The Siege of Arconia: Chapters 18-20

Even though things weren’t as crazy as they were before when it came to work, I knew that it was wrong of me to impose on Granny Qi for much longer.

As it was, a few days later, her entire village had turned up at the city gates. Since they were closer to the city than other villages, they were able to take a bit of what they had with them while fleeing. But that was just relative to some of the other people coming in - it was not nearly enough to sustain them for the coming weeks or months if it came to that.

“They took a portion of the grain,” Suki Tang complained to her sister. The refugees, if they had family in the city, went to go live with them. Granny Qi’s house was so packed now with her family and with people coming to visit me there was no room to even move your elbow without smacking someone in the face. “They said they had to ‘requisition’ part of it to feed the city.”

“Did they at least pay you for it?” Granny Qi asked.

“Of course not - they said it was an emergency, and that if we did not agree with that policy, we were free to roam outside the walls,” Suki Tang said. “Free to do what? Get mauled?” She sighed. “Anyway, we should have more than enough for now… but still… I don’t know what will happen if this siege lasts for too long. Or how we will rebuild once it is all over- I wonder if anything will be left of our house when we go back.”

Back on Earth, the government usually couldn’t grab what you owned without compensating you, though I had to admit that was during normal times. If something like this had happened back on Earth, I had a feeling that not all laws would hold up then either. As it was, this was not framed as ‘confiscation’ but rather as another form of ‘taxation.’

Still, these people had decided to tax someone like Suki Tang - but had also waived my fee for being gifted a grimoire?

Well, they likely thought I was more valuable and that it was more imperative that I have that grimoire than Suki Tang have a few more handfuls of rice.

When I had started settling down in Libraria, I had found it a bit strange but delightfully so that the Liberomancers did not seem to suppress the commoners, or other Liberomancers who were less powerful than they were. After all, that was one of the concerns of living in a society where certain people had strange powers and others didn’t. I didn’t see anything remotely like that though.

Now, I realized that it wasn’t that the Liberomancers didn’t suppress others - they just didn’t do so overtly. You wouldn’t find one beating up commoners on the street for fun or harassing women, for example. Instead they did so in more subtle ways, such as economics and taxation. Laws also favored Liberomancers, and Rank Three Liberomancers especially. If a Liberomancer was accused of a serious crime in Chipker, they wouldn’t be tried by the normal court - but by a special one set up by the Liberomancer’s Guild. And I had a feeling that the alternative court was far more lenient and understanding than the regular court.

“Granny Qi, I will be moving out today,” I said to Granny Qi before packing up to leave. She was a bit surprised, but understood. If she wanted to house as many of her relatives as possible, it was for the better that I leave. “If you need anything at all though, feel free to send someone and I’ll come running.”

“But child,” Suki Tang said, “where will you live now?”

“They have some apartments reserved for Rank Three Liberomancers, I didn’t take one initially because I really didn’t need one, but it looks like it’s time to take them up on the offer,” I said. I grabbed my things, gave Granny Qi a quick hug, and then was about to set out when an idea struck me.

Some time later, a clerk from the Liberomancer’s Guild was showing me a house. It was very bare-bones, which was to be expected, but more than functional enough. I had no complaints given it was being handed to me.

“Ah, but Master Liberomancer,” the clerk said. “This is only for you and your family… you cannot house guests here.”

The guild maintained about twenty of these small, spartan, but functional houses; not enough to house every Rank Three Liberomancer, mind you but they never needed to. Any Rank Three Liberomancer would prefer to find their own accommodations given enough time as it was childishly easy for them to amass the kind of wealth that usually only first-rate merchants could. These houses were mainly set up for traveling Liberomancers or in case there was some kind of grave misfortune that befell one so that they would’ve be left out on the street.

The houses were all empty, but the guild had vehemently refused to let them be loaned out to any of the refugees even now. I didn’t agree with that decision - but I couldn’t change their minds either.

I also couldn’t really take random people with me from the street to help them out, the guild would not allow that. Such were the rules. And these were the guild’s houses, they did not belong to me - they were just letting me live there because of my rank.

But wherever there are rules, there are loopholes to those rules as well.

