"Children? You targeted children?!" Roshoka's fury overtook his shock. He had been in charge of this city for nearly 25 years, now. He had fought off waves of unfriendly intruders and merciless enemies. He had dealt with criminals sunk deep within the rabbithole of sadism. Naturally, children being harmed wasn't something new to him. But to confine so many at once and setting them on fire still struck him harder than a Super Rank warrior's punch.
Not to mention, all of them belonged to aristocratic families! Their lives were priceless!
"Those kids are the future of my city!" Roshoka roared as he grabbed the smiling human by the neck and hurled him at the wall. The force behind the throw probably broke his spine in multiple places. The human sluggishly slid down and crumpled to the floor, appearing to have fallen unconscious.
Closing his eyes, Roshoka sent a command to his other three clones. This wasn't a job for one person. He had to stay here and interrogate this evil creature. Since the enemy could infiltrate the core city, burning down nurseries would hardly be their only choice of attack.
Two minutes later, all three of his totem clones sent back a message saying that they had neutralized the threat. The spell array protecting the fire was gone. And a majority of the children had been saved.
A majority. The phrase stung the Goblin Duke like a red-hot iron rod. Kicking the unconscious human in the rib vengefully, Roshoka cast a basic healing spell on him before death could claim his soul.
The guards propped the mage up as Roshoka towered over him.
"How else did you plan to attack my city?"
"Did you put out the fire already? That's an impressive speed," the mage said in a weak tone, and then he looked up at Roshoka with the same mirthless smile.
"It would've been a lot easier to do the same in the outer city, where no nobles' children are being raised. But that wouldn't have affected you as much as it does now, eh?"
A black smokey circle of fire formed over Roshoka's palm. This was the manifestation of his Rare Grade Spell- Searing Rot. The mage's eyes flickered with the light of recognition as Roshoka's palm reared back a few inches before slapping the circle of fire right into his throat.
Screams erupted from the deepest pit of his lungs. The mage's body bent into a ball from the pain of having his skin, muscle and bones burning off layer by layer. The screams eventually turned into hoarse outbursts of air as the injury became more lethal.
Roshoka cast another healing spell, and this time he didn't put enough effort to heal him fully. While the mage was shivering in pain, the guards forced him to sit back up.
"Answer the question. What else is included in your plan of attack?"
"Your clones must be busy dealing with the aftermath of the fire. They didn't leave your precious tower unsupervised, right?" the mage said between pain-filled coughs.
Roshoka's heart shook as he sent another hurried message to his clones, urging them to rush back to the tower.
But the feedback he got from them made him frown. The towers were fine.
The mage seemed capable of reading his gaze. Again, he smiled infuriatingly, saying, "I just needed them back in one place, the furthest place from the walls."
This time, even Roshoka heard the commotion. He could sense the vibrations of what could only be explosives going off one after one. The walls of the prison shook from continuous impacts throughout the city.
"The filthy commoners will be graced with a chance to enter the core city and have a look around. Conveniently for them, the population of the entire core city is concentrated near certain nurseries. Surely, the lack of law enforcers around the broken entrances won't encourage unsavory lowlives to commit crimes..."
Teeth gritted, Roshoka simultaneously informed his clones and sent the guards to warn the officials nearby. The prison facility naturally didn't lack law enforcers and patrolling teams. Most of them were sent out immediately to guard the broken entrances. There were also a significant number of wall sentries, so Roshoka didn't fear that the situation described by the mage would come true.
"What's next? You've made me send out most of my manpower from the prison. Any plans of invading this weakly protected facility now?" He asked the mage, who shook his head in amusement.
"No, you're here, wise and powerful Duke. How can this prison be weakly protected with your presence? But you should really consider the fact that the attackers don't need to follow your actions. It's really the other way."
Roshoka silently sent an order to his military base, summoning his best legions without caring for secrecy. Then he spent another minute torturing the human on the border of death. The session was interrupted by a message from one of his clones.
Two hospitals inside the core city had been infiltrated. Many sick, weak, and old nobles were being killed by what appeared to be hundreds of totemized beasts rampaging through the buildings. How they got in was a mystery.
"It has been a long time since I felt this..." He mumbled as he sat on the ground facing the human mage. "You've managed to deal enough damage to the foundation of my city to make me remember the days I spent in wars that were beyond my power to win. Tell me, mage, were those three worthless beastmen worth all this? Do you think you can leave this prison alive now?"
A burst of energy seemed to seep into the mage's countenance hearing his lament.
"What are you even talking about, Duke? The destruction of your city is still a far-off achievement. But if I don't leave this place alive and well, the situation is only going to escalate! This is just the beginning!"
"Regardless, my city will not be conquered so long as I am alive," Roshoka said.
"Who said anything about conquests?" The mage laughed derisively. "A flattened ruin can still call itself the winner of a battle. But you, my Duke, shouldn't be concerned with battles, right? Because you have a real war ahead, and a ruined city won't help you win it!"
As evening approached, the chaos throughout the city got worse. No matter how hard Roshoka's men pursued the miscreants, they always seemed one step ahead, leaving trails of destruction and death wherever they escaped. His three totems could barely deal with the aftermath of each large scale attack as the numbers increased and tragedies piled up. The legions that had been trained for a harsh war in open coastal regions didn't fare very well within the confines of narrow streets and brick walls. A few spies were caught, but they committed suicide with the decisiveness of veteran assassins.
Roshoka continued to torture more information out of the mage, going as far as searching his memories under the risk of suffering spiritual corruption. But it seemed that the spies had been cautious enough to not give the mage any concrete details about their plans.
As the sunlight began to wane with dusk's approach, Roshoka walked out of the interrogation chamber, leaving a pile of rotting meat and bones inside. He hadn't made the mage's death easy, that was his only consolation.
Standing on the prison's roof, Roshoka felt a crushing sense of defeat as he watched a shroud of smoke covering the entire outer city. The fiery emblem he had raised on top of his towers to celebrate the past victory was no longer visible. The streets were empty, save for small patrolling teams rushing headlessly in search of abnormalities. The thousands of citizens hiding in their homes knew they weren't safe.
And most importantly, Roshoka's decade long preparation for the war, including his stockpile of resources, had been annihilated.
He eventually realized why he had failed so miserably. His suspicion had formed when the mage had implied that he knew about Roshoka's future plans. And the following interrogations, the repeated failures of his well-trained army, and the perfect exploitation of every weakness his city had sealed the suspicion.
Only in a nightmare would an enemy be capable of grasping all of his weak points so thoroughly and turn his world upside down in one go. Roshoka had foreseen each and every incident that had happened today while assessing the city's defense throughout the last 30 years. But most of these gaps were not realistically remediable, and he had left things up to fate after taking what precautions he could.
"This dream divination spell has gone out of control," he muttered faintly. And the world went dark.