Chapter 340 - 176: Heavy Losses

The battle raged from morning until afternoon. The Alliance Army had deployed nearly three hundred thousand Warriors, while Li Ziyu had lost count of how many Undead he had sent to the field.

He could still keep track of his Combat Sequence units, but the Skeleton Undead were truly innumerable. At the start, he could muster a hundred thousand before sending them to the battlefield. But as the Alliance Army’s assault grew more ferocious, Li Ziyu couldn’t summon Undead fast enough, and had to rush out reinforcements in batches of thirty to fifty thousand.

He wasn’t counting on the Undead Combat Sequence to win the war on its own. While the Elite Heavy Hammer Skeleton Warriors, Skeleton Longbowmen, Skeleton Short Bowmen, and other such Undead were powerful, they were few in number—only about twenty thousand in total.

Against three hundred thousand elites from the Three Races, a mere twenty thousand Undead Combat Sequence units were hardly enough. He didn’t even dare send the Combat Sequence to the front lines; even units as powerful as the Elite Heavy Hammer Skeleton Warriors would be annihilated if they charged ahead, to say nothing of the other troop types.

Fortunately, in addition to his Undead Corps, he had also prepared an Alien Undead Corps, which proved invaluable in the battle. The Beast Corps blocked the enemy’s Cavalry early on, preventing them from punching through the Skeleton Undead Corps as planned. And the fighting prowess of Alien Undead like the Skeleton Minotaurs and Skeleton Hill Giant Demons was nothing to scoff at.

Most importantly, when the Alien Undead fell, the Tattoos on their bodies would explode, sowing chaos among the surrounding Alliance Soldiers and buying Li Ziyu precious time.

The Three Races Alliance Army was not to be underestimated, however. They fought their way to the Undead Fortress on three separate occasions, but Li Ziyu found a way to thwart them each time. He truly threw everything he had into the defense. At the most critical moments, Liu Xingxing and Zhang Peng even piloted their own fortresses into the fray to staunchly block the enemy’s advance, preventing them from breaching the Undead Fortress. The Minotaurs of the Tabu Tribe didn’t slack either, wielding their Totem Poles to help hold the line.

The fighting was incredibly brutal, a river of blood. It wasn’t until the sun began to set that Palamede, seeing that the Alliance Army truly could not take the Undead Fortress, reluctantly ordered a retreat.

He had no choice. If they didn’t fall back, the Alliance Soldiers fighting in the chaotic melee would break. If that turned into a full-blown rout, it would be all over.

The Warriors of the Three Races were elite, it was true, but they were also flesh and blood. They felt pain when struck and grew exhausted after fighting for so long. They had been fighting for hours and couldn’t take it anymore; their physical stamina and mental fortitude were at their absolute limits.

It was a testament to their elite training that they hadn’t routed already, given the physical exhaustion, immense mental pressure, and high casualties.

Palamede glared at the distant Undead Fortress, his eyes bloodshot as he ground his teeth. ’One more push... We could probably take them,’ he thought. The Undead resistance was weakening. But there was an equally high chance that his Warriors would collapse before they could capture the Undead Fortress.

No matter how unwilling he was, he had to give the order. If it were only his Palamede Tribe’s Warriors, the decision would be simple: fight to the death until the enemy was defeated. But these weren’t just his men. It wasn’t even an army of a single Race.

DOOOO—DOO DOO—DOOOO—

The mournful call of a horn echoed across the field—the signal to retreat.

Hearing the call, the Warriors in the thick of the fighting immediately disengaged and began to withdraw toward the Alliance Camp. A collective sigh of relief went through them. They could finally rest.

From his perch on the Watchtower, Li Ziyu watched the Alliance Soldiers recede like the tide and let out a long, slow breath he didn’t realize he’d been holding.

’We held on!’

’In the end, we actually held on!’

"Clean up the battlefield! Tally our losses!" Li Ziyu said, turning to the Skeleton Longbowman standing guard beside him.

The order was transmitted through the undead network. The Combat Sequence Undead began an orderly return to the fortress, while the surviving Skeleton Undead started gathering corpses.

They were old hands at cleaning up the battlefield. Gathering corpses was always the top priority—standard procedure.

Li Ziyu scanned his fortress, knowing in his gut that the losses would be heavy. The Light Armor Shields facing the battlefield had been shattered, for one, and the platform edges showed varying degrees of damage. That alone told him how severe the losses were.

Those Light Armor Shields were meant to withstand attacks from other Mobile Fortresses; they were incredibly Solid. During the battle with the Jackal Wolfman Fortress, their Firearms Team’s shots had barely scratched them. But this time, of the five shields on the front, three had been utterly shattered, and the other two were broken in half.

One of the White Bone Watchtowers had also collapsed. Li Ziyu was lucky; the one he stood on was still intact.

The platform’s surface was pockmarked with new craters, some from Catapults, others from blasts of Magic. The ground was littered with spent ranged Weapons—arrows, projectiles, and all sorts of other debris.

The other buildings on the fortress had also sustained damage.

Still, this was all manageable. The Undead Fortress had the ability to repair itself. As long as there were Skeletons, Li Ziyu didn’t have to worry; the fortress would fix itself on its own.

One of the Undead Fortress’s Traits was Skeleton Architecture. The buildings and the Undead were practically inseparable; it wouldn’t be a stretch to say the entire fortress was constructed from the Undead themselves.

However, the collapsed White Bone Watchtower and the destroyed Light Armor Shields would have to be rebuilt from scratch. The self-repair function couldn’t restore things that were completely annihilated.

It wasn’t just the Undead who had suffered losses. Liu Xingxing’s Treasure Hunting Catmen, Zhang Peng’s Gophers, and the Tabu Minotaurs living in the fortress had all sustained casualties as well.