“Oh, these people are my servants,” I said, waving to the group of ten people behind me. “I’ve read the guild rules, and we can keep servants, can’t we?”

By astonishing coincidence, all of these ‘servants’ of mine (I still cringed while saying that word, we didn’t have servants, at least most people didn’t, back on Earth where I came from) happened to be members of Granny Qi’s village!

After all, that was how the refugees set about finding accommodations and the like. If they had family in the city, they would go to them first. If their family was unable or unwilling to do so, or if they did not have close family, they would go to someone from their village. If there was no one from the same village as them, then someone from a neighboring village, and so on.

If all of the above failed, if they had money, perhaps they could rent out a room, but many of them had been forced to flee under duress carrying nothing but the clothes on their backs, and as it was most of them were poor to begin with.

There were still many who could not find accommodation whatsoever, and there were only so many temporary shelters that could be built by the city in such a short a span of time.

Granny Qi had asked me to help out some of the less fortunate members of her village if I could - after all, she only had so much space in her house, and her immediate family already took up most of it even after I was gone.

Hence this ruse.

“…” the clerk seemed slightly thrown off-balance by my declaration. “Master Liberomancer, does one person such as yourself really need ten servants tending to you in your own house?”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “I am rather fastidious - you see, for example, if I want to drink a bottle of wine, I need five people in order to do so. One of them has to fetch the wine bottle, another one has to uncork it, a third person needs to pour it out into a glass while a fourth person holds it, and then a fifth person has to hand it to me. If any one of them isn’t there, the whole chain breaks down and I won’t be able to enjoy my wine, you know what I’m saying?”

The clerk’s eyebrows twitched. It was clear that he had not, as a matter of fact, bought my ridiculous story, thought about what he was going to do next for a good minute - and then decided that it wasn’t worth his time to object considering that he likely had bigger problems than this to handle. “Alright then, Master Liberomancer, but do please note that any damage or cleaning that will need to be done after you leave will come out of your own pocket.”

Breaking the rules was greatly frowned upon, though this was more of bending rather than breaking them. As it was - I wasn’t too concerned about what might happen if anyone decided to bring the ax down upon me. I had not technically done anything wrong, and if I was called out on it and they wanted to ruin my reputation or social standing instead - I could just play the sympathy card. After all, I had bent the rules not for my own personal gain- but to help out those less fortunate. That was somewhat understandable and less likely to invite censure.

“Thank you, Master Liberomancer,” said several voices behind me as the clerk trotted off.

“It was the least I could do,” I replied. I actually meant that - there were still many people who needed help around the city, but what else could I do? Using [Fish Haul] to create fish would divert mana I needed in order to read that grimoire that gave [Grand Fireball]. And though it pained me to say so - it was more important that I learn that then give out handfuls of food to some people.

I had brought up the idea of mass-producing grimoires that gave [Poissonnier] and [Fish Haul] given the combo you could pull of with both of them to Zeke and Drake, but the idea was shot down. There were a number of hurdles with trying to enact such a plan. The biggest was the language barrier that existed, one was in English meaning I was the only one who could make copies of it (my mana was needed elsewhere), while the other was in the lizardmen language so I couldn’t make copies of that.

[Fish Haul] was a Rank Two spell, and most Rank Two Liberomancers were busy doing other things. The supply of food still hadn’t reached such a low point that creating food with magic on a massive scale would be deemed necessary. “There are better ways to get food, and our reserves should hold well enough for now,” most of the top brass assured me when I brought this up.

There was likely enough food for everyone to just get along - though it would mean that many people would have to get by on a single meal a day for the foreseeable future. They could survive, yes, but to me it still felt like they were suffering needlessly and more could be done for them.

I tried to brainstorm other things that might help during my free time, but came up blank most of the time. The thing that I could do most to help out these people was to deal with the dryad invasion - and I could not do so as well if I did not know [Grand Fireball], so any idea involving me to use up mana had to go out the window.

I did hand out money to some of the people I saw - but there was a limit on how much I could do of that too. I had to pay Granny Qi back for this grimoire after all.

With a heavy heart, I could only turn a blind eye towards much of the suffering in the city and help out the little I could.

