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1310 Words
He had troops holding the breach, and the enemy was pinned against a wall. That made them fish in a barrel for the mana cannons and ballistae.
There were zero good reasons for his reckless decision.
Liz leaned down to quickly check on Aster, but soon stormed over to him. He expected to be either punched or slapped, deservingly so. But she just kneeled and felt him over for injuries while demanding, “What were you thinking!?”
“I wasn’t. Sorry, I neglected to wake myself with [Endurance] for too long and got tired. It’s been a long few days, and it keeps wearing off faster each time. I’ll…”
“Stop. What was that? Have you not slept recently? When did you sleep last…? Wait, have you not slept at all?”
At Matt’s shake of the head, she grabbed and shook him. “You i***t! You need to sleep. Right now. Matt, you can only go for so long without some proper sleep.” Seeing him open his mouth, she shook her head. “No. The rest of us have all slept since this started. While I hadn’t personally seen you sleep, I assumed you were just sleeping when we did. I’m taking over for the next few hours while you get some rest. Things will be easy enough with the shields up.”
Matt shook his head. “I need to recharge the earth mages.”
“No, stop! They’ve been resting for nearly a full day now. You need to sleep. We all need you to sleep. Go grab Aster and find a bunk to crash in. She severely overextended herself rescuing you from this insane stunt. Juni sent us a message about this that you ignored. He already knew about the Tier 7s here, and an equivalent division of our own Tier 7 elites was already on their way to deal with them. We didn’t have to take this risk.”
Matt didn’t have it in himself to argue anymore, particularly after seeing the state of his bond and hearing her worried pleas. After messaging Juni that he was going to sleep, and being chewed out again for not sleeping, he found a cot and his world went dark before he had time to adjust.
With Aster in his arms, Matt was out cold in seconds.
Liz prodded him awake after what felt like only minutes, but a check of his AI showed that it was closer to seven hours.
“What’s wrong?”
Liz pushed him back onto the cot slightly as he tried to stand. “Nothing. We have about three hours before the shields fall for real this time, and I knew you would want to be up. I’ve had everyone resting and recovering their mana. The healers are even ahead of the casualties, and we’re…” She paused. “Well, we aren’t at one hundred percent, but everyone is mostly healed and ready for the next engagement.”
Matt laid a groggy Aster down on the cot and picked up his sword from where he’d apparently dropped it on the floor, returning it to his spatial ring.
“Thank you.”
He kissed Liz’s sweaty, soot-covered head.
He walked outside to see that the area around them was cleaned up, and any debris was added to the defensive berms.
Quickly climbing the stairs, he surveyed the attacking army. Their numbers had grown again during the time he was unconscious. While observing the besiegers, Matt called Juni.
Before he could say anything, Juni cut in with, “You’re an idiot.”
“We went through this yesterday. Yes, I am. No, I won’t do it again. Though I think we’ll be dead before I need to sleep again anyway. Oh! How many Tier 7s did we get? Was it worth it?”
Juni snorted, “Nine full battalions of Tier 7s with Tier 8 items. I wish I could have seen the princess’s face when she found out. After they realized we tricked them, the queendom restarted the bombardment for real. Clearly, the plan to take the city intact is dead and gone. Just like their elites.”
The queendom had moved half their trebuchets forward to within range of the city proper and was battering at the shield with a vengeful intensity that could only be born from being made a fool of.
“What’s our strategy?”
“Hold as long as we can and make them bleed for it. We intend to hold until they take the outer walls, then try to sally forth out of one of the gates. With the prince’s help, we should be able to break through their lines and escape.”
“Think they’ll happily let us walk out of here?” Matt didn’t think it was likely, as boulder after boulder shattered on the invisible shielding.
“No. We’ll need to fight our way out. Are your troops ready to ride out the bombardment?”
Matt peered over the edge of the inner wall and surveyed his side. “As ready as we can be. All positions are within the protection of the wall, but outside of its collapsing range. Are we going to hold the wall this time?”
“If we can, yes. But orders will change as we progress.”
Suddenly remembering something, Matt asked, “What about the remaining crafters still in the city?”
Juni groaned. “I’ve gathered most of them that weren’t able to catch a teleport out, but some are refusing to leave their workshops, even though we know the queendom will be pummeling the city center.”
With that ominous note, they ended the call and waited, with only the pounding of rocks on shielding to give them company.
It wasn’t good that all the crafters hadn’t gotten out of the city. They were able to get in the teleporter, as it was a swapping function between locations, and they were trying to bring people in. There was nearly no demand to leave except from the civilians. Even then, some of them had simply refused to evacuate without the large, expensive equipment in their workshops that they couldn’t pack up in time. Losing that equipment would financially ruin many of them, and if it wasn’t stored on their person, then it wouldn’t be ‘looted but returned’ to them when they died or were captured. The ones who fled without any equipment wouldn’t be getting it back either because it would either be destroyed during the siege or claimed as war prizes afterwards.
It was a shitty situation for everyone.
Three hours later, the first boulder sailed over the wall and smashed its way through a city block. Then, the queendom started lighting the rocks on fire before launching them. Teams ignored most of the fires, unless they ate their way to their positions, where bucket brigades and mages would handle the flames.
One landed close enough for Matt to smother the flames with [Hail].
He looked over the kingdom casualty list as he waited for the attackers to move in again.
Things weren’t looking good. They had lost nearly half their troops in the various fights and while repelling the siegers. On the bright side, they had taken out nearly eight hundred thousand enemy troops already. If the queendom hadn’t gotten reinforcements, they would have won the siege, but there were another million and a half troops out there waiting.
With the enemy’s new willingness to level the city, Matt hoped that the prince had a decent extraction force ready to help them break through the encirclement.
They would need large numbers to break through and avoid being chased down and killed out of hand.
Five long, agonizing hours later, as the sun reached its zenith, the queendom troops started moving forward.
- Writer
