The Last Wall

The fifth day.

Crystal Giants still surged forward like a tide. The monsters from the Holy Spirit Plain seemed endless, while human strength... had nearly reached its limit.

Arcane Energy gathered into wave after wave of lightning storms. Destructive power relentlessly lashed at the crumbling Energy Barrier of Saint Suniel's great shield. A low, profoundly unsettling howl echoed throughout the shield, like the roar of tens of thousands, or like a rift leading into the abyss tearing open deep within the earth. The once seamless barrier was now riddled with holes. Vast patches of fragmented static covered the sky above the city, and both those patches and the howls filling the shield reminded the city's defenders of one thing: the shield was about to collapse.

Overly active magical power had accumulated over the plain and begun affecting the weather. Though it should have been summer, icy gusts swept through the entire city. The blue-and-gold Ansu royal banner snapped above the walls, whipping wildly in the gale. Beneath it, battered and exhausted knights and soldiers held their positions beside trebuchets and heavy ballistae, behind the battlements, staring numbly yet stubbornly at the plain below.

Stone shells and massive bolts for defending the city were still piled along the walls, yet fewer than a third of the ballistae and trebuchets remained in operation—because the mages responsible for enchanting the ammunition had already exhausted their mana.

Mana ran dry more easily than physical strength, and it was more susceptible to environmental influence. Mages could only recover quickly in relatively stable surroundings, yet Saint Suniel City was now engulfed in a turbulent magical field. The human mind was not a machine; meditation simply could not proceed smoothly in such a Magic Environment. The Royal Mages did everything they could to maintain the defensive firepower,