Chapter 587: Chapter 587 - Taming the Swarm - 2

The non-combatant people of Yino weren’t mostly to blame for the past war, so letting them die would be unjust in both leaders’ opinion.

These were civilians whose only crime had been living in the wrong place when corruption decided to awaken.

"We have to split up," Victor decided, rapidly evaluating the situation while watching smoke rise from multiple directions. "I’ll go to Yino’s side with part of the army to stop the creatures there."

Selphira nodded, though she could see the strain this would put on both forces. Dividing their resources felt like trying to dam two rivers with half the stones needed for one.

"Distribute the earth tamers well... We’re going to need to close all possible entrances and defend the city with a complete external circular wall," she murmured, calculating the energy that would be required for such an ambitious defensive structure.

♢♢♢♢

At first, everything went well. The efforts to keep the city’s underground defended already had thousands of earth tamers mobilized who stayed active in rotating shifts. Now they would have to work 16 hours instead of 8, but with a little more pressure, the number of defenders could increase by adding thousands from the abyss wall and thousands more who weren’t participating.

The opportunistic noble families had many of those on standby, waiting for a specific signal before committing their resources.

But while Selphira and Victor built defenses and managed to stop the initial advance of creatures, a fourth line of mutants arrived at Selphira’s side of the wall from Starweaver territory. This was a line that not even Ren had had time to sense during his current battle, emerging from a completely unexpected direction.

Their defensive planning became exponentially more complex.

"Damn!" Selphira shouted while reinforcing a section that should have been covered by Sirius’s family and had begun cracking under the assault. "Where are so many vermin coming from?"

Victor, who had reached Yino’s side with part of his forces, found himself also facing no longer just one flow of creatures, but two simultaneous flows converging on the same area. The situation was much worse than his scouts had reported, and the refugees were caught in the crossfire.

With the flow from the side where Ren was fighting, which would undoubtedly increase when they retreated due to the new artifact they had discovered, the cities were about to find themselves completely besieged by six different flows of mutant creatures.

And maybe they weren’t yet all the flows they would face.

Did all these flows originate from different artifacts?

How many artifacts were scattered around the kingdom?

Their soldiers were being dispersed in a narrow line around the cities and were therefore being pushed backward despite their best efforts. The refugees from Yino kept arriving in numbers that strained their logistical capabilities beyond reasonable limits.

Selphira made the decision to extend her side of the wall even more, using energy reserves she knew she couldn’t maintain indefinitely.

Now even the new doubles and most Gold ranks in Selphira and Dravenholm power were spread thin.

"How many more are going to appear?" she wondered while reinforcing another section of the wall that had begun to crack under sustained assault.

♢♢♢♢

The defenses were covering six different flows when Selphira received the report she had been dreading.

A messenger arrived flying, his breathing labored from urgency and the strain of maintaining high flight speed over long distances.

"Matriarch!" he shouted while approaching where she maintained control of the ice wall. "Two more flows have emerged from Yino’s side!"

Selphira felt as if someone had punched her in the stomach. Eight flows were already stretching their defenses to the absolute limit. The forces they had available were distributed so widely along the city’s circumference that each section barely had minimum coverage.

"Status of other positions?" she asked, though she feared the answer would only bring more bad news.

"Victor reports he urgently needs reinforcements in Yino," the messenger responded, his voice carrying the strain of someone who had witnessed the deteriorating situation firsthand. "The first two flows on his side have intensified, and the other two are pushing toward the city center near the evacuation. Some refugee families are trapped."

Another messenger arrived before she could completely process the previous information.

"Matriarch! The southern wall in the ex-Goldcrest territory shows significant cracks! Two lines of creatures are concentrating their attacks on that point!"

Selphira looked toward the horizon, where she could see smoke rising from multiple directions. The scope of the crisis was becoming clearer with each passing moment, and it was larger than anything they had expected.

"How many non-combatant worker families do we still have within the outermost perimeter?" she asked her second-in-command.

"Approximately three thousand, matriarch."

The Iron and Bronze zone. Children, elderly, workers like artisans, farmers, minor merchants... there were many people who couldn’t defend themselves if silver rank power level creatures penetrated the defenses.

If she allowed the defenses to fail, they wouldn’t be talking about some military casualties. They would be talking about a massacre of helpless civilians.

Selphira closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the weight of a decision she had been avoiding by abusing her own power.

The order she didn’t want to give.

The order that would open doors to political complications that could last years.

But the alternative was much worse.

"Give the general crisis signal with my ice seal," she finally ordered, her voice loaded with resignation and resolution mixed together.

Her second in command looked at her with surprise. "Matriarch, are you sure? Once it’s declared..."

"I know perfectly well," Selphira interrupted him. "But soon the battle is going to enter the city if we don’t get more forces... It doesn’t matter where they come from."

The general crisis signal was a protocol with far-reaching implications. It officially declared that the city’s regular forces couldn’t contain a threat alone, opening the stage for support from all inhabitants and, more significantly, legitimizing important achievements that would normally be restricted to active military personnel.

It was exactly what families like the Starweaver faction opposed to Sirius, the Ashenway opposed to Selphira, or the remnants of the Goldcrest zone would need to claim political recognition.

"In the war a few years ago, the same space opened up," Selphira murmured while an assistant prepared the visual signals that would rise from all the city’s towers. "But many of those families sat on their hands because they weren’t sure who would win the conflict."

She remembered vividly how the varied interests in that war’s resolution had paralyzed many noble houses, each one waiting to see which way the winds blew before committing their resources.

"But in this case," she continued, observing the smoke rising from multiple battle points, "I’m sure they won’t hesitate."

The new vault under the castle and its immense wealth was in the sights of all the kingdom’s prominent families. Any achievement during this crisis would be a perfect excuse to demand parts of that wealth, and with those resources they could dramatically increase both the quality and number of their private soldiers.

It wasn’t pleasant to think about how annoying and shameless they would be in their subsequent demands, but unfortunately those additional military resources were now absolutely necessary.

The political price of survival was always paid later, but death collected its debts immediately.