“Fuck!” Alissa cursed vehemently as the fourth tier demon – likely an assassin type that had a shadow-related stealth skill, given how she noticed their presence despite them being stealthed – slipped away into the shadows and beat a hasty retreat. The demons had struck just as Sir Marsten and the rest of his group were leaving for a shift change, which temporarily left – if only for a single minute – only Alissa, Nadine, and Maribel guarding the walls.
The demons must have observed their shift change times and laid in wait until the right moment, when those leaving were far enough away from the walls to delay their return and their replacements were just as distant. It was a masterful display of timing, and if not for Alissa being particularly sensitive to shadow-related stealth skills – likely due to her own skill being a similar yet more advanced type of it – they could have likely done some damage.
As it was, Alissa managed to hold off the fourth tier assassin demon while Nadine and Maribel, alerted by her, helped the soldiers on the east and west walls to handle other, lower tier demon assassins. Like before, the demons did not cause much damage. Seven injured soldiers on the human side with three deaths – all second tier soldiers – while in turn Nadine and Maribel made short work of four of the demon assassins, all of whom were at least mid third tier.
On paper, the losses were heavier on the demon side, both in quality and quantity, but Alissa couldn’t – didn’t – want to feel satisfied just with that. If possible, she wanted to prevent the demons from doing any damage at all. Even when Sir Marsten returned to the wall in a hurry together with the fourth tiers from the next shift and praised her for her quick reaction, Alissa couldn’t feel happy.
People had still died because they weren’t good enough.
No, rather, people had still died because of this damned war that she was still no closer to getting the truth behind despite all her attempts so far. Given how she’d be stuck in the frontlines in the foreseeable future, she doubted that they’d allow her to “take a break” back in the royal capital to scour the library for anything she missed either.
Not that she could justify that even to herself, with desires of both wanting to help save as many lives as she could warring with the desire to find the truth behind the fishy situation that framed the constant periodical warring between the demons and the humans.
The more she thought – and discussed with Ethan – about it, the more she realized just how fishy everything was. The locals might not have considered things suspicious, given that for them, it was all simply “just how everything has been” for many generations. The strangeness was just part of the norm for them.
For outsiders like her though, it was impossible to not notice the rather odd way things were set up. Given the grudges that had developed over countless generations of wars and blood feuds, the humans and the demons were clearly more than willing to slaughter the other to the very last. Yet it never happened. Not even when one side was so advantaged to the point that they ruled over three-quarters of Ephemera’s lands.
Instead, each time the situation reached that point, the winning side always lost the next war, and often a couple more after that as well, pushing the advantage back to the other side more often than not, while keeping the borders fluctuating. If the explanation that they only conquered as far as their gods allowed them during each war, with those trying to go for more receiving punishment by said gods, then that meant the gods had some sort of agenda that required prolonging the war or even never letting it end.
Alissa could internalize and understand that much with ease. What she found harder to understand was the motive behind it all. Why had the gods made their people fight and kill each other endlessly, without allowing either side a lasting, permanent victory, over so long?
She could have stomached it better if the gods of the humans and those of the demons possessed the same sort of hatred for each other that their subjects displayed. She doubted that was the case, however, otherwise the war should have ended for good with one side exterminating the other long ago, not stretch on for countless generations like this.
Could it be that the gods derived power from the bloodshed? That had been the first thought that came to Alissa’s mind, that the whole semi-ritualized war that went unabated between the humans and the demons might just be one elaborate blood sacrifice ritual to power the gods themselves. She had long ditched that explanation, however.
There were simply too many holes in the theory. For example, why would the gods need otherworldlers like her to serve as [Heroes] and [Champions] if they were just after the bloodshed? Also if the gods were truly powered by bloodshed then they were going about it in a very sporadic and inefficient way. Surely a state of eternal war that never paused would be better for them, if that was the case.
If some random high school kid like her could think of it, she doubted the so-called gods of this world would miss that point.
So she refined her hypothesis. Clearly the gods of this world needed the otherworldlers for some unknown reason. She was not stupid enough to believe that they would just “borrow” some otherworldlers only to send them back to their homes when they were done, so there had to be some reason behind the summoning, and the presence of otherworldlers in general.
What that reason was, she had no idea as of yet, though many guesses percolated in her mind.
From what bits of history she managed to learn so far, however, Alissa could theorize some things. For one, the somewhat random intervals between the summonings and the wars that always followed them. It implied that the summoning itself needed some sort of resource that did not come about all too often. Maybe it was power from the gods themselves, maybe it was just waiting for the stars to align right, she wasn’t sure.
