Late that night, the Demon Army launched another surprise attack, just as expected.
On Novigel's northern wall, the sounds of battle shook the heavens, screams mingling with the explosive roar of flames.
Outside the city stood an undead army stretching as far as the eye could see.
As the first wave of expendable cannon fodder, reanimated corpses, skeleton soldiers, and ghouls were driven forward by necromancers, forming a dark tide of bodies that charged madly at the wall.
Atop the towering wall, the defenders unleashed their full firepower.
White-robed Salvation Army soldiers stood in three tightly packed ranks, wielding the laboratory's latest lever-action rifles, [Demonbane]—high-capacity weapons with a rapid rate of fire and enchanted bullets that erupted into searing flames on impact.
Gunfire merged into a continuous roar, as dense as a torrential downpour.
The bodies in the front ranks were shot to pieces and fell, only for those behind them to trample over their companions and keep climbing. Corpse piled upon corpse, building stairways of flesh and blood at the foot of the wall.
"Fireball Technique—release!" The battle mages raised their staffs in unison.
Dozens of enormous fireballs came howling down, turning the ground beneath the wall into a sea of flames. The stench of charred flesh drifted far downwind.
Yet the gaps blasted into the horde rarely remained empty for more than a moment before fresh undead creatures roared and filled them, seemingly without end.
This was how Balks had waged his relentless campaigns against the continent's nations in recent years.
Wherever the Demon Army went, cities that refused to submit and become slaves were slaughtered one after another. The dead were then collectively turned into undead, becoming an inexhaustible supply of cannon fodder for the Demon Army.
Like a rolling snowball, the undead forces under Balks's command