Chapter 332: Corpses scattered across the ground (1/2)
Chapter 332: Corpses scattered across the ground
The change of nearly a hundred bandits had been forever halted in just a blink of an eye, thanks to the bombardment of two war chariots, five ballistae, and three stone-throwing catapults.
As the smoke from the explosives billowed above the battlefield, Fass’ insane roaring rang loud and clear, “Mages! Push the mages’ tower forward! Launch the ballistae! Be quick about it!”
As Fass hollered orders left and right, the bandits beneath the tower pushed with all their might. The ballistae that the bandits had transported were quickly brought up from the rear. There were several bandits with iron shields in hand, standing in front of each ballista to force open a path.
The war chariots continued to enthusiastically spout flames as stone-throwing catapults drew beautiful arcs across the sky before smashing the ground with terrifying, earth-shattering rumbles. Each impact created its own unique pattern, a painting of blood and severed body parts. Six bolts darted through the air with each shot to reap cheap lives like cold, fatal blades.
Five hundred meters of the path that lead to Brettel City’s gates had turned into a literal hell on earth. The bandits who had charged forward was met with overwhelming firepower. Anyone in range of the barrage had no chance of making it out alive.
“Spread out, spread out already! You damned stupid fools! How many time have I told you?!” Fass’ shouts were verging on hysterical, but it was of no use. The rumbling of the war chariots overrode his words to the point where only the row of bandits behind him could hear his words.
The Greenfire Bandits had a total of six thousand members, and Fass had certainly not planned on committing his entire force at once. Thus, the bandits who’d come to attack Brettel City were definitely not the true elites of the Greenfire Bandits.
Fass only had roughly a thousand trusted followers when he left the Narsen Duchy. The band had swollen to their current numbers by recruiting during raids as they traveled. As such, those currently charging towards Brettel City were the newest recruits, the ones whose strength Fass wasn’t quite satisfied with. Their combat ability was the weakest in Greenfire.
This was the case in every attempted siege, the cannon fodder was always the first to be sent out. In Fass’ heart, these two thousand underlings were completely expendable. As long as there were enough gold coins, he never had to worry about not being able to recruit more lackeys amidst the never-ending chaos surrounding the seven grand duchies. According to Fass’ initial plan, these two thousand underlings were more than enough to bring down Brettel City.
What quite surprised Fass was Brettel City’s defensive ability. He’d originally thought he’d face the bombardment of the magic crystal cannons, yet unexpectedly, he’d seen no sign of them and had instead discovered other defensive emplacements. Further, this array of defensive artillery were all time-tested instruments of war. Once they started their lethal spray from the tall city walls, they reaped life like a scythe through corn.
Two thousand bandits were approaching Brettel City step by step beneath the massive artillery shelling and missiles. After paying the price in four hundred more deaths, a portion of the bandits reached the city wall. They’d brought wooden ladders, and quickly set them up against the city wall, doing their best to dodge the heavy bombardment.
“Faster! Fill the bolts and load the goblin explosives into the war chariots!” Han Shuo’s expression was indifferent, but the speed of his speech was extremely fast as he yelled orders to the soldiers around him.
These soldiers had only recently become familiar with war chariots and ballistae. Faulke had intensely drilled them over several days and nights and barely pounded the basics of using war chariots, ballistae, and catapults into them. As such, they weren’t too skilled, especially under the pressure of a chaotic battlefield. The lingering scent of death and blooded steel affected the speed at which these soldiers operated the equipment.
Kaka… kaka…
A strange noise suddenly came to Han Shuo’s attention. He looked around, puzzled, until his eyes came to land on little Fatty Jack. The latter’s lips were trembling, and his teeth were chattering at an astonishing rate to create that noise.
Little Fatty Jack stood beside Han Shuo as he looked into the battlefield where flesh and blood flew. He saw boulders smash bodies into a blurry meat paste. He witnessed limbs flying from the explosions created by the war chariots. He was transfixed as the frenzied storm of bolts literally flung the bandits into the air as they tore through them. He couldn’t restrain his trembling.
“Wuu wuu, this is too terrible!” The little fatty’s voice was a bit muffled, his small eyes bloodshot. He cried out involuntarily with trembling lips, his entire being caught in a strange, dull state of helplessness.
“Ready! Pour down the oil!” Han Shuo flicked his eyes away from Jack. He didn’t say a word upon seeing the latter was still next to him. Instead, he loudly shouted to the soldiers around him.
Han Shuo had already known before the battle began that little Fatty Jack, having never experienced such a scene, would definitely be frightened by the cruelty of war. Jack’s expression of terror was well within Han Shuo’s expectations, so he wasn’t the least bit surprised.
The Demonslayer Edge could no longer resist the temptation, and shot out from the back of Han Shuo’s neck to hover high above the battlefield. Unseen from the battlefield, it started to forcefully absorb souls from the cacophony of agonized and despairing screams below.
Whoosh whoosh whoosh!
The bandits finally fired their ballistae. A rain of bolts began to furiously assault the defenders atop Brettel City’s wall. Surprised by the sudden hail of death, several archers aiming at maelstrom below were immediately killed. The actions of the soldiers controlling war chariots and stone-throwing catapults also grew a bit frantic.
A low whistling sound accompanied one of the bolts, aiming straight for little Fatty Jack, who was leaning against the wall and watching the tragic scene below. When he heard the screeching whistle, Jack was scared witless as he screamed raspily, “Bryan, save me!”
Han Shuo reached out with his left hand. Bloody lights shot out from his five fingers like he’d suddenly grown sharp claws. When that bolt was only roughly ten meters away from Jack, the bloody light from Han Shuo’s five fingers clenched around it, grinding the bolt into splinters.
