On the other side, a skeleton suddenly stood up from the ground.
Just seconds before, it was a royal halberdier, lying on the edge of the steps inside the city wall.
After gray lines covered its face, its body contracted and deformed in less than two seconds, its armor fell off, its skin collapsed, and its gray-white skeleton emerged from under its skin.
As soon as it straightened up from its curled-up position, it turned and pounced on the nearest living person. The halberdier next to it reacted extremely quickly, thrusting his halberd three times in quick succession, accurately shattering the skeleton's cervical vertebrae. The skeleton scattered on the ground and stopped moving.
"Those who have just died will turn into skeletons; just behead them!"
Before his shout had even faded, another skeleton that had just completed its transformation pounced from the flank.
A garrison infantryman stepped forward and smashed it with several shields.
The chaos on the city wall was suppressed for a short time, but the fallen continued to be converted.
Every time a new skeleton appears, the surrounding guards have to allocate manpower to deal with it.
The defensive line barely maintained its balance amidst repeated tugs of war, until three short horn calls rang out from behind the undead positions.
Immediately afterwards, the ground in front of the battle line began to rise, and hundreds of grayish-white bone snakes emerged from the ground. They were made up of segments of bones, sixty meters long and about two meters wide, and were serpentine in shape.
They crawled across the riverbed left after the still waters were filled in, crossed the battlefield, stopped forty meters in front of the city, and then suddenly raised their heads, the tips of which precisely rested on the crenellations of the city wall.
A sixty-meter-long skeleton forms a 42-degree angle on the outer wall of the forty-meter-high city wall. On the grayish-white slope, skeleton infantrymen begin to climb upwards.
"The bone snake is coming up! Block the ramp!" At the command, the gray-robed crossbowmen quickly adjusted their aim.
Arrows rained down on the skeletons on the slope, but there were too many undead. The front row fell down, while the ones behind continued to charge up the slope, stepping on the broken bones.
The first to rush up the city wall were ordinary skeleton soldiers. As soon as they climbed the battlements, they were pierced through the chest by halberdiers and thrown off the wall.
But the skeletons kept coming, and occasionally undead warriors wielding broadswords would break through the defenses. They were thicker and heavier than the skeletons, and it took two or three soldiers working together to deal with them.
The Dawn Crusaders surged up from the inner passage of the city wall, their silver-white half-armor standing out against the deep purple sky.
The two-handed swords in their hands glowed with a pale white light, and the Holy Light Blessing attached to the weapons increased damage against the undead by an additional 20%.
A Dawn Crusader parried the broadsword of an undead warrior that was slashing at him, and with a backhand slash, the blade sank into the undead warrior's shoulder armor.
The undead figure paused for a moment, the dark gray soul fire flickered, and then it collapsed forward.
Another Dawn Crusader leaped over the battlements and landed on the back of the bone serpent. He slashed with his twin swords, cutting down several skeletons that were climbing. He then retreated to the inside of the battlements to provide cover for his companions.
"Blessed by Holy Light! Don't let them surround you!"
One of the Dawn Crusaders shouted, their positions always within each other's sight, their swords flashing and crisscrossing above the gray-white ramp, blocking the undead trying to rush up one by one outside the wall.
The Kingdom's halberdiers and garrison infantry formed a second line of defense on the city walls, filling the gaps between the Dawn Crusaders and archers.
The halberd thrust out from above the battlements, knocking down the climbing skeleton soldier.
The garrison infantry's shields blocked the undead warriors' slashes, while spears pierced through their chests from the sides of the shields.
Among the crowd on the city wall, a county soldier's health bar had dropped to 47 points after continuous fighting.
He didn't stop; he continued thrusting forward.
Then his eyes changed, his movements became chaotic, he stopped aiming and just swung wildly, fighting with the surrounding guards. Immediately, some people grabbed him and tried to drag him away from the city wall: "He's cursed! Drag him away!"
Another person shouted, "Go find a purification spell, or clean water!"
A halberdier next to him used his shield to block his attack, subdued him, and dragged him toward the passage inside the city wall.
He was still struggling as he was being dragged away, making incoherent sounds.
Just then, the skeletal mortar position in the distance completed its adjustment.
Hundreds of necromancers simultaneously closed their hands, and the dark purple crystal at the bottom of the bone socket lit up again.
This time, the cannons were no longer aimed at the middle section of the city wall, but were all pointed at the line where the Bone Serpent Slope met the city wall, where the defenders were most concentrated and were desperately blocking the entrance for the Bone Serpent to climb.
A deep hum spread from the center of the undead territory, followed by hundreds of dark purple orbs of light rising into the air simultaneously, tearing through the low sky with a dense, tearing sound.
The orbs of light landed on the same line of the city wall almost simultaneously, creating a series of muffled thuds, sending rubble flying and dust billowing up.
As the smoke thinned slightly, the dozen or so guards who had been standing there had vanished, replaced by new skeletons that slowly raised their heads in the remaining firelight.
Their movements changed from slow to swift, and they instantly pounced on the surviving defenders on both sides.
The surviving defenders, who had been knocked back by the shockwave of the explosion, were surrounded before they could even regain their footing.
Several skeletons were approaching from the left, three emerged from the smoke and dust from the right, and two more circled around from the inner steps of the city wall.
The gap is widening.
A royal halberdier had been stabbed in the abdomen; his health bar was still intact, but he could no longer stand upright.
The shield guards beside him tried to drag him toward the inner passage, but a skeleton had already bypassed the shield guards' defenses and pounced toward him.
The shield guard sidestepped and raised his shield to block the attack, leaving a new scratch on the shield. He then pulled the halberdier's arm and slowly retreated backward.
Just then, a series of hurried and orderly footsteps came from the inner passage of the city wall.
A squad of Dawn Crusaders emerged from around the corner, led by a man clad in dark gray chainmail, who wielded a broadsword that gleamed with a pale white light in one hand.
Without pausing, he pointed towards the gap and said, "Press it up and seal the opening!"
More than twenty Crusaders behind him responded and advanced on both flanks, forming a perfect arc formation to firmly surround the skeletons that were climbing up on both sides of the gap.
The front row members crouch slightly, while the back row members stand, with the sword blades raised above their shoulders.
In just two breaths, a new steel defense line was established two meters behind the breach.
A skeleton lunged at them, and a Crusader soldier in the front row parried the thrust with his greatsword and then twisted his wrist.
The blade sliced diagonally into the skull's right collarbone, leaving a faint white trail of light, cleanly cleaving it in two.
He took a half step back, readjusted his sword grip, and gripped the sword with both hands, allowing him to complete the slashing motion with minimal lateral space on the narrow city wall.
With a single swing of the sword, a three-meter radius in front of him was filled with death lines.
Just as the Dawn Crusaders regained their footing and wiped out all the skeletons at the breach,
A chilling and violent aura, far more sinister than that of ordinary undead, suddenly erupted from below the Bone Serpent Slope.
"Watch out! It's an undead knight!" someone shouted sharply.
