The female warrior was hanging from the outer wall of the tower. The excruciating pain in her left shoulder made it almost impossible for her left hand to hold her sword, but she did not let go. She clung tightly to the bone wall with her right arm and legs.
On the platform, a Crusader soldier took out a Holy Light grenade from his waist, pulled the fuse, and inserted it into the gap of the bone base beneath the purple core.
"withdraw!"
The remaining Crusaders charged down the bone ladder.
Three seconds later, a muffled explosion came from the purple core, and a violent shockwave rippled out from the top platform of the tower, causing the bone structure to collapse from the inside out.
In the instant before the explosion, the female warrior decisively drew her longsword, using the recoil to slide down the bone wall.
Her carapace rubbed violently against the rough bone walls, emitting a piercing shriek, and flying bone fragments and sharp bone spikes easily tore through her skin and flesh.
However, the shockwave from the explosion still slammed into her back.
【Damaged by the shockwave of the explosion, HP -300.】
【Triggers the "Binding of the Dead" effect, lasting 10 seconds. The duration of crowd control/immobilization skills is increased by 3 times.】
Just as the excruciating pain and stiffness struck, fifty meters to her left, on the platform of another siege tower made of white bones, a necromancer's cold gaze had already locked onto her.
With a wave of the staff, a dark purple energy chain pierced through the air—【Death Shackles】, hitting its mark precisely!
【Triggers the "Imprisonment" effect, lasting 6 seconds. During the imprisonment, the user cannot move or use skills.】
The female warrior felt as if her limbs and bones were instantly locked in place by invisible shackles.
She was deprived of even the chance to adjust her falling posture and make a cushioning movement. She was like a soulless puppet, stiffly suspended in mid-air, letting gravity drag her down along her bone wall.
At the edge of my field of vision, a dark purple countdown bar was relentlessly shortening.
Just as she was about to crash heavily to the ground, several rough and powerful hands suddenly emerged from the crenellations of the city wall.
"Grab her!"
Zhao Tiedun and two garrison infantrymen grabbed her arms tightly and dragged her back to the city wall from mid-air.
The moment she landed, the dark purple timer bar at the edge of her vision reached its end, flickered, and then shattered into points of light.
She regained control of her body.
She collapsed inside the city wall, the wound on her left shoulder, pierced by the shadow's impact, still smoking, the charred flesh emitting a pungent odor.
She coughed twice, spitting out a mouthful of blood mixed with bone fragments, and looked up at Zhao Tiedun.
"The tower exploded." She grinned, her face covered in blood, but she managed a smile.
Zhao Tiedun stared at her for two seconds, then sighed: "You're always like this."
"He won't die."
She leaned against the battlements, letting the priest treat her wounds, but her eyes remained fixed on the outside of the city walls.
The fighting on the city walls continued. More than a dozen bone siege towers had been destroyed, but dozens more were still supplying undead warriors.
On the Bone Serpent Slope, waves of skeleton soldiers and undead warriors surged upwards.
Although Isabella destroyed more than a dozen of the mortars and the catapults and ballistae suppressed dozens more, the remaining ones continued to bombard the area.
...
In the middle of the city wall, Olaf's battle had just ended.
As a level 29 second-tier berserker, he held a short-handled axe in each hand, the blades already stained with broken bones and black blood.
The section of the wall he was responsible for defending did not feature the Bone Serpent Slope, but instead encountered a more brutal tactic from the undead army.
Countless skeleton soldiers used their bones and blue energy crystals to create a temporary bone staircase outside the city wall, which stretched all the way to the height of the crenellations.
Olaf stood alone in the center of the gap, hacking away at the surging skeletons one by one with his two short axes.
The pile of broken bones beneath his feet was knee-deep, making it almost impossible for him to stand, but he never stopped wielding his double axes.
Suddenly, a death knight charged through the crumbling pile of skeletons, his skeletal warhorse crushing two skeleton soldiers blocking his path.
The Death Knight's bone sword, imbued with dense shadow energy, pierced straight towards Olaf's chest.
Olaf abruptly sidestepped the bone sword's edge, his left axe precisely blocking the blade, while his right axe, accompanied by a whistling sound, cleaved the Death Knight in the waist.
With the axe blade deeply embedded between his ribs, he roared, his arm muscles bulging, and forcefully pushed the Death Knight and his horse through the gap.
The bone sword slipped from his hand and landed on the city wall with a clang.
The dark blue light on the surface of the sword quickly faded, becoming dull and lifeless, like an ordinary bone weapon whose soul fire had been drained.
Olaf's gaze lingered briefly on the bone sword before he looked away, continuing to hold his double axes firmly against the gap.
Half an hour later, Zhao Tiedun and his squad finally arrived and completely destroyed the steps made of skulls from the side.
After the breach was resealed, Zhao Tiedun turned his head and immediately saw Olaf still standing in the same spot.
The berserker was covered in blood, so much so that it was impossible to tell whether it was his own or that of the undead.
"You son of a bitch—" Zhao Tiedun cursed a string of profanities, his chest heaving violently.
"One person guarding the breach? Where are your soldiers? What about your formation? Are you trying to be a hero and risk your life?!"
Olaf raised his hand to scratch his head, grinned, and said with bone fragments still stuck to his teeth, "I didn't think too much about it at the time. The skeletons were already piled up, if I didn't go up and support them, who would?"
Zhao Tiedun took several deep breaths before he managed to suppress the urge to continue cursing.
He gritted his teeth and squeezed out a sentence: "If you dare to charge forward alone again, I'll break your legs first."
Olaf replied with a grin, "Got it, Lao Zhao."
But his hands, hanging by his sides, were still trembling slightly uncontrollably. It wasn't fear, but a physiological reaction from exhaustion.
Despite his cursing, Zhao Tiedun immediately had the accompanying priest cast a healing spell on Olaf, and then personally pushed Olaf towards the rest area inside the city wall.
"No one is allowed to come up before their shift ends."
Zhao Tiedun commanded in a deep voice.
...
On the other side of the battlements, a young archer was steadily nocking a pale golden arrow onto the bowstring.
He was just a level seven archer, inconspicuous among the city's defenders, but his archery skills were extremely accurate.
His quiver was hung at the most convenient position on his waist, with the arrowheads slightly tilted outwards.
This was a survival habit he developed on his own in order to complete the series of actions of taking an arrow, nocking the string, drawing the bow, and releasing the arrow in the shortest possible time.
Below the city, a skeleton centurion stood atop the Bone Serpent Slope, commanding a tidal wave of skeleton soldiers to charge toward the breach in the city wall.
It was half a head taller than a normal skeleton, its left arm's bone shield was covered with sword marks, and its right hand was tightly gripping a bone knife that was longer than its body.
Instead of rushing up the city wall himself, it remained like a cold nail, firmly anchored in the center of the skeleton army's formation, constantly aiming its bone blade at the weak points of the wall.
"Whoosh! Whoosh!"
Two fireballs roared out from the side and rear of the city wall and exploded in front of the skeleton centurion.