Given the randomness and lack of any discernable pattern she could notice, she guessed that it was likely a combination of factors that governed when a summoning was feasible. Alissa still remembered that one time Cerilla – the priestess who was in charge of the summoning ritual that brought her, Ethan, and Joshua to this world – admitted to her that they only performed such rituals after receiving omens from the gods themselves.
They didn’t dare to perform such a ritual at any other time, in any other circumstance.
That meant that the gods practically dictated when the summonings – and the wars – happened, which brought unpleasant implications with it. If Alissa assumed that they summoned otherworldlers because they had some use for them, then she had to suspect that the offered way back home was also a lie, just a lure to keep them fighting obediently.
Of course, that was her pessimistic thinking. It might well be that the act of summoning had formed a gateway of sorts that just needed power to reopen and reuse. Or maybe returning summoned people to their origin was easier than summoning them to this world. She could find no details about the ritual itself, as it was apparently a closely guarded secret of the temple.
Alissa had only ever shared her doubts about the world, or rather, its “setting” with Ethan. While she had come to consider Princess Nadine and Moira as friends by then, she still doubted whether those two would be on her side. It was unrealistic for her to expect them to choose her side – some otherworldlers they had only known a few months – over the world they grew up in, should push come to shove.
For the time being, Alissa and Ethan chose to cooperate with the Kingdom. They were still too weak to try to do things on their own, although the two of them – together – could match up to Sir Inolet, who was one of the strongest humans in the Kingdom. The problem was that there were others of Sir Inolet’s caliber, and even with their classes, neither Ethan nor Alissa would fare that well when mobbed by multiple fourth tiers at once.
Maybe when they were at the fourth tier themselves – when they should each be as strong as the strongest people in the kingdom – they might reconsider things. At that point, they could make themselves too troublesome to bother with, especially with the war still ongoing. Despite keeping the option as a possibility, Alissa felt that she would likely have qualms about adopting such a measure, however.
Because if the inspirational [Heroes] were to abandon them, morale was certain to plummet amongst the human soldiers, which could very easily lead to a disaster that would have far greater impact through the kingdom. Compared to having that sort of guilt on her shoulder, simply fighting alongside those soldiers and helping them survive another day was a far easier thing to do.
Even so, the situation in the temporary fort remained a highly stressful one. Not just for Alissa and the other fourth tiers, but also for the soldiers in general. It must have been so much worse for them, as every assault meant a possibility of some of them losing their lives. They were the ones who tended to be powerless to affect their own fates, with fortune – namely whether they were on the section under attack or not – playing the greater role.
Sir Inolet and Sir Marsten, as veteran soldiers, had long noticed the issue, and tried their best to mitigate the issue, with some results. The promise that reinforcements from the kingdom – including engineers that would build a proper fortification around the encampment – were coming soon had so far managed to buoy the soldiers’ morale, but everyone knew that that was temporary.
As a countermeasure to the way the demons took advantage of their shift changes, Sir Marsten changed things up. Alissa and the rest of her party still went up in shifts of three people each time, but the other five that stood guard with them had their shifts staggered so that they’d switch with another one at a time at intervals of a little over an hour apart from each other.
Sir Marsten chose to make a point by having his group stay longer to align the shifts properly and left the wall last, so there were no complaints about the change. At least, not with the commander himself already leading by example.
The alteration seemed to have thrown off the demons, since they did not dare to mount any focused attacks like before. Instead the demons limited themselves to harassment from the safety of cover and range, primarily using projectiles, though from time to time a mage had been sighted making attacks at the walls as well.
Casualties remained low on both sides, but the constant and unpredictable harassment ground the nerves of the soldiers and made them fidgety. Many were unable to sleep properly due to the harassment, and fatigue started to rear its ugly head amongst the sentries. People made more mistakes, be it out of tiredness or stress, and things were looking bad for a while, despite the low casualties.
It was only after another week had passed, when a caravan from the kingdom passed through the valley, bringing the first batch of reinforcements, that morale recovered and began to soar once more. The palisades used as temporary fortifications were made large enough to encompass the planned base in its entirety, so the engineers immediately began their work as they started to lay down the foundation for the walls of the fortification to be right behind the palisades.
The demons had noticed the development and tried to interfere, but the additional reinforcements made it difficult for them to do so.
Avitue
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“Fuck!” Alissa cursed vehemently as the fourth tier demon – likely an assassin type that had a shadow-related stealth skill, given how she noticed their presence despite them being stealthed – slipped away into the shadows and beat a hasty retreat. The demons had struck just as Sir Marsten and the rest of his group were leaving for a shift change, which temporarily left – if only for a single minute – only Alissa, Nadine, and Maribel guarding the walls.
