Overall, it was a pretty enjoyable night… For me. Obviously it was a nightmare for the residents of umm, I honestly forgot what that place was called before then. We renamed it Citadel City, because of all the castles and fortresses inside. It was originally a bordertown, dangerously close to Agar. Since that place got wrecked a long time before I showed up, we didn’t need to worry much about defenses.

That central plaza that I teleported to, was actually some kind of holy square. There were lots of churches and a particularly large, fortress-like cathedral nearby. At the back of that cathedral was a gargantuan green pine tree. Similar to how Hithu was a weeping willow, Lum was a pine.

Anyway, while I was annihilating the core clergy of the Lum faith, Amber was playing around with the treants, mages and soldiers that were trying to defend the walls, plural. Yes, a city that big had at least three separate walls, segregating the poor, from the rich and noble, while the third wall was there to protect the cathedral.

Although it was tempting to just break down and destroy the whole inner city, I didn’t. I wanted to keep the churches, cathedrals, palaces and other beautiful structures intact. I didn’t even bother removing the statues of Lum, because ultimately, she just looked like a green dryad. Yep, just one of many. Besides that, just like what happened to Hithu, Lum’s body would ultimately belong to a new soul once I made some modifications. Statues are ultimately just art either way.

I wanted people to remember the history of Salvation. For them to remember how the two Goddesses had fallen to the Spirit of Eternal Suffering. The destruction of two kingdoms, and the birth of two more States of Alfirin: New Hithu and New Lum.

“Round em up!” As my battle was ending, I sent out a telepathic message to all of the troops that were surrounding Citadel City. What? Did you think it was just me and Amber alone?

No, the city’s outer walls had six gates. One of them was destroyed by the fiery tigress and was inaccessible, but the other five were completely undamaged. I had Pixies, Beast Tribe warriors, Hithu treants and the feisty Pale Goblins waiting outside of the city in those five directions. They were too far away to be attacked by the wall defences, but close enough that the fleeing soldiers were unable to escape their fate.

Then I climbed up on top of the highest tower in the whole city, able to oversee everything. From there I utilized my Mark’s true power and orchestrated the five battlefields, making sure that they suffered from as few casualties as possible. If someone was in danger, I could funnel some of my power through their body, healing their wounds or allowing them to exert a much greater strength. Occasionally, I would use my staff to conjure up a few generic balls of molten lead, hurling it at the enemy formations like artillery fire.

In case I didn’t mention this before, Creation Magic isn’t always a bad idea. In fact, once you reach a certain threshold of mana-capacity and generation, Creation Magic isn’t that inefficient. Especially when you’re dealing with extreme distances. Of course, I also could have flown over there and massacred everyone with very little effort… But then the other four sides would have suffered losses I would have been able to prevent.

Also, I wanted to let my soldiers get some action. I knew that once the Lumean Crusade was over, they would either retire or participate in a new war. Either way, it was best if they got as much experience as possible, while I was still there to protect them.

I could also take full command of any treant during the fight, so I didn’t allow the Pixies and Yuri-Mice to fuck up. Eventually though, the enemy morale had fallen apart. Soldiers started to surrender to my forces, while Amber got bored of aimlessly destroying walls and started eating the tastier-looking people she killed.

Once the battle was over, then it was time to start rounding up all the Wood Elves in the whole city. While my forces were doing that, I was putting out the fire that Amber started and trying to keep her from wrecking the whole place.

Then it was time for judgement. A culling of all the ‘evil’ men and women from our newly conquered city. Rapists and slavers were actually a minority among the commoners. If they committed even minor ‘crimes’, they would be heavily punished. The nobles, clergy and wealthy business people on the other hand… They were almost all extremely corrupt and disgusting creatures.

Children were exempt from the telepathic trials, because the Yuri-Mice weren’t good enough yet to read the minds of children accurately. Adults are far easier to see through. Of course, whenever it came to the stronger or elderly Wood Elves, I had to judge them myself. There weren’t too many though.

In any society there will always be a dark, criminal underworld. The more laws there are, the more gritty and disgusting it tends to end up. Of course, when it comes to highly religious societies, with strict and absurd regulations, their idea of ‘crime’ is usually much different than mine…

For example, wearing blue clothing was considered blasphemy against the Goddess Lum. Children born with blue eyes, would be forced into slavery from birth, killed or if their parents are kind, their eyes would simply be gouged out before anyone would discover their ‘sin’.

There was an entire gang of blue-eyed Wood Elves called the “Azure Devil Clan”. Yeah, their name is a lot more sinister than their actual work ethic. Most of their group of a hundred relatively powerful warriors, were able to pass my personal telepathic trials. A couple of their officers had sold some slaves and one of them was a serial rapist, but aside from that, they were way cleaner than the soldiers who surrendered to us. Those Azure Devil Clan kids were responsible for a lot of smuggling of contraband, selling and buying black market goods, along with running gambling rings. All of which was strictly forbidden by Lum, but I couldn’t care less about any of that.

There were plenty of terrible prisons, where most of the prisoners were innocent from my perspective. One woman, I can’t remember her name, but she was imprisoned for a hundred years… Her crime? A noblewoman thought that the poor girl was more beautiful than herself, so she had her arrested, gangraped, tortured, but eventually just locked in a cell and forgotten for decades.

Fortunately, that noble bitch was still alive. As an example, I had her impaled on a steak, along with thousands of others who committed similar crimes. Most of them died quickly, the unlucky ones however, had a lot stronger vitality. The sharp wooden pole was actually a thin branch of Hithu. In case you’re unfamiliar with impalement, they were given the option to start from the mouth or the ass, but that was their last decision before getting sent to Karma for their ‘real’ punishment.

Why not just crucify them? Do you have any idea how much extra work is required to crucify someone? The goal is also to have them slowly bleed to death or dehydrate. It’s just way too much effort. Besides, it was thousands of people. There were more Wood Elves being impaled. If I had to rely on a few hundred people to do the job, it would’ve taken ages.

Anyway, the important thing wasn’t that I was killing them and doing it publically. It was actually a tactic to demoralize our next target. I won’t go through in detail and explain every siege, because that would take way too long. It would also be super repetitive.

Our first task was to set up encampments. Each one was close enough that troops could be mobilized quickly when the command to attack was given. Once things were set up properly, we started our first attack. The thousands of executed nobles would be mounted on their spikes, in clear view of the front gate. Then the hundreds of thousands of elven corpses would be gathered, chopped into manageable pieces and then placed onto catapults. For three days and nights, we would continuously bombard each wall with Wood Elf bits and chunks. It was cold, so they didn’t even rot during that time. I wanted them to see the faces of people they recognized, maybe relatives or old friends… Unfortunately, once you launch a head half a kilometer onto some hard stone, it usually just splatters apart.