There was no choice but to activate the Bloodlust Domain. Watching the three hundred-man heavy-armored spear formations closing to within thirty meters,
Just moments earlier, when those heavy spearmen formations had been fifty or sixty meters away, the four cart-mounted crossbows in the two towers had launched an interception volley. Unfortunately, only one massive bolt struck the leftmost hundred-man formation, killing two and wounding three. But the heavy spearmen quickly filled the gaps left by the fallen and continued advancing toward Lorist in tight formation.
The other three bolts left Lorist at a loss whether to laugh or cry. One struck the wall of a house beside the street, dislodging a large chunk of stone as the bolt snapped in two. Another sailed over the heads of the three formations, and screams rang out from behind — though whether anyone had been hit remained unclear. The most dangerous bolt had grazed Lorist's body and struck the blood-soaked ground ahead, punching a large hole through a headless corpse. Lorist was startled, and the guard behind him turned to shout curses at the towers...
This was not due to error. After more than half an hour of sustained firing at maximum load, the bowstrings of the four city-defense crossbows had slackened and the arms had weakened. Bolts landing a dozen meters off target was perfectly normal — one of the inherent drawbacks of old-style city-defense crossbows. The guards operating them couldn't be blamed.
"Worich, when I make my move, carry your wounded companions and run for the stone stairs on the left. Got it?" Lorist took two steps back and called in a low voice to Worich behind the barricade.
Lorist had already assessed the fighting at the stairs on both sides of the gate. On the right, the battle had reached a stalemate — the attacking heavy spearmen and the guards were still locked in combat at the midpoint. Despite hundreds of casualties, over a thousand heavy spearmen remained. On the left, the heavy spearmen had already fought their way up onto the wall itself, making the fighting fiercer and the casualties heavier. Fewer than a thousand heavy spearmen remained on that side.
Lorist didn't know what was happening on the wall, nor that Ross the Fierce Tiger, Malek, and Jost had just coordinated to kill a Great Swordmaster of the Wissia Trading Company. What he needed now was to find an escape route for his guards. Under the current circumstances, his only thought was to activate the Bloodlust Domain — and within the short span of fifteen minutes, first scatter the heavy spearmen formations in front of him, then charge a hundred meters to scatter the enemies still attacking the left-side stairs, covering the retreat of his guards and himself back onto the wall. It wouldn't be easy, but it was the only choice.
"Your Highness, shouldn't we have a vanguard and rearguard to hold them off?" Worich asked.
"No need. Leave everything to me." Lorist shook his head. "Your task is to get the wounded up onto the wall. Leave the rest to me."
The heavy spearmen's formations were drawing ever closer, all three maintaining the same speed and spacing. Lorist understood that the enemy had learned from the destruction of the first formation. The three formations coordinated — one attacked while the other held back, advancing in turns — and he would no longer be able to simply charge into their midst as he had before.
Fifteen meters. Thirteen meters. Eleven meters. Lorist's hand tightened on his sword hilt, veins bulging on the back of his hand. Once the enemy closed to within five meters, the Bloodlust Domain would activate immediately. There was no alternative — the area Lorist could currently cover was limited to a radius of ten meters, lasting at most fifteen minutes. The optimal thrusting distance for the heavy spearmen's hundred-man formation was three meters. Lorist was confident that within that two-meter gap, he would teach these enemies what true despair looked like.
Just as Lorist was about to unleash the Bloodlust Domain, he heard a familiar voice shout: "Fire!"
A piercing whistle passed overhead, followed by a continuous stream of screams from the heavy spearmen formations ahead. The three neatly arranged hundred-man formations had been thrown into complete disarray under the steel crossbow barrage — men tumbling, casualties mounting. At a hundred meters, they were squarely within the most powerful range of the city wall's steel crossbows. The massive iron shields at the front rank were torn open as if made of parchment by the specially crafted bolts, and a single bolt could even pierce through three or four heavy spearmen in succession...
It was a massacre. Lorist exhaled in relief and closed his eyes. Behind him, Worich and the other guards erupted in jubilant cheers. The whistling of bolts overhead continued unabated, the sound carrying further into the distance, and the screams went on without end.
