Chapter 108: Probe

  Farnese's infantry squares advanced, not one after the other, but intentionally leaving tens of meters between each square, maintaining a certain buffer space.

  "Commander, we..." A Montian officer asked Cain, who was standing in the middle, as they faced the slowly advancing Phanoid infantry formation towards the fortress.

  "Wait a bit longer." Cain's faint refusal of his subordinate's request was met with an icy stare at the phalanx formation of the enemy army, devoid of any emotional fluctuation.

  "Let's do it." The Fano army was about 300-400 meters away from the fortress wall. Although their infantry phalanx advanced slowly, they had already moved forward by 200-300 meters in a very short time. When the first infantry phalanx of Fano approached to within 100 meters of the fortress wall, Kane finally gave orders to his subordinates beside him.

  "Archers, cover!" Upon hearing this military order, a lieutenant immediately walked to the edge of the cave and shouted loudly towards the city wall below.

  "Endless flames, heed my call, obey my command...." As soon as the lieutenant's order was conveyed, five figures in red robes with wooden staffs emerged from under the city wall. They were old Lava Monks with some grey hair.

  These old men were surrounded by a faint crimson glow, and the arrows that fell on them, when they reached one or two meters in front of them, seemed to have been shot into a cotton pile, softly deflected to one side, and finally gently fell to the ground.

  And on the heads of their staffs, a fist-sized fire-red crystal was inlaid. When they recited the incantation, the crystals on the staff emitted a dazzling fire-red light.

  Then five pieces of fire walls, each about twenty meters long and wide, formed at a height of more than twenty meters above their heads, quickly merged into one huge fire wall, protecting the entire hundred-meter-long city wall from front to back.

  Then the five old flames of Meng Bi raised their staffs and pressed down again, and the wall of fire that covered the city wall actually tilted forward slowly, forming a small slope.

  At this moment, the arrows and stones shot out by Farnod's army, wherever they fell around the city wall, were firmly blocked by the fire wall, and slid down along the fire wall. Only when they fell, the wooden arrow shafts were burned, leaving only the iron arrowheads, which showed a glimpse of the powerful energy contained in the fire wall.

  "The first phalanx, rise up, prepare for battle." After the firewall covered the city wall, four or five Bi Mon officers immediately ran out of the cave and continuously conveyed orders to the Bi Mon warriors who had formed a phalanx on the city wall.

  "Triangular formation, first row catapults advance." Kane gave the order to the officer beside him without turning his head.

  "Yes" A Burmese officer bowed his head in response, then turned around and picked up two 1-meter-square fire-red flags from the ground, quickly walked to the entrance of the cave, and waved the red flag in his hand heavily up and down once.

  Then about forty or fifty meters away from him on the mountain wall, a cave also stretched out a red flag and made the same movement.

  "The first row of catapults, attack." Seeing the waving flag, several Bamun warriors in light golden armor around the four catapults in the first row of the sixteen catapults at the back, transmitted the command while putting a green stone as large as a washbasin into the huge iron net of the catapult.

  One of the four catapults on the left, a warrior of Bamun, gave the order first. Then the thick iron column of the catapult suddenly lifted up, and after four loud noises, the four green stones quickly became smaller in the eyes of the surrounding beast tribe warriors, and flew high over the walls of Emalbeng Fortress.

  "Boom, boom...." In the phalanx of infantrymen attacking the fortress, a phalanx in the back was hit by four green stones before they could react, and after several miserable cries, several soldiers were crushed into meat pulp.

  "Three catapults, fire at will." Seeing his own catapult score a hit on the first shot, Kayne added another order.

  "All catapults, attack!" A moment later, a warrior in light golden armor from the rear flank relayed the order again, and soon more than a dozen sonic booms rang out.

  When the boulders fell again, the effect was quite different from the previous blow. Five or six infantry squares of Farnod's infantry deep in the canyon were hit by the boulders from front to back, and although not many warriors died.

  But these infantrymen instinctively moved around to avoid the stone attacks, naturally making the formation of the phalanx greatly disordered.