The demons must have observed their shift change times and laid in wait until the right moment, when those leaving were far enough away from the walls to delay their return and their replacements were just as distant. It was a masterful display of timing, and if not for Alissa being particularly sensitive to shadow-related stealth skills – likely due to her own skill being a similar yet more advanced type of it – they could have likely done some damage.
As it was, Alissa managed to hold off the fourth tier assassin demon while Nadine and Maribel, alerted by her, helped the soldiers on the east and west walls to handle other, lower tier demon assassins. Like before, the demons did not cause much damage. Seven injured soldiers on the human side with three deaths – all second tier soldiers – while in turn Nadine and Maribel made short work of four of the demon assassins, all of whom were at least mid third tier.
On paper, the losses were heavier on the demon side, both in quality and quantity, but Alissa couldn’t – didn’t – want to feel satisfied just with that. If possible, she wanted to prevent the demons from doing any damage at all. Even when Sir Marsten returned to the wall in a hurry together with the fourth tiers from the next shift and praised her for her quick reaction, Alissa couldn’t feel happy.
People had still died because they weren’t good enough.
No, rather, people had still died because of this damned war that she was still no closer to getting the truth behind despite all her attempts so far. Given how she’d be stuck in the frontlines in the foreseeable future, she doubted that they’d allow her to “take a break” back in the royal capital to scour the library for anything she missed either.
Not that she could justify that even to herself, with desires of both wanting to help save as many lives as she could warring with the desire to find the truth behind the fishy situation that framed the constant periodical warring between the demons and the humans.
The more she thought – and discussed with Ethan – about it, the more she realized just how fishy everything was. The locals might not have considered things suspicious, given that for them, it was all simply “just how everything has been” for many generations. The strangeness was just part of the norm for them.
For outsiders like her though, it was impossible to not notice the rather odd way things were set up. Given the grudges that had developed over countless generations of wars and blood feuds, the humans and the demons were clearly more than willing to slaughter the other to the very last. Yet it never happened. Not even when one side was so advantaged to the point that they ruled over three-quarters of Ephemera’s lands.
Instead, each time the situation reached that point, the winning side always lost the next war, and often a couple more after that as well, pushing the advantage back to the other side more often than not, while keeping the borders fluctuating. If the explanation that they only conquered as far as their gods allowed them during each war, with those trying to go for more receiving punishment by said gods, then that meant the gods had some sort of agenda that required prolonging the war or even never letting it end.
Alissa could internalize and understand that much with ease. What she found harder to understand was the motive behind it all. Why had the gods made their people fight and kill each other endlessly, without allowing either side a lasting, permanent victory, over so long?
She could have stomached it better if the gods of the humans and those of the demons possessed the same sort of hatred for each other that their subjects displayed. She doubted that was the case, however, otherwise the war should have ended for good with one side exterminating the other long ago, not stretch on for countless generations like this.
Could it be that the gods derived power from the bloodshed? That had been the first thought that came to Alissa’s mind, that the whole semi-ritualized war that went unabated between the humans and the demons might just be one elaborate blood sacrifice ritual to power the gods themselves. She had long ditched that explanation, however.
There were simply too many holes in the theory. For example, why would the gods need otherworldlers like her to serve as [Heroes] and [Champions] if they were just after the bloodshed? Also if the gods were truly powered by bloodshed then they were going about it in a very sporadic and inefficient way. Surely a state of eternal war that never paused would be better for them, if that was the case.
If some random high school kid like her could think of it, she doubted the so-called gods of this world would miss that point.
So she refined her hypothesis. Clearly the gods of this world needed the otherworldlers for some unknown reason. She was not stupid enough to believe that they would just “borrow” some otherworldlers only to send them back to their homes when they were done, so there had to be some reason behind the summoning, and the presence of otherworldlers in general.
What that reason was, she had no idea as of yet, though many guesses percolated in her mind.
From what bits of history she managed to learn so far, however, Alissa could theorize some things. For one, the somewhat random intervals between the summonings and the wars that always followed them. It implied that the summoning itself needed some sort of resource that did not come about all too often. Maybe it was power from the gods themselves, maybe it was just waiting for the stars to align right, she wasn’t sure.
Given the randomness and lack of any discernable pattern she could notice, she guessed that it was likely a combination of factors that governed when a summoning was feasible. Alissa still remembered that one time Cerilla – the priestess who was in charge of the summoning ritual that brought her, Ethan, and Joshua to this world – admitted to her that they only performed such rituals after receiving omens from the gods themselves.