Lorist had to admit that his family's steel crossbows had reached the absolute pinnacle of long-range offensive weapons on the Galentea Continent. They could fire at least ten shots per minute with exceptional range, high accuracy, and devastating power. On an open battlefield, enemies might still deploy massive log-shielded wagons to counter the threat of steel crossbows at range, but in this situation, for the Wissia Trading Company's heavy spearman regiment, the crossbow barrage was simply unsolvable...
When Malek ordered the Flying Tiger Corps soldiers to line up dozens of steel crossbows along the battlements and open fire on the hundred-man heavy spear formations facing Lorist — crossbows that had already been hoisted onto the wall in advance — the Wissia Trading Company's scheme to retake the north gate and wall with a single heavy spearman regiment had already become an inevitable failure.
Had the Wissia Trading Company's heavy spearmen continued pressing for a while longer, Lorist might have suffered some wounds, and his guards would have taken even heavier casualties and losses. But once Malek reached the wall, everything changed. Among the
Malek had come from a military law enforcement background. Known as "Iron Face," he had always been famous in the army for his expressionless demeanor and cold-blooded nature. Years ago, while commanding the garrison at Edelis, the capital of West Degler Province, he had ordered a massacre of the rebelling populace, causing tens of thousands of civilian casualties and earning him the title "Iron-Faced Butcher." Lorist had swept the matter under the rug, and his trust in Malek only grew deeper from then on.
After reaching the wall, Malek first drove back the heavy spearmen who had gained a foothold on the battlements, stabilizing the battle. He then immediately adopted an encircling posture, forcing the Wissia Trading Company Great Swordmaster — who had been locked in fierce combat with Ross the Fierce Tiger — to lose composure and attempt a hasty retreat, only to be struck down by Jost's hidden arrow. Malek then promptly ordered the steel crossbows and their crews, already hoisted onto the wall, to line up along the battlements and fire upon the heavy spear formations in front of Lorist, resolving his crisis in one swift move.
The steel crossbows fielded by the Norton Family were originally mounted on war chariots, with the main load borne by a support pillar underneath. Removing them from the chariots and mounting them on sledges was straightforward — the base structures were nearly identical, and the support pillars could handle the force. The most laughable reason these crossbows, once removed from the sledges and hoisted onto the wall, had been unable to fire was that the stone walkway had no wooden base structure for the support pillars to brace against. Unable to secure the crossbows, the crews that had already reached the wall could do nothing but fume in frustration.
Malek's solution was simple. He ordered the Flying Tiger Corps lancers already on the wall to form groups of four, lie flat on the ground, and grip the support pillars beneath the crossbows to keep them from toppling. He then ordered the firing crews to load and shoot immediately. With that, the tide of battle turned in one fell swoop. The only drawback was that the lancers lying on the ground, bracing the crossbows, were shaken so violently by the recoil that each one gritted his teeth in agony...
As deputy corps commander of the Bedrock Corps and commander of the Crossbow Regiment, Malek had his own expertise in directing steel crossbows. The chaos that had gripped the wall was quickly sorted under his command — clear, orderly, and well-organized. Ross the Fierce Tiger was dispatched to lead a counterattack at the left-side stairs, Jost assisted the guards in defending the right-side stairs, and the lancers and guards arriving on the wall afterward were assigned to help transport bolts and hoist crossbows. All the while, Malek directed the wall's crossbows in their assault. When over a hundred crossbows were lined up along the battlements, the bolts they fired finally formed a storm that swept the entire street before the gate...
When Lorist opened his eyes again, what appeared before him was a tragic forest of bolts. At its base lay row upon row of heavy spearmen corpses stretching all the way to the street corner. Bright red blood had carved several small streams through the filthy snow, flowing silently. The entire street was deathly quiet — only the wailing from around the far corner and the faint moans and pleas for help from the dying...
When Malek ordered the head of the slain Great Swordmaster hung above the gate, the two thousand-plus heavy spearmen at both staircases finally laid down their weapons and raised their hands in surrender. Stripped of their armor and weapons, their task was to clear the corpses from the street, piling the frozen bodies along both sides into two tall, long walls of the dead.
"Your Highness, we arrived too late." Malek and Ross the Fierce Tiger stood before Lorist and performed a knight's chest-salute.
