The soldier who was thrown off the wall probably wouldn’t die. What was a thirty foot fall to a gevai anyway?

William didn’t care about that though. Within a few moments he was inside the gatehouse. There, he saw a dozen more soldiers, with more heading in from either side. Without a weapon, William would find it troublesome to defeat armored soldiers… if he had to rely on just his body.

Unfortunately for them, he didn’t have to consider their armor at all. It was even easier to take them down with soul attacks when he could reach them in melee. All he had to do was dodge around their spears. They hadn’t seen what caused their archer allies to collapse earlier, so they were surprised when he took down the first half dozen of them, such that they weren’t ready for him for the second.

It only took a few moments more to take down the other soldiers who were showing up and shut the doors. That wouldn’t stop people for long, but it might make it take longer for them to realize how bad the situation was.

William went over to the secondary portcullis and set it up so it could be raised, then started turning the winch. Preferably there would be help, but when his men saw it started moving they helped lift which shortened the process. William could sense that more of his men were showing up below, now that there weren’t many archers on the side of the wall facing them.

William brought up the other portcullis. While horses wouldn’t be great inside the fort, he didn’t want to just leave Chris there. After that was done, he dangled a strand of ki down through a murder hole. They were bigger than the diameter of an arrow, because otherwise they would have required perfect precision. While it would have been hard to stab a spear through them, lifting a staff wasn’t too difficult- especially when the staff could control its own orientation.

After retrieving Chris, William thought of something he should have done long before. He began chanting, drawing on mana from a large distance around… and also creating a large scale effect. In total, the actual amount of energy required for the spell was small, but it was harder on a large scale. In addition, William wanted to drain most of the mana in the nearby area to prevent his spell from being undone easily.

All around the fort a fog appeared. William’s men had been trained to fight in fog. It wasn’t dense enough to be a problem for melee combatants anyway- it would just stop the archers on the walls from shooting his men as they entered the courtyard.

William left the gatehouse and moved along the wall, defeating defenders as he came to them. By the time he’d made a quarter loop, his men had taken over the rest of the fort. They had superior numbers and training, the only thing stopping them had been the gates. While William had left many of those he defeated alive, he wasn’t going to ask his men to risk their own lives to do the same.

The fog had dissipated within an hour, and William looked over his new fort. There wasn’t anything particularly wrong with it, which actually was much better than most of the ones he had seen. All he needed was to replace the power source for the magical defenses.

-----

The old lords clearly had not expected the sort of response they got from William and the others. He wasn’t sure what they had expected- him to go with Lord Heinrich or to be successfully captured, or even something more… but they hadn’t expected a wide scale rebellion. Except, it wasn’t exactly a rebellion. Tradition dictated that the older lords would be listened to, and they had more political power… but officially all lords shared the same rank. The Grand Council was full of many powerful gevai who could enforce their will, but as far as actual legalities went… the Eternal King had all the legal power.

On the other hand, it wasn’t that they couldn’t legitimately enforce their own views either- much of the actual legal basis among the gevai was centered around ‘might makes right’. As far as actual laws and regulations… they were a mess. Each territory had their own laws, and it was up to the rulers of those territories to enforce them.

In short, the Grand Council was basically in their rights to do whatever they could get away with… and so was everyone else. It was just important to take into consideration who might want to stop you.

Everything was rooted in tradition rather than codified as laws. In a practical sense, it wasn’t much different… except it made it easier for someone who wanted to change the system to proclaim themselves in the right. That said, if anyone actually caused a big stir, their power would be fleeting. The Eternal King would return and make an example of them.

That had always been the case… but it wouldn’t be any longer. William knew he wouldn’t return with any sort of power… and wasn’t afraid of him anyway. The Demon King had great personal power. William wasn’t confident he could beat the abilities he displayed, nor that he could defeat him in single combat… but that was only if he took soul attacks out of the equation. While the Demon King had been worn down when William defeated him, William was much stronger now in ki cultivation and the strength of his soul. As long as the Demon King wasn’t focusing all his efforts to prevent soul attacks, William was confident in destroying him again.

That was important, because he wasn’t sure how strong some of the old lords would be. They had remained alive for longer than anything else, and they would be very strong. Even if they didn’t grow quickly, given that much time they would be very powerful. The only thing William was counting on was that their souls would be weaker than the Demon King’s. He was definitely an exception, like William himself. That was a weakness he could exploit… and he would destroy them. He didn’t like to do it, but he couldn’t chance the possibility that any of them would reincarnate even with partial memories. William just wished he could have stopped at the Demon King. He didn’t want to destroy more souls… but he would for the sake of what they would do if he didn’t.