Chapter 91 Dungeon Core: “The Eternal Training Ground”

Every day, I had pushed my skill to see outside my dungeon to the very limit, yet this time I was finally able to see what I was looking for. The army, or perhaps 'armies' would be a better description, were finally close enough that I could see them.

Not long after I saw them, I could hear the warning bells start to ring all over the city. There was no panic because of this, and no one started to rush to escape the impending doom. Everyone who wanted to get out of here had already gone, and the rest were either holed up in the city or brought inside the dungeon.

On the walls were numerous soldiers, but Ace was quite secretive. Normally, the city had 5,000 soldiers/guards, but on the walls and behind them, there were 11,000 defenders. Around 3,000 adventurers were accepted into the initial defense. Although the number of people wanting to join was a lot higher, they were denied by the guild master, and no one was brave enough to go against him.

The rest of the soldiers were from the hidden shadow guild. Ace had been able to get a lot of people to join his secret army, and they were all quite well trained, thanks to fighting inside my dungeon.

As the armies approached, I was able to get a better estimate of how strong they were. About 40% were bronze-ranked, 20% iron, another 20% silver, and 10% under bronze rank. Those were mainly helpers to keep the army running, although the bronze-ranked did that job as well.

Only the iron ranks and above seemed like proper soldiers; the rest looked more like beginner adventurers or militia composed of regular citizens.

There were gold rank people as well, but they were in really low numbers and most likely would be the higher commanders. Ace even seemed to have more gold-rank people on his side. Of course, I think if the guild master and the three people who have the dungeon core realms join the fight, Ace should win in half an hour after having decimated the entire enemy army.

I had a feeling that they were not going to take part in the combat. There were probably rules against something like that. I wasn’t confident that I could defend against their combined efforts, but I think I could delay them for quite a while and hope that one of the scary toxins or poisons could kill them off.

If I hadn’t had the ants to observe, I would have never understood why Ace would work so hard to keep the possible adventurer reinforcements as hidden as possible.

There must have been spies already inside the city, and if they knew that they had a lot more soldiers, the sieging army would probably leave a bigger portion of troops here. Perhaps even a large enough number that even with adventurer support, they could not win. If Ace succeeds in this deception, it will be a great start for his victory.

Of course, keeping these facts hidden will not be that easy as you can't just have thousands and thousands of soldiers join in your cities defense without things being messed up. You need a command structure and resources in place for such an influx of defenders.

Ace needed to do these preparations while not giving away his true plan. It seems that he has succeeded in making a lot of people think that he's just over-prepared and a little bit overwhelmed by the whole situation, which was kinda true, but it seems to have been working so far.

The defenders had some siege equipment, so the army stayed quite far away, standing in beautiful battle lines. Well, at least the battle lines were nice at the front of the army, where the proper soldiers were currently standing. A little bit further behind where the militia started, things weren’t that proper.

I suspect that the enemy army could jointly launch an attack against the city, and while they will lose a lot of people in this sort of assault, I think that they could take this place in a maximum of three days.

I don’t think that they would do that as it would just be too costly. Fortunately, I didn’t need to think about this for long as a contingency of about 10 people, all gold rank, rode from the head of the army approaching the gate of the city. About halfway between the army and the city, they stopped, waiting there.

It didn't take long for the city gate to be opened and for four people to ride out of the city, one of them being Ace and, to my surprise, another one being the guild master. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about Ace's safety as I didn’t think that anything could be done to Ace with him beside him.

"We will give you this offer only once. Surrender the city to us, and only you have to die; otherwise, many will die, and you will die no matter what," one of the enemy generals said after both sides had stared at each other for a few minutes in complete silence.

"We will see about that," Ace said and turned his horse around. Of course, the commanders weren’t too happy about that. Some of them were confident enough that Ace would surrender, but it seems that they now need to properly prepare for a siege.

The enemy started to set up camp, and with so many soldiers, it went quite fast, and soon the entire city was surrounded. Many sides could have probably done a lot of nasty things, but it seems that this world had rules for war, and no side wanted to break them.

It took an entire week before the army was split up. Around 62,000 soldiers, in roughly the same ratio of different ranked people as the whole army, were left to keep the siege and eventually plan an assault. The rest marched further into the Kingdom, split into yet another two armies.

Two days later, the probing attacks finally started, and the sieging army began to build siege equipment. The probing attacks were meant to find weak points in the defenses, but Ace had the best architects and defensive generals he could get, and with the amount of money this city was making, they were among the very best in this world.

The probing attacks were launched simultaneously. They attacked from multiple angles and every attacking force had at least 1000 soldiers. They had many wooden barricades reinforced with different skills to make them stronger. They pushed forward but never fully committed and when the defender's attacks grew to numerous, they retreated.

They left a lot of barricades behind placed in strategic places to make the final assault easier. They tested many sections of the wall sometimes making it closer to the wall than other times. Like this, they slowly found sections that were weaker but not by much.

The sieging army found after almost a week of testing that the defenses were incredibly solid, but they were still completely confident in their victory because they had such a numbers advantage. They had six soldiers for every one of the defenders.

It was funny and kind of sad for the enemies as I was just waiting for Ace to inform me before giving out the quest. But that would take a while longer; right now, Ace had informed that they would be taking any adventurer who wanted to defend the city into the Defense Force.

In basically one night, they almost doubled their original number, bringing them to a little under 20,000 defenders. The enemy army found out about this the next morning, most likely from their spies.

Immediately, they canceled their assault plans and now had to set up an even more extensive siege plan. The next day, they started using catapults with the help of a few skills to start weakening the walls.

Not every rock hit the walls. Slowly, buildings started to be destroyed inside the city. The defenders started to fire back, but the army had an easier time defending against the rocks as they had a lot less to defend.

Some earth mages started to strengthen the walls and even added a mud layer to the outside to lessen the rocks' impacts. It will most likely be a long siege, but that’s what Ace was planning on, and it seems that currently, everything was going according to the plan.