Close Combat Mage

Chapter 220 – The Soldiers’ Arrival at the City Walls Pt.2

Putting aside how the Velociraptor Knights were training, as well as how the dwarf smiths were forging the armors, Dawn City was currently raging with energy. The great war was within sight, and the city walls could no longer increase in height. However, that didn’t mean the slave soldiers were just idling around; they continued to pile stones the size of their head next to the walls. Judging by their current piled amount, even if they tossed stones for a month, they couldn’t possibly use up all the stones there.

As they were still very listless, the slave soldiers came up with new ideas, They opened some slanting pathways on the arrow barrier part of the wall, and placed a long wooden channels that reached the bottom. As long as a head-sized rock was thrown out this opening, it’d naturally slant downwards along the channel. Then, it’d rebound off the bottom end of it and fly out to smash at the enemies below the walls.

The rocks’ destinations could also be modified according to the lengths of the wooden channels outside the walls. After a few tests, they confirmed that the longer the wooden channels stretched, the further the stones would fall. Likewise, the shorter the channels were, the closer the rocks would fall.

As for the entry point for the rock projectiles, it was slanted at a 45 degree angle. Outside attacks would never be able to shoot through this opening and injure the soldiers. Thus, the slave soldiers could just hide behind the wall and endlessly toss rocks out to kill the enemies without being injured. It was both easy and satisfying.

The slave soldiers also decided that they might as well construct a stone passage along the top of the walls. It was made up of only rock, with a stone roof and walls. Even the passageway to the bottom of the walls was created with rock. This stretched all the way up to the pile of stone projectiles.

Of course, for the sake of preventing people from getting shot by arrows, the pile of stone projectiles had a large, wooden shack erected above it. That way, long-ranged attacks would basically be unable to hit anyone. Although Dawn couldn’t claim being invulnerable to all attacks, Suo Jia still hadn’t come up with any possible way to break through its defenses.

Also, the spaces the arrows were shot through had also been shrunken by quite a bit. Now, the openings were only about the size of a person’s face. Although this affected the arrows’ levels of accuracy, the battlefield fortunately didn’t really require singular attack accuracy. Rather, it only needed an AOE attack within a certain precision. As long as the soldiers followed the battlefield’s flow and General Jason’s commands, they’d definitely be able to pull off a successful AOE attack.

In order to maintain the archers’ safeties, these openings were covered with wire nettings. Only a small hole for shooting was left. Random arrows making it through was nearly impossible. This was basically a one-sided defensive net that even thin arrows couldn’t possibly pass through.

People are afraid of resting, because once they rest, their thoughts tend to wander. This is especially true when one’s life is involved; people can think of any methods for the sake of keeping their own lives. Seeing the war devices added onto the city walls one after another, Suo Jia couldn’t help but admit that these people’s creativities were too frightening. The combination of 100,000 minds was really very powerful, and could be even described as ‘endless horror’.

Of course, this was also related to Suo Jia’s policies. Seeing how active everyone was, Suo Jia immediately ordered that anyone that made a suggestion that was later adopted would receive 10,000 gold. According to the degree of the suggestion, it could be calculated as a meritorious contribution. Once one had made enough contributions, they could exchange them for a noble rank. Of course…this noble rank was only within Dawn City; Holy Light Empire didn’t accept them.

As time passed by, the slave soldiers slowly lost their fear of war. Now, they all desired for the war to break out. Every day, they cursed and ranted about how those damn bastards still hadn’t come!

Seeing everyone so excited about the war, Suo Jia knew that he had to find some way to drain some of their energy. Otherwise, they might end up fighting amongst each other from impatience.

Suo Jia ordered General Jason to start an unlimited exercise for real combat. The other trainings each day were all cancelled and replaced by this exercise. Every morning, afternoon, and evening in 3 hours, thousands of refined iron arrows were shot out from the top of the city walls. They fell one after another onto various targets placed in different locations around the perimeter. In order to conserve the arrows and make them easier to retrieve, the targets were all made with sand. Thus, the standard was reached if they hit a sand trap.