Lorist waved his hand, signaling they needn't stand on ceremony. "You did well. Now let's figure out how to open the gate below. Also — Reidi, El, and Great Swordmaster Hughes — how are things going at the towers on their sections of the wall? Send reinforcements immediately."
When Doleus outside the gate gathered all the soldiers waiting to enter and had them collect snow to build snow bricks, piling a ramp up to the height of the wall so that large forces could finally climb up, Lorist, Ross the Fierce Tiger, and Malek combined their strength to sever the uppermost iron gate bar within half an hour. The gate swung open. Doleus collapsed onto the snow ramp and muttered, "Are they trying to kill us here or what..."
The entry of the Norton Family's main force into the city did not mean the Wissia Trading Company was willing to surrender quietly. On the contrary, the alarm bells of Fedeliga's royal city rang without cease and horns blared without interruption. Around the few hundred meters near the north gate that the Norton forces had seized, the Wissia Trading Company's troops began erecting street barricades, driving residents from their homes, and converting their houses into small defensive strongholds. At the same time, having assessed the enemy's strength, the Wissia Trading Company began rallying reinforcements and reserve forces, marching them toward the north gate.
The Flying Tiger Corps, having entered the city, launched two more assaults under Ross the Fierce Tiger and Doleus against the enemy lines before their reinforcements could arrive, seizing two additional city blocks. But in a desperate bid to halt the Flying Tiger Corps' advance, the fanatical Wissia Trading Company forces poured massive quantities of fire oil across the northern district and set it ablaze. In an instant, thick smoke billowed and flames leapt skyward across the entire northern district.
"Call off the attack for now. First priority is to evacuate the commoners from the northern district — gather them and move them outside the city. Build snow shelters and tents for them. The Wissia Trading Company may not care about these hundred thousand commoners — they don't even consider them their own people. But we can't neglect them. After all, they are our subjects." Lorist had no choice but to halt the offensive.
Reidi and El had seized nine towers, fighting all the way to the west gate. They might have taken the gate as well, except that when they captured the ninth tower, a garrison guard inside had risen in the night to relieve himself at the far end of the tower passage. When Reidi and El's group infiltrated posing as a patrol, they failed to spot the guard lurking in the shadows. The killing of the sleeping guards gave them away, and the guard who had been relieving himself sounded the alarm horn.
Great Swordmaster Hughes had only managed to seize six towers along the north wall. When attacking the first tower on the east wall, the alarm from Reidi and El's side exposed his position as well. What followed was Great Swordmaster Hughes defending a single tower alone against the attacking Wissia Trading Company forces in a fierce battle. After killing two Gold Swordsmen who had fought their way into the tower, the Wissia forces harbored a deep hatred for the Great Swordmaster within. They sealed the tower's entrances with longbows, released poisonous smoke, and even attempted to set the tower ablaze, but Hughes thwarted every attempt. During this time, over twenty guards tried to reinforce him, but they were all cut down by enemy longbowmen on the wall before they could reach the tower...
Things were similar at Reidi and El's position, though Reidi managed to kill a First-Class Great Swordmaster. That First-Class Great Swordmaster who had charged into the tower killed five guards before facing Reidi. After only a few dozen exchanges, realizing he was outmatched, the Great Swordmaster turned to flee. Reidi pursued him out of the tower and cut him in two, then braved a rain of arrows to fight his way back, taking one arrow each in the shoulder and hip. Only after Lorist's side had secured the situation and dispatched large forces to relieve Reidi, El, and Great Swordmaster Hughes did the Wissia Trading Company forces besieging those two towers finally withdraw.
On the thirty-first of January, 1787 by the Galentea Continent's universal calendar, the Norton Family launched a night raid on the royal city of Fedeliga, capturing the north gate and its wall. The Wissia Trading Company suffered catastrophic losses — two First-Class Great Swordsmen and several Gold Knights killed, their heavy spearman regiment devastated. To prevent the Norton forces from pressing their advantage, the Wissia Trading Company's troops set fire to the residential buildings in the northern district. The blaze burned for three days and two nights, reducing the entire northern district to ash. Tens of thousands of innocent commoners perished or were injured in the fire — a sight too horrible to behold.
...