The inside of the house was neat and tidy - it would have been more than big enough for a family of four or five. With ten people not including myself, it was very crowded, though there were no complaints given the alternative. This was, after all, only a temporary living arrangement. There was no furniture in the house, I had been expecting to get the furniture myself, so the others would have to sleep on the floor for the time being until it could be arranged, though again, there were no complaints there.

For two days I worked from this apartment, but there were multiple issues. Foremost of which was that I had to report back a lot of things to Zeke or Drake, and as such, it wasted a lot of time sending someone back and forth from here to the governor’s palace. This place was much further from there than Granny Qi’s house.

I told Drake about this, and so they ended up setting up a small office for me in one of the rooms of the palace. It was supposed to be just for work, but I spent so much time there in the coming days that I basically lived there - eating all my meals and sleeping on the desk that had been provided for me. It was actually more comfortable than living back in the bare-bones house with ten people, and it also saved precious time that could be used for things like reading that grimoire.

Zeke noticed this and even offered me a proper room in the palace to stay in. I was quite touched, because although lizardmen and humans usually got along in public spaces, there were still some unwritten rules about what they did or did not do together.

One that that was seemingly taboo was inviting humans to live in lizardmen houses and vice-versa, I had learned of that the first day I had started work in Lauren’s shop. It was extremely rare for either species to even visit or go inside the house of another, and actually living together was one step further beyond that.

It was likely though that Zeke’s family were used to hosting humans, as an exception given their status within Arconia.

I accepted the room, and couldn’t help but note that the palace still had several rooms available. I brought it up casually to Drake once as to why they didn’t allow some people to move in, to which he simply replied that it was a security issue.

I didn’t press him any further, as it was, morale was low, and I did not want to. And in his case, I could understand the concerns with letting anyone in.

No joke, this was a conversation I had overheard between two people while walking on the street:

“If the food situation gets really bad, and we have to end up resorting to cannibalism,” one person said, “do you think you’d be able to stomach lizardmen meat? I think it’s better than human meat, but at the same time, I can’t help but think that it’d taste really funny.”

“Me too,” the other person replied. “But morally I think it’s less reprehensible. I think we’ll have to come up with a system where we exchange human meat for lizardmen meat with the lizardmen if that happens.”

Both of these people were humans, and I had to bite down the urge to tell them that our food supply situation was still pretty good, and there was no need to already be thinking of such doomsday scenarios right now. Than again, I was also someone who was thinking about the same, so I couldn’t blame their minds for wandering in that bleak direction.

I guess the worst part of all was the waiting - sieges in movies were always pretty dramatic events that ended in a few day’s time, though I knew in reality it was more of both sides sitting down and waiting until one of them gave up.

The entire situation came more into focus when we could finally see the dryads on the horizon one day after dark.

I went up to the walls once to take a look myself - with [Unobstructed Sight] I could just make out the dark shadows that were moving towards the city. They would be here, near the city walls, in two days or so.

The number of bodies that washed up in the river had been increasing day by day, and I had a feeling that was one of the main contributors to the feeling of general panic in the city.

If there was one silver lining, my job was much easier in the next few days as people seemed to realize it was better to shut up and get along for now now that the enemy was literally at the gates.

***

Among the hordes of dryad, one stood about two feet above the others. His appearance was markedly different in other ways as well, the bark around him was a darker, richer color, partly signifying his special rank, and also partly signifying the fact that he had easier access to fresh blood than the others.

This was a dryad lord - one among them who had risen above their normal station, and the equivalent of ‘kings’ or ‘princes’ that were seen among other magical beasts. Most dryads did not have names, there was little need for them as they did not really communicate with each other aside from marking their territories aside from large scale invasions like these. Even then it was the lords who did most of the talking. The lords, however, usually tried to distinguish themselves with a name.

His name - Great Claw, due to the rather massive size of his hands, was not clever, but what would he care of such?

He was a dryad lord and able to think beyond what the other members of his species could, formulating plans and executing them on a level the others would not find possible. And so, what did he care if his name did not sound magnificent to humans or the like? The dryads had no real written language which is why they were considered to be beasts in a world of Liberomancers, but they still had their oral traditions and stories. Most of their legends involved names like ‘Big Leaf’ or ‘Tough Trunk’ and so were his name to also join their ranks, it would not be out of place.

