"Boom, boom, boom, boom..." The solid ground suddenly shattered as more than a thousand Earth Spikes burst out. They shot up incredibly fast, piercing the ground and the Zerglings' bellies at the same time. Under this war magic, the Zerglings finally began dying in large numbers. More than 1,300 Earth Spikes claimed the lives of over 1,500 Zerglings!
The Earth Spikes didn't stop after one wave. One spike after another kept thrusting up from the ground, spreading outward from the corners of the city gate! From the sky, the once-level ground was now covered in sharp spikes!
Even the Zerglings that hadn't been impaled could no longer charge forward as quickly as before. The ground was uneven and covered in Earth Spikes, leaving them nowhere to set foot!
"Attack a human city? I'll teach them what respect and fear mean in this war!" Warwick said, watching the Zerglings get pierced by the ever-spreading spikes, his voice full of arrogance.
The spikes spread five hundred meters, killing at least ten thousand Zerglings. Combined with the rain of arrows, the hundred thousand Zerglings had suffered more than twenty thousand casualties before they even reached the city gate.
Ye Luo, however, remained expressionless. Although only ten days had passed, twenty thousand Zerglings no longer meant much to him...
"Ye Di, Ye Ci! Get ready to attack!"
The Path of Thorns spread Earth Spikes across the ground, while the spikes in front of the city gate dissolved into earth-elemental energy. The Zerglings seized the opportunity, displaying their remarkable jumping ability. Though they continued to die, at last they managed to approach the city walls!
"Poor bugs, how are you planning to besiege the city? Are you going to gnaw away at our walls one bite at a time?" Warwick taunted the Zerglings standing dumbfounded beneath the city wall.
"Boom, boom, boom!" Suddenly, an astonishing sight unfolded!
Sharp spikes suddenly thrust out from the city wall, which had been built from huge stones brought down from the mountain and then cut and shaped!
These spikes were unlike the earthen ones. They were pure white, more than three meters long, enormous, and incredibly sharp! And they were all too familiar to Warwick and Barrit! Ten days earlier, if it hadn't been for these Earth Spikes, they would have succeeded in killing Ye Luo!
Warwick's heart sank, and the smile on his face stiffened. "Those damned Demon Beasts are trying to destroy the city wall with Earth Spikes?"
"Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh..." Earth Spikes kept jutting out from the wall, seemingly at random. But as more and more of them stayed in place instead of disappearing, the Zerglings immediately leaped onto them and began hopping easily from spike to spike!
"Infantry! Defend the wall! Don't let those damned Demon Beasts up!" By now, even a fool could see what the Demon Beasts were planning. Warwick clenched his fists and roared. Soldiers in black iron armor, carrying large shields, immediately rushed to the edge of the wall!
"Boom!" An Earth Spike burst from the ground three meters below the wall. The fastest-charging Zergling leaped onto it, bent its powerful legs, then sprang like an arrow, clearing the three-meter gap in a single bound. It sailed over the infantry, who had braced themselves and begun gathering strength, and landed atop the wall!
"Clang! Clang! Slash, slash!" As soon as the Zergling landed, dozens of blades came down on it. Five or six gleaming swords struck its body, but it was like hacking at an iron shield. The two strongest soldiers managed to break through its armor, but their strikes had spent all their strength and did no real damage. The remaining five or six weapons, wrapped in black battle aura, drove deep into the Zergling's body, tearing it apart in an instant!
"Boom, boom, boom..." The Zergling died quickly, but its arrival signaled the beginning of the Zerglings' assault on the wall!
Earth Spikes began appearing two or three meters below the wall. At that height, the Zerglings could jump onto the wall, yet when they landed on the spikes, the soldiers above couldn't immediately attack them! Then the Zerglings came down like they were falling from the sky, one black shape after another leaping over the battlements!
"Defend! Defend! Defend!" The captains, senior captains, and deputy generals in charge of each section of the wall roared again and again. Any Zergling that leaped up was immediately hacked to pieces. But as more and more Zerglings surged onto the wall, they finally began to fight back!
One Zergling leaped up, and two quick-witted ones behind it followed its trajectory and jumped after it.
The first Zergling landed, and five nearby soldiers plunged their battle-aura-infused swords into its body and chopped off its head. But the other two landed with a crash while the soldiers' swords were still stuck in the first Zergling's body, leaving them no time to pull them free!
"Roar!" The Zerglings immediately went on a rampage. Their sharp foreclaws stabbed through the iron armor on two soldiers' chests with ease, tearing out their innards, while their huge jaws clamped onto another soldier's leg and tossed him high into the air!
In the blink of an eye, the two Zerglings had taken down five soldiers. As more Zerglings poured in, the ratio had shifted from more than a dozen soldiers fighting each Zergling to only five or six. The deaths of those five soldiers immediately added to the pressure on the rest. More importantly, four or five Zerglings leaped up at once, using the spot as a foothold. At last, they gained a firm hold on the wall.
"Damn it! Third Squad, move in and reinforce Second Squad! Third Squad..." A company commander watched as more than a dozen Zerglings expanded their foothold and immediately began directing the troops to concentrate their superior numbers. But then a red Zergling came hurtling down from above and, with a roar, bit off his head!
The wall fell far faster than Warwick had imagined. Beneath these crisscrossing spikes, the towering wall could no longer make them feel safe!
Warwick gritted his teeth. "Open the gates! Cavalry Brigade, charge with me!"
Warwick vaulted down from the wall and mounted a tall warhorse. Inside the wall, five thousand cavalrymen were already prepared!
"Open the gates!" Warwick shouted, while pulling on heavy armor weighing fifty or sixty pounds! With his original weight of a hundred and fifty or sixty pounds plus the armor, the warhorse beneath him showed no sign of strain... The horse's ability to bear such a load was truly astonishing!
The soldiers on either side of the gate removed the enormous crossbar behind it, which was as thick as a bucket. Seven soldiers on each side seized the huge bronze rings and pulled hard... "Clang!" Their combined force made the rings groan under the strain, but the gate remained completely motionless!
"This..." The gate guards were stunned. Their company was normally responsible for opening and closing the gates, so no one knew better than they did how much force it took to open them. Today, with the legion commander watching, they were eager to make a good impression and had used more than twice their usual strength. Yet the enormous iron gate seemed fixed in its frame!
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