My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill-Chapter 359

At fifty yards, the human archers began suppression fire against the settlement defenders on the walls. Arrows forced goblin and serpentfolk archers to duck behind crenellations, reducing their firing rate.

The ram team reached the eastern gate.

"Ram at the gate!" Vex reported mentally. "They’re beginning the breach attempt!"

"Defenders on the wall—drop stones and burning oil," Lyra commanded. "Make them pay for every second they’re at that gate."

Settlement defenders had prepared for this. Large stones and heated oil pots were positioned at intervals along the wall. Now they heaved them over, targeting the ram team clustered at the gate.

The results were horrific.

Stones crushed skulls and shattered limbs. Burning oil splashed across armor, seeping into joints and igniting clothing underneath. Screams rose from the ram team as soldiers caught fire or were pulverized by falling debris.

Fifteen casualties in ten seconds.

But the ram kept swinging. Heavy timber reinforced with metal crashed against the eastern gate again and again. The gate shuddered but held—Thrak’s construction was solid.

Meanwhile, scaling ladder teams were reaching the walls at other points along the eastern sector. Ladders crashed against stone, and human soldiers began climbing.

"Ladders on the north wall!" reported a serpentfolk archer. "They’re climbing!"

"Push them off," Vex commanded. "Poles, blades, anything. Don’t let them get footholds!"

Settlement defenders swarmed to the ladder positions. They used long poles to push ladders backward, sending soldiers tumbling. They slashed at hands gripping ladder tops. They dropped stones directly onto climbing soldiers.

It was brutal, close-quarters combat fought vertically with humans trying to climb and defenders trying to prevent it.

Three ladders were pushed back, sending soldiers falling to injuries below.

But two ladders held firm, and human soldiers reached the wall top.

Hand-to-hand combat erupted as human heavy infantry clashed with goblin and serpentfolk defenders on the narrow wall walkway.

"Breaches on the wall!" Vex reported. "We’ve got hand-to-hand at two positions!"

"Vex’ahlia’s elites are moving to support," came the demon commander’s response. Fifty elite soldiers surged toward the breach points, moving with the professional speed of veteran warriors.

At the eastern gate, the battering ram finally succeeded. The gate cracked, then splintered, then broke inward with a thunderous crash.

Human soldiers poured through the breach.

"Gate is down!" Vex’s mental voice carried controlled urgency. "Enemy pouring through!"

"Urgak—now!" Lyra commanded.

The orc shock troops had been positioned precisely for this moment. As human soldiers flooded through the broken gate, they found themselves in a prepared kill zone.

Urgak’s orcs hit them from three sides simultaneously—a coordinated ambush in the confined space just inside the gate. The orcs’ superior strength and shock assault tactics turned the breakthrough into a meat grinder.

Human soldiers fell in heaps. The advance stalled as bodies clogged the gateway. Those behind couldn’t push forward through their own dead and dying.

On the wall tops, Vex’ahlia’s purple-skinned elites arrived at the breach points. These weren’t ordinary soldiers—they were demon-trained specialists with centuries of combined combat experience. They hit the human soldiers who’d gained the wall with coordinated precision.

Blades flashed. Blood sprayed. Within ninety seconds, the wall-top breaches were cleared, and settlement defenders were pushing human forces back down the ladders.

At the gateway, Urgak’s orcs had turned the breach into an impassable killing ground. Dead human soldiers were stacked three deep in the gateway, and no amount of pressure from behind could force living soldiers through.

In the human assault formation, officers were receiving panicked reports.

"We’ve taken fifty percent casualties! The gateway is blocked with our own dead! Wall breaches failed! We can’t sustain this!"

A captain made the hard decision. "Sound retreat! Fall back in order! Maintain formation!"

Horns blew. The human assault force began withdrawing—not routing, but conducting a professional retreat under continued arrow fire from the walls.

The settlement defenders let them go, too exhausted and bloodied to pursue.

Aftermath: Hour Sixteen

As the human forces retreated back to First Line positions, both sides assessed the cost of the escalated engagement.

Human casualties: Seventy-three dead, one hundred and four wounded. Total: one hundred and seventy-seven casualties from a three hundred soldier assault—fifty-nine percent casualty rate.

Settlement casualties: Nineteen dead, thirty-two wounded (twelve seriously). Total: fifty-one casualties from approximately one hundred and twenty-five defenders engaged—forty-one percent casualty rate.

In the human command tent, Elric reviewed the brutal numbers with stony calm.

"Unacceptable," he said quietly. "Fifty-nine percent casualties for zero territorial gain. At this rate, we’d lose two thousand soldiers taking Second Line and still wouldn’t have won the battle."

"Sir, they fought harder than we expected—"

"They fought exactly as hard as they needed to," Elric interrupted. "That was professional defensive warfare conducted by trained soldiers with good leadership. The eastern wall is strong, their defensive positions are well-prepared, and they have reserve forces they can commit to threatened sectors."

He studied the map, recalculating his entire approach.

"We can’t brute force Second Line. Not without catastrophic casualties." His finger traced alternative approaches. "We need to be smarter. Find weaknesses. Exploit them. Or..."

"Or what, sir?"

"Or we settle in for a proper siege. Cut off their supplies, wear them down, let attrition do our work for us." Elric’s weathered face showed the calculation of experience. "They can’t have infinite food and water. Eventually hunger and thirst will weaken them more than our assaults ever could."

At Second Line, the mood was grimmer despite successfully holding.

Lyra coordinated casualty reports through the telepathic network, her golden eyes tracking the numbers with cold precision.

"Nineteen dead, thirty-two wounded. We’re down to eight hundred and ninety effective fighters." Her mental voice was steady but everyone could feel the weight behind it. "We held, but barely. If Elric commits his full force instead of three hundred soldiers, we can’t sustain these casualty rates."

"We killed seventy-three of theirs for nineteen of ours," Vex pointed out. "That’s nearly four-to-one in our favor."

"Against three hundred soldiers," Seraphina countered. "He has three thousand seven hundred still combat-ready. He can afford to trade four for one. We cannot."