Chapter 276: The Rest of His Army

Chapter 276: Chapter 276: The Rest of His Army

Chapter 276: The Rest of His Army

Dawn broke over the eastern quarter in a slow, suffocating wash of gray light.

There were no incendiary payloads this time. The siege engines remained entirely silent. General Marek did not rely on fire or mechanical bombardment to break the surviving defenders. The morning fog simply parted to reveal a terrifying, singular truth.

Marek had committed everything.

The southern horizon was no longer a structured line of overlapping gray shields. It was a moving ocean of steel. The Capital forces did not advance in three isolated battalions.

They advanced as one massive, unyielding organism. Every single infantry unit, every heavy spearman, and every runic sniper marched perfectly in step.

THUD.

THUD.

THUD.

The synchronized sound of twenty thousand iron boots striking the cobblestones shook the foundations of the brick warehouses. The sheer kinetic weight of the army made the puddles of melted ice vibrate.

The Captain stood on the roof of a ruined textile mill. He looked down at the encroaching tide. His gray eyes were cold and calculating behind his featureless white mask.

’Marek has stopped conserving his forces,’ the Captain concluded quietly. ’The logistics have failed. The supply lines are severed. The General recognizes that time is no longer a free resource. He is willing to accept catastrophic frontline casualties to secure the city before his own men starve.’

The Capital army was coming to end the siege right now. 𝘧𝓇ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝘣𝓃ℴ

Deep inside the command warehouse, Lord Commander Vell prepared for the end.

The opulent merchant lord had spent the last four days acting as a desperate logistics manager. He had managed rationing tiers and watched his city burn from the inside. He had worn a pristine white uniform stained with ash. He had worn ceremonial silver armor on the outer wall just days ago.

He did not wear silver today.

Vell stood before a heavy iron footlocker. He bypassed the beautifully engraved breastplates and the golden wheat sheaves. He reached into the bottom of the trunk and pulled out a suit of plain, scuffed steel.

The metal was heavy. It lacked any magical enchantments for temperature control or comfort. It was the armor of a frontline soldier, forged for utility and survival.

Vell strapped the heavy steel plates over his chest. His movements were stiff. He had not fought a genuine battle in over a decade.

His Valor class had sat dormant, buried beneath ledgers and trade negotiations. But as he tightened the leather straps, a cold, hardened resolve settled over his aged features.

This was the first practical decision he had made about his own body since the siege began. He was not dressing to project authority. He was dressing to bleed.

The Captain gathered Strike Team Zero near the primary canal crossing.

The barricades were heavily damaged. The purified water was entirely gone. The hidden kinetic plates beneath the cobblestones were spent and useless. They had exactly five people and a handful of exhausted dockworkers left to hold the line.

"This is the final rotation," the Captain stated plainly.

His voice carried no false hope. He did not offer a grand, inspiring speech. He delivered the brutal arithmetic of their reality.

"Marek is sending his entire remaining force," the Captain continued, looking at his squad. "We have no reserves. We have no hidden traps. Once this line breaks, the quarter falls."

Aegon gripped his heavy crimson spear. Reina rested her double-sided ice axe against her shoulder. Lucien and Nyx checked the edges of their blades.

The squad heard the bleak reality. They did not waver. They simply nodded.

"Aegon, hold the left flank," the Captain ordered. "Reina, freeze the right. Lucien and Nyx, take the rooftops and blind their snipers. I will hold the secondary canal crossing to prevent a flanking maneuver."

The Captain turned and sprinted toward the secondary bridge. He would be entirely occupied holding the southern alleyway. He would not be present at the primary intersection.

Ten minutes later, the Capital forces hit the barricades.

CRASH.

The collision was deafening. It was bigger and uglier than anything they had faced so far. The disciplined human combatants slammed into the makeshift iron walls with the force of a tidal wave. Heavy gray shields interlocked, creating a massive hydraulic press that physically crushed the iron shipping crates.

Varn and his soot-stained dockworkers screamed. They swung their rusted pry bars over the barricades. Capital spears thrust through the gaps, piercing leather aprons and tearing into flesh. Blood sprayed across the ruined cobblestones in bright, sickening arcs.

The defenders were instantly overwhelmed. The sheer density of the enemy force made it physically impossible to hold the line.

