"Oh? Those are some sturdy-looking walls." Ainz commented as he looked at the stone walls protecting the city.
He and his group were waiting in line to enter the city.
"They are indeed. E-Rantal is a fortress city that has never been conquered in its 150 years of history," Ninya answered by his side.
"History tells that E-Rantal was built during the reign of the Re-Estize's second king to be used as a shield to stop the waves of undead coming from the Katze Plains."
What a fool.
In his opinion, there were very few things more foolish than to try to fight an undead army from inside a fortress.
He knew because he had conquered many of these so-called impregnable fortresses in his life; most of the time, it was an easy but time-consuming endeavor.
The people who hid behind the walls of a fortress usually put too much importance on fending off attacks, forgetting some less pressing, but even more important matters.
His most common strategy when capturing a fortress was to surround it from all sides with his undead army and wait.
Living creatures need to eat and rest to keep their lives, but the undead have none of these concerns, so he could keep the siege for as long as needed.
Food would grow scarce inside the fortress, and as he instructed his army to make loud noises constantly, even sleeping would become difficult.
As time passed, the enemy would only grow weaker, while his army maintained peak form, so from a battle standpoint, the longer it took for the people inside to go out and fight, the better for him, and as someone with an unlimited lifespan, he might find it annoying, but waiting a few years wasn't a problem.
But it usually wouldn't come to that.
The humans inside would inevitably grow restless and open the gates to attack his army.
If he could breach the fortress through the battle, then that would be it, but if he couldn't, he would use the casualties from the battle to replenish his army while resurrecting his most important minions.
It wasn't unusual for his army to grow in numbers through this process.
Sometimes reinforcements came, in which case the battle could go either way.
If it were possible to overpower the enemy, he would; if not, he could always retreat temporarily, waiting for the reinforcements to go back before trying again.
After a few centuries of practice, he got quite good at doing these types of strategies, having seen most of the possible outcomes and variations of reactions coming from the besieged individuals, so he was confident in his opinion that building a fortress to fight the undead was an incredibly dumb decision.
"At the time, the Re-Estize Kingdom and the Baharuth Empire were allies fighting together against the undead, but now…" Ninya's voice drifted as she turned to look at a group of people.
He followed her gaze and saw dozens of soldiers entering the city through the gates with heavy expressions.
Many of them were missing an arm or a leg, with some having lost more than that.
"Are these the soldiers returning from the war with the Empire?"
"Yes, although calling them soldiers might be wishful thinking. They are commoners who were forced to participate in the war by the lords of their domains, and who now will return to their homes without receiving any compensation." Ninya bitterly commented.
The Re-Estize Kingdom operated through forced conscription to build its forces.
Using this method to leverage its large population, the Kingdom could amass a way bigger army than the Empire, but this system came with problems.
First, the quality of the troops.
These hastily trained soldiers couldn't compete with the professional soldiers from the Empire, who were constantly training for war, and whose morale was all the higher due to the benefits offered by their country.
And second, the Kingdom's troops were also its main workforce, so deploying them would cause every other facet of the country to suffer.
Wait. Could it be?
"You told me that this war happens every year, but does it also always happen around the same time?"
"I think so, but why do you ask?"
"It's nothing."
From what I heard from Enri, right now is the harvest time for most of the crops used by the humans in this region…
If that's the case, then by waging war with the Re-Estize Kingdom at this time every year, the Baharuth Empire is forcing the Kingdom to waste its workforce in this crucial time on a pointless war, and by the time the war is over, a good portion of the crops will have been wasted.
This will create a food shortage that will weaken the Re-Estize Kingdom each year, and over the years, the Kingdom will become less and less of a threat.
The Re-Estize Kingdom also doesn't have a choice in this, since it needs to defend itself even if it knows that this will be the result.
If nothing is done, the Re-Estize Kingdom will be devoured by the Baharuth Empire in at most a few decades.
As Ainz analyzed this strategy, he couldn't help but admire the wit of the Blood Empress.
She implemented a siege strategy, not that dissimilar to my own, but on a national scale.
Hum… I should tell my subordinates not to accidentally kill her. She sounds like a very interesting individual.
After a while, Ninya went to talk with her party members.
Even from far away, Ainz could tell that they were still awkward around each other, but everyone was trying their hardest to ignore that.
