And (N)one Shall Remain

“The army got here? We can rest now?” asked Joshua as he huffed and puffed with exhaustion after the long fight. While Alissa’s group was more experienced with such prolonged, intense fighting, mages like Joshua still faced the worst of it due to their reliance on mana, and the corresponding drawbacks from overexpenditure of the same.

 

It was much harder to train one’s mana pool compared to one’s stamina, after all, and also much easier to empty out one’s mana in a few big spells. Because of that, even back at Fort Silvia Joshua rarely held his position for too long, as he had to take breaks to regenerate his mana first before he could function as a combatant again. Back then they had people to cover him during those breaks, but in the crowded situation in the gatehouse, they had no such luxury.

 

Magus Drummond, Joshua’s mentor, had less issues persevering through similar situations as the old man had built his attributes differently, where he sacrificed some power for more sustained capabilities. That, combined with his greater experience meant that he was far better off compared to Joshua, despite both having spent great amounts of mana in the past couple of hours.

 

The group was exhausted, which was to be expected given that they had been fighting for their lives for over an hour straight without any rest. Back at Fort Silvia, the situation was more controlled, and they could find time to get short breaks after every half hour of fighting or thereabouts, but there was no such chance in the chaotic fighting just now. 

 

Even with the greatly enhanced physical capabilities that the party had, they still felt fatigued after such fighting, though it was manageable for the more physically oriented members of the party, thanks to their being in better physical shape to begin with. Either way, the end to the fighting was welcome to them, and they understood why the assault team was filled with so many of the strongest people from Fort Abernal.

 

A lesser force would have likely succumbed before such a determined push from the demon side and failed the mission as a result.

 

As it was, they had succeeded, and with both the outer and inner gates opened wide, the main army marched directly into the demon base of Arh-Getlam. The demons attempted to erect a makeshift barricade before the inner gate as a last resort, but said barricade was quickly demolished by judicious use of skills from the assault team’s fourth tiers and the army walked over what was left behind.

 

Said army was currently marching through the gates below. The demons had abandoned the northern walls when they saw that there was no hope to reclaim the gatehouse, and seemed to be escaping through the base’s southern gate. It was not unexpected, since the demons knew that they would be hard-pressed to hold the base with their fourth tiers to help out.

 

Similarly, there were thousands of non-combatants that lived in the base, which the demons had told to prepare to evacuate in case of the worst case scenario happening. Now that said worst case actually happened, part of the demons stationed in the base – mostly the younger ones – left the base from the south as escorts for the non-combatants while they escaped as fast as they could.

 

The rest of the demons, mostly older warriors who were likely already nearing the end of their career, formed a rearguard that gathered themselves around the base’s southern gatehouse. They made a last stand there as they sold their lives dearly in order to allow for the escaping non-combatants and youngsters to gain as much distance as possible.

 

For their part, Sir DelVillar as the supreme commander on the human side seemed content to just let the escaping demons retreat unmolested. He was more focused on claiming the base for their own use – something that would be a process as the demons left behind traps and other unpleasantness for them to run into – and killing off the remaining demons still in the base.

 

After the army took over the fighting, the rabble rousers who went and sewn chaos deep in the base also regrouped. Only about half their numbers returned, as many had met with misfortune during their risky mission, but out of those that returned, six out of ten had gained a level, with many having gained the last bits they needed to push them to the fourth tier.

 

Even so, most of them also bore injuries of varying seriousness, and the healers – the main army brought more healers to help lighten the workload that Leda had been shouldering all by herself thus far – quickly dragged them off to be treated first. Some of them looked like they wanted to protest but were silenced by a glare from Sir DelVillar or Sir Inolet.

 

They had no use for people who neglected their health due to their excitement and ended up dropping dead, after all.

 

Once the army rushed into the base, the battle itself was pretty much over. It was only the stubborn demons who acted as rear guard for the rest that holed themselves up in the southern gatehouse as well as small pockets of resistance elsewhere that still posed any threat, but the assault team was content to leave those demons to the main army. They had already done their part, so it was up to the rest of the army to earn their pay that morning.

 

The fighting in Arh-Getlam continued for quite a while, mostly because the gatehouses were very defensible structures for those defending it from the inside, while the demons also had good knowledge of the town’s layout from the decades in which they occupied the place. As such, it took the army a good while to finish cleaning up the demons that made guerilla strikes from within the base’s inner town.

