Chapter 116: Modern Siege

For hundreds of leagues across the fertile valley of the Oakhaven basin and the rolling hills of the Gilded Plains, vast agricultural estates stretched toward the horizon. Here sat the colossal Imperial Granaries—sprawling complexes of three-story stone silos, magical drying houses, and distribution depots that fed the millions residing in the interior provinces, as well as the eighty thousand troops garrisoned between the capital and the coast.

To the tenant farmers, overseers, and provincial monks who blessed the harvest with growth-enhancing cantrips, this land was holy and untouchable. Wars were fought with banners on distant borders, settled by knights and blood. Bread was life, and no army had ever possessed the means to strike the breadbasket from beyond the horizon.

Then the digital maps inside the combat information center of the USS Gerald R. Ford updated.

On the tactical screens, blue icons representing carrier strike wings shifted focus from barracks and bridges to strategic supply nodes.

"Target package Zulu-Sierra confirmed," the air warfare coordinator reported calmly. "Regional grain silos, salt-curing depots, flour milling complexes, and livestock redistribution hubs. Secondary focus on the state-run mana-fertilized greenhouse arrays."

A pilot’s flat voice echoed through the bridge speakers: "Strike Lead copies. Rolling in on Sector Four. Target in sight."

High above the clouds, far beyond the reach of human eyes or wyvern patrol ceilings, four B-1B Lancers staged from the island base flew in wide, sweeping corridors. Their internal bomb bays snapped open. Instead of standard high-explosive penetrators, they released hundreds of precision cluster munitions and GPS-guided incendiary canisters designed specifically to deny agricultural stockpiles.

At the Grand Granary of the Lower Basin—a fortified stone complex housing enough wheat and dried rations to feed the imperial capital for eight months—overseers were busy tallying sacks of milled grain when the sky screamed.

It was not a thunderous blast like a lightning spell. It was the tearing whistle of falling iron.

KABOOM!

The main silos detonated from within as penetrating incendiary warheads pierced the stone cupolas and ignited the volatile grain dust suspended in the dry air.

A catastrophic secondary dust explosion ripped through the complex with terrifying fury.

The three-foot-thick stone masonry shattered outward, showering burning limestone across the wagon yards. Towering geysers of blazing flour, wheat, and pulverized wood erupted hundreds of feet into the blue sky. The pressurized blast blew the heavy iron gates off their hinges, flattening the surrounding administrative offices and setting the surrounding dried fields on fire in an instant.

Minutes later, fifty miles to the south, the royal cold-storage vaults at Rivermouth were struck.

Laser-guided AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles slammed through the refrigerated subterranean cellars where the empire preserved hundreds of tons of salted meat and holy curing butter for long campaigns. The deep bunkers collapsed in suffocating plumes of dust and gray smoke, burying the emergency meat reserves beneath tons of collapsed earth.

In the eastern terraced fields, the grand aqueducts and irrigation canals that drew water from the northern snowmelts were shattered. High-explosive bombs pulverized the ancient elevated stonework, sending millions of gallons of stored fresh water flooding across unharvested barley fields, turning the fertile soil into useless, muddy swamps before draining completely into the empty ditches.

Across five entire provinces, black and brown pillars of smoke joined the gray smudges from the earlier foundry strikes.

There was no bloodbath of common peasants. The munitions did not hit the scattered villages or residential huts. It was colder than that. It was the calculated, surgical destruction of calories. The empire’s stomach was being carved out with clinical, mechanical detachment.

At Port Solis, inside the imperial pavilion, another spatial courier materialized on the marble platform.

The man did not even attempt to rise. He fell forward onto his stomach, coughing violently, his face smudged with black soot and ash that smelled faintly of scorched bread.

"Speak!" Belis shouted, his hands clutching his velvet robes as he rushed to the messenger’s side. "What has happened in the Oakhaven basin?!"