“Step back, don’t stand too close to the edge of the city wall!” Han Shuo shouted lightly, waving his right hand and sending the shield of a fallen soldier abruptly crashing down in front of Jack, covering most of his plump body.
Creaking sounds suddenly fell into Han Shuo’s ears. He wheeled around to feel surges of magic ripples gradually converge in the distance, the sound of the magic incantations growing more audible. Several mages on the slowly approaching tower had begun to chant the magic spells of their respective elements, guarded zealously by the shield wielding bandits.
“I’ve been waiting for you to arrive!” Han Shuo said derisively. He reached out with his mind, and a bloody halo dropped from the heavens.
The Demonslayer Edge was executing “Bloody Radiance of Ten Thousand Cuts” under Han Shuo’s guidance. The Demonslayer Edge, looking only a little longer than a dagger, spun a breakneck pace as it dove straight down. Each rotation of the Demonslayer Edge caused a dagger-like bloody light to shoot out.
The Demonslayer Edge’s high-speed rotation caused it to gradually blur into a ball of crimson light as it descended. Scarlet slivers, rapidly increasing in number by the second, coalesced around it as they formed thousands of blades. The countless blades swirled into a huge orb, swirling around the Demonslayer Edge in wide arcs as they crisscrossed without interfering with each. The light they gave off was a deep rich ruby, an awe-inspiring sight spilling down onto the mages on the tower below.
From afar, it looked like a small, disc-sized sun had come into existence, except that this sun was brimming with sharp, rotating barbs of bloody light. As the vermillion sphere continued its descent, its rotation grew even more ferocious. A palpable surge of slaughter emanated from it even before it landed, causing terror to sprout in the heart of onlookers.
The dazzling orb of slashing light landed in the midst of the mages on the tower. Despite being protected by iron shields and magical barriers of various strengths, the tower was instantly macerated. The wood it was made of became splinters, then dust amidst the agonized screams of the bandits and mages. Mangled flesh, blood and steel painted a scarlet portrait as the fragile mages and the heavily armored bandits were torn apart, the rotating blades of light resplendent as they dealt death with equal parts beauty and ruthlessness.
No one on the tower had the strength to do anything in the face of Han Shuo’s “Bloody Radiance of Ten Thousand Cuts”.
The ten thousand sanguine rays of the Demonslayer Edge had vaporized everything it had touched, whether it be the humans, the wooden tower, or the iron shields. Fass had spent a great deal of money to form this team of bandit mages, and now, they lay scattered across the battlefield, too mangled even to be recognizable as human remains anymore.
Having been injected with thirty percent of his magical yuan, one strike of the “Bloody Radiance of Ten Thousand Cuts” through all those people and the tower was far from enough to consume its power. The orb transformed into an enormous scarlet spinning cactus, hurling blades of crimson light at the bandits around the tower. Like a hurricane, the Demonslayer Edge’s “Bloody Radiance of Ten Thousand Cuts” raged unchallenged across the battlefield. A storm of blood in every sense of the word, everything it encountered was obliterated, be it human, ballistae, or sturdy shields.
An unnaturally beautiful red drizzle of blood began to pour down on the field. None out of a hundred bandit corpses were whole after the Demonslayer Edge made a circle, no piece of meat larger than an ear . Since even iron shields couldn’t defend against the Demonslayer Edge, it was no surprise to find even bones minced finely as well.
“Damn it! Where’s the tower? Where are the mages?” Fass had been paying attention to the Brettel City wall, and had missed the events around the tower. Only when the crimson orb of light had made its way over to him did he discover that the tower was gone.
“Dead, all dead! It was that thing! It was all because of that thing!!” A bandit by Fass’ side had witnessed the entire thing. He pointed at the blood orb that was responsible, his voice shrill with terror.
The horror of the blood orb wasn’t quite over yet. Ear-piercing screams once again echoed across the battlefield. They belonged to the bandits who’d been approached by the drifting blood orb. To no avail, all of them desperately attempted to dodge by rolling and jumping. However, every bandit that was touched by the blood orb instantly turned into a shower of mangled flesh, blood, and bones. No one was lucky enough to escape.
“Attack that thing, attack it!!” Fass’ heart was beating violently, panic barely kept at bay. He hastily roared commands to the bandits around him.
Dozens of sharp axes were fiercely hurled at the quickly approaching, whirling Demonslayer Edge. However, just when they almost neared the Demonslayer Edge, the magical yuan powering the “Bloody Radiance of Ten Thousand Cuts” was exhausted, and it vanished into thin air. Like a star of death returning to the universe after completing its mission, its disappearance sent the bandits reeling with relief.
“What is that thing?! Curse that necromancer! He must’ve used some sort of necromancy magic to create that damned monster. Don’t be afraid, keep attacking! I think they’re almost done for!”
Humans were always fearful of the unknown, and Fass was no exception.
When he had spotted the death dealing orb disappear from the sky, Fass’ heart unclenched slightly. He then roared madly at the frightened bandits, as if to comfort himself.
It was as Fass said. Even though the Demonslayer Edge had thrown the battlefield into disarray by wiping out the magic users, the bandits still held the advantage in numbers. Moreover, they had begun to use their iron hooks and wooden ladders to gradually scale the city walls.
There were only three hundred soldiers manning Brettel City’s walls in total. Of those, twenty had died up until now, mostly due to the ballistae attacks. The remaining two hundred odd soldiers were frantically hauling boulders to load the stone-throwing catapults and reloading bolts for the ballistae. As a result, those soldiers who had been assigned the task of transporting boulders were now deprived of energy, sprawled flat on the ground.