Chapter 73: Siege of Divinatus

***The First Defence***

The Alliance acted fast to exterminate the Ak’hims. For as soon as they were able to gather enough soldiers, they immediately started getting to work. With haste, they quickly constructed a bunch of siege towers; it was made rather shoddily and not with the expectations to last. Once done with construction, the Alliance immediately boarded them and started making their way to Divinatus. Scores of men followed the siege towers as if protecting them. They were just shy over eight hundred meters from the Ak’hims.

As they travelled to Divinatus, they passed through a few mines and traps that were set up all over the land, killing some of them on the spot. However, the Alliance was fearless. Despite seeing their comrades being blown to pieces, they kept moving without stopping, not caring about their lives. The sight of this confused the Ak'hims— do the Alliance not care for their own lives?

In the first place, Klauna was perplexed as to why they would be building siege towers. Without a large bridge to cross the moat, the siege towers would just fall to their doom. She expected them to construct mobile draw bridges instead.

Nonetheless, Klauna ordered the Harbin and the Seventh Army to launch artillery strikes upon them— artillery strikes that began the moment that the Alliance crossed the seven hundred metres mark. It was a range where Harbin and her battalion could reasonably reach with decent accuracy. Their aim? The siege towers that they were protecting so much. Something was out of the ordinary about them and Klauna wanted them destroyed to pieces.

With the screeching sound in the air, several large red ordnance shells rained upon them. It crashed upon the siege towers and men surrounding it. Undeterred by the attack, the Alliance soldiers continued forth. They made a slow and steady movement towards the moat of Divinatus despite being shelled nonstop from Harbin’s Battalion. More and more of them died and exploded to pieces as time went on.

Something was off.

It weirded the Ak’hims that the soldiers moving towards them weren’t panicking or running away. It was as if they were possessed. When under intense shelling like that, groups of people would usually spread themselves thin in order to receive minimal damage. The Alliance soldiers headed towards them did no such thing. They stayed in formation and kept moving forward.

All of them made their way to the moat steadily. All except a certain siege tower where the men surrounding it could be seen rather fearful of the matter. Unlike the others, they were acting how normal living beings would react. Klauna noticed them and ordered Harbin to focus her attack on their coordinates, shelling them immediately.

However, the Ak’hims weren’t able to strike it down as it was protected by a very good interception defence. The human mages around said siege tower deployed large magic circles and started intercepting any and every projectile that came to them.  It was weird that they would activate their interception spells now instead of earlier.

It was then that the siege towers finally reached the moat. The tower doors opened and from within were several mages who quickly went over to the moat and started constructing crude bridges using earth magic. The rocks from outside the moat slowly gathered together to form a platform. Multiple bridges were being constructed at the same time. 

The special tower that the Ak’hims tried to destroy earlier soon came onto the moat and deployed as well. Like the others, several men poured out of it and immediately started constructing a bridge. Though this batch was different, they were much faster and much more protected by the interception magic.

Klauna squinted her eyes and saw a few familiar figures among the men constructing the bridge. It was the Prince of Serrora and a few of his companions, giving orders to his men.

Any attempts by the Ak’hims to stop them were handled by the extremely effective interception magic that was being led by one of his companions, the Elven Princess. It didn't seem that the Ak’hims could punch through with just the strikes from the Seventh Army alone.

Though, the Ak’hims will be damned if they give up here. Klauna ordered every single one of her men that was able to launch ordnance, to strike the Alliance forces at the moat. Soldiers that were at the wall strike the Alliance with whatever projectiles they could and the soldiers that were in the towers on the opposite end of the moat launched their own fierce ranged strikes upon them. Even Klauna herself started to launch her own strikes, throwing powerful grade six artillery barrages at them

The interception magic of the Alliance was quickly overwhelmed by the fury of strikes and, one by one, the siege towers were destroyed and the mages constructing the bridges disposed of. The interception magic was then concentrated on the Prince’s group, leaving the rest of the Alliance to their own fate. 

It was the right choice as they, despite the causality from such a move, successfully managed to complete the bridge to the other side. After hearing loud cheers from the Alliance soldiers, they immediately started crossing the bridge in an attempt to take down the forward towers.

This was a bad situation for the Ak’hims as men in the towers were vulnerable to the enemy's strike. They did not expect the Alliance to be able to reach this side of the moat so fast and so early. But what is Klauna if not crafty? The solid-looking towers on the outside of Divinatus soon broke apart and revealed themselves for what they truly are.

Large Iron Boxes.

It was a smaller version of the Yuupiecca’s Mark Three, dubbed the Mark Four. It was designed to be operated by a smaller crew and was supposed to be much more mobile than their larger counterparts. It also maintained a special weapon from the Mark Three— a large orb that shoots out giant lasers. 

Hearing an eerie crackling of thunder, the Mark Fours shot out giant lasers towards the bridge, burning anybody who tried to cross it to a pile of burnt crisp. One of the armoured vehicles moved forward and trampled all over the Alliance soldiers in an attempt to move closer to the bridge. The other iron boxes shot magical lasers in order to cover for that said tank. The enemy tried their best to prevent the said iron box but found themselves outgun and outmatched by said armoured vehicle.

The Iron box eventually reached the middle of the bridge before blowing up in a glorious explosion, taking out the bridge and the men on it with them as they fell to their dooms at the depths of the pit. The soldiers within the iron box sacrifice themselves for the others in order to buy their superior, Yuupiecca, the little bit more time he needs to get the city running.

