Chương 120: The War of Siege and Defense (Part 2)

"Keep the formation tight! The absolute second the Cloud Ladders anchor, storm the battlements without a single moment of hesitation! The first warrior to step onto the stone shall be elevated to the peerage!!" The echoing roars of the knightly class and minor nobles rippled across the staging lines, driving the common conscripts into a feverish state of unrest. Transforming from an absolute nobody into a highborn entity addressed by the masses as "My Lord" was an evolutionary leap worth gambling one's life for.

The human shock infantry braced their shoulders against the massive Cloud Ladders. Beneath the central carriage of each vehicle sat an internal framework of heavy wooden driving stakes, allowing upwards of sixty men to leverage their kinetic strength from within the belly of the apparatus. While the flanking wooden mantlets provided a baseline of physical cover, factoring in the external labor details, a single Cloud Ladder required over 120 soldiers to successfully drive its weight forward.

To mitigate the threat of incendiary counters, the entire wooden framework of the ladders had been heavily coated in thick river mud. The specialized fireballs of the Goblin Incinerators would find it mechanically impossible to incinerate a ladder chassis on approach; the human engineers had meticulously addressed every conceivable tactical vulnerability.

Of the forty Cloud Ladders deployed across the field, twenty were directed toward the western ramparts to spearhead the primary assault vector, while the remainder split to pressure the northern, southern, and eastern perimeters. The eastern line featured the structurally compromised wall breach, making it the focal point for five specialized assault ladders. Evaluating the enemy's deployment matrix, Li Qinwu distributed his garrison forces across the high battlements.

He personally assumed command of the western gatehouse to check the enemy's main effort, anchoring his sector with 500 elite Punisher Army musketeers and 500 heavy plate infantrymen. Goblin Mao was dispatched to secure the eastern gatehouse, spearheading his defense with 200 elite Punisher veterans and 500 heavy infantry. Goblin Bow was given the critical task of holding the compromised wall breach, commanding 300 Punisher musketeers and 500 heavy plate infantrymen.

The northern and southern perimeters were assigned to two Level 5 military Barracks Captains, each commanding a standard detachment of 100 Punisher veterans and 500 heavy infantrymen. The four active field artillery pieces were distributed evenly across the fortress layout, with one cannon anchored at each primary gatehouse to serve as a high-velocity insurance policy. To pad his defensive lines, Li Qinwu deployed 3, 000 newly spawned Goblin Spearman conscripts.

Equipped with an ad-hoc assortment of short spears, wooden bucklers, hand-axes, mismatched chainmail, hardened leather hides, padded cloth gambesons, and standard kettle hats, their raw combat efficacy remained theoretically unverified. However, having completed several months of rigorous, system-driven basic training, they possessed a functional grasp of military discipline.

A fraction of these conscripts were distributed along the open battlements, while the vast majority were concentrated heavily behind the primary gates and the open breach. Within the reserve training encampments sat an additional 3, 000 goblin recruits. Because their training cycle stood at less than a single month, Li Qinwu willfully chose to keep them withheld from the active front lines, forcing them to continue their drilling sub-surface.

Deploying green, unconditioned recruits into an active meat grinder was an invitation for catastrophic operational failure. If a green unit experienced a psychological break and fled the field, the resulting panic could easily compromise the morale of the veteran units. Furthermore, a proper siege was a test of temporal endurance; the investment could easily drag on for six months to a full year.

It was far more efficient to keep them training until they crossed the mandatory three-month threshold before introducing them to live fire. Additionally, utilizing the 500 smoothbore muskets previously delivered by Goblin Pao, Li Qinwu had selected the finest specimens from his newly matured Great Goblins to form five independent Musketeer Militia Companies.

The raw lethality of these militia units was noticeably inferior to the line infantry of the Punisher Army, primarily because they lacked the fluid muscle memory of firearm handling and had not been afforded the same heavy ammunition expenditure during target practice. These units were kept off the high battlements, stationed instead as a tactical reserve around the interior of the primary gatehouses to serve as an anti-sabotage force.

As for the 2, 000 active members of the Municipal Gendarmerie, Knight Leo assumed absolute command over their lines. Their singular operational objective was the maintenance of absolute civic order within the urban interior, operating in direct coordination with Miss Hana and her specialized human system units. Following successive population contractions, the interior civilian mass of Poloia had leveled out at roughly 40, 000 residents.

A massive wave had fled when Li Qinwu initially stormed the gates, a significant portion had been systematically liquidated during his experience-farming operations, and successive waves had leaked out during the initial announcements of the incoming siege. The remaining 40, 000 represented the absolute dregs of the societal hierarchy—the vast majority consisting of institutionalized slaves and destitute laborers on the precipice of debt-bondage.

