Once the Demon army noticed their fellow soldiers’ heads were flying after getting hit with rocks, the soldiers up on the wall dumped hot oil over them. Some Demons fell to the ground. The stench of blood mixed with the odd smell of stone hitting stone filled the soldiers’ nostrils, and the clamor, the plucking of bow strings, battle cries, and even the howls of the Demons assaulted their eardrums.
While the long-ranged battle had begun in the dead of night, it was still raging when the dim light of dawn began to glow.
With the catapults broken, the wild magic kettles seemed to no longer have a purpose. However, Eickstedt decided to use them as heat sources. There was no longer an upper limit to their heat, and they reached a few hundred degrees Celsius. With the lids open, he would heat sugar or oil, and once they boiled over, he’d dump them over the wall. The contents that rained down did unbelievable damage to the Demons.
“Keep at it! We’re not the only ones suffering!” shouted Werner. His soldiers answered. Being on the battlefield was one of a noble’s duties, but to fight on the frontlines was something else. And their chief commander, a boy still in his teens, was right there shouting his throat raw. This was no time for fear.
Werner’s perseverance during this battle was deserving of special mention. He brought his injured men to the safest places possible to administer first-aid and sometimes even joined the defenders on the walls in throwing rocks. He watched for where supplies dwindled and restocked stones, arrows, and oil. He was still barking orders, but he was too busy to even feel exhausted.
“It’s like they came here to laugh at us!”
“I mean, I guess so,” responded Werner. No one but him would have recognized Neurath’s accidental anime reference. Neurath responded with an expression half-glum and half-grimacing as Werner threw another stone over the wall.
Now deep into the battle, Werner began to think that Gezarius’s destruction of the ballistae had been effective. If he was still throwing logs, Werner’s men wouldn’t have been able to stave them off for this long. It seemed that even a Demon Commander couldn’t throw logs one-handed for too long, and that was one of the reasons why he was working to maintain the war front. He was also probably thinking that if he landed a projectile on Werner and killed him, it would ruin his plans.
Still, when a stone thrown by the Demon Commander hit a human head on, it killed them. Many more lost their lives to rocks thrown by other monsters. Werner’s men were tired, but their foes’ onslaught was so relentless that it left no room for switching with the reserves. Werner cursed under his breath; he had underestimated the Demons’ ability to fight drawn out battles.
Just as Werner was beginning to think they were in real danger, Schünzel pointed to something behind their enemies. There was a flickering light. For a second, even Werner didn’t recognize it was their agreed upon signal, but as he returned to his senses, he quickly ordered a response be sent.
“Send the signal to the south too. It’s about to begin.”
“Yessir.”
Schünzel reflected the light to its source. Then, a member of the garrison at the southern gate used a metal plate to reflect that light and send the signal back. Shortly after, the Demon army sensed a presence from behind. They turned around to see beautiful armor glittering in the light of the sun.
Before the Demons could even scream, the Kingdom of Wein’s knight brigade rushed into battle, glinting in the early morning rays. The clomps of hooves were all that could be heard, but from within the clamor came Grezarius’s angry roar of “Impossible!”
The kingdom’s army arrived on the battlefield as swiftly as possible, which they managed by bringing minimal supplies and making early preparations for the battle.
The knight brigade had left all other battles to the knights of noble houses and marched for Anheim in peak condition on the same day the capital had received Werner’s messenger. They had already heard the crown prince’s orders and the plans for battle, and thus, they knew for certain that they would find a battlefield waiting for them when they arrived. They had made a “pre-planned” emergency march.
Count Volger was the one who supplied the knight brigade. Not only did he have the geographical advantage of having a domain located adjacent to the former fiefdom of Marquess Kneipp, but he also had experience relocating over five thousand refugees from the same fiefdom to the capital in just a month without letting a single one starve. He already knew where to allocate supplies and how to ship those munitions to prevent the knight brigade, noble house armies, mercenaries, and squads of adventurers from starving, even though they had marched from the capital with no provisions and minimal armaments.
Just as had been planned, the knight brigade had brought no supply packs, instead securing supplies, provisions, and arrows while en route. They even got horses that were pre-emptively shipped to the lands of the former fiefdom of Marquess Kneipp that were now under Baron Zabel.
The knight brigade rushed for their enemies with astounding bravery. The battlefield was not Triot but the old domain of Marquess Kneipp, and their enemies were none other than the invading Demon army. To them, it was a fight to defend their motherland. Given their inhuman foes, they had no need for restraint.
Knights were always skilled with field battles. The fact that the Demon army had intentionally waged the battle in the plains worked to the knights’ favor, and the fact that the Demon army had already brought Triot to ruin only stoked their hostility. Having seen the refugees from Triot in the capital for themselves, it was pure anger that drove their assault.
Werner watched from atop the ramparts, but what most surprised him was that they were equipped with a squad of carroballistae. Werner had thought that shooting while moving would be impossible, but that was only because he underestimated the power of this world’s skills.
A driver with the Coachman skill almost completely eliminated vibrations from their chariot, and an archer born with Marksmanship could easily hit targets from atop the roof, even while the vehicle was moving. Werner gazed in wonder as they hit shot after shot while driving the carriage.
The kingdom’s engineers hadn’t been playing around. Not only did they miniaturize cranequins, they half-automated the carroballistae through the use of magic stones. Every time it launched a bolt, the cranequin would restring the line, allowing for the next round of arrows to be fired just by setting them in place.
Crown Prince Hubertus had taken the lead in improving the design until they had achieved their goal of producing ballistae that shot with blinding speed. The kingdom had used its power as a large-scale organization to assemble the necessary personnel, and as a result, carroballistae became powerful missile weapons whose squadrons surged through the battlefield like this world’s version of tanks.
The knights pierced through the monsters with their lances and caved in the Werewolf and Weretiger heads with their swords. With one volley of the carroballistae, the arrows went right through one monster and stabbed straight into the one behind them. The galloping horses broke the Demon army’s lines, reducing them to a disorganized Demon mass.
While one or two tried to fight back, they posed no threat once battered aside with maces and cut down by battleaxes. Marquess Schramm acted as their supreme commander, and he spread out the knight brigade into two wings. Once he did, seasoned mercenaries cut the Demon army to pieces, plunging them into chaos.
“Jeez. I see the knights have arrived.”
No one criticized Werner for dropping to his knees. The attack on Anheim had come to a sudden halt. After running around since the middle of the night, Werner was finally able to take a breather and a sip of water.