"How can there be so many monsters?"
"Is this a monster siege? It feels more like a war between NPCs."
"Look — the guards around the perimeter have had their levels reduced!"
Everyone stared at the flood of orcs pouring out of the forest, their scalps tingling. The level-100-plus guards of Millen Forest Town had somehow been knocked down to level 70, and even the squad leader was only level 75.
Those levels made everyone's hearts sink.
Level-70 NPCs could exert absolutely no suppression over level-50 or level-60 orcs. On the contrary, trying to hold Millen Forest Town with barely two thousand NPCs was nothing but a pipe dream.
The hope they had placed in the NPCs evaporated in an instant, sending every major guild into a panic.
"Guild Master, the orc numbers are far too great. With Millen Forest Town's defenses, we can't hold it — should we pull out right now?" Liu Qianqian swept a wide arc with her observation skill, her expression grim.
Among the massive horde, the weakest were Special Elites. Scattered among them were not a few Giant Orcs at the Grand Lord rank and Orc War Generals at the High Grand Lord rank. Millen Forest Town was being attacked from three sides, each led by a level-65 Legendary Orc General.
This level of fighting power was simply not something a weakened little town could hope to withstand. What made matters worse was that the town's offensive structures consisted of nothing but arrow towers, while the enemy fielded over a hundred catapults. The gap in combat strength between the two sides was nothing short of despairing. Counting on three hundred thousand elite players who had no unified command to hold back several million orcs was a joke.
"Let's wait and see. If it doesn't work, we prepare to retreat." Xinghe Wangxi was feeling the pressure mount as well.
He had originally assumed this city-defense battle would devolve into a scramble for the boss, but now it looked like merely holding the line would be an achievement — let alone fighting over a Legendary boss. Whoever tried would die.
The other guilds held back and watched as well.
But while everyone was hesitating, over a hundred massive fireballs suddenly streaked across the sky and plummeted toward Millen Forest Town like meteors.
"Watch out! Dodge, now!" The higher-ups of every guild saw it coming and their faces darkened as they barked orders.
Those enormous fireballs were catapult projectiles. If a player was hit, there was only one outcome: death.
Yet even as people tried to dodge, Millen Forest Town was already packed with over three hundred thousand players — there was simply nowhere to go. All they could do was watch the colossal fireballs rain down one after another.
Boom… Boom… Boom…
A cascade of explosions thundered across the entirety of Millen Forest Town.
Every fireball burst apart in midair, each one deflected by the town's defensive magic array. The array trembled violently under the impacts, and cracks appeared in several places, but the flow of mana patched the damage almost as quickly as it formed.
Everyone let out a sigh of relief. If those hundred-plus fireballs had actually landed, the consequences would have been unthinkable.
Yet no sooner had the fireballs been dealt with than waves of orcs and siege engines reached the walls of Millen Forest Town and launched their assault. As a fortified strongpoint, Millen Forest Town's walls had been reinforced with magic runes, giving them a defense even higher than the magical barrier. However, siege engines were designed specifically to destroy walls and gates.
One devastating charge was all it took — the magic lance mounted on the lead siege engine punched clean through the barrier's protection and gouged a scar into the wall.
"All units, listen up! Target the orc siege engines — we cannot let them break the barrier and the walls!" The guild leaders called out their orders the moment they saw it.
The players snapped to action. From the ramparts, countless arrows and spells rained down, bombarding the siege engines and orcs below. Yet both the orcs and the siege engines seemed to be wrapped in some kind of protective layer that drastically reduced all incoming damage. Most hits dealt only a few hundred points of damage, and only a rare few cracked the thousand-point mark.