Then, a blinding golden light erupted in the center of the primary intersection.

Lord Commander Vell stepped into the meat grinder.

He did not carry a sword. He did not hold a shield. He slammed both of his gauntlets directly into the shattered street.

He was a Level 200 Valor. He had spent his entire life suppressing his terrifying power to maintain a polite, merchant facade. He finally stopped suppressing it.

RUMBLE.

The earth violently answered him. The ground magic he unleashed was not decorative. It was genuinely frightening.

The solid cobblestone street liquefied for a fraction of a second. Then, it violently erupted upward. Massive, jagged spikes of compressed bedrock shot out of the ground. They tore through the Capital phalanx like paper.

Dozens of elite gray-armored soldiers were launched into the air. Their overlapping shields were completely useless against an attack that came from directly beneath their boots.

Vell stood in the center of the carnage. His golden aura burned like a miniature sun. He raised his hands, and the shattered stone twisted into a massive, floating wall of jagged rock. He hurled the entire construct forward.

SMASH.

The stone wall crushed the second wave of Capital infantry. Helmets caved in. Bones snapped. The disciplined ranks of Bastion One physically buckled under the sheer, tectonic force of the Lord Commander.

Vell waded deeper into the enemy lines.

He was actually winning. He broke the flawless center of Marek’s formation exactly as he had promised Draven he would. The Capital soldiers, trained to hold their ground against any conventional threat, began to panic.

They broke their shield walls. They turned and routed, scrambling over the bodies of their fallen comrades to escape the golden monster tearing up the street.

But the victory was not free.

Vell’s lungs burned. His heavy steel armor felt like a prison of lead. Sweat poured down his weathered face, mixing with the dust and blood.

Holding a Level 200 output of pure environmental manipulation required a colossal drain on his mana core. He was old. His stamina was rapidly failing. His golden aura began to flicker and dim at the edges.

A mile away, General Marek watched the intersection from the safety of a high ridge.

The General did not panic. He calmly observed the routing soldiers and the golden light flaring in the eastern quarter. He processed the variables with flawless logic.

’Vell is outputting maximum kinetic force,’ Marek calculated, his hands folded behind his back. ’He is successfully shattering the primary assault wave. If I continue to feed infantry into that specific choke point, he will slaughter three thousand men before he collapses.’

Marek recognized the horrific cost of pushing the assault. He was a man who preferred to take cities without shedding unnecessary blood. He would not waste his soldiers’ lives on a dying man’s final stand.

Marek raised his hand. He signaled his lieutenants.

BWOOOOM.

A heavy brass horn echoed across the battlefield.

The Capital forces immediately ceased their forward push. They did not break and run. They executed a highly disciplined, orderly withdrawal. The gray shields locked together as the soldiers slowly backed away from the ruined intersection, retreating out of Vell’s magical range.

Marek chose to let the old man drain his own core against empty space.

The immediate threat receded. The dust slowly began to settle over the primary intersection.

Vell stood alone in the center of a massive crater.

The ground around him was completely unrecognizable, chewed to pieces by his own localized earthquakes. He leaned heavily against a jagged pillar of rock. His chest heaved violently. His lungs begged for oxygen. His golden Valor aura guttered like a dying candle, flashing weakly before fading completely into his skin.

He was entirely spent. He could barely lift his arms. But he was alive. He had held the line.

The surviving dockworkers and household guard had pushed forward, chasing the retreating Capital lines down the side alleys. For a brief, silent moment, the Lord Commander was completely isolated in the wreckage.

He closed his eyes, savoring the freezing morning air.

CRUNCH.

A boot stepped softly onto the broken stones behind him.

Vell opened his eyes. He did not turn around immediately. He assumed it was one of his guards returning from the chase.

"The line holds," Vell rasped, his voice weak and raspy. "Tell the Captain to reinforce the northern barricade."

The figure behind him did not answer.

Vell slowly turned his head. Standing just a few feet away, holding a rusted iron blade, was a low-ranking administrative aide. The man wore a soot-stained clerk uniform. He had dull, unremarkable brown eyes.

The aide was not a Capital soldier.

The clone of Malakor tilted its head. It stared at the exhausted, defenseless Lord Commander. It raised the rusted blade in total silence.