Chapter 316 - 311: The Four-Sided Cage

Chapter 316: Chapter 311: The Four-Sided Cage

The entire army responded to Unas’s command.

The giant siege turtles ponderously turned, the flames clinging to their carapaces still flickering.

They abandoned the crumbling second wall, preparing to charge the coral wall that had just risen behind them.

But Velin wasn’t about to let them escape so easily.

Nefarian’s wings beat powerfully, carrying him like a bolt of black lightning as he streaked along a pre-seeded path.

Velin extended his hand, palm down. Immense life energy, like an invisible plow, dug deep into the seabed!

The sea churned violently wherever he passed!

On the left and right flanks of the trapped Multi-Armed Race army, two more walls erupted from the seabed!

They connected with the walls in front and behind, forming a massive, square prison.

The water from the surrounding sea was completely isolated.

But this didn’t affect the speed of Unas’s troops too much. After all, no matter how many walls Velin erected around them, they only needed to break the outermost one.

From his position on the second wall, Baron Kroo watched the scene unfold below, marveling at how quickly the tide of battle could turn.

"My lord, shouldn’t we be carrying out the plan?" a nearby Knight prompted.

"Oh! Right!"

He turned and issued his command to the soldiers behind him, who had long been waiting.

"Launch the Lord’s ’gifts’! Fire them all down below!"

The soldiers sprang into action. Working in pairs, they mounted sealed clay pots onto the specialized tips of heavy ballista bolts.

On the commander’s order, dozens of ballistae fired at once.

Trailing short whistles, the clay pots landed in the enclosure below, shattering against the carapaces of the Sea Beasts.

A viscous, dark green liquid splashed from the shards, splattering everything nearby and quickly dyeing the stagnant water around the Sea Race green.

"What the hell is that stuff?" a noble from the Dawn Territory asked curiously.

"The juice of swamp nettle," Baron Kroo explained with a sly grin. "A specialty of the Grey Marsh Territory. It’s remarkably effective against the multi-limbed insects in the swamp."

He leaned over the edge to look down at the Multi-Armed Race Warriors, who were beginning to grow restless.

"Let’s see how well it works on these multi-limbed creatures from the sea."

The Multi-Armed Race Warriors in the water soon noticed something was amiss.

A needle-like stinging pain pricked at any skin that came into contact with the green liquid.

A Warrior tried to swing his bone spear but found his arm limp and powerless.

He looked down to see one of his own arms twitching uncontrollably, as if it were no longer part of him.

"The water... is poisoned!"

As the poison spread, more and more Warriors began exhibiting the same symptoms.

They felt as if their muscles were dissolving, their symbiotic carapaces growing heavier and heavier.

It was a toxin they had never encountered. Their oceanic physiology offered no resistance to the plant-based poison.

Even the thick-hided siege beasts began to let out low, uneasy roars.

Their movements became sluggish, and the force of their impacts against the wall grew weaker each time.

Unas watched his clansmen struggle and sink in the poisoned water.

He knew he couldn’t wait any longer.

Waiting any longer would mean devastating losses.

"Heed my order!" he roared with all his might. "Take every siege beast that can still move! Break through the outer wall! No matter the cost!"

The largest of the siege crabs no longer conserved its strength.

Goaded on by its handler, it charged the outer wall.

BOOM!

A giant turtle slammed viciously into the outer wall.

The entire wall shuddered violently. Its bark-like surface cracked and splintered, but did not break.

More Sea Beasts followed, ramming the outer wall despite having absorbed large amounts of the poison.

Meanwhile, Baron Kroo seized the opportunity, ordering all ballistae to open fire and unleash a volley upon the Sea Beasts.

As he watched his clansmen fall under the twin assault of poisoned water and concentrated crossbow fire, a resolute gleam flashed in Unas’s single, crimson eye.

He let out a piercing shriek, a signal that cut through the chaos of the battlefield and reached the open sea.

The next moment, the sea’s surface outside the enclosure erupted!

A shadow rose from the depths of the open sea. A colossal tentacle, as large as a siege ram, burst from the water and whipped violently against the outer wooden wall!

BOOM—!

With a thunderous crash, the sturdy wall shattered instantly.

Splinters and spray erupted into the air, revealing a massive breach in the wall.

This sudden turn of events left the defenders on the wall stunned.

The murky, green, poisoned water found an escape route, surging out toward the open sea.

"Go!"

Unas commanded.

The Multi-Armed Race Warriors supported their more heavily poisoned kin, scrambling to escape through the breach under the cover of the beasts that could still move.

They suffered heavy losses during the retreat, but their formation never completely broke.

They still found the strength to tend to their wounded; not a single Warrior was left behind.

