How were the Ibasans even able to blow up our wall to begin with?
Was the question on everyone’s mind? And we soon found an answer. While Felicia was digging through the rubble, she found the end of a long dirt tunnel reinforced with wooden beams along its side.
A Tunnel. They had dug a tunnel all the way from their main camp, hidden behind some trenches, to our wall. But just removing some dirt beneath it wouldn’t have been enough. They must have packed it with explosives to cause such an explosion.
Indeed, we found a significant amount of explosive residue and the burned remains of their fuse in the tunnel.
But how were they able to dig all the way to the wall in just five days?
A Tunnel of this size would have taken way longer than five days to dig. At least, if one looks at it from a conventional mindset. However, this world was familiar with magic and had people who could wield it. The Ibasans must have had an earth magician who was at least as good as Felicia, or even better, on their side.
But why had they not simply dug a tunnel right inside the Fort? They would have been able to kill us all in our sleep, and that without any of us noticing.
But no matter how long I discussed it with Jack or Felicia, we couldn’t unravel the mystery. All we could agree on was that if the Ibasans had played their cards a bit smarter, The Fortress, Fort Rosedorn, that had stood against them for hundreds of years, would have fallen in just five days.
From that day on, Jack increased the lookouts, ordering them to keep looking for Ibasans carrying dirt throughout their camp. One of the walls exploding into rubble had affected him quite badly. His father had given him the responsibility, and he had to uphold the trust that was placed in him.
The Ibasans had completed their trenches, so any further digging would be rather obvious. Felicia and the other two earth mages, meanwhile, were ordered to work in shifts and look for any “weird” movements underground.
I tried to keep working as if nothing had happened, but I was still pretty shaken up by the whole affair. Not only was our wall breached, but I was also at least indirectly responsible for all the Ibasan soldiers who died in their effort to charge the Fort.
I tried to calm myself down by remembering that if I hadn’t done it, many on our side would have died as well. But no matter how much sense it made in my head, my heart was still in turmoil.
From the sixth day onward, everyone was a bit more on edge, and I finally didn’t feel alone in my concerns. Not that it made anything better, of course, if it wasn’t just me who was freaking out, it actually made it way worse. The tension was palpable, and our once secure fortress now felt like a fragile shell. Still, I have to admit it at least felt a bit satisfying to see a tiny nick in their stone-hard beliefs.
But unlike our fear of the whole fortress being tunneled. There wasn’t a sighting of another tunnel until one fateful night of the twelfth day. For this one, I wasn’t even awake, though. Unlike last time, there was no explosion this time.
This time, they had dug a tunnel all the way towards our wine cellar. They were able to murder a kitchen boy who was just supposed to bring a bottle of wine to the always drunk Lord Breesby, and two Maids who were making their rounds.
And they would have gone further if not for the same Drunk Lord Breesby, who had come looking for why his order had taken so long, stumbling into them. The Drunk fool almost died as well when he fell right onto an Ibasan spear, but he screamed like a dying pig waking up the whole Fort.
I never thought that I would one day be saved by this drunken fool, but beggars can’t be choosers. However, any kind of respect he had earned himself through this act instantly vanished when he, drunk as a sailor, retold his heroic deed.
We were even able to make our first prisoner. It was the Ibasan whom Lord Breesby had nearly crushed beneath himself. Poor guy…