Necromancer, summoning 055? What the heck?

Chapter 464 The Defense Line Collapses, Enemies Meet on a Narrow Road
Winston was still standing on the lookout tower.

He's been standing there for most of the day.

As the sun moved from sunrise to zenith, and from midday to slant westward, it stretched his already hunched shadow long, making him appear to have grown taller all at once.

His deputy brought him food twice and water six times, but he didn't touch a drop.

Just yesterday, despite his deep concern over the lack of progress in negotiations, Foreign Secretary Winston remained convinced that this line of defense would remain an insurmountable barrier for at least the next few months.

The food in the fortress was stockpiled according to a year's consumption, one-third of the kingdom's reserves were used to obtain spirit crystals, three sets of weapons and armor were prepared on average, arrows were piled up like mountains, and supplies were plentiful.

The fortress even had military prostitutes, both men and women...

Besides, there are quite a few high priests from the Azure Sky Holy City in the fortress; the Divine Court can't just ignore them.

These are the reasons Winston has the confidence to negotiate.

But at the same time, Winston also knew that this time it would be anything but easy to negotiate.

The king's famous sayings were constantly recited in the kingdom's court.

"The duty of the Minister of War is to ensure that the Minister of Foreign Affairs does not need to go out, but can simply stay at home and wait for others to come to him for help."

"The Foreign Minister's duty is to enable the Military Minister to set foot in a new territory without having to carry a sword, simply by wearing a robe."

That's too vague. Winston's grandfather, the former Foreign Secretary, said something more practical.

"The greatest value of diplomacy is to prevent situations from reaching the point where diplomacy is necessary."

That's the reality; when the Foreign Minister has to personally come out to negotiate, the situation is already quite complicated.

Even if the battle lines don't fall immediately, being repeatedly besieged like this will eventually lead to unpredictable losses.

This elite force is the foundation upon which the kingdom relies to suppress all sides and seize jade; it cannot be lost.

His Majesty the King was so wise that once he realized the fortress was not effective in providing active defense and could only be passively attacked, he made the decisive decision to take the troops out.

The moment that unreasonable little girl rejected the negotiation request, old Winston used the teleportation array to communicate with the court.

Green Pine has already taken action.

On the one hand, they continued to look for new, worthwhile bargaining chips; on the other hand, they were also prepared for the final negotiations to completely break down and result in a lose-lose situation.

The court is preparing new bargaining chips: wealth, resources, land that can be used for negotiation, and even the ruins of Silvermoon City.

They continued to plead with the Azure Sky Holy City for greater mediation efforts, their words extremely humble.

Meanwhile, the military continues to tighten its grip.

Two dukes and four marquises have already mobilized, and new conscripts are pouring into the Eagle's Beak Mountain defense line.

The Green Pine has been established for over three hundred years; what storms and waves hasn't it weathered?

However, the kingdom ultimately miscalculated.

Winston never expected that the other party had no intention of giving them a few months.

Not for several days.

He witnessed the collapse of the fortress.

The old man was old, but his eyesight was excellent.

He saw the stones overturned like rags, and the wooden beams, iron frames, and human limbs inside were thrown into the sky, then fell back down. Smoke and dust rose, and a huge gray-white mushroom cloud shot straight into the sky.

He saw the enemy's defensive line that had been breached.

He saw those kingdom warriors who only focused on charging forward, not even raising their heads when they were captured.

People poured out of the fortress like ants, crawled out of the hidden tunnels, and ran out of every corner where they had been hiding. They had no direction, no goal, they just ran desperately.

Some went east, some went west. Their eyes were empty, and they made meaningless roars. Several people were captured by the people of Hanhai, but they were still desperately pushing forward, kicking their legs on the ground, leaving bloody marks, but they just wouldn't stop.

Some people had only run a few dozen steps when they were knocked down by the crowd rushing up from behind, and then countless feet trampled over them, turning their skin into a flat, shriveled sheet.

He also saw the ecstatic enemy chasing after the distraught, routed soldiers.

There aren't many people in Hanhai, far fewer than in Lvsong.

However, a few soldiers from the Vast Sea could chase dozens or even hundreds of Green Pine warriors, who were now running around in a panic. These former prides of the kingdom were now like a herd of frightened livestock.

