Badge in Azure

Saleen was hardly happy about anything at that moment. He was feeling rather nervous. The sorcerers under his command took turns hitting the nine magic towers within the city. The nine towers were basically clustered in the center of the city. It was an ancient design, and the Sikeqinyans did nothing to change it. If his Magical Element Tower was to hover any lower, it would have suffered a devastating attack.

Within the first floor of the magic tower, the lesser nobles of Sikeqinya were terrified to their bones. The scene of the Magical Element Tower attacking Ironwall City from the air was utmost spectacular. There were Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers that went about pulverizing buildings in the center of Ironwall City, while Vermilion Knights went about setting fires to things.

The sounds of buildings crumbling to the ground within the city were so loud that it would have stunned those who heard it, even so high up from the ground. Saleen let all those sounds into the magic tower without any attempt to filter them out, just so that he could scare the lesser nobles.

Viscount Gugger was right. The lesser nobles had been around for more than a dozen, some even several dozens, of generations, and they had firm control over the smallfolk. It would have been wrong to just kill them off and having them surrender would have been for the best. After the battle, Saleen believed that there was nothing the lesser nobles could have done but to submit.

The city had, of course, mobilized armies, but even the professionals within the army hesitated to stand in the way of the Elemental Stone Statue Soldiers and Vermilion Knights. They were after all, figures of more than one-hundred yards tall. One punch would have proven fatal. Infantries and cavalries were little more than concepts to the elemental creatures. They would be able to easily stomp the human units out like ants.

Saleen cast off all restraints and went on to have the elemental creatures draw the attention of the towers, keeping the towers totally occupied. The nine towers were literally caught in a pincer attack both on the ground and in the sky and were totally suppressed.

Saleen’s powers still proved superior in comparison. It was just that suppressing all the towers spread out throughout the two square mile area took quite a bit of effort still. It was fortunate that Saleen took thirty-six sorcerers with him, which was more than the number that was available in the city. They took turns to attack the towers, and the towers were rendered completely helpless. With the elemental creatures drawing the attention of the few sorcerers’ attacks further, Saleen had it rather easy with the assault.

There were two grade-8 mercenary groups in the ranks of the army. Seeing the illusions more than one-thousand yards in the sky, the mercenaries knew that the odds were against them. They began to gather their forces to evacuate the families. The city was a lost cause. The enemy did not care if civilians die, and that spells cast did not avoid residential areas. They were thrown all over the place without any clear objective, taking out buildings piece by piece.

The reputation of a mercenary was built based on being alive. The families of the mercenaries were all staying within Ironwall City. They had intended to simply hold the fort, but seeing how events unfolded, it was the mercenaries who first started getting shaken. Twenty-thousand mercenaries gathered around and began retreating. One of them broke the smaller gate on the south side and went on to escort their families to leave the falling city.

Saleen was able to see everything from above, and he let the Vermilion Knights circle around the gate just so that the mercenaries were able to escape. The mages of the other group of mercenaries saw everything and went on to inform their commander immediately. The commander dared not hesitate and went for the gate as well. They even allowed the mages to burn the gate down, just so that their troops and families were able to make it out of Ironwall City.

Seeing the mercenaries being smart, Saleen let them escape. With the mercenaries being examples, everyone around the gate began to flee outside. The army that came to stop them were held back by the Vermilion Knights. The gate was totally ruined, and there were no rivers outside barring escape. More and more people fled outside, but the number who made it out was still too small compared to the population of the city itself.

A loud metal hum was heard from the sky, and hundreds of metal flyers flew above the city, which then began to drop magic fire shells. The shells were filled with fire oil and the outer layers were wrapped in magical materials. Said material broke when they hit the ground. The solution within would have only burned when they were exposed to air.

The shells were something that could only be classified as grade-1 magic equipment themselves, yet they sported terrifying damage potential. When the shells blew open on the ground, they splashed sticky fire oil, which was capable to burn anything it was stuck on. The fires would burn even when they hit water. Nothing other than magic would be able to suppress such fires.

The doom of Ironwall City was there. Mages all over the city gathered inside the towers. When the elemental creatures made their entrance, those who were still outside ran for the towers without looking back.

When the metal flyers got there, there were no longer any mages remaining within the city. All surviving mages were gathered in the magic towers, holding their ground against the aerial assault.

The metal flyers were capable of flying high, but for them to drop the magic fire shells, they were required to fly at about five-hundred yards from the ground. The metal flyers did not rely on wind element for flight but instead lift generated by their wings. As such, it was imperative for them to maintain their speed, and to not fall to the ground.

It was for that very reason that Saleen worked hard to suppress the magic towers. Five-hundred yards above ground was a very dangerous altitude, as the nine-floored towers had effective attack range of one to two-thousand yards. The metal flyers’ defenses were mediocre. Any attack exceeding grade-5 would simply wreck the flyers outright.

Ironwall City was practically being swallowed by a firestorm. Saleen’s orders were able to do just about nothing to help it. The warriors riding the metal flyers were told to drop their payload at fixed positions, which left large enough gaps for people to run in the fire. The damage potential of the shells simply exceeded Saleen’s imagination. The resulting high temperatures caused any flammables nearby to burn, and there was some material that became flammables only in high temperatures.

When the fire oil burned, its temperature easily exceeded that created by low level magic. The city center was literally turned into a sea of fire in less than half an hour. Only the nine towers remained unscathed, protecting areas that were neither large nor small around them.

It was too late for anyone who had only started fleeing then. The second wave of metal flyers came, and they dropped countless shells at the edge of the city.

Only a handful of the flyers crashed, and they were shot down by the army using magic stone cannons. The scattered magic stone shells were aimed at the metal flyers. So long as their wings were hit, the metal flyers would no longer be able to fly, and dived straight for the ground. The remaining shells on the downed flyers blew altogether at once, causing even more severe casualties.

Saleen no longer had any time to spare for something like that. While the rate at which the flyers were lost was slow, once he relaxed the suppression against the magic towers, every single flyer that crossed into the air space of the city would have been unable to escape attacks by the towers. There was simply nothing else in his mind at that moment, but to do everything he could to crush his enemies.

Such was the nature of war. To destroy.

The seventy-five Sikeqinyan nobles within the Magical Element Tower were completely crestfallen. Ironwall City burned before their eyes. Black smoke rose as the fires spread. If it was not for the Tempest Dragon-might standing by and using wind spells to disperse the mists and smoke, nothing within the city could have been seen anymore.

Is this still considered war? If all wars from there on out were to become something like that, the glory of the nobles would end up becoming a thing of the past. With powerful mages participating in wars and tearing down enemy cities, who else would be able to stand against threats like that?

The third wave of metal flyers came and continued dropping shells in the city. The city’s defenses had completely crumbled. No one tried resisting, but the ones holed up inside the towers. Everyone who survived fled the city, even the army guarding the walls.

Everyone but Nailisi felt heavy inside, including the thirty-six sorcerers. Everyone agreed that the assault was simply too brutal.

Saleen’s voice was heard throughout the tower. “I know all of you are doing this with a heavy heart. We don’t have much time. Armies of the Holy See will break through the defenses at the Qin border soon. The Cloudflows will sack Porter City. Most southern nobles want independence, and if Qin only has its northern side left, the empire will have no hope of defending against attacks from the other three empires. It was a warning, to let Sikeqinyans know that they can’t lay a finger on the Kingdom of Metatrin. When the remaining three empires truly align, even such attacks won’t faze them. We simply don’t have time anymore…”

Saleen’s voice sounded tired. He could bring himself to continue watching one such war. It was different than how he had planned it. Other than the army within the city, civilians that survived amounted to less than one-hundred-thousand.

While it was true that it was Lex’s idea to do it, Saleen could not help but wonder if he was free from any blame of any of it. He encouraged the sorcerers and consoled the mages, yet he himself shouldered tremendous pressure. Saleen had no problem killing tens to hundreds, but slaughtering millions was not something a grade-9 sorcerer like him was able to bear.

Reality often differed greatly from one’s imagination. Saleen had thought himself capable to ignoring everything that happened, but at that moment, he wanted nothing more than to leave the blasted place, and never wanted to ever see something like that ever again.

“Master, people die. We demons would never think of all the messy crap like that,” Nailisi tried to console Saleen, as she was able to sense how terrible Saleen was feeling inside.

“Nailisi, you don’t understand.”

“How can I not? Humans have always been crueler than demons. We wouldn’t have followed humans all those years ago and went killing everywhere otherwise. Conquering planes seemed like a grand undertaking, but in actual fact, those who died on every plane were a hundred times more than what we saw today. Master, those who were killed were not monsters, they were humans too.” Seeing how Saleen kept quiet, Nailisi continued, “Master, you remember the grandmaster, right? Just look at that fellow. Did that mage see you as one of them?”

Saleen realized something all the sudden. The grandmaster had never seen him as one of his own. He would have killed everyone on the Myers Mainland, if that meant they would be able to escape that damned cemetery.

Humans, gods…they were all the same inside.

“Nailisi, that is not an excuse to go killing people.” Saleen felt somewhat better, but he was unable to let go still.

“Master, the way I look at it, it’s entirely normal for you to feel bad. Just savor that while you can. When you have advanced to the levels surpassing the gods, you will never feel what you felt today ever again.”

Nicholas added, “My liege, what Nailisi said is correct. It is the same with the gods, sacrificing people who devoted every fiber of their being to them and making them scapegoats. There would be a day when we reach such heights, we will become something like that ourselves. Right now, just let everyone grieve over what happened.”

Nicholas laid it out better than Nailisi. What tore Saleen apart on the inside was the contradiction within his mind.

If he wanted to conquer the entire mainland, he needed to continue doing something terrifying like that, yet he never wanted to have anything to do with something like that again.

“My liege, you can sit back and do nothing, but when the Holy See goes on to unite the entire mainland…” Nicholas did not continue, as Saleen needed no persuasion in that regard. His liege understood. Even if Saleen was not going to do it, the Holy See would see to it thoroughly. Anyone who did not believe in their god would all end up dead, and that meant killing off more than half of the entire mainland.