Capítulo 124: Chapter 15
Within a couple of days, Ben had buried his fallen soldiers and made arrangements for the wounded in the Hospital. He used what money he had to purchase replacements and took them through the teleport formation to join up with his generals and the main army who were resting in the Conqueror's Castle near the Caegon Dynasty border.
He was unsure if any of Rodara Soldiers who ran from the battle had made it back home to warn the king of the outcome of the invasion. There are hundreds of miles between the caegon border and the Rodara capital. This long distance should prevent word from reaching the Rodara King's ear for some time.
Ben decided to load his Avalon troops into the carriages and ride directly into the Rodara Kingdom to move toward the capital. With the use of his horse and carriages they should stay ahead of the new that their invasion was defeated. Ben wanted to quickly strike at the capital before they had time to bolster their defenses.
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There are two decent sized towns along the route to the Rodara capital city that Ben choose to bypass. There was no need to waste time by stopping to deal with the town guards in those two towns.
Ben wanted to make a blitz straight for the capital, and then they could deal with the town guards of the outer seven Rodara towns at a later time if they choose to resist.
They drove on without stopping for twelve hours and reached the Rodara Capital city just before the sun began to set.
Ben had his troops make camp for the night with plans to attack the city at first light.
He made no attempt to hide their presence and had his men camp only a few hundred yards from the city walls.
Before the sun rose Ben brought out the siege equipment that his men had been training with back on the Dragonshome Training Fields.
The engineers were assigned to four catapults lined up at the Rodara capital city gates. Eight siege towers were lined up in a row at a short distance from the capital city's western walls.
The Avalon troops were given enough time to comfortably wake up and have a decent breakfast before they were assigned to a siege tower they would either help to move toward the wall or ride on the second floor of once it made its way to the walls.
Under the cover of Elven archer arrow volleys, the lumbering siege towers began to slowly move forward. While the siege towers began to move the engineers began to load large rocks onto their catapults.
Ben held the catapults back from attacking until the towers had almost made it to the city walls. His engineers had trained on aiming and aligning the catapults and it only took them a couple of tries to blast the city gates open when they were given the order to fire.
Just as the bridge on the eight siege towers dropped onto the city walls the spearmen hidden inside them slowly marched out with their shields interlocked. As the spearmen marched out to secure the walls, Ben sent his armored mounted knights charging through the destroyed city gates to deal with any defenders in the streets or below the walls.
The armored spearmen quickly established a defensive foothold on the city walls by pushing back the defenders from the siege tower bridges to allow the men in the lower sections to climb up and join them.
It was a continuous wave of Avalon troops climbing the towers from the outer field up through the siege towers and onto the walls.
By the time every Avalon soldier had climbed up through the siege towers to join the fight on the walls the mounted knights had dismounted to also climb the walls from inside the city and attack the defenders from behind.
Ben left his generals in charge of the attack and gathered up his special units to make his move against the royal palace.
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When Ben and his squad made it to the royal palace they were greeted at the gate by a line of defenders and a couple of cultivators of lower stages. The presence of these fifty Half-Giants was enough to keep the palace defenders from directly charging toward them. Ben had his cultivator/magi throw out lightning bolts and chain lightning toward the stationary defenders in an attempt to have them surrender or to eliminate them all together.
The two enemy cultivators were forced to charge out from behind the frightened palace guards in an attempt to stop Ben from wiping them out from a distance, but they were quickly dispatched by the overwhelming amount of cultivators led against them by Ben personally.
A few of the royal palace guards were emboldened by the two cultivators who charged forward. They attempted to join the fight and support their fellow cultivators.
Unfortunately for them the quality of troops Ben sent against them made it a futile effort. The majority of the palace guard chose to surrender after watching Ben's elite squad dispatch their final remaining cultivators.
Only thirty to forty minutes had passed since the siege towers began moving toward the city walls and Ben was already walking his squad cautiously into the royal palace.
Today was the first time they had ever had to fight defenders to get into a royal palace so he was playing it safe by moving slowly forward as they looked for the Rodara King.
They only ran into scattered patrolling palace guards who appeared surprised to see them and were easily captured or dealt with.
The Rodara King did not make it easy for them and had already barricaded himself along with fifty palace guards in his royal quarters.
He and his officials were using the royal quarters as a command post to fight against Ben who had suddenly had shown up outside their walls at sunset yesterday.
