Chapter 212.3
Crown Prince Hubert and Duke Grunding, who were checking the battle situation from the observation tower, breathed a sigh of relief when they saw that the city walls were completely unaffected by Mubrial’s blow.
“It’s a big deal that those barriers are intact, right?”
“Mm.”
Initially, when two of them heard that the capital’s barrier had been destroyed, their complexion turned bleak, but since it was restored in time, they were able to mentally relax.
The barrier also prevented city walls from being destroyed. If the city walls had been destroyed in several places by multiple Cyclopes, demons would have invaded from there. In such a situation, it would have been impossible to defend the royal capital.
“What is the status of the battle outside the city?”
“I don’t know for sure, but there have been no reports of a disadvantage.”
As soon as one of the knights who was standing by responded in this way, the flow of air changed. It was no metaphor. The Mubrial, with his head visible above the ramparts, suddenly began sucking in air with a loud intake sound. Even Hubert and the others on the tower, who were a good distance away, were forced away from the window by the sudden gust of wind.
Mubrial flapped his wings, and countless numbers of light-reflecting objects flew over the city walls and into the sky of the royal capital.
The next moment, Mubrial roared. A huge storm of wind erupted from within the eagle’s beak, sending the soldiers on the city walls flying through the air, blowing off the roofs of the houses near the city walls, and creating a huge explosion in the sky over the royal capital, sending shockwaves all around. The screams of the royal capital’s residents overlapped with the explosion.
At the same time, a point of light, swallowed by a huge storm in the middle of the explosion, sucked in the wind and created a black haze around it, which further transformed its appearance. Soon, Mad Demons spread their wings and began to fly over the royal capital.
(T/N: Mad Demons are a type of demons.)
“Is that…”
“He created demons. That means that the things he threw into the air were demon cores.”
Duke Grunding and Crown Prince Hubert were surprised to hear that Mubrial had created demons by throwing the nucleus first and then sending a huge storm of magical power and wind into them as if to strike them.
Furthermore, the situation also changed near the city walls. The Cyclopes, who had barely regained their vision, grabbed the Dark Knights who were fighting around them and threw them into the city.
The situation was enough to astonish the soldiers.
In Welner’s previous life, he had read in history books about the use of catapults to shoot human corpses into castles. It was done to spread a plague from the corpse or to psychologically scare the opponent.
Unlike humans, however, demons could still move and fight even after they crashed through the roof of a house in the capital, destroying the building underneath.
The Dark Knights, who were able to successfully infiltrate the capital after being thrown by force inside the barrier, pushed aside the debris, stood up, and started rampaging with their swords.
Hubert was surprised but not upset. From the tower that served as the frontline command post, Hubert unfurled a flag of a different color and flashed it on a metal plate to indicate the position of the guards inside the castle.
When the roads of the royal capital were originally repaired, many of the roads were given names, which was helpful here. The colors of the flags and the points of light were enough to designate their purpose to some extent. While issuing instructions from a high vantage point, he sent out orders to destroy each of the Dark Knights who had been thrown into the castle.
The wounded Dark Knights were easy prey for the guards, who had not been in action up to this point. The Knights shouted with confidence as they attacked the Dark Knights without fear.
At the same time, the airborne Mad Demons were also attacked, as Ballista arrows shot up from below.
The ballistas were simply tilted at a 90-degree angle so that they could be shot upward, but since their target was demons that flew, they used arrows similar to the type set up on the city walls.
This type of ballista, however, had also been improved: it could be mounted on a turntable and moved on a pedestal like the Carroballista so that it could aim at a wide area in the sky by adjusting its direction and angle.
This anti-air ballista was purposely placed in the city center of the royal capital and inside the palace.
It was because Welner organized a specialized knight unit that was supposed to destroy flying forces that might enter the city at an early stage of the battle by concentrating fire on opponents while they were still descending and from various angles and directions.
The airborne interceptor ballistas were mainly operated by noblemen’s knights, but there were also those who attended the school with Welner and Mazell. A second and the third attack was directed at the Mad Demons who had descended on the Ballista.
Not all adventurers participated directly in the battles outside the city.
In order to better organize adventurers that stayed inside the city, they were divided into two groups: a group that would focus on attacking the invaders, and a mobile force which would help defend the citizens. The adventurers that were inside the city would scatter potions to prevent Mad Demons from attacking Ballistas. Those with bows aimed their arrows at the demons, along with Ballista’s arrows, which were automatically hoisted up, to pierce any approaching Mad Demon.
Overseeing the entire battle, Crown Prince Hubert dared not take any action against those outside the city walls, leaving the Cyclopes to the forces outside to deal with them.
A group of Mad Demons headed towards one of the watchtowers, but they failed to get close enough to attack because of the elites of the Mage Corps and Royal Guards.
What was probably a miscalculation for the Mad Demons was that they were unable to use ranged magic as they wished. This was because the magic circles to strengthen the barriers were sucking up the magic power of the inner part of the capital. So, all the Mad Demons could do was just to fly within the royal capital.
Immediately thereafter, another roar emanated from the Mubrial, and vibrations shook the surrounding area. Crown Prince Hubert frowned upon seeing this. However, he did not show any sign of being upset after that, and focused his thoughts on sending commands from the tower with Duke Grunding.