elementals of the fire, wind, water, and earth attributes started to being summoned, and threatening spells were ready to be shot in any instant. Those who didn’t have affinity with the spells had bows in their hands charged with elemental power provided by those who were of the support roll. Being at one and a half kilometers from the wall, it was obvious that they were out of range and couldn’t fire such arrows, nevertheless they knew that the first stage of their siege consisted purely in ranged attacks without risking a single hair of the men of the army, so if holding a bow and arrow was useless right now, brandishing a sword was even more useless.

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A huge number of elementals and some bizarre creatures were commanded and started running towards the walls of the citadel, after which a torrent of majestic spells was released.

The demonkins which were watching in their posts laughed with even more disdain, using summoned creatures and long range spells was like wanting to take down a steel wall by throwing soft mud to it. When the elementals approached, a torrent of arrows and some spells was thrown to them, destroying the vast majority.

Some of the spells fired from the human side were destroyed in midair by an equivalent spell fired from the demonkin side, and some of them just collided against the magical barrier, but they couldn’t create the slightest ripple in it.

Thus, a magical battle started. When an elemental summon was taken down, another one would appear and take its spot. When a spell was successfully casted, a new one was beginning to take shape.

The knowledge Sile had about demonkins was limited, nevertheless, she knew some key things that were crucial when she decided the strategy of the siege. Demonkins had low affinity with the elemental essences, instead, they are naturally gifted with a dominion over the dark aura. Although there are powerful dark spells, the range of the dark aura and light aura based spells is not as large and threatening as the elemental essence based spells.

Although Sile was clear than in order to use this as a true advantage in something like a siege their numbers were far from enough, she was clear that this was the best she could right now, and it was far better than suiciding against those majestic walls of the citadel.

With the guidance of some sages that were highly knowledgeable when it came to barriers, the spells and elementals were always aimed to the seemingly weak points of the defenses of the demonkin citadel.

It has to be said that the citadel was enormous, and the price to set up and maintain active a barrier that could cover its entirety was very high. In order to lower the energy consumption, they will weaken the power of the barrier on the sides which were not being under attack, but doing so would create small ripples in the barrier which the sages will immediately notice.

Having it fully active was out of the question against such small army, but activating and deactivating it was even more stressing and costly.

Seven days passed and they were still employing the same tactic. The demonkins were truly furious and were throwing taunting words and curses to the human army.

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