Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

'I was the one who abandoned him all along.'

Isera's face turned still…

Only for the images within her pendant to start to change.

The battle at the wall continued to go in the empire's favor, with more and more of their legionaries climbing up the wall. Bit by bit, they started to establish strong points where they held the patriarchate's troops, allowing safe access to all those climbing the walls behind them.

One by one, more and more imperial soldiers climbed up the wall, expanding the holding points to the sides and slowly creating sections of the wall that were fully in their hands.

'Sound the retreat, you dumbass!'

Not even knowing who was in charge of the Lunagar's defense, Isera could only wish for them to showcase any sort of damn intelligence! Enjoy more content from empire

Along with the changing state of her emotions, the leak of her mana continued to surge outwards, feeding into the near-perfect mana void at the bottom of the starlight trap.

The girl could tell something changed.

In the over four years total that she spent locked on this plain and a total of two years, since she reached the bottom of the trap, this whole place remained unchanged.

Walking a step toward the barrier would mean permanently decreasing one's distance from it. And no matter how hard one tried, they could never regain the space they so carelessly would lose.

There was nothing on the other side of the barrier, just a plain stretching out endlessly and perfectly uniformly as if the barrier itself reflected the image of the empty plain at whoever stared at it.

And due to the absolute lack of mana in this space, one couldn't even create spellforms, for there would be no free mana to act as the cornerstone of the form.

But…

Isera observed things on the other side of the barrier.

And she continued to pump her mana out into the atmosphere, without any resistance of the void that would usually snatch and disperse it so thin, it would pretty much vanish out of existence.

For this reason alone, the spell on her pendant simply couldn't work. It didn't work back in the normal parts of the world already, but in a place fully devoid of mana, there were only more reasons why it simply shouldn't work, to begin with!

And yet….

The situation changing on the other end of the spell imbued into her pendant continued to change.

More and more of the fortress's first wall fell to the imperial hands, with Banjay or whoever was in the siege still refusing to issue an order to retreat.

'Come on! It's the weakest of the wall, so what's the issue with losing it?'

Isera could tell that the situation wasn't good.

The uniforms of the imperial legionaries, their armor, their swords…

They were all too damn clean and sparkly, indicating those people joined the war only recently.

And even with her information about the state of the war being five years old or more… There were some things that Isera could guess.

'Some sort of rebellion had to occur, for Jay wouldn't hold back for years before taking his revenge.'

Trying to overcome the pain of watching her countrymen get cut down left and right with no commander doing anything about it, Isera tried to focus her thoughts elsewhere.

'The war with the empire had to erupt. I've heard the news of this conflict brewing ever before I reached the edge of this damned plain.'

Taking a deep breath, Isera forced her eyes back onto the pendant.

Now that she broke her taboo of actually using her memento, she simply couldn't allow herself to ignore the truth just because it wasn't nice or what she wanted to happen.

And so, Isera continued to watch how all the defense of the first wall turned into just a bunch of survivors. They were truly fighting to the last time, doing their absolute best to keep any sort of cohesion despite their units breaking down again and again.

Whenever the patriarchate's soldiers would gather, the imperials would follow, eager to quell the last bits of the resistance.

But as those makeshift units of soldiers would retreat, by the time they were broken into pieces, their soldiers would simply retreat even further up the ramp, narrowing the space that the imperials could make use of to attack and solidifying their ranks with soldiers from other, broken units.

This retreat wasn't something that anyone ordered, but a natural way in which soldiers tried to save their lives on the battlefield when left with no option to actually retreat.

'Wait, don't tell me…'

With her eyes opening up wide, Isera had to watch how the number of the defenders of the first part of the fortress decreased further and further… Their compatriots on the higher walls continued to cast all sorts of projectiles down at the imperials, ranging from arrows and spears to stones and bolts and at random, broken pieces of furniture ending.

Whatever had weight and would fall quickly was a good choice of a projectile to throw down the wall. And even if a single chair claimed the life of a single imperial soldier… That was still one less legionare for the patriarchate to fight.

Still, in spite of Isera's hopes, there seemed to be no rescue coming or way to retreat opening even for the last few survivors that ended up at the bottom of the fortress. But their great determination ended up causing the already battered imperial forces to stagger more and more, struggling to push past the last few of the defenders.

The approach ramp would turn narrower the closer it came to the gate of the second wall, allowing a mere hundred or so men to stall an army of several thousand imperials that managed to scale the walls and drop down on their other side.

Out in the distance, Isera could see the imperials working hard to unlock and open the gate, allowing fresh reinforcements to come and complete the last push.

'How could they abandon their troops like that?!' Isera screamed out in her soul, sending her mana into a frenzy and only ending up feeding more of her power into the emptiness of the surroundings.

But as she shook her head in the fit of powerless anger, Isera noticed a small, familiar shape cut through the air, several tens of feet off her line of approach to the barrier.

The shape grew closer and closer, swerving heavily toward the barrier… Only to then somehow move away from it, as if the pulling force that kept everyone confined to this place didn't apply to it.

And before long, the shape grew out to be the size of a small, trade barque that Isera used to see on the bigger rivers of the Patriarchate.

A ship that sailed through the air, as opposed to the water like a proper ship or ground like a carriage. It sailed through the air before raising its front tip as it slowed down and came to a complete halt, some god few tens of steps away from the girl.

'Wait, if those are really the ones I saw before, on the other side of the barrier…'

All out of nowhere, the importance of the pendant and what it was showcasing lost their meaning.

Still in the air, the ship turned around before lowering itself all the way down onto the plain. Then, a square shape suddenly appeared on its otherwise smooth, round surface, before revealing itself to be some sort of stairs on a swivel that opened an easy path between the insides of this airship and the ground.

And out of the insides of this magical ship, a strangely dressed man came out with a calm yet obviously wary expression on his face.

'Wait, what about…'

Despite how much she wanted to make use of this opportunity to potentially leave this accursed place, Isera couldn't resist her desire to look down into her pendant again…

Only to see a whole crowd of people rushing at her from the very same direction she came from after leaving the camp…

And as her eyes reached down to the pendant, she could see that the first level of the fortress…

Has somehow devolved right back into intense fighting, with all the imperial formations broken and legionaries now engaging in personal fights, one-against-one, one-against-two, or even one-against-three.

They were fighting… And for all intents and purposes, they were losing, taken by the chaos of the sudden change that Isera missed.

And only one question hung over the girl's head.

'What the hell happened there?!'