Chapter 12: 55 days in Wyvernwald
Wyvernwald was in flames. Well, parts of it it anyways, mostly the mundane parts of the city. It would be ironic if it weren't for the depressing fact that it's rather well known that saviors tend to destroy the very things that they set out to save. Thus it came to be that the arrival of the incels to drive the filthy orcs, elves, and dragons out of sacred human lands simply sparked rioting and looting of epic proportions. The few city guards, already sympathetic to the incels to a certain extent (mainly in driving out the foreigners), were only too happy to fan the flames of chaos. It was a time to settle old scores and score new loot.
While the imperial court and the nobles watched on helplessly but safely in their grand palaces and castles as the city burned merrily before their eyes the situation was similar but also at the same time very different over at the Legation section.
The walls of the Legation section, which despite their faux medieval appearances were constructed with the best reinforced concrete elven money could buy (as both the orcs and dragons were far less concerned about the dangers of rioting mobs than the elves, who seemed to have assumed that all humans were only a couple of steps away from caricatures straight out of hentai). The overly ostentatious fake-ish fortification finally came in handy though, as the tops of the walls were patrolled by a ragged collection of Legation police, diplomatic guards, intelligence agents (some of those paper pushers still seemed to have problems figuring out which end of the gun they should be pointing at the enemy), and random tourists, the last of which were still mainly excited than anything else, mostly because they have yet been exposed to the real bloodletting and horrors unique to isekai fueled civil disturbances.
Needless to say, while the various departments and agencies had plans in place for various contingencies for such disturbances, but none with each other, especially not with those of other countries, rivals and even potential enemies they might have been, now all thrown in the same crisis. The orcs of the Republic's embassy were ready to make a 'thunder run' and even had a truck ready, which they claimed will strike terror in the hearts of all isekais. That plan was shelved when the engine simply refused to start, as the truck itself was left in storage without maintenance for over half a year (the rest of the city's medieval, nowhere to use it anyways).
In the end, everyone decided that the best course of action was to sit tight and hope that their countries would come and rescue them.
Then the telegraph lines were cut, and they became more cut off than ever before.
……
"Remember, women and children first." Buntoc said as he took another potshot with his rifle at a fleeing woman carrying her infant child through an alleyway. His voice and actions as cold as the great northern mountains. The shot missed by at least three meters.
"How about you use a little tact and not talk about this in front of a reporter?" Teg tried his best not to simply facepalm while eyeing Jameson just a couple of meters away, busily jotting down notes or sketching, whatever reporters do normally when on the job.
"Why not? Pretending the ugliness of the world doesn't exist will only make it harder to clean up said ugliness." Buntoc retorted as he took another potshot, again going wide.
Teg merely sighed, went over to the reporter, grabbed him easily in one hand, and dropped him off the inner side of the wall. It wasn't a long drop, merely less than a meter until he came in contact with the roof of a building, a general store of all things.
"So you come over to my way of thinking I see." Buntoc barely glanced over.
"No, but since I can't fix your psychopathic tendencies right now I can at least hid it from the general public for a bit longer." Teg growled.
"Figures, you milita types are really just civilians roleplaying military." Buntoc fired another shot. Another miss, this time missing a child by five meters. The streets, already rather empty, now approaching absolutely deadness, only the rats and other vermin dare to crawl forth, too insignificant to warrant even stray shots. "Too soft to be able to make the hard choices when it counts."
"Says the tough talker who seems incapable of hitting the wide side of a building, never mind a moving target of any size." Teg shot back, the words more biting as he merely used his normal voice and vocabulary, the contents need no embellishment.
"Not like bullets are all that useful, given what we know of the threats ready to assault this place. Not to mention one less civilian means less fuel source for the incels."
"Suppression fire is still a thing, as is kinetic energy from impact. Old instincts die hard. Not to mention you'll look less like a psychopath." Teg give up on convincing the obviously bonkers intelligence officer of the madness of his thinking.
Teg himself might be a trigger happy gun fetishist, but he drew the line on shooting unarmed civilians in the name of denying resources to the enemy.
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It took a while, as all research related matters when the topic being controversial and the subjects too dangerous to be observed at any but at distance, for some (mainly those whose jobs are to study such matters) to figure out the horrifying way in which the incels gain power. IN hindsight, it wasn't that surprising given their mentalities and whatever ironic and sadistic logic that the world seems to cater to the more depraved isekais.