In order to satisfy the demands of the exercise, sand pits filled a diameter of 10 meters within the 300 meter perimeter around the city. All the sand pits were adjacent to each other, and they each had individual ID numbers. With General Jason’s command, all the arrows would be simultaneously shot out towards a single sand pit in a condensed attack. In a mere instant, thousands of refined arrows would change the sand pit into an arrow pit.

General Jason had also split the 300 meter area into 30 parts, each part 10 meters. If he gave a command, the rain of arrows would definitely land in a specific area accurately. Currently, this bit of accuracy was still present.

Why did the firing range suddenly increase? It was originally 200 meters, but it had become 300 meters. Actually…this wasn’t strange at all. Firstly, everyone’s arm strengths had increased, so their shooting ranges had increased as well. Secondly…the height of the city walls was now 10 meters, so the shooting range naturally grew.

After training non-stop for a month…the enemies that they had been waiting forever for had finally arrived. Just like before, a large army that hid the sky and covered the earth came charging over from the horizon. Facing the distant army, the soldiers all remained calm. They slowly retrieved all their refined iron arrows from the sand pits, and climbed up the tall, 75 degree angled city walls. At the same time, the enemy army finally appeared around 1000 meters away.

Seeing the enemy army at its peak outside the city, the slave soldiers became both nervous and excited. Nervous because it was hard to avoid deaths from occurring in war, excited because they had prepared for so long. The numerous plans that Dawn had come up with would finally show their might.

In addition, everyone was filled with confidence in their own strengths after training for so long. It wasn’t just because of everyone’s strengths, but more importantly, because of their great general and expert in defense: Jason! They also had an overpowering master, the rich and able viscount: Suo Jia!

Everyone knew that money wasn’t omnipotent. However, money and strength in addition to perfect leading and tactical stratagems formed a matchless foundation. How could one fight a battle without any money; fights were fought precisely over money!

Karuda was seated on his warhorse outside the city, looking at the imposing city walls in the distance. For a moment, Karuda’s face remained frozen with a bitter expression; he just hadn’t imagined that in only a year, the place would’ve changed to such an extent. He remembered that during the last time he had visited, the city walls were only 2 meters tall, and a single push could cause them to collapse. But now? If he wanted to push the city walls down now, he might as well go push at the large mountain nearby. At the very least, there wouldn’t be anyone sniping at him there.

However, Karuda was extremely confident in the war. He had brought 200,000 men this time, but that had required him to use up a large majority of his accumulated assets. This was the symbol of his wealth and power. Only with the power of the 200,000 soldiers was he able to shake the border with his power and look down on everyone.

Although to any outside person, Karuda seemed to have a million soldiers, the only elite masters that were fully equipped only numbered 200,000. If he wanted to equip all of them and train them into elites, Karuda would have to use 5x more of his wealth, and another 5x more of his time.

But really, just the 200,000 men had already used up 40 years of training and equipments. It could be said that in the end, it was his strongest force. He had never believed that he’d be defeated; no matter how tall the walls he faced were, it wouldn’t be an exception!

Next to Karuda stood a tall and upright, masked person wearing a green cloak. Looking closer, one could see that this guy’s figure exceptionally robust. Although it didn’t appear to be very thick and solid, it gave others a sharp and penetrating feeling. He had 3 strangely modelled daggers, and any bright person would be able to tell that this guy was a super powerful warrior!

That’s right. In reality, he was the leader of the Alliance formed by 180 thief groups. This time, he had sent out 100,000 elite thieves; only victory was allowed. This was already all the ordinary members among the 180 thief group alliance. If they were defeated again, they would be losing all hope.

A gale swept through. Karuda turned his head to the side to look at the Thief Alliance leader and said, “Typically speaking, we’d only be able to stably overturn them if our attack force are at least twofold of their defensive forces. However, the current sum of our entire forces has already surpassed theirs by threefold, reaching 300,000. That’s why, our victory in this war is guaranteed!”