  "Loose arrows!" At this time, a military order sounded again on the walls of Emal's fortress. The Bimon warriors who had formed an iron shield phalanx on the city wall earlier had turned into two rows of archers. Now they were shooting arrows at Fanord's infantry from the high walls of over ten meters.

  After a dense sound of breaking through the air, a large number of arrows flew towards Farnod's first infantry phalanx, which was less than fifty meters away from the fortress city wall.

  These Farnod infantrymen were also well-trained troops, although their formation was somewhat scattered, they still formed several small squares with the iron shields in their hands between breaths, blocking most of the arrows.

  But quite a few arrows still carried a few points of Dou Qi halo, and they went through the gaps in their phalanx formation, causing heavy casualties among the infantry under Iron Shield.

  Without giving the foremost Nord infantry phalanx a chance to advance again, the Bimon warriors on the city wall shot out a second row of arrows.

  "Hmm" Cain, standing on the city wall, saw that the enemy's infantry phalanx, which had been compressed together by their increasingly dense barrage of stones and arrows, suddenly moved neatly to both sides. In the passage left open by the phalanx, three giant ballistae, each over five meters long, appeared.

  "Destroy them!" Cain turned his head to shout at the nearby Bimon warriors, and in one swift motion he grabbed a bow and arrow from a nearby warrior. With a single spin, Cain drew the longbow into a full moon shape.

  The Bitmon warriors on the city wall heard the officer's order and shot arrows frantically towards the direction of the three ballistae. However, several infantrymen suddenly walked out of the enemy's phalanx formation, stretched out their hands and pointed forward, and a green wind wall quickly formed about one or two meters in front of the three ballistae.

  The beast tribe warriors' arrows, whether they were adorned with golden or fiery red, brown auras, were all effortlessly blocked by this wall of wind.

  But then Cain, who had been aiming at the city wall for a moment, relaxed his hand holding the bowstring, and a golden light as thick as an arm shot out from the city wall in a flash of lightning towards the direction where the three scorpion ballistae were located. This golden light easily pierced through the wind wall and hit one of the three scorpion ballistae in the middle.

  A loud "boom" was followed by a massive amount of dust rising from the center of Fano's phalanx, making it impossible for the Bimon warriors on the city wall to see what was happening there.

  Before the dust had even settled, a beam of cyan light as thick as a water bucket shot out from the dust, giving the beast tribe's garrison no time to react before heavily slamming into the pure iron gate of Emalben Fortress.

  The beast warriors on the city wall heard a somewhat crisp and loud noise coming from under their feet.

  "Ballista ready." Ignoring the situation of the city gate being hit below, Cain immediately awakened the stunned Bimon warrior.

  "Hiss, hiss!" The defenders on the city wall did not wait for them to deploy their fine steel crossbows. A sharp military horn sounded from the mouth of the canyon where Farnod's army was stationed.

  "Damn it, I haven't even moved my hands yet and we're already retreating." Liu Yu in the iron shield formation cursed angrily upon hearing the military horn, which indicated that Farnese's army was going to retreat again.

  He could have withstood the dense arrows in the iron shield formation for more than half of Ai Su, and both hands had changed to hold the shield several times. Now, not even a shadow of an enemy soldier can be seen, but the opponent wants to retreat. Liu Yu feels that this is really indescribably depressing.

  "Sir, what about the enemy?" asked a Bimon officer beside Kain, bowing his head as he looked at the Fanoord infantry phalanx which had already begun to slowly retreat.

  "They just wanted to test us today, to see how much defensive power we have. Otherwise, they wouldn't have sent a direct vassal legion to attack. The magic ballista's shot earlier was no weaker than a 9th-tier expert's full-strength strike, yet our city gate remains unscathed."

  "It's been explained that a high-level defensive magic formation has already been laid out here. This is what they wanted to know. Since the purpose has been achieved, there's no need to continue fighting."

  "Fall back," Kane breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the retreating Farnod army, issuing new orders to the officer beside him.

  I was typing until after 12 o'clock last night and didn't finish this chapter, so I had to update it this morning. Sorry about that.