They didn’t dare to perform such a ritual at any other time, in any other circumstance.
That meant that the gods practically dictated when the summonings – and the wars – happened, which brought unpleasant implications with it. If Alissa assumed that they summoned otherworldlers because they had some use for them, then she had to suspect that the offered way back home was also a lie, just a lure to keep them fighting obediently.
Of course, that was her pessimistic thinking. It might well be that the act of summoning had formed a gateway of sorts that just needed power to reopen and reuse. Or maybe returning summoned people to their origin was easier than summoning them to this world. She could find no details about the ritual itself, as it was apparently a closely guarded secret of the temple.
Alissa had only ever shared her doubts about the world, or rather, its “setting” with Ethan. While she had come to consider Princess Nadine and Moira as friends by then, she still doubted whether those two would be on her side. It was unrealistic for her to expect them to choose her side – some otherworldlers they had only known a few months – over the world they grew up in, should push come to shove.
For the time being, Alissa and Ethan chose to cooperate with the Kingdom. They were still too weak to try to do things on their own, although the two of them – together – could match up to Sir Inolet, who was one of the strongest humans in the Kingdom. The problem was that there were others of Sir Inolet’s caliber, and even with their classes, neither Ethan nor Alissa would fare that well when mobbed by multiple fourth tiers at once.
Maybe when they were at the fourth tier themselves – when they should each be as strong as the strongest people in the kingdom – they might reconsider things. At that point, they could make themselves too troublesome to bother with, especially with the war still ongoing. Despite keeping the option as a possibility, Alissa felt that she would likely have qualms about adopting such a measure, however.
Because if the inspirational [Heroes] were to abandon them, morale was certain to plummet amongst the human soldiers, which could very easily lead to a disaster that would have far greater impact through the kingdom. Compared to having that sort of guilt on her shoulder, simply fighting alongside those soldiers and helping them survive another day was a far easier thing to do.
Even so, the situation in the temporary fort remained a highly stressful one. Not just for Alissa and the other fourth tiers, but also for the soldiers in general. It must have been so much worse for them, as every assault meant a possibility of some of them losing their lives. They were the ones who tended to be powerless to affect their own fates, with fortune – namely whether they were on the section under attack or not – playing the greater role.
Sir Inolet and Sir Marsten, as veteran soldiers, had long noticed the issue, and tried their best to mitigate the issue, with some results. The promise that reinforcements from the kingdom – including engineers that would build a proper fortification around the encampment – were coming soon had so far managed to buoy the soldiers’ morale, but everyone knew that that was temporary.
As a countermeasure to the way the demons took advantage of their shift changes, Sir Marsten changed things up. Alissa and the rest of her party still went up in shifts of three people each time, but the other five that stood guard with them had their shifts staggered so that they’d switch with another one at a time at intervals of a little over an hour apart from each other.
Sir Marsten chose to make a point by having his group stay longer to align the shifts properly and left the wall last, so there were no complaints about the change. At least, not with the commander himself already leading by example.
The alteration seemed to have thrown off the demons, since they did not dare to mount any focused attacks like before. Instead the demons limited themselves to harassment from the safety of cover and range, primarily using projectiles, though from time to time a mage had been sighted making attacks at the walls as well.
Casualties remained low on both sides, but the constant and unpredictable harassment ground the nerves of the soldiers and made them fidgety. Many were unable to sleep properly due to the harassment, and fatigue started to rear its ugly head amongst the sentries. People made more mistakes, be it out of tiredness or stress, and things were looking bad for a while, despite the low casualties.
It was only after another week had passed, when a caravan from the kingdom passed through the valley, bringing the first batch of reinforcements, that morale recovered and began to soar once more. The palisades used as temporary fortifications were made large enough to encompass the planned base in its entirety, so the engineers immediately began their work as they started to lay down the foundation for the walls of the fortification to be right behind the palisades.
The demons had noticed the development and tried to interfere, but the additional reinforcements made it difficult for them to do so.
Avitue
If you enjoy this story, please consider leaving a rating or review to help it gain more exposure, thank you! Or help support the author by leaving a tip!
Read ahead on my Patreon! For 5$ a month patrons will gain early access of a week's worth of chapters ahead (3 chapters), or for 10$ a month, gain early access to ALL the available Advance Chapters! (as of the moment of this writing: 25 Chapters ahead.)
Or you can subscribe to all my stories and get a discount on the price!
Join the Discord for silly stuff and chat with us!
