The ball of light reached the clouds, and then it transformed in numerous spiraling rays of light which lit brightly the night sky. After a brief moment, the light rays directed where she previously felt that there was some sort of repulsive force at an incredible speed. The location was a towering mountain at least two thousand meters tall, that is almost the height of Mount Gerlic.

The rays of lights exploded, creating ripples in the air visible to the naked eye. Although this could be considered a large scale attack, it didn’t possessed a destructive aura, instead, it had the power of dispelling illusion and breaking barriers.

The air around the towering mountain started to distort and convulse with each successive ray of light that exploded near it. Cracks started to form in the air, and suddenly, as if a giant glass screen was broken, the scenery which depicted the tall mountain shattered in tens of millions of illusory pieces.

The moment the real scenery which was behind the illusion was revealed, not even Sile could hide an expression of extreme astonishment, and even fear. There was no mountain, however, there was something huge obstructing their vision. If you called that a tower, then nothing else in the world could be considered a tower. If you called that a fortress, then even Salzem castle had to be called from now on a house.

The imposing structure did not reach the previous height that the illusory mountain had, but it was at least half its size. Just the imposing wall that was at least forty meters in height, who knows how tick, and that spanned at least two kilometers in both sides was enough to make the scalps of everybody present to go numb.

Sile caught her holy symbol and clenched her fist tightly. She didn’t have time to hesitate and to tremble in fear, a paladin would always be valiant even at the moment of its death! She closed her eyes for a brief instant, and at the next moment an incredible resolve appeared once again in her eyes which then turned in an aura that pacified the minds of everyone. “This is the enemy of humanity,” Sile yelled, turning to look at the army which were raising to their feet one by one, “This is not a war between two kingdoms to see who has the right to govern over some lands, this is a battle for our own survival!”

“Retreating now means forfeiting our own lives, and the lives of all our loved ones, retreating now means the annihilation of the world as we know it, retreating now is a fate worse than death itself!”

“I can’t be certain of whether we will succeed or not, but if we retreat, we are doomed to fail! If the gods wants us to perish and let the demons to take over the world, we still have to fight until the bitter end! But if there is a tiny strand of hope for us, we will definitely grasp it and bet our lives on obtaining the victory right here right now, on this battlefield!”

“We are not an army fighting behind the banner of the Holy Empire of Ivalice, we are the humankind… fighting… for our freedom!” These last worlds were yelled by Sile with a fervent tone, they were uttered from her soul.

“FOR OUR FREEDOM!” The whole army roared in unison, a roar that reached the heavens.

The hesitation and fear were erased completely from the heart of each and every soldier. They instantly started to organize themselves in brigades, battalions, and companies in an extremely orderly fashion, the sight of two hundred thousand elite soldiers was extremely astonishing.

Without waiting anymore, they started to march towards that seemingly impenetrable towering fortress, with the hope that a miracle would occur. Additionally, Sile sent a group of messengers to relay the information of the location of the enemy’s base.

After marching for three hours, they were two kilometers away from the demonkin’s fortress, each step further magnified the majesty of that fortress by several fold. Two hundred thousand elite soldiers was definitely a sight to behold, but in front of a fortress of this caliber, they seemed extremely lacking.

It was obvious that at this point the guards of the fortress should have noticed them long ago. After stablishing a vanguard point for the army, Sile saw a pair of figures calmly marching towards them. Her eyes flickered for a moment, and then she summoned her warhorse and sped off haste in order to meet them.

The two figures and Sile met at a halfway point from the fortress and the army, they stopped until there was a distance about ten meters of each other. The ones who came from the fortress were wearing hooded robes and it was impossible to see their faces clearly.

Upon stopping in front of each other, there was a momentarily silence, as if each one was seizing the other party’s strength. “Who do you think you are in order to break our illusion barrier and intruder in our territory like a bunch of idiots in a circus? Are all of you tired of living?” Said one of the hooded figures with a hoarse voice filled with a tone of arrogance and contempt.

“Who am I?” Answered Sile, looking towards the one who spoke. She remained silent for an instant and then her gaze turned towards the second figure, her eyes had a complicated expression for an instant while she remembered the question Lengsat asked her before parting ways, ‘Do you have what it takes if you have to deal the final blow?’, She silently answered once again the question in her heart, and then her voice was filled with dignity, “Why don’t you ask him who I am?” Sile said while pointing in an accusatory manner at the second figure, “Because I’m pretty sure you haven’t forgotten me, Isiurem Sicer, or should I still call you master Isiurem?”