Return to Yunkai

A week later, Eren arrived. After finishing up that night, he rested for the night and ordered the army to march straight for Yunkai the next day.

This time, Eren did not intend to take action himself. Yunkai had only been swept through half a year ago and had probably only just recovered. He could leave it to Modun, Flock, and the others to crush Yunkai.

After a week of arduous marching, the captives dragged along with them had also lost quite a few people. Many with physical impairments had already collapsed along the road. Eren had nothing to say about this. They were captives to begin with, and he could not waste time on their account. Those who could no longer walk did not need to be attended to. After their shackles were removed, they were left there to fend for themselves.

When Eren returned to Yunkai this time, he discovered that, after he had damaged sections of its walls last time, all the walls had been raised and reinforced. They were now nearly thirty meters high and considerably thicker. People were still working on the walls, preparing to raise them further. They had probably been frightened by Eren's fifty-meter giant.

This time, Eren stayed in the rear with thirty thousand men. After all, having the king personally take the field for every battle was beneath his dignity. Besides, this was clearly a fight in their favor. If these men could not even defeat a Yunkai that had already been swept through last time, there was no need for them to exist.

All the remaining troops were led into the attack by Modun, Flock, and the others. The Pure Titans would attack alongside them.

Eren directly controlled the Pure Titans, putting them at the front and having the cavalry follow behind to reduce casualties from arrows.

At the command, the cavalry began their attack on Yunkai. The guards on the walls who were overseeing the construction spotted the mass of troops in the distance, and even giants among them. They hurriedly sounded the horn, summoning all the defenders.

After making the construction workers leave at once, the defenders saw the cavalry and giants and immediately organized a counterattack, sending a rain of arrows toward the enemy.

The Pure Titans pushed through the rain of arrows to the walls and slammed hard into Yunkai's fortifications. Although the walls shook violently under the impact, Yunkai had taken special care to reinforce them after the previous attack.

Although the crashes were loud, the walls ultimately held. This time, however, the giants were merely shields drawing fire so that the cavalry behind them could charge up to the walls. Quite a few cavalrymen also began shooting arrows at the walls directly from horseback.

Meanwhile, after approaching the gate, Modun transformed directly into a Jaw Giant and raked his sharp claws across it. But the gate was far too thick. Although his claws scraped off some fragments, it remained standing firm.

Seeing this, Modun used the mask on his head after transforming to ram the gate madly. In the end, although the recoil from the impacts left his head a little dizzy, he still managed to smash the gate open.

Once Modun saw that the gate had been smashed open, he tried to squeeze straight through it. Although he had broken through the gate, a force of three hundred men stood beyond the passage inside, preparing to organize a counterattack.

Because the gateway passage was narrow and very long, Modun had only just poked his head through the broken gate and had not yet had time to assess the situation when several spears hurled straight at him caught him off guard and pierced his eyes. Blinded, Modun grew somewhat flustered. He had never expected the defenders behind the gate to be so formidable, robbing him of his sight right away. Instinctively, he wanted to reach out and flail at them.

But the passage was too cramped. His transformed giant body could only barely fit inside, leaving no room to extend his arms. He could only brace himself against the wall and retreat, pull the spears out of his eyes, and prepare to find somewhere to recover.

The troops who had dealt Modun this heavy blow were the Unsullied. After Eren had breached Yunkai last time, the surviving slave masters had gone straight to Astapor and bought quite a few Unsullied. Although they were of no damn use against Eren, in cramped surroundings they could still pose some threat to giants a dozen or so meters tall.

Moreover, after buying a contingent of Unsullied,

If anyone attacked the city again, as long as they did not encounter a cheating bastard like Eren, the Unsullied might even be able to escort these slave masters to safety. At worst, they could buy them some time to escape. But these slave masters had never expected this band of damned robbers to return after only half a year. With no other choice, each household contributed some Unsullied to form a force of three hundred men. If the gate was breached, the discipline of these Unsullied and their skill with shield formations and spears could buy a little more time for them to escape.

Yes, these slave masters had planned from the outset to flee as soon as the city fell. Although abandoning the city's inhabitants would look bad, they were slave masters. They would not care about the lives of those lowborn wretches, as long as their own lives were preserved.

The Dothraki cavalry outside the city watched Modun transform and smash straight through the gate. Before they could celebrate, they saw him retreat with two spears sticking out of his eyes.

Through the space left by Modun's retreat, they could see a force near the passage inside, already in a shield formation with spears leveled. These men completely blocked the opening of the passage. To get inside, they would have to kill them first.

Some reckless fools therefore charged straight toward the gate on horseback. The result was obvious: quite a few were taken out by a single volley of thrown spears. Those coming after them tried to charge the formation, but in a place like this, cavalry had no room to operate. The passage was too narrow, and charging in merely meant throwing their lives away.

Meanwhile, Modun had originally intended to wait for his eyes to recover after retreating, but the soldiers on the walls kept harassing him with arrows until he was thoroughly fed up. He could only cover the nape of his neck and retreat farther out.

But this action gave others a chance to discover his weakness. He protected nothing else, only the nape of his neck. Was that not plainly telling everyone it was his weak point? For a time, all the arrows flew toward Modun. Fortunately, his transformed palms were thick enough that the arrows could not pierce them. Besides, individual arrows could be ignored entirely as long as they did not hit his brain.

After holding out like this for a while, his eyes recovered, and Modun could see his surroundings clearly again. He discovered that the Dothraki cavalry were all exchanging arrows with the defenders beneath the walls, while the Pure Titans were still clawing at the walls and repeatedly ramming them.

Modun also spotted the culprits who had blinded him just now. A force was guarding the mouth of the passage inside the gate, shields raised and spears in hand, fighting the cavalry charging the gate. But because the terrain was narrow, the cavalry could not maneuver. Many warriors dismounted to fight, and for the moment, the battle reached a stalemate.

Faced with this situation, Modun could not think of a solution right away. He was the sort who liked to meet force with force. Normally, he only needed to follow Eren's orders. This time, Eren had let him act on his own with the intention of helping him grow. After all, he had inherited the power of the giants and needed to practice adapting to changing situations.

At that moment, Flock, who was some distance away, saw that the battle had stalled and hurriedly rode over. He shouted at Modun:

"Modun, what are you doing? If you can't get through the gate, why don't you just use your claws to climb over the wall? Don't hold up the task His Majesty gave us!"

Hearing Flock's words, Modun immediately understood. He had not possessed the power of the giants for long, and because he had previously always moved and fought as an ordinary human, his thinking had become stuck in an ordinary human's mindset for a moment.