After a few tries, the female Captain managed to replicate Lith's spell, but between the long flight and the imminent fight, she needed to recover her strength so she had to let it fade away.
"What army base do you serve in, Major? With your permission, I would like to apply for a transfer. There's a lot that I could learn from you."
"I'm not back in the army, Captain. Once we are done with our mission, I'll go back to being a civilian." He replied, leaving her quite disappointed.
Studying standard spells from a book was one thing, being taught by an Archmage was quite another.
While the soldiers rested, Lith discussed with the officers what the best approach to surround the city with their limited numbers and keep anyone from escaping was. All the members of the regiment could fly, but very few could use dimensional magic.
On top of that, Lith had no notion of military strategy. Despite the fact that he was an officer, he had always worked alone. The one thousand mages under his command were a powerful tool that he had no idea how to properly employ.
As soon as Zeska was in sight, the regiment split into four 200-men units that stood in front of one of the city gates each while the remaining soldiers formed a circle in the sky right outside the city arrays to keep anyone from escaping unnoticed.
The guards patrolling the walls sounded the alarm the moment the army of mages started its descent, but the siege was completed even before the noise of their horns could die out.
"What was the original plan, Captain…?" Lith asked.
"Timeka Ahria, sir." She gave him a brief salute before answering his question. "Zeska is equipped with air and earth blocking arrays. Flying, Warping, and even taking down the walls with magic is impossible.
"The best course of action is to combine our powers to conjure a snowstorm. The cold will clear the battlements from the guards and allow some of us to infiltrate the city. Once inside, we just have to open one of the four main gates and Zeska will be ours once again."
"What if before leaving Quaron changed the locks' passwords?" He said.
"Worst case scenario, our contingency plan is to keep the storm at full power and the city will fall in a matter of days. The citizens had no time to restock for coal or firewood and not even a stone house can keep out the cold for long." Ahria replied.
"It would be a great plan if the Royals didn't order me to avoid violence unless absolutely necessary." Lith shook his head.
"There would be no fighting nor the shedding of a single drop of blood." Estar pointed out. "We will remain outside the city and cease the attack the moment the enemy surrenders."
"That's where you are wrong." Lith dismissed his argument with a wave of the hand. "There is no enemy here. Just people afraid of starving. If your original plan succeeds, Zeska will not fall without a fight.
"Resorting to your contingency plan would be even worse. Hundreds of farmers would freeze to their death, leaving too few alive to take care of the fields. Even the survivors would need time to recover from our siege. A time that we don't have."
"Then what's your plan, sir?" Captain Pelan asked. "To knock on their door and politely ask them to reconsider their position? The army sent its best negotiators and they all failed. If diplomacy was an option, we wouldn't be here."
The former Lieutenant Colonel was still furious for being demoted and humiliated, but he was smart enough to avoid challenging Lith directly.
'I just have to object to his nonsense and wait for him to fail. After that, the Royals will strip this violent barbarian of the lead role and put me in charge of the mission after restoring my rank.
'I'll give him all the rope he wants and enjoy watching him hanging himself with it.' He thought.
"Correct." Lith nodded. "You all stay here and make sure that no one escapes unless I say so. Keep an eye on sewer pipes and remember that even though we can't fly in, the citizens of Zeska only need to turn the arrays off for a second to fly right under our noses."
Lith walked inside the area of effect of the arrays, feeling slightly nauseous as his connection with the world energy faltered. Back when he still had a blue core, elemental sealing arrays made him feel as if someone had covered him with a wet blanket.
After achieving the violet, however, he could smell the unbalance. The lack of the two elements in the air surrounding the city made his auxiliary cores lose efficiency and altered his five senses.
A hail of arrows and catapults' shot welcomed him, but the defensive aura of the Scalewalker armor deflected even the heavy projectiles with ease. Lith walked in a straight path toward the city door while darts just made way for him, falling to the sides.
The boulders were a tougher client, but thanks to the gravity sheath altering their weight and direction, Lith needed but a flick of the wrist to deflect them. They moved in slow motion to him while his movements were but a blur to everyone else.
What both the soldiers atop of the city walls and those behind him saw was Lith taking a stroll while everything that was thrown at him refused to stand in his way, lying orderly on the ground like a silent honor guard.
Once the soldiers realized that it was pointless wasting any more bullets, they switched to wands, unleashing on Lith a barrage of fire, ice, and darkness.
Alchemical tools couldn't hold spells above tier three but anyone could use them, even those with no magical talent and without enough mana to light a match. They were military-grade weapons that had been charged by at least bright cyan-cored mages.
It was impossible to infuse willpower inside an alchemical tool since the caster of the spell and the person that would actually use it would be different and so was mixing different elements together.
Yet with enough wands firing at the same time, it was easy to produce a destructive power that outclassed even a tier five spell.
In front of the incoming onslaught, Lith was forced to stop and take a deep breath. He closed his eyes to more easily attune his cores and the five eyes hidden under his skin with the distorted frequency of the world energy.
When he opened them again, the magical bullets stopped in front of him, forming a curtain of light as more and more spells piled up. Lith didn't need to chant, only to trace a semicircle with his hands to split the energy wall in front of him and resume his walk.
His hands never stopped moving as he moved forward. Weaving the dozens of spells of three different elements into a single one required so much focus that he needed to trace runes even with his fingers.
A three elemental spell was akin to a Tower tier spell, something that Lith couldn't do on his own. Now, however, the city guards were providing him with all the mana and the elemental energy he needed, leaving to Lith only to rearrange them in the form that suited him best.