"The silos..." the courier sobbed, his voice cracking into high-pitched hysteria. "The Grand Granaries of the First and Second Districts... they are gone, Your Eminence! Fire fell from the clouds! The wheat exploded! The winter stores... forty thousand bushels... burned to cinder in minutes!"

A second teleportation flare cracked open behind him. Another herald stumbled out, clutching a singed parchment.

"Report from the Lower Valley!" the second man cried, his knees shaking so hard he collapsed beside the first. "The aqueducts are severed! The stone reservoirs at Highbrook have collapsed! The eastern harvest is drowned in mud, and the salt depots at Rivermouth are buried beneath sixty feet of rubble! The overseers report zero transportable grain for the capital convoys!"

Belis stepped backward, his face turning the color of dry parchment. His eyes darted around the pavilion in sheer, unadulterated panic.

"Zero grain...?" Belis stammered, his breath turning shallow. "The capital... the capital houses three hundred thousand citizens, not counting the imperial guard and the refugee guilds! Port Solis alone has sixty thousand troops entrenched on these cliffs! We only have seven days of emergency rations stored within the Aegis!"

Lord Justin grabbed the edge of a gilded table to steady himself, his breath rattling in his armored chest.

"They aren’t going to storm our trenches," Justin whispered, the horror washing over his eyes like cold ocean water. "They aren’t going to climb the cliffs. They’re going to sit on their iron ships, drink their water, and let us starve to death behind our own holy walls."

Goddess Viona stood completely still, staring out at the golden horizon through the sheer fabric of the pavilion.

The sky above Port Solis was still radiant, bathed in the protective golden shimmer of the Aegis. But far to the east, rising beyond the coastal mountains, thick, dark clouds of smoke from the burning granaries were drifting high into the stratosphere, staining the sunset an ugly, bruised purple.

Her divine light surged, flaring violently around her fists, but it felt hollow.

Against an enemy who challenged her in combat, she could unleash celestial fury. Against an assassin, she could strike them down with divine lightning. But how was she supposed to use divine magic against a strategy that refused to meet her in battle? You could not smite a famine. You could not turn holy fire against an empty grain sack.

She spun around, her golden eyes blazing with desperation as she locked onto the empty, robotic gaze of Ayanokoji.

"Ayanokoji!" Viona screamed, her voice cracking with fury and terror. "How much food does an army require?! What is their timeline?! Tell me how we feed the legions!"

Ayanokoji stood stiffly, his left arm held rigid by the black Torment Band, his dull, crimson-tinted eyes staring past her through the silk curtains.

"An army of sixty thousand men in combat footing consumes roughly ninety tons of dry food and one hundred eighty thousand liters of potable water per day, Master," Ayanokoji replied in a smooth, emotionless monotone. "With the regional silos destroyed, the transport bridges severed, and the coastal salt stores erased, the surrounding provinces will experience acute caloric collapse within ten days. By day fourteen, rations will drop below maintenance levels. By day twenty-one, combat cohesion among regular legionnaires will decline to zero."

He tilted his head slightly, the red gemstone on his wrist pulsing faintly in rhythm with his heartbeat.

"The United States military has not engaged in a single melee encounter," Ayanokoji added flatly. "Yet, without firing a shot at the Aegis, they have achieved the operational equivalent of an unconditional siege. In twenty days, this army will not be able to swing a sword."

Viona’s hand lashed out.

SLAP!

Her palm struck Ayanokoji’s cheek with enough divine force to send a shockwave through the pavilion, snapping his head to the side. A small trickle of dark blood ran from the corner of the boy’s mouth, but his expression did not change. He did not flinch. He did not blink. He simply turned his head back, his lifeless eyes staring through her as if she were made of thin air.

Viona’s hand trembled.

The silence inside the pavilion was absolute. Outside on the cliffs, sixty thousand men stood in cold, iron armor, unaware that the food meant to keep them alive had just turned to smoke on the wind.