Their numbers had once again grown to the point where the forest could no longer satisfy their need for blood, and so they, like their ancestors before them, had set out to assault the human lands and the rich stock of livestock that lay there. However, as they were wandering along the same path their ancestors traversed upon, they had come upon an omen which caused them to change their direction of travel.

Great Claw had been one of the dryads who had witnessed the event himself. As they were cresting a hill after having slain a human village, a solitary human wandered towards them. Initially, this generated some alarm - the dryads had some sense of self-preservation, and had learned through experience and tales passed down that solitary humans could be dangerous particularly those who could use fire like the dragons of old.

As a dryad lord, Great Claw, in addition to possessing greater physical abilities, had three skills at his disposal. [Nature’s Call] which was an area-of-effect type of skill that could be used twice a day to apply a buff to their physical abilities and magical resistance; [Dryad Lord’s Authority] which allowed dryad lords to command large numbers of ordinary dryads; and [Forest’s Blessing] which greatly increased the rate at which his injuries would heal for an hour once a day.

He had used his [Dryad Lord’s Authority] to instruct the others to stand back and spread around in case this human wielded the magical flame they had learned to be so wary of.

His wariness turned out to be unwarranted as the human simply walked up to an ordinary dryad, wielding no magic apparently. The dryad acted out of its nature and killed this human effortlessly. It was an odd site to Great Claw, like a deer walking into a pride of lions, though the other dryads did not take notice of this and began fighting over the human’s corpse.

It was then that something odd happened - as they were carving open the human’s body, a shadow emerged from its torso. Even though it was nighttime, the shadow seemed darker still, as if light could never penetrate it even if the sun were shining in all of its glory.

Great Claw had never seen anything like it. The dryads tried to grab onto it but their hands passed through as if they were trying to grasp a shadow.

And then, the shadow ‘spoke’ to them. Not words, but they heard its thoughts clearly in their minds. It gave them visions of what would happen if they continued upon the same path, how the humans would assault them and wipe them out with ease after they were trapped. The humans had weak bodies but clever minds, and were lying in wait for the dryads further ahead. If they continued on this same path, they would certainly meet their doom.

But it did not just give them bad news, it also gave them a path forward. A way that would allow them to fill their stomachs with fresh blood. A way that had a few obstacles to reach, but would have great rewards if they were willing to take the risk.

It was a risk to go in the direction it was pointing them in, but as more such incidents happened they had ultimately decided to follow its directions. They went down a path that was unfamiliar, one which was not told about in the songs and tales passed down through the generations, but was still close to the fresh water they all needed. The shadow had been right up till now, as they had encountered minimal resistance up to this point.

Many of them thirsted for blood, and that had been satiated partially with the animals and fish they had encountered. And yet, it was not enough.

Great Claw took a look at the city before him - and knew that what they wished for, a great bounty, would lie behind those stone walls.

Their army had no clear commander - dryad lords were able to exert their influence over small groups of dryads, and these lords spoke to one another to come to something resembling a consensus, but these small groups essentially were just traveling with each other much like what locusts might do with little to no regard for their fellow dryads.

Great Claw dipped a foot into the nearby river, quenching his thirst as it traveled up his roots. The sunlight was also good in this country, not to mention the bounty of fish and other animals, as well as humans, had been great.

This gamble of following that shadow’s wisdom seemed to have paid off well.

It made him question the wisdom of those who had come before him - why had they not embarked on this path before? Did the shadow not also speak to them? Perhaps it did but they had simply been ignorant or were too scared, no matter, when they were victorious here and went back to their homeland, they would carry tales of how this land was a much more bountiful place than the others they had been told of.

Dryads in the future, would follow this new path forevermore! That was the wisdom they would leave behind for their descendants!

***

The day had finally come when the dryads were at our doorstep. The amorphous blemish on the horizon was now distinguished into tens of thousands of individual dryads.

