Ascendance: The Rebirth Of The Unknown Gamer

Marquis Devon Autumnspire awoke late.

He'd stayed up late last night mourning for his dear departed aunt.

He couldn't believe that his family had let that vampire off so easily after what it had done to his family's head.

That vampire had drained his aunt dry, and his family had just humiliated her and sold her as a slave.

This punishment was nowhere near enough.

But there were more important matters to attend to.

Due to the mourning parties being held every night, the manor's food supply had run low, Devon needed to send some servants out to buy food.

But when his servants returned empty handed an hour later, he knew something was happening.

All the merchants and farmers said the same things, they had recieved numerous large orders of food and other essential supplies late yesterday.

These orders were all of differing sizes and were placed by different people, and a little investigation showed that these people were unrelated to each other.

The merchants charged extra and sold, and the farmers followed suit, thinking they could just buy some more food if they needed to.

But early this morning they found their coffers empty and their valuables missing, and those wishing to leave town found a barrier surrounding the whole city.

When the marquis checked his own home he found all his valuables missing and his vault had been looted, his food stores had been thoroughly spoiled.

Whoever did this was both very wealthy and very skilled, and this city had royally pissed him off.

The marquis was very unhappy with the current situation, and became even more frustrated when a report came in from one of his subordinates.

The city's teleportation circle had been sabotaged and the emergency teleportation scrolls stolen.

What's more is that rumours were circulating around the commoners that the marquis and his family were responsible for the food shortage, buying up all the food and hoarding it for themselves after they heard about the imminent attack.

People were even citing the disappearance of all teleportation and communication tools as the marquis making sure that they couldn't call for help.

The only thing marquis Devon could think of is that he and his family were screwed.

All means of travel and communication in or out of the city were cut, and all necessary supplies for siege survival had been bought up.

Even if they made it out of the siege alive, they had no money with which to purchase food.

And the commoners believed that the nobles had all the food and were demanding that food be spread to everyone, but the nobles couldn't give out food they didn't have, and telling the people the truth would only make them seem more suspicious.

The brutality of this attack was obvious at a glance, since almost everybody trapped within the city would undoubtedly die, whether through fighting or starvation.

Those that did survive would probably be arrested and summarily executed should they ever be found by authorities, since cannibalism was a major taboo.

The temporary barrier around the city would last sixty days, and there would likely be no outside assistance.

Bringing a tool capable of breaking the barrier would take a month and a half, and by then the people would be long dead, not to mention that other cities even learning about the siege would be delayed due to lack of communications.

People who were capable of breaking the barriers wouldn't be slumming it in the first realm either, so waiting on help was futile.

Whoever was doing this probably had several backup plans too, especially given his willingness to utilise such a strategy.

This strategy would only work once, since cities would make serious countermeasures after they'd seen it.

Spending such a strategy was the same as telling your opponent how you prefer to play the game.

Such a trick will only work once.

Thus, anyone willing to expend such a trump card strategy would only be willing to do so if they had a backup.

The assumptions being that your opponent is intellegent, but the results of their strategy speak for themselves.

They are smart, and ruthless.

Given that he was going to die, the least marquis Devon Autumnspire could do was write a detailed analysis of how this attack was carried out, so that this tragedy would never be repeated.

Sadly, the marquis's report was burned down along with his mansion two weeks later.

What a tragedy.