The old man's eyes turned blood red. He felt something in his brain explode with a "pop," and a heat flowed from the back of his head all the way to his eye sockets. Everything in front of him began to spin—the sky, the fortress, the mountains of corpses and seas of blood, and the sounds of those still running wildly, all gradually mixed together, turning into a crimson vortex.

The world spun around.

Winston just collapsed like that.

Han Hai, who had been "accompanying" and "supervising" the delegation, quickly called for the medical team.

Half a minute later, an incredibly young deer-tribe hybrid beastman came galloping over, sifted through the pupils, and listened to the heartbeat.

"Preliminary diagnosis: cerebral hemorrhage!"

"At your age, how come you can't control your emotions?"

The deputy envoy of Green Pine opened his mouth weakly, but in the end, he was unable to utter a word.

What could he say...?

The young military doctor waved, and a stretcher was brought over.

"Take him to the field hospital for emergency treatment!"

"By the way, will someone pay for the examination and medical expenses? We don't offer credit here."

"We need another person who can make the decision to sign off; there's a risk in trying to save him!"

"..."

The deputy envoy followed the stretcher for a few steps, but couldn't help turning his head back again.

The wind blowing across the plains carried a heavy smell of dust and blood, causing a surge of nausea in his chest.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

The sound of cannons at Dongguanling Pass would stop and then start again, then stop again.

The eastern front of the Hanhai was not under much defensive pressure. The defeated soldiers who rushed to this direction were all confused and out of their minds. They had almost no ability to resist and could be easily taken down, tied up, and captured.

The western route is a bit more troublesome.

After triggering a series of massive collapses, under the leadership of the commanders of several fortresses, the routed Green Pine troops managed to maintain their organization and began to charge towards the Eagle Beak Mountain defense line.

This is a temporary defensive line built by the Hanhai Airborne Troops. The site has not been modified much; it is just a simple trench and breastwork.

If fortifications are insufficient, equipment will suffice.

Han Hai equipped this defensive line with more than two hundred heavy machine guns.

This is no longer a war, this is a massacre.

In that initial charge, the fleeing soldiers of Green Pine still carried a certain desperate ferocity. Many of them were battle-hardened veterans who knew that in such a surging tide, following the charge might not necessarily mean death, but once they stopped, they would inevitably face merciless trampling and pursuit from the enemy's eager-to-achieve victories.

That's a true life-or-death situation.

"Charge!"

"Charge! Jump over that wall and you'll live! There aren't many of them!"

The soldiers at the front were the personal guards of the Green Pine generals. They were still barely maintaining their formation, and they had swords and crossbows in their hands. Some of them even had shields.

The shields were still gleaming with the emblem of the pine tree, an emblem that had been invincible for centuries, striking fear into the hearts of countless enemies.

It also gave the Green Pine's stormtroopers their final courage.

They planned to unleash the first volley of arrows when they were about 300 paces away, and then charge at full speed to break through the barrier.

But their opponents didn't give them that chance.

A faint smell of machine oil, the kind used for gun maintenance, wafted in the wind. Then, a cloud of blood suddenly burst from the chest of the soldier at the forefront.

He looked down and saw a series of messy, scattered holes in his body, with blood gushing out, steaming hot, and some even splashing onto his young face.

He tried to shout, but his lungs were already leaking air, and all he could make when he opened his mouth was a strange hissing sound.

Then his knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground.

The soldiers' thin armor could not stop the kinetic energy of the bullets from tearing them apart. Rows and rows of Green Pine Warriors were as if they were being whipped hard by invisible whips, falling one after another.

Then, the sound finally arrived, albeit belatedly.

"Da da da da da da—"

The continuous gunfire, crisper than a bowstring and more rapid than war drums, sounded like tens of thousands of professional soldiers simultaneously throwing small firecrackers at a thin sheet of iron.

Some of them are "big spray flowers".

Those were grenade launchers fired from the defensive line.

Heavy artillery is too cost-effective for paratroopers, but rifle grenades are a good fit—they are lightweight, flexible, and powerful.

Shells fell from the sky and exploded in the crowd, blood gushed out and limbs flew everywhere.

The simultaneous roar of gunfire at this moment made the battlefield even more lively than the square on New Year's Eve in Dongxia.