The Kingdom of Thasos was a deeply entrenched, highly oppressive slave state. Within a major metropolis like Poloia, which originally boasted a population of 150, 000, filtering out the upper and merchant echelons revealed a staggering underclass of tens of thousands of active slaves and indentured serfs.

Li Qinwu resolved that once the besieging host was successfully repelled, he would orchestrate a massive population relocation project, marching these tens of thousands of souls back into the sovereign territory of the Alliance. Infusing his core territory with such a massive demographic base would exponentially elevate the Alliance's baseline resilience against macroeconomic risks.

For the immediate moment, however, this unconditioned civilian mass represented a volatile internal security risk that required constant surveillance. Li Qinwu established a mandatory military exclusion zone extending 300 meters from the base of the fortress walls into the residential blocks, authorizing the immediate arrest and detention of any civilian entity attempting to cross the perimeter. With both factions finalized, the grand war of siege and defense officially commenced.

Watching the agonizingly slow advance of the Cloud Ladders and the supporting infantry screens across the open plain, Li Qinwu turned to his line officers and issued a calm, measured command.

"Hold your fire until the enemy closes the distance to fifty paces. Once they cross that threshold, authorize independent fire at will." There was no telling how long this siege would endure; preserving their powder and lead reserves was paramount. His directive was barked across the line by subordinate officers, echoing into the ears of every rifleman. The system musketeers adjusted their stocks, bracing their barrels against the stone battlements as they tracked the oncoming human columns.

The human soldiers guiding the chassis advanced with profound anxiety, their minds hyper-focused on the anticipated thunder-blasts of the demon's specialized ordnance. Yet, even as they pushed the heavy frameworks past the 200-meter marker, the stone battlements above remained dead silent. Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. Standing adjacent to the commander, Goblin Boom offered a low reminder: "Boss, should we authorize the opening salvos?

If the ladders close any further, our barrels won't be able to articulate low enough to strike them." The negative depression angle of their field artillery pieces was capped at a mere 5 degrees. Perched atop a twenty-five-meter stone wall, the blind spot directly beneath their muzzles was colossally massive. Li Qinwu evaluated the slow crawl of the twenty-odd assault ladders and shook his head.

"Keep the batteries silent. Conserve the ordnance. I want to draw the enemy into extreme close quarters before opening fire—we will maximize our structural lethality by breaking them at point-blank range!" With a disciplined musketeer wall and a massive height advantage, Li Qinwu had zero anxiety regarding his ability to hold the ramparts. His primary concern was that the human vanguard would break and route too quickly, denying him the opportunity to systematically liquidate the core elite of the Count's army.

Consequently, he chose to completely bench his artillery assets, trusting his small arms to deliver a psychological trauma so absolute it would break the enemy's martial spirit in a single wave. Along the battlements, 500 black-powder muskets followed the slow, heavy movement of the target columns. Li Qinwu unslung a custom long-rifle featuring a precision modifier of +10, tracking the advance through his iron sights. The moment the leading ranks crossed the 50-meter threshold, his finger compressed the trigger.

BANG! A sharp report echoed across the wall as a human soldier operating the external drive shafts let out a wet shriek, dropping dead into the dirt. In the next heartbeat, the entire line of Goblin Musketeers opened fire in unison, a massive cloud of dense white gunsmoke erupting from the stone embrasures. A chorus of agonizing shrieks tore through the plain as the human laborers operating the external frameworks were violently swept away, dropping in massive, bloody heaps.

Li Qinwu cleanly flipped his hot rifle to a nearby loader, instantly snatching a freshly primed musket from his assistant's hands. Adjusting his alignment, he targeted a human crossbowman who had hunkered down within a forward trench line, squeezing the trigger. The high-velocity lead ball completely vaporized the soldier's skull, rendering him a lifeless corpse. Snatching a third rifle, he fired again, cleanly liquidating another external driver.

With a dedicated three-man team managing his reload cycles, Li Qinwu maintained a relentless fire rate, rapidly building up his firearm proficiency metrics. Between shots, his booming voice echoed across the battlements:"Maintain your composure! Steady your breathing! Conserve your ammunition—make every single lead ball claim a human life!" In response to his commands, the rapid cadence of the goblin line slowed noticeably, but their operational accuracy soared.

Below, the external laborers were systematically systematically plucked from the chassis. While the internal driving details sheltered beneath the wooden body of the ladders remained largely insulated from the vertical fire, the external support crews were completely devastated, their lines wiped out multiple times over.

By the time the leading Cloud Ladder dragged its weight from the 50-meter mark down to the 40-meter perimeter, over 300 human laborers had been systematically slaughtered across the approach vector. Deprived of the necessary kinetic mass to drive the wheelbases forward, the massive wooden structures ground to a complete halt. This immense, cold-blooded casualty rate instantly paralyzed the backup details stationed in the rear trenches. Are you completely insane? Who could survive this?