The Alliance started retreating as they figured that they no longer had any chance. For a while, victory was to the Ak’hims who let out a breath of relief. Though that moment of respite was disturbed when they heard a loud eerie screeching sound coming from above.

Looking directly above, they could see a large streak of light heading towards Divinatus. More specifically, towards Harbin’s and her battalions’ position. 

It was a counter bombardment from the Elves, looking to take out the Ak’hims bombardment battalion.

The Ak’hims totally did not expect such a strike and were caught off guard. Under any normal situation, Harbin and her battalion would have gotten hit. They would probably suffer massive casualties. Perhaps Harbin and the others would have erected a barrier in time to negate as much damage as they could, but there was no need to think about such things.

The Ak’hims new Mass Force Field, took the magic strike head-on. The shock of the blow spread across the force field. For those inside of Divinatus, it was like looking at a fireworks show.

First Defence results:
Northern Demon Kingdom : 33 Deaths.
The Alliance : 16098 Deaths

***The Second Defence***

The Ak’hims didn’t get much time to rest because as soon as the second day rose, the Alliance were once again, prepared to launch another assault on Divinatus. Their tactics were largely similar to the prior day. Bringing in siege towers to construct bridges and assault Divinatus, with elven battalions deploying interception magic to shield themselves from the Ak’hims’ bombardment.

For if once you don't succeed, you simply try again— this time with twice as much effort. And so they did, with twice as many siege towers and twice as many troops; twice the speed as well. Rather than slowly and steadily making their way towards the moat, the humans opted to sprint instead. The only difference was that the heroes and their companions were nowhere to be seen. That and the troops that they sent actually felt like real people this time.

This obviously confused Klaun, but she had no time to think about the matter.

The Ak’hims response was obvious. They started launching as many shells as they could at the incoming horde. These were, of course, intercepted by the elves and their powerful interception spells. Though, as seen and proven before, they can’t possibly intercept every shot. Some of the shelling went through and took out a few of the siege towers.

Unfortunately, It wasn’t enough for the Ak’hims as the enemies comfortably constructed multiple bridges to cross the moat. Some of the bridges were so large that even the siege towers could cross the moat without much difficulty. And unlike the previous day, there were no Mark fours to be seen on sight.

Klauna had ordered them to retreat to the city as they no longer served their purpose as surprise weapons for the Ak’hims. Instead, they were on the walls now, shooting giant lasers at the enemies below. They and together with the Ak’hims on the walls shot down upon the enemy that was trying to make their way to the walls.

As hard as they tried, some of the siege towers reached the walls of Divinatus. Causing the Ak’hims to engage with them in melee combat on the walls. The Alliance even tried to be cheeky with this and have started sending assassins to scale the wall— dwarves with special climbing gear that scale the walls of Divinatus. As the slaughter was going on at the front, the dwarven assassins slowly climbed the wall, trying to sneakily get rid of the Ak’hims on the less focused parts of the wall. 

The Ak’hims saw this of course and started to shoot back at them, causing many of the climbers to fall down to their doom. Their deaths were further assisted by Saboteurs who scaled down the walls in order to take the dwarves on. They proved to be superior at wall fighting as the help of their drilling claws and tails gave them an advantage on the battlefield. They were further assisted by Succours who flew by and grabbed the Dwarves before dropping them to their deaths.

The Ak’hims were able to hold off for now, but they wouldn't be able to if more siege towers started to attach themselves to the walls. The Alliance knew this and was doubling down. The siege towers moved as fast as they could as they slowly reached the walls of Divinatus.

Though, Klauna was not one without a plan. She considered that it was time and launched a flare towards the skies— a bright red flare.

It was then that every replica grimoire lit up with a red glow. 

“Tis is Queen. We see your marker. ‘The Wave’ Commencing," Queen Saladis' voice came out of the grimoire.

The Ak’hims then started to prepare themselves, moving away from the walls in order to latch on to something. The Saboteurs who were outside on the walls were carried by the Succours to safety, leaving the wall climbers free reign to scale the walls. The enemies were rather confused at the matter, but didn’t think much about and attacked even more zealously.

It was then that a large tremor was felt and the Alliance’s soldiers started tripping. Soon, they could hear the sound of water crashing onto something. Looking over to the ocean, one could see a large wave towering several meters coming towards them. If one looked even closer, one could see thousands of merpeople riding the large wave. Whether it was on the wave or inside the wave, the merpeople swam as one as they brought the water to crash onto Divinatus.

The whole place shook as the water slammed into the city walls. Divinatus tilts heavily towards one side, causing anybody that was not latched on to fall out of the wall. It soon tilts back the other way, detaching any siege towers from the city. Anything other than the grand floating city stood strong, easily shrugging the wave and even floated a little to the top.

However, the merpeople weren’t done just yet. Under the guidance of their queen, the merpeople controlled the waves, directing it and washing away the Alliance in a large flood. From the east and west side of Divinatus, following the circumference of the walls, the two waves convened and crashed into each other.

It was like watching a dam break, the water swept across the whole area, collecting the people and siege towers within. The moat was filled with water and the corpses of thousands of Alliance soldiers that day. The only unfortunate thing to happen was that some of the Ak’hims fell among the waves of death as well.

Second Defence results:
Northern Demon Kingdom : 412 Deaths
The Alliance : 28000 Deaths

Kotohood

Thanks for reading!