However, the few giant turtles that had exhausted their strength ramming the wall were now spent forces, eroded by both poison and fatigue. Unable to keep up with the main army, they were left behind forever in that sea of death.

Unas, standing on the Skeleton Throne, was the last to leave.

He looked back, his gaze traveling across the vast distance to fix on Velin, high in the sky.

Then, leading his surviving clan, he disappeared beneath the waves of the Gray Sea.

The battle was over.

The moment Unas and his surviving forces disappeared beneath the waves, Velin issued an order.

Under his command, several Casters rose high into the air with the help of the Dragon Eagle Knights.

As they chanted, earth elements converged on the breach created by the massive tentacle. Muck from the seabed rose and clung to the elemental structure, forming a makeshift patch over the hole.

Next, a massive Magic vortex formed in the center of the enclosure. It drained away all the accumulated seawater and poison, revealing a muddy seabed littered with the corpses of Sea Beasts and the wreckage of weapons.

Baron Kroo descended from the wall.

His Knights followed, entering the field to clear the battlefield. They carefully carried the bodies of their fallen comrades together and covered them with white cloths.

The Dawn Territory’s forces had not suffered great losses. Most of the casualties occurred during the brief chaos when the first line of defense was breached.

But looking at those young, pale faces, Baron Kroo’s mood remained somber.

He made his way through the bustling crowd to find Velin.

Velin was standing at the breach in the ruined wall. He crouched down, pinching a speck of biological debris from a splintered trunk between his fingers and examining it closely.

"Why... did you let them go?"

Baron Kroo strode to Velin’s side, his voice a mixture of post-battle daze and confusion.

The brutal siege had left him shaken, and this incomprehensible conclusion to it all left his mind in turmoil.

"We had them trapped... With a little more time, whether we used more poison or fire oil, none of them should have been able to escape..."

He paused, seemingly struggling to organize his thoughts before finally voicing his question.

"I don’t understand. Why would you do that?"

Without turning, Velin placed the speck of debris into a glass vial before standing up.

"And what of the cost?" he countered, his tone as calm as if he were discussing the weather.

"What cost?" Baron Kroo was stunned; he couldn’t follow Velin’s train of thought at all.

"Even a cornered beast will fight back." Velin turned to him, his amber eyes perfectly calm.

"Did you think that tentacle that smashed the wall was Unas’s last resort? Push an enemy too hard, and they’ll play every card they have. If we had pushed for total annihilation, we wouldn’t just have faced their desperate, self-destructive last stand, but also the true main force he has hidden in the open sea. By then, even a win would have been a pyrrhic victory."

He gestured with his chin toward the splintered trunks.

"Repairing them will take materials and time. More importantly, my soldiers are not just expendable numbers on a list. Their lives are worth more than a victory bought with devastating losses."

Baron Kroo opened his mouth, but couldn’t say a single word.

He had seen it, after all. As the Multi-Armed Race Warriors retreated, they had maintained their basic formation, helping one another.

They weren’t a routed mob; they were an army that still had the will to fight.

’If we had pushed them to the brink... And with that unknown behemoth lurking in the deep sea... the outcome would have been uncertain.’

"But they escaped!" Baron Kroo was still not resigned to it. He slammed a fist into the wreckage of the wall beside them.

"They’ll be back! Next time, they’ll bring more behemoths and a stronger army!"

"I know," Velin nodded. "But our goal, from the very beginning, was not to wipe them out today."

"Then what exactly are you trying to do?" Baron Kroo felt like this young man was going to make his head explode.

"You went to all this trouble, built these fortresses, set this trap... all just to poison them a bit and watch them escape?"

"I wanted to make them give up on destroying the fortresses," Velin replied.

"To make them think we have the upper hand in fortress warfare, to make them keep their distance from the fortresses."

"That," he concluded, "is our greatest achievement today."

As he spoke, Velin drew a semicircle on the ground.

Baron Kroo slowly began to understand Velin’s point.

"You mean we use the fortresses as anchors to build the surrounding wall, which would make the wall shorter?"

Velin nodded in confirmation. "Not only will that shorten construction time, but it’s mainly for the sake of stealth."

"A wall with too large a perimeter would be difficult to build without them noticing."

Kroo nodded slowly, accepting the reasoning.

"Alright, let’s assume you’re right about all that. What’s our next move?"

"We buy time."

He walked to the edge of the breach and looked out at the devastation within the enclosure.

"They will be back, but not now. The swamp nettle toxin isn’t fatal, but it’s enough to weaken them for a long time. Unas will need time to regroup his forces and treat his wounded."

"And that time... is ours."

"Buy time? How long do we need?"

"Until the night of the full moon."