The Order of Saint John Hospitaller

Just as Giovanni had predicted, the central section of the walls came under the fiercest assault.

Situated in the Lycus River valley, the walls here were relatively low. After days of ferocious Ottoman attacks, the moat had been filled, and the first low wall had been blasted apart. It was far easier to climb onto the battlements here than elsewhere.

Fortunately, the central section had been the first to spot the enemy, and the Emperor had immediately dispatched the Kheshig Army to reinforce it. Though the scales of battle had already tipped toward the enemy, the defenders had not been scattered. Instead, they stubbornly formed one combat group after another, blocking the narrow passages and holding back the enemy.

As time passed, the towers on the second and third walls also began supporting the battle ahead. The Ottomans seized several towers as well, intending to use their elevated positions to provide ranged support to their own men. Yet the moment they showed themselves, the Kheshig Army positioned on the second wall shot them down.

These Kheshig soldiers, the finest armored horse archers in the human world of this age and the last afterglow of the nomads, were all elites painstakingly selected by Lothar. The crackle of arrows striking armor never ceased. Even amid the rain and darkness, more than half their arrows still found their marks.

By now, the purple robe over the Emperor's Holy Cross Plate Armor had been soaked through with blood and rainwater, while corpses lay piled like a small mountain beneath his feet.

The enemies who had originally surrounded him had packed the entire stretch of wall. Countless Janissaries charged one after another toward the imperial banner, trying to break it. Yet even when the Janissaries on this section of wall were nearly wiped out, the