My first thought was that they were even uglier now that I could actually see them up close. That drawing had been extremely generous as to how humanoid their faces looked - they were only vaguely human, looking as if someone had taken a club to a very crude model of a human head.

I also saw exactly how it was that they drank the blood of their victims. Their long, lanky arms were used to suspend their prey upside-down, and they would then slit their throats, lapping up the blood as it rained onto their faces. Some of them preferred to simply decapitate their prey, however, and then used their feet to lap up blood from the puddles on the ground - their ‘roots’ seemed to be able to absorb blood as easily as water.

[Unobstructed Sight] was actually more a burden in this scenario because I could see this horrifying sight in very nice detail even in the low illumination of the rising sun. I had to look away when I saw a kid as young as five years old about to be devoured.

If their goal was to terrorize us - I would be lying if I said it wasn’t working.

I was also able to see the so-called dryad lords as they stood taller than their counterparts - other than their heights and some slight differences in the texture of their trunks I didn’t notice that much special about them.

The dryad horde did not seem to really have much organization to it - the merchant caravan was far closer to a well-disciplined military group than these things, which looked like a collection of wild zebra or the like, standing and going wherever they pleased.

I couldn’t identify anything resembling an overall leader who we might be able to potentially assassinate and get this whole thing over with quickly - but this also meant that they were poorly lead and a strong coordinated attack was unlikely.

Zeke had been posted near the eastern end of the wall, while Lance was near the main gate leading into the city. I had been assigned to the western end which was commanded by Drake.

I would’ve preferred to be in some other place - I did not really like Drake and I had a feeling that this sentiment was mutual. He had given a half-hearted apology regarding his actions in the restaurant earlier, saying that he was drunk and hadn’t been completely aware of what he was doing, when we were working together, but things were still frosty between us. Putting that aside I also didn’t think he was as good a leader as Zeke.

The Rank Three Liberomancers were the main pillars of defense with Rank Two and Rank One Liberomancers supporting them with magic like [Greater Reach] which was a buffing spell that increased the range of someone’s spells. Why couldn’t we just have a bunch of people buff one individual and make them super strong? Because buffs of the same type overwrote each other, you could only have single buff for a certain thing. [Greater Reach] was Rank Two but there was a weaker version of the spell called [Lesser Reach], if someone cast [Lesser Reach] on a target and then also [Greater Reach], [Greater Reach] would overwrite the [Lesser Reach]’s boost, and you couldn’t stack multiple [Greater Reach] spells on a single target from multiple people. You could however, cast [Alacrity] on top of it since that spell boosted Speed and not range, and was considered a different kind of buff.

It was a pity that buffing magic worked that way - because in this world the power of a single person could eclipse that of a thousand ordinary men, and if only that power could be magnified further. If we could all stack hundreds of buffs on Lance, I think we wouldn’t even had needed to worry about the incoming army. The dryads had not made any moves yet - some isolated groups wandered near the walls only to be turned into smithereens by a [Grand Fireball].

Other than magic, we did also try using conventional weapons, but the dryad’s skin was harder than even tree bark and ordinary arrows seemed to do little to nothing. There was a niche Rank Two skill called [Armor-Piercing Arrow] that could enchant up to ten arrows a day and greatly increase their penetration power and damage, but the buff only lasted for three minutes at maximum. The dryads had no obvious vital points where they could be hit to incapacitate them, so rather than using that kind of skill direct magic was more effective.

Drake approached me as I was watching the dryad horde off in the distance. “Master Liberomancer, there were a few things I wanted to speak to you about before we begin.”

He was wearing armor and had an elegant sword attached to his hip - if you ran out of mana, or just needed to buy yourself a few seconds, a weapon was extremely helpful. I had rented out a set of wooden lacquer armor from the palace (another perk of my new job) as well as a wooden staff with an iron shod. Plate armor would’ve been better for defense, but the thing was that I was not used to wearing it and it weighed so much that it would more likely than not cause me to collapse if I tried. I was after all, just a college student from Earth, not someone who had trained to fight since birth.

