Chapter 1317

The soldiers in the rear kept shoving the soldiers in front forward, while explosives rained down from above; they were crying out for their fathers and mothers, yet their bodies had no choice but to advance, and with a sudden bang of an explosion, they died on the spot.

In just over ten minutes, the Holy Kingdom's overly dense formation suffered losses exceeding ten thousand men, including a large number of precious mages, archers, and countless shield-wall soldiers.

These front-row shield walls received extra attention from the Eternal Night soldiers' explosive packs, while the shield walls behind them pressed against the backs of the soldiers in front; when one explosive pack came down, in an instant two rows and two columns of shield-wall soldiers died on the spot, along with several surrounding shield-and-spear soldiers blown into a dazed mess.

In their brief moment of stupor, they were once again stabbed to death by the long spears of the Eternal Night soldiers behind the shield wall!

By the time the Holy Kingdom's commander-in-chief and the Holy Son noticed something seemed off, the casualty count had already surged toward fifteen thousand, and the two thousand explosive packs on the city wall were nearly exhausted; when the Holy Kingdom's commander-in-chief and the Holy Son received word that the enemy seemed to be using black powder weapons, the commander immediately had the horn-blowers announce a retreat.

The Holy Kingdom's rear soldiers, hearing the retreat horn, finally stopped applying pressure on the soldiers ahead; the more they were pushed forward, the more these soldiers understood exactly what was happening at the very front line, and they watched in terror as a package fell from the city wall, suddenly landing among the crowd and exploding, killing people in an instant.

This was simply beyond their imagination; it felt about the same as their own magic cannon shells, only slightly less powerful.

The retreat horn and the gradually fading pressure from the rear made the surviving Holy Kingdom soldiers feel grateful that they had been blessed by the Holy King, and the city wall seemed to sense this as well, no longer tossing down those packages of explosives, which made the Holy Kingdom soldiers below even more grateful.

In truth, it wasn't that the Eternal Night soldiers responsible for bombing didn't want to keep throwing — they simply had limited supplies; just as they were getting into the swing of throwing, the black powder in their hands ran out.

The Holy Kingdom army once again retreated like a tide, and Yan Liu on the city wall also breathed a sigh of relief; if they had chosen to continue the fierce assault, they would have discovered that there were actually no more packs left to throw.

Heaven favors us.

But next time we won't be so lucky, and a wry smile rose on Yan Liu's face as well.

The next wave will surely be a bombardment of magic crystal cannons!

This time the enemy will definitely choose to bombard the city wall, and we can only choose to evade!

Whether we can withstand the enemy's next wave of attack is the crucial key!

The reason is also very simple: the commander-in-chief is the head of an army, the very root of morale; once the enemy still has black powder and harbors thoughts of perishing together, then he'll be in trouble.

Moreover, the enemy's commander-in-chief has not made a move either; when the two commanders clash, it must be the final showdown where one side has already gained the upper hand over the other.

At such a time, if the weaker side's commander defeats the stronger side's commander, perhaps the weaker side could turn defeat into victory, but most of the time it is the stronger commander who defeats the weaker commander and ends the battle.

But now, with neither side having won or lost, if one commander rashly steps forward to fight, and once the Holy Kingdom's commander is seriously wounded by the enemy commander, or killed through trickery, morale will plummet, and then the Holy Kingdom's army will surely be slaughtered by the enemy like chickens and tiles.

Better to play it safe for now.

"Although we lost two thousand mages, we still have confidence in summoning the Holy Fire; it just takes time to arrange, and the agreement with the Kingdom requires at least evening before we can launch the final attack."

Both the Holy Son and the commander-in-chief were sensible people.

What Holy Fire? In truth, it was simply using spatial magic to open a long-range mirror-image magic, thereby allowing the Kingdom's magic-guided giant cannons to launch an attack, with magic cannon shells striking the enemy through spatial magic.

It wasn't any particularly brilliant tactic; it was just that under the rule of religious faith, the common folk had become ignorant, like puppets on strings, deeply controlled by those in power — whatever the Holy King said, that was what it was.

The luxurious life of oppressing the lower classes in comfort made the Kingdom's ruling class extremely corrupt, while the common people, due to their ignorance, each felt this was the best life possible, all a trial from the Holy King, unaware that elsewhere there existed lives far better than those in the Holy Kingdom.

"This time there shouldn't be any mishaps, right? Will the second descent of the Holy Fire cause morale to drop? In the past, the descent of the Holy Fire always signified the start of a holy war — a second descent, hmm." The Holy Kingdom's commander-in-chief fell into thinking bound by Chen Jiu conventions.

Will it make the common folk below feel that the holy war has ended?