The sheer mathematical absurdity of the mortality rate defied comprehension. Their expensive heavy plate armor offered zero structural protection against the high-velocity lead balls. To step out into that open field was not a military deployment—it was an unmitigated suicide run. The terrified conscripts huddled deep within the earthworks, refusing to step out into the open to assume the empty driving positions.

The fiery desire for knighthood and noble titles was instantly extinguished by the cold reality of industrial slaughter. The frontline sergeants and knights grew desperate, their voices cracking as they screamed commands over the din of battle:"Move! Get out there and man those shafts! You are less than forty meters from the base of the wall! Forty meters and we anchor! Any soldier who refuses to advance shall be executed under martial law!

The first squad to drive a ladder against the masonry shall receive a bounty of ten silver coins!!" Coerced by the twin pressures of immediate execution and financial incentive, the human soldiers forced their trembling legs out of the trenches, sprinting toward the stalled Cloud Ladders to resume the drive. The massive wooden wheels groaned back into motion, but their targets remained tracked by over 500 disciplined muskets.

No matter how many bodies the human command threw into the vector, the mechanical equation remained absolute. The rhythmic, thunderous crack-crack-crack of the firearms rattled across the valley, dropping the fresh driving details in a matter of seconds. The density of the human corpses accumulating around the wheelbases grew so severe that the vehicles could physically no longer clear the terrain. Broken by the sheer volume of the slaughter, the remaining drivers abandoned the chassis and fled for their lives.

Their psychological collapse instantly triggered a chain reaction through the adjacent trenches, culminating in a localized route that the frontline knights found utterly impossible to stem. In their maiden assault upon the walls, the human host left behind over 300 pristine corpses, retreating back to their main lines in absolute humiliation.

Deep within the central command pavilion, Count Fischer erupted into a towering fury, his face contorted with rage as he bellowed at his vassal lords: "Those wretched, spineless cowards dared to abandon our primary siege machinery in the open field! Every single soldier who participated in that route shall be summarily executed under martial law! Let the entire host bear witness to the penalty for cowardice! Deploy the secondary assault divisions to the forward trenches—resume the drive immediately!"

The decree was executed with absolute brutality. The 200-odd survivors who had actively abandoned the ladders were dragged from the trenches and executed in full view of the army, establishing a reign of terror across the lines. Yet, when the fresh wave of human infantry was driven into the forward trenches to resume the assault, the results were identical.

The system muskets methodically systematically dismantled their lines, leaving an additional 400 human corpses rotting beneath the masonry before the advance dissolved into a second panic. This time, however, the retreating soldiers executed their route with absolute finality. Knowing that returning to the rear trenches meant certain execution at the hands of the provost marshals, several squads reached a rapid, desperate consensus.

Turning their weapons inward, they assassinated their commanding sergeants and a minor noble who attempted to bar their path. Stripping off their heavy iron breastplates and helmets, the 200 mutineers fractured into dozens of small cells, sprinting clear of the trench networks and fleeing toward the distant mountain ranges. The rear guard cavalry details lacked the necessary mobility to navigate the deep, interlocking trench lines to hunt them down.

At this point, Count Fischer felt a cold wave of administrative numbness wash over him. Merely attempting to roll a few wooden wagons forward had cost his army nearly a thousand elite troops. A casualty figure of this magnitude could no longer be dismissed as a simple failure of frontline discipline; it was an indictment of his core strategic paradigm. The defensive capabilities of the demon host were too overwhelming.

If he continued to feed his primary infantry into this meat grinder, even a grand host numbering 70, 000 would be bled white before the summer concluded. Stepping forward, a minor vassal lord offered a ruthlessly pragmatic, devastating solution. He noted that the active Cloud Ladders had already been driven to within thirty meters of the base of the masonry.

If an advance was executed with absolute speed and unyielding determination, a dedicated crew could successfully anchor the ramps against the battlements in less than a few minutes. To preserve the lives of their valuable, high-grade professional infantry, he proposed launching immediate press-gang operations across the surrounding rural districts, systematically abducting the local serfs and forcing them to serve as human shields to drive the ladders home.

These agricultural serfs were heavily bound to their domestic units. They possessed wives, aging parents, and children who were legally classified as hereditary property. To maximize agricultural yield, the land-owning nobility routinely forced these serfs into arranged marriages to accelerate the birth rates of their labor pool. So long as the crown forces seized their families as collateral, the human command could guarantee that these serfs would drive the machinery forward with absolute, suicidal compliance.

The genocidal proposal was approved and put into immediate operation. Light cavalry details swept across a forty-mile radius, systematically ransacking every agricultural commune and village within reach, gathering a mass of over 3, 000 domestic serfs to serve as immediate cannon fodder for the siege engines.