The Great Battle Begins (Part 1)

His policy of one-on-one assistance and one-on-one pairings had also won the mages' wholehearted support, allowing them to quickly integrate into the great family of Southeast Fortress and mingle with the warriors.

On the battlefield, mages were the sharpest spears, while the warriors at their side were their sturdiest protective shields.

Thus, as the Avian Demons' Lightning Spears came raining down, the heavily armored Shield Warriors immediately turned the entire defensive line atop Southeast Fortress into a turtle shell.

Hidden behind them, completely covered by Tower Shields, the mages did not even catch sight of the Lightning Spears before the spears were already ricocheting away—directly back down beneath the city walls.

The Avian Demons' Lightning Spears had a distinctive feature: near the rear of each spear's middle section were four tiny stabilizing fins, meant to keep the spear aimed forward and downward during flight rather than falling sideways. But now, those four little fins had become the Mad Demons' nightmare.

The Lightning Spears deflected by the Shield Warriors naturally could not tell friend from foe. The Mad Demons had only just wiped out all three waves of Magic Beasts and suffered considerable losses when thousands of Lightning Spears descended from the sky to greet them.

They had come far too suddenly.

The Mad Demons were still in their frenzied state. Those who noticed the falling Lightning Spears in time and managed to knock them aside fared somewhat better, but those who failed to see them—or whose attention had wandered—were doomed.

Of the five thousand Lightning Spears, at least two-thirds had been knocked down from the walls. At least a thousand Mad Demons were killed or wounded beneath them. What a miserable sight!

But Mad Demons were Mad Demons after all. Though they had suffered several devastating blows in succession and