There was a spell called [Lighten Armor] that could reduce the effective weight of armor by half without affecting its durability, but its effect only lasted for an hour and it was Rank Two, meaning it would consume so much mana it was generally not worth using especially in a drawn-out siege like this. Someone very important like Drake could hire someone to assist him who could cast that spell on him so he didn’t have to spend his own mana, but I didn’t have that luxury. Making my armor lighter by casting [Lighten Armor] on me over and over was not something a Rank Two Liberomancer could be spared for. I also had a feeling that I wouldn’t be able to tolerate even half of that armor’s weight regardless. Much like with buffing magic, casts of [Lighten Armor] could not be stacked on top of each other to reduce the effective weight of armor even further. There was one other issue that I had to keep in mind. Just like back on Earth during medieval times, you could cover yourself in metal armor so thick you were basically invulnerable unless your enemy brought out a heavy bludgeoning weapon like a mace or war hammer. However, there was a drawback to turning yourself into a giant metal lobster in this world that didn’t exist back on Earth in the Middle Ages - fire.

Many people basically had built-in flamethrowers that they could lob at you, and while you could protect yourself against that by having a high Resistance, that only reduced damage done directly from magical attacks. The heat of the impact could cause the metal to warm up to the point that it would weld to your skin, and your Resistance would not help you against that.

Granted, no one on the enemy side could shoot fire, but it was something to be wary of in case one day I managed to train myself to actually move while wearing a suit of armor. Not to mention, the dryads couldn’t shoot fire, but there were people on our side who could. Friendly fire was not actually friendly - granted, I didn’t think anyone would deliberately attack each other, but there could always be accidents.

Drake, unlike me, had clearly been groomed from birth to not only wear his set of plate armor, but to also run and possibly climb up ladders in it. I did not have that kind of strength - and I had to admit that despite any cold feelings I had towards him, his armor looked incredibly cool. A large amount of work had gone into it, and since it was lizardmen armor, there was also a tailpiece in the form of an iron covering that went over the top of his tail, still leaving it free to move as the underside was not covered save for the very tip. It looked exquisite enough to be a work of art rather than a battle piece, and probably cost far more than even a Rank Three grimoire to make.

As it was, the purpose of the armor, regardless of what it was made of, was to block any ranged attacks that might happen to come our way. We were well sheltered on the wall, with numerous points from where we could rain down spells while barely exposing ourselves, so I wasn’t too overtly concerned with this.

Not to mention that in addition to the lower-ranked Liberomancers helping us, there were also normal soldiers who were ready to create a shield wall; a barrier that would encase us in case the enemy did reach the top of the walls somehow.

“Sure, what’s going on?” I asked. Was there another situation that I’d have to mediate?

“I couldn’t help but notice that you seem very tired,” he said. “You look like you’re about to doze off - is everything alright?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Sorry, but I was up all night for a few days just to finish this grimoire - but it’s worth it because I can use [Grand Fireball] now.”

The difference in firepower between [Fireball] and [Grand Fireball] was enormous. [Fireball] could kill between six and twelve common soldiers depending on how closely they were standing near each other so long as one’s Attack stat was high enough, while [Grand Fireball] was known to easily consume a hundred men or more and had five times the range of [Fireball]. Making Rank Three grimoires was much harder than Rank Two, but they were also correspondingly much more powerful as well.

A Rank Two spell consumed two points of mana to cast, while a Rank Three one consumed three points. Even though the cost of casting [Grand Fireball] was fifty percent higher, it more than made up for it with its results, not to mention that Rank Three Liberomancer generally had larger mana pools than Rank Two ones.

Rank Four [Inferno] was said to be able to kill a thousand or more men, and probably had a higher range than [Grand Fireball] as well.

Fire elemental spells in general had the advantage of having high, well, firepower - they were very good at attacking large groups of weak enemies. Conversely, their weakness was that the damage was hard to control and these spells were ill-suited for use in narrow places like city corridors because it was far too easy for innocent bystanders to be caught in the blast radius. Lightning and wind elemental spells were better at dealing damage precisely to a few targets, but conversely, would not do as well as fire elemental spells in a situation like this involving an open field.

Thank goodness that I had finally read that grimoire and learned [Grand Fireball] in the nick of time for this battle!

However, Drake had concerns beyond my very apparent fatigue.