Shi went towards the riverside that had become his training ground as of late and sat down to think about the nature of gravity. In his previous world, scientists thought that gravity was mass pressing against the fabric of space-time. The depressed space-time would attract smaller masses since they didn't leave as much of a depression as the larger mass.
There was a common experiment that Shi had seen, where people stretched a piece of fabric across an area and put marbles and weights on it. It produced the same effects as the universe only with friction stopping orbits from going on for too long. So all Shi had to do was make a depression or somehow negate the effects of other depressions on himself.
Shi willed his mana to have unimaginable mass and felt himself grow a little heavier. Shi grasped at the force pulling him towards the earth with his mana and willed it to ease off, Shi felt himself lighten considerably, losing about half of his weight. After that, Shi's core was out of mana so he took a rest. Over the next 9 months, Shi refined his gravity techniques, being able to increase the gravity for everything around him by up to 10 times while keeping himself under normal gravity.
He could also make anything go into zero-gravity and even form a gravity source above something to pull it upwards. Shi had turned 9 by this point and had reached the middle stages of yellow core so he headed back to the barracks to ready his men. "Alright men, it's about time we took Castle Saiban, pack your sh*t, and let's go." Shi announced when he made it to the barracks.
The men quickly packed their stuff and were ready to head out in only 5 minutes or so. Shi brought Seizon and Daisan to his side and they headed out towards Castle Saiban. After a few days on the road, they set up camp in plain view of the castle but out of bowshot. Shi wanted to intimidate the lord of the castle and see what he would decide to do with an invading force right outside his gates.
Shi, Daisan, and Seizon sat around a fire waiting for something to happen but nobody in the castle dared to come out. "Seizon, what can you tell me about the man who rules this castle?" Shi asked, more to kill time than out of any real curiosity. "His name is Kaunto Eikyo, he's a count but he comes from an extremely influential family.
The Eikyo family has direct ties to the current emperor of Japan, with the current head of the Eikyo family being the emperor's brother. Kaunto is only a minor member of the family and they don't care too much about him. As long as it will be costly to them, they probably won't come after you for killing him unless they sense weakness from you.
He's well known as a coward but he's managed to reach the beginning stages of green core. This isn't that impressive though because he's in his late 50s and has reached his peak." Seizon explained, taking a bite of the meat they had been cooking. "What kind of manpower are we going to be dealing with?" Shi asked, taking a bite as well.
"They have about 250 men, 200 of them footsoldiers and the other 50 archers. There are also 3 yellow core mages, with miss Shiryoku being one of them. Shiryoku is well known for her mastery of the basic elements, being able to wield wind and earth better than some blue core mages. The other two yellow core mages are the Yami twins, both are accomplished in shadow magic, being able to hide themselves well.
They are accomplished assassins, but their abilities of stealth can be easily negated by someone of the same level core as them as long as the person is on guard so they won't be sent out until we're distracted by something. Kaunto himself is accomplished in body strengthening magic and spear work. He can increase his defense to the point where you need to use magical weapons or a strong spell to hurt him and he gets an increase in his speed but it's not a huge one." Daisan said.
Shi nodded and decided to get ready for the coming day. In the morning, Shi got the troops in order and headed out to the wall by himself, war cry activated. Some of the archers shot at him but with his increased reaction time and speed he easily dodged them. He even caught some of them to scare the archers as much as possible.
He unslung his bow and proceeded to kill any archer who poked his head up above the wall long enough to take a shot at Shi. After he killed about 10 of them, they wisened up and stopped trying to shoot at him. Shi took the time that this gained him to form a fire dragon and a tornado.
He sent these up onto the ramparts to rampage and quickly retreated before any of the men could retrieve a serious mage. By the time one of the yellow mages came, Shi noticed that it was Shiryoku, it was already too late. A total of 30 men had died, all archers, leaving the walls guarded by only 20 archers. Shi stood within bowshot of the wall still, bow at the ready in case anyone wanted to give him a free shot.
"Miss Shiryoku, long time no see." Shi called out to the ramparts. Shiryoku looked down at Shi, a look of disgust on her face. "If you weren't an overambitious idiot, you could have easily taken this castle in a year or two. I would have even helped you, now you risk too much for no reason.
I've heard of your accomplishments with the nearby villages, if you had just trained for an extra year or so and the garrison here would have suffered and you could have broken through into green core. Then it would have been relatively easy to take this castle. I had high hopes for you boy, but you have disappointed me." She scolded Shi, shaking her head.
"That's funny, because I think I can take this castle relatively easily right now." Shi called up to her, smiling broadly. Before Shiryoku could react, the remaining 20 archers fell dead, arrows sprouting from their chests. Before Shi had headed out, he had told Daisan to take the archers to a small hill that Shi had made the night before that gave a view of the ramparts.
Shi had distracted the men on the walls by forcing them to keep their heads down in order to not die. This gave Daisan and his men plenty of time to reach the hill and set up a volley that would kill all of the archers on the walls. Shi grinned, and made a mountain under the gate, shaking parts of the walls and blowing the gates clean off their heavy metal hinges. The true battle was about to begin.