I think they will be fine.
After their conversation that night, Ninya talked things out with the others.
She didn't reveal the full reason why she deceived them, but showed that it was something important to her, which was enough for the others.
It was decided that she would continue to crossdress, and everyone promised not to reveal it to others.
In the meantime, Enri ordered her goblins to wait for her on the outskirts of the forest, since there was no way the guards would allow a group of demihumans to enter the city, and even if they did, it would be counterproductive to everyone to be seen with them.
As he watched over the group, a blonde woman walked from the gate all the way to him.
"What is it?" He asked.
"Momon-sama, we have permission to go in now." Nigun lowered her head discreetly.
He is still afraid that I will punish him if he is not respectful, huh?
Well, considering he is not from Nazarick and is even a former enemy, I don't think there's a problem with letting him stay like that.
"Very good, you did well." He patted Nigun on the shoulder and went to share the news with the rest of the group.
And just like that, they entered E-Rantal.
The city was composed of 3 layers, each divided by a wall.
The outermost layer was where the troops stayed during the war.
The middle layer was where commoners lived, being the most populated part of the city, and also where most businesses were located.
The Bareares lived there, and it was also where they could find the Adventurer and Magician Guilds.
Ninya told me that the Cemetery is located between these two layers, but on the other side of the city, so it shouldn't be difficult to pay it a visit later.
Ainz came to E-Rantal for a few reasons, but the most important of all was to gather corpses to create undead, so the Cemetery was his main target.
Compared with that, the inner layer housing nobles and wealthy merchants was of little importance to him.
It didn't take long for them to reach the gate, and after another check, the group reached the middle layer, or simply E-Rantal for most people.
"Thank you for everything, Momon. I'll take my things and stop bothering you now." Enri's voice took him from his reverie.
He saw the girl trying her hardest to get one of the barrels out of the carriage.
Her face flushed under the effort, but she barely lifted the object from the ground.
Seeing that she was going to fall, Ainz moved, grabbing the barrel with one hand and Enri with another.
"What are you talking about, Enri Enmot? We're going with you to visit the Bareares, so there's no need for you to carry your luggage by yourself."
"You're going to see Nfirea?"
"Of course I'm going; why wouldn't I want to see the capable young man everyone talked so much about?"
He needed to see the man with the talent to use any magic item.
Securing his talent was his second objective in coming to this city.
Were it not for his relationship with Enri, he would have already sent someone to kidnap the boy.
"Oh? Then thank you!" Enri moved back to give her thanks, but accidentally hit a woman coming from the other side.
Bloodlust?
Sensing something coming from the woman, Ainz moved between the two of them, shielding Enri behind his back, and looked at the woman.
She seemed young, maybe barely in her 20s, with short blonde hair and predatory red eyes.
A cape hid most of her figure, but Ainz could tell that she was wearing armor, and her hands were reaching for something in her cloak.
Is that blood? Was the first thing he thought.
A warrior. Was the second.
In the instant he evaluated her, the woman was also sizing him up, her eyes wandering through his armor and the swords on his back.
There was tension in the air.
"Oh. I'm sorry about hitting you; I didn't mean to." He heard Enri's voice coming from behind him, and with that, the woman smiled.
"There's no problem; I should have watched my step." The tension vanished instantly.
The smile didn't quite reach her eyes.
***
He's strong.
Only after the group with the warrior in black armor left her sight did Clementine allow herself to relax her body.
What is someone so strong doing in this city?
When the warrior locked his attention on her, she felt the air leaving her lungs, giving her the clear notion that if they fought, she would definitely die.
It was even stronger than when I fought the captain, maybe even more than that old girl.
She shivered as the memory of her first day in the Black Scripture surfaced.
Having grown up with the confidence of being strong, for the first time, she understood what it felt like to be prey in front of a predator, and she also understood what had driven her father into madness.
Heh!
Clementine sneered while thinking about her father's obsession with creating a human on the same level as a Godkin.
She put her palm on the spot where the girl had bumped into her, seeing it come back red with blood.
This was a wound from her last battle with the Windflower Scripture. Individually, they couldn't do anything to a hero like herself, but they were many and very persistent, following her all the way from the Slaine Theocracy until the Great Forest of Tob.
But soon it will be over.
She looked toward the Cemetery and began to walk.