They had just received reports the previous day on the strength of the Avalon army and had quickly gathered to make defensive plans to fight them with what little troops they had in reserve but they never expected them to show up so quickly.
Not only had the Avalon troops crossed the entire Rodara Kingdom in a single day they had suddenly entered the royal palace in less than an hour after beginning their attack.
When the large wooden doors to the royal quarters were smashed in everyone gathered inside was startled by the sudden appearance of the lightly armored cultivator/magi squad.
The remaining royal guards made a feeble attempt to defend the royal quarters to no avail. A few quick punches and kicks were all that was needed from Ben's squad to quickly knock out any resistance before anyone could really comprehend what was actually going on.
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Ben was happy with the invasion and had captured the Rodara capital city without losing any of his soldiers. The surrendering defenders were stripped of their weapons and released back into the population.
The Rodara King was shackled and loaded onto a carriage with Avalon troops and sent to be handed off to the Caegon Monarch.
Ben really did not have any ill feelings toward the Rodara King. His merchants had died because of the decision he made to send his cultivators to Woodford City but that wasn't a direct attack aimed at him.
He and his people happened to be targeted by his scheme to incite the Caegon populace. Ben also thought that by allowing the Caegon Monarch to deal with the Rodara King it would help him avoid any future animosity during the transition of power.
From the royal palace of Rodwynne the capital city of Rodara, Ben began to find men and women he could trust to help him govern the Rodara Kingdom. He also began to make drastic improvements to the capital city every night during the temporarily established curfews.
Any loyal family members, palace officials, or military officers who were deemed a threat to the throne were imprisoned or executed. Ben was sure there would still be a few bad apples he missed, but without any true backing or power there isn't much they could do to cause future problems for him.
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Ben soon began replacing the primitive streets with concrete, and heating coils were also placed to prevent winter snow build up. The city walls were replaced with impressive concrete and rebar towers and walls rivaling those built to defend Dragonshome.
He also made use of his moat tool to surround the city that now used an impressive Gatehouse and drawbridge instead of the now destroyed wooden city gates.
When the defenses and infrastructure were improved, he moved on to begin demolishing the commoner's homes in sections and replacing them with Large Houses which provided the occupants with modern amenities.
During this time proper non-system schools were also built for the Rodara region's population. Ben began bringing over a few of his people who had graduated from high school and were willing to move to Rodwynne and work as teachers. These teachers were paid a decent salary and were awarded large estates with servants as an incentive to make the move and educate the people here.
All of these changes were done by Ben to win the people over to his side. He wanted to show them, he would do more, and provide them with a better life than the previous king had.
He had even experimentally allowed the local nobles to remain nobles without stripping them of their titles like he had previously done in the other conquered kingdoms.
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By the time fall came back around Ben had turned twenty years old and he had successfully unified all of Rodara under his rulership. The outer towns were being upgraded and improved along with the dirt roads between the cities and towns.
Daily patrols of veteran mounted Knights were sent out into the wilderness to follow-up leads and rumors of bandits or menacing profound beasts. Anything that would endanger the safety of the Rodara people was gradually eliminated over time.
Ben had now spent a decent amount of time in the Rodara Kingdom taking care of all these things and had learned more about the savage creatures living in the snowy northern regions.
Apparently, the snow-covered region to the north was home to a hostile race of savage beast like men. They could speak a guttural broken form of the common language and live in scattered towns throughout the north.
For some reason, these hostile beasts would remain in the snow region but once it began to snow in the lower southern region of the continent they would begin to make raids into the human kingdoms and empires.
After discovering more about the existence of these beast-men Athena's memory blocks related to them were unlocked. She confirmed these beast men were created by a large pocket of condensed Mana and QI far to the northeast in the snow region.
These creatures were created with Mana that had been infused with the element of Ice. This made their constitutions dependent on cold weather climates. They could survive in a warm climate but it would make it very difficult for them to function.
If one of these creatures were forced to live in a 72 degree Fahrenheit climate it would be the same as placing a human in a 120 degree Fahrenheit climate. You could live but just moving around would be extremely taxing and miserable
The one good thing was Ben would not have to worry about these creatures raiding into Rodara. The Botodor Kingdom to the north gathered troops every winter to eliminate any raiding.
There was a time in the Rodara history when the northern beast-men had raided into Rodara but it only happened a when the kingdoms on this continent were still young and growing.
Ben was now curious about these beast men and wanted to see them for himself, but he had to remain focused on Rodara for the present time before he could run off chasing any new adventures in these new lands.
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