The momentum of the green pines' charge was unstoppable, and the tide behind them continued to surge forward, pushing and supporting them, making them move forward against their will.

Second row, third row...

The location of the death was ultimately too close to the defensive line.

The fleeing soldiers finally saw the flames spewing from behind the low wall—thin, bright, like the outstretched tongues of a demon, each lick taking a row of lives. Some began to try to dodge, running left and right, serpentine, rolling—using every survival skill they had learned on the battlefield, but to no avail.

Within minutes, the bodies were piled up into a low wall.

Before the soldiers in the back could even understand what was happening in front of them, they found themselves involuntarily stepping onto the wall of corpses, their steps hard and soft.

Hard armor, soft body.

A few minutes later, the "wall of corpses" stopped climbing, and the first wave of the attack ended.

The gunfire finally subsided.

The open ground was littered with the corpses of Green Pine soldiers. Most of them had their eyes wide open in disbelief, remaining in their charging postures until death, some even twitching slightly.

They are all dead, or dying.

Large amounts of blood seeped into the scorched earth, turning the topsoil into a sticky mud.

In the trenches of the vast desert, Loma Chasing Wind, the brigade commander of the airborne special operations brigade, rubbed his fingers together and lit a cigarette with the flame that emerged from his fingertips. He took a deep drag, then flicked his wrist, and the flame quietly went out in the wind.

Smoke billowed from his nostrils and drifted away in the wind.

"Shout out."

The loudspeaker emitted a short, static sound, followed by a chilling voice that echoed throughout the mountain of corpses and sea of ​​blood.

"Put down your weapons! Put your hands behind your head! Crouch down and surrender! We will not kill prisoners!"

The trapped pine beasts ignored them and launched a second attack, this time spreading out further and charging even more fiercely.

They once got within 200 meters of the Hanhai Airborne Corps and even launched a long-range attack.

But that's all we can do.

From this position, they saw white.

An endless expanse of white.

Skeleton warriors surged forth from the ground like a tide. They were silent and cold, their dark eye sockets devoid of any emotion. The bone spears in their hands drew stiff arcs, occasionally clashing with their 'comrades' beside them, producing a cracking sound of bones colliding.

The skeleton felt no pain, nor did it retreat; it simply thrust mechanically. For every skeleton that fell, two more skeletons immediately took its place.

Under the cover of the Skull Sea, the machine guns and mortars of the Vast Sea continued to relentlessly reap the Green Pine soldiers in the back row.

Although Green Pine's forces inflicted "significant casualties" on the undead, and even Vast Ocean's own firepower shattered many skeletons, the impact on this defensive line was negligible.

The undead manufacturing production line in the Vast Ocean is now very mature. By airdropping a medium-sized container, an undead defense line five meters wide and eighty meters long can be laid out.

The wars of the past few years have left the Hanhai region with no shortage of enemy corpses, not to mention that the Hanhai region also has mines.

For example, at the Vulture Cliff Mine, what others see is an iron ore deposit, but what Han Hai sees is a high concentration of "undead ore".

Such mines are ubiquitous in every orc tribe settlement area of ​​the White Deer Plain.

With ample resources, a single Jiutian Tri-weight UAV can cover a 1.6-kilometer defense line in a single deployment.

After the undead warriors landed, the ground troops unlocked the containers, causing the four sides of the containers to collapse. The undead warriors rolled out in clumps, untied their interlocked skeletons, stood up with a clatter, lined up in order, received a grenade to hang on their ribs, and then entered the defensive line.

How many troops would it take to break down such a wall of skulls, backed by heavy machine gun and grenade launcher positions?

Green Pine's troops had no idea, and at least for now, they saw no hope of breaking through.

When cold weapon troops face firearms troops, relying on fortified defenses or chaotic fighting in complex terrain offers a glimmer of hope. However, if they attempt to break through enemy fire lines, no matter how many troops they have, they will be insufficient to sustain the attack.

That night, the final large-scale night raid, illuminated by flares, left corpses strewn across the battlefield, marking the complete end of organized military operations along the Green Pine Valley defense line.

Some of the Green Pine Warriors retreated in despair to the remaining fortresses or hidden bunkers, silently awaiting death, capture, or some other unknown fate.

The