33 Risen#re - Chapter 358

Lirian found the mist to provide the perfect cover for his silent killings, as he moved through the alleys of the city, that were a slaughter ground for the refugees.

Bodies piled upon bodies and blood ran in thick streams to form deep pools of crimson, the red started to seep into the mists.

The mist no longer looked like a gentle blanket but rather a demonic fog of death.

Lirian used the blood fog as his cover, to decorate the alleys, in a similar but different way from before, it was no longer the blood of the refuges that spilt, now it was the nobles blood that formed torrents and rivers.

Yet as the blood mixed with the blood of the commoners, it ran all the same, with the same speed, with the same colour, ‘In death all things are equal,’ Lirian thought of an old saying, a saying as old as life itself.

Lirian took the opportunity to thin the forces of the nobles, the idea was to make the nobles leave the city to weaken House Kurt’s power, and this was doing pretty much the same thing, and it was right up Lirian’s area of expertise.

Killing was second nature to Lirian and the red mist acted as a deadly veil for his movements, when Lirian found a group he raced forward in a heartbeat and the soldiers would die before they even knew what hit them.

Lirian approached the group under the cover of the mist and he would offer them a chance, he would offer them his mercy, but it seemed no one was keen on accepting his offer and Lirian would offer it only once.

In the moments that followed their deaths would be swift and silent, it would take a while before anyone learnt of the dead bodies, and by the time it was known Lirian would be long gone and in another part of the city repeating his ritual over and over again.

—

To the residents of the city the night seemed to last forever, no one could sleep, no one could rest with such horror on their doorsteps, but then a time came when the city went silent.

The screams had gone silent and so they thought that the nightmare had finally come to its end.

They pushed open their windows to take a look at the city, but all that greeted them was the wretched stench of death and a crimson mist that threatened to consume them.

It was then that they knew that the nightmare had only just begun.

—

Lirian noticed the lack of soldiers, as he did his tally he found that the number he killed was high already sitting in the four digit brackets.

He was thankful for the novices that he discovered, if not for their noble sacrifice in his hands he would have depleted all his fate particles with the massacre he unleashed.

There were no fancy spells, nor were there any fancy tricks, it was just him and his hands he used them like the mighty weapons that they were as he crept around in the night, and the night was still young.

Lirian noticed that the House’s had stopped sending out troops, after incurring such heavy losses, at least 400 novices fell to Lirian’s hand, and only those at the fourth stage and above provided him with fate particles, and thankfully most of them were above that threshold.

As for the number of ordinary soldiers killed, their numbers ranged close to 4000.

The losses suffered by the houses were immense, but lucky for them those losses were split across the many existing houses.

At that point Lirian turned to the keep, he had spent plenty of time in thought, and he was slowly coming up with a method to enable his earlier plans to work, or at least he hoped it would work.

“Well then time to enter the keep,” Lirian said as he faced the keep.

He walked up to the wall and activated ‘levitate’, Lirian steadily rose up against the wall and after a while he left the clouds of red mist as he reached the top of the wall.

Lirian noticed that there were soldiers walking on the walls, performing their duties, Lirian immediately activated his charm and ensnared the two closest to him, neither of them were novices so it practically turned them into his subjects as soon as they saw him emerge on the walls.

“How may we be of service master?” they asked in unison.

“Just keep patrolling and pretend like I’m not here,” said Lirian and he moved to the ballista.

Lirian had given the ballistae a lot of thought since he saw them, at first he wondered why House Kurt didn’t have them stationed at all times, which made him realise that the ballistae were most likely House Kurt’s secret weapon for the war.

With these weapons in play even the other noble House’s, would find it to be a near impossible task to approach the city, without suffering severe losses.

Not to mention that the ballistae themselves posed as a threat to even the knights, the third grade cultivators.

Lirian found solace in the fact that he forced them to reveal this hidden weapon, they were most likely only planning on revealing it in the final stages of the war against the other nobles, it was supposed to be their trump card, but Lirian pushed them so hard that they were forced to reveal it now.

The ballistae would act as deterrence against their enemies, and at the same time it acted as reassurance for House Kurt’s allies, it gave them hope that House Kurt could win.

But with such an early reveal, there enemies were now bound to find out about the weapons from their spies and come up with new strategies and precautions to deal with the weapons.

It wasn’t like it would make the power of the ballistae lower, but it wouldn’t be as massively destructive, as it would be if it was sprung up on them and took them by surprise.

Lirian examined the ballista in front of him, and found that it was of extremely sturdy build, and the design was extremely good, which brought up another question.

Lirian wondered how House Kurt was able to afford such weapons, without a doubt each and every one of these siege engines were worth a lot of gold, since they could kill even third graders, their value was immense, yet House Kurt some how possessed 90 of them.

Such a purchase should have brought House Kurt to bankruptcy yet as he looked through Izlandi’s memories he found no memories of such a purchase or of House Kurt ever running into financial trouble.

“There is something to all this that I am seriously missing,” Lirian concluded and started to tinker with the ballista.

A weapon like this would consume to much energy to destroy, but the unfortunate thing about it was that it’s components could be rigged.

Lirian didn’t go with anything obvious, he could have cut the sling but that was two obvious, so instead he used some spells to damage the gears on the crank, after a few turns it was likely to break.

And Lirian also messed with the spring, the next time the weapon was drawn it was likely that the spring would shatter.

Those parts could be replaced, but house Kurt couldn’t create those parts by themselves, they had to purchase it first.

Just as Lirian finished rigging the trap another guard started to perform a round on the wall, and as Lirian noticed the guard he discovered that it was an adept.