It still doesn't morally justify shooting women and children, but morality was rapidly becoming a luxury in the besieged section. Hard times calls for hard men to make hard choices.
No… no, no. It shouldn't be that way. The forces of evil must be denied on all fronts, even in the battlefields of the soul, battles that many have already lost, and many more in the process of losing.
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Bullets were not the only things in short supply, nor military personnels the only ones losing their temper and sanity. Since the beginning of the siege all contact with the rest of the world has been effectively cut off; the water pipes cut (although the legation section has their own water treatment plant), as were power and telegraph lines. The roads that weren't blocked with rubble were filled with roving incel bands, hellbent on raping anything that's alive, be they humans, elves, dragons, or even cats.
……
Pumfee slumped into a wall, utterly drained from dealing with yet another day full of whining and insufferable brats. It would be a lot of efficient to simply throw them out of the compound and let the incels have their way with them, then maybe the rest of them might actually have a fighting chance. Then again, surviving long enough just to be thrown in a court for throwing civilians to their certain doom is also a pretty lousy option.
"Tired?" Jane, who was leaning on the wall next to him and also seemingly just as tired, asked.
"Exhausted." Was all he could get out.
"It's like running a kindergarten isn't it?"
"If you mean heading a large number of undisciplined children, yes. That would be the case." He thought to himself for a moment. "How come you aren't like them?" He finally asked.
"My life in the previous world was solidly middle class."
"So were most isekais…" Pumfee begin, then he noticed the glare Jane, a glare of pure, distilled rage.
"Forget I said that." He lamely finished.
"Don't, ever, ever, compare me to them." Jane said through gritted teeth.
"Yes mam."
"And drop that deterrence act, I ain't nobody special."
"The blue hair and the water purification abilities beg to differ." Pumfee said, silently thankful of the fact, since the water treatment plant had been unable to meet the higher demand while losing much of the usual electric and personnel that normally needed to run it.
Jane merely snorted, "I don't get why people are still all over those little mundane powers."
Pumfee decided to drop the topic, too tired to explain the fine nuances of magic and mana usage, not that he himself knew much of it. Once seen as a race wide curse of sorts, now in the age of machines and science the general many have wonder if it was a blessing in disguise. After all, the cray crays tend to be rather limited instead of potentially entities of mass destruction.
Life and societies has become too complex for rampaging nutjobs with actual powers. Case in point the current crisis.
…...
"This isn't looking good." Pimu muttered, reviewing the remaining inventory.
"No they are not." Helen agreed.
As with all sieges, rationing was instituted as soon as the gates were locked. However, the problem was as always the civilians, specifically those of the upper class, who are not used to hardships of any kind. Thus it was a constant fine line between preventing the spoiled brats from rioting by robbing paul to pay for peter while keeping an eye on the irreplaceable supplies.
"At least the one thing we don't have to worry about is water rationing, thanks to your friend."
"You don't need to remind me that every day."
"Hard not to when no one seems to have an idea how long her mana reserves will last."
"And you think a little bit of faith on your part would help?"
"Think more of it as reassuring my own mental state, what's left of it anyways." He paused for a moment, "Say, how come you aren't like most of them?"
"You mean like a spoiled little bitch?"
"I wasn't thinking in those coarse terms, but yes, especially when half of your grandparents being isekais."
"They weren't normal isekais, and for all their faults at being parents and grandparents, they at least tried to instill good values on their descendants." She sighed, "Not that it did much good, given what most of us ended up as. A bunch of greedy bastards hellbent on stuffing ourselves while the going was good."
"I'm sorry if I touched a nerve."
"It's fine, we probably won't live long enough as is, might as well let out our last confessions."
"You think it's really that bad?"
"Aren't you supposed to be the expert?"
"Given what the government pays me? I doubt it. Then again, we been crying wolf so many times that we have learned to just ignore our own findings."
"And so here we are."
"I suppose the shepherd boy was telling the truth the last time, didn't do him much good though. Speaking of which, I always wondered did the wolves ate him too or just all the sheep that he was supposed to protect? I never got a concrete answer from all the isekais I talked to."
"Probably because there was a number of different versions of the story."
"Well damn it I can't even get an answer to a simple question in my last days."
"Welcome to life, cheerful isn't it?"
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Sieges weren't just hard on the bodies from the rationing of supplies, they also took their toll on the minds, as distilled, it's just a mind waiting game, with potentially a terrifying surprise at the end.