 

It took them even longer to besiege and take down the demons in the southern gatehouse, but as Sir DelVillar was no longer in a hurry, he allowed the army to handle that, as it would give more chances for the lower leveled members of the army to gain experience. While he and the other fourth tiers could certainly resolve the situation much faster, doing that would also result in them hogging a large part of the experience despite the meager experience from killing lower level demons no longer being of much value to them.

 

Naturally, leaving the task of conquering the southern gatehouse to the main army – which consisted primarily of soldiers in the second and early third tiers – meant that there would be higher casualties. Such was the price for allowing the soldiers to gain their experience, however. The higher tiers couldn’t just baby the lower tier soldiers as that would lead to stagnancy, as the higher tiers would gain far less experience when fighting weaker enemies.

 

It was a cold decision, in many regards. Some parts of Alissa’s mind recoiled at the idea of fighting in a way that resulted in more casualties just to allow the soldiers to gain more levels and experience, yet the more logical part of her mind also understood the necessity. It was not as if the Kingdom had enough higher tier combatants to do everything, and even if they did, those of the lower tiers would always still have their part of play in the bigger picture.

 

If the army neglected leveling their lower tier soldiers when they had the chance, then it was likely that they might end up in the unenviable position of running out of high tier combatants while having no potential replacements waiting at the sidelines. Since the humans and demons in Ephemera had waged war against each other for many, many generations, naturally they learned to avoid such situations.

 

Still, it didn’t mean that Alissa liked the solution they came up with.

 

Not that she couldn’t do much about it at the moment, though, since she did understand the logic behind the decision. The fourth tiers were tired and needed to rest, while the lower tier soldiers needed their experience and levels as well. It was pointless to intervene when one couldn’t provide a better solution, after all.

 

In the end, it took the army most of the day before they could defeat the demons holed up in the southern gatehouse. Casualties were thankfully light, as the humans were nowhere near as desperate as the demons were when they attacked the northern gatehouse. As such, the army had far more leeway to withdraw their injured to be treated, which reduced the number of deaths and injuries they took greatly.

 

Probably only a couple hundred people died altogether, in contrast to the thousands of dead demons that made their last stand in the gatehouse. It was not even in the realm of “acceptable” losses anymore, but downright negligible losses for a military campaign. Overall, other than the members of the assault team that perished, the casualties that the human army took in exchange for Arh-Getlam were far lower than any and all expectations.

 

Even those who perished would not affect the rest too much, as the people who gained enough experience to push them to the fourth tier outnumbered the fourth tiers who died. Even the losses amongst the high-leveled third tiers were somewhat made up by the lower leveled ones who gained levels during the battle in and around the southern gatehouse.

 

Under most considerations, the victory at Arh-Getlam would be close to flawless, even if Alissa couldn’t think that way, because people did die. Over two hundred people died, yet their deaths were written off as acceptable. Perhaps it was the ingrained morals of her previous world that revolted against such a thing, but Alissa found such a view hard to stomach, even though she understood why the locals had that viewpoint.

 

Either way, the battle was won, and Arh-Getlam returned to the Kingdom’s fold after decades under demon control. Alissa had no idea how Sir DelVillar would arrange for people to guard both Arh-Getlam and Fort Abernal, but that was none of her business either, as she knew that her party was likely sent to this region to help with the assault for the most part.

 

She just took some solace in the knowledge that her presence – and her party’s as well, for that matter – likely saved the Kingdom many, many people who might have otherwise died had the assault gone on without them. It was not much consolation, but it was what she had to work with. On top of all that, Alissa couldn’t help but to think of Esperanza as well when she thought about saving lives.

 

Because in the end, their goals were contradictory to each other, with Esperanza’s stated end goal being the end of the current world, though Alissa believed her old friend when she said that she was amenable to other alternatives… should they manage to find a passable one. That was the issue after all. Neither of them had a passable alternative solution for the problem Esperanza informed Alissa about.

 

While Alissa herself momentarily lacked the skills to confirm some of the things Esperanza informed her about, she did portray some questions regarding the Soul attributes of late, framing her questions as coming from curiosity. Despite her status, most of the answers she received were either very basic in its nature or evasive, refusing to actually discuss some of the things she asked about.

 

When faced with such blatant avoidance, it pretty much served as a confirmation to Alissa that the clergy – as they were the ones “entrusted” with the matters of the Soul – were hiding something from everyone else. She still lacked the details on what was being hidden, but given time, she expected that someone would eventually have a slip of the tongue or otherwise make a mistake in her hearing. That said, it did add on to the pile of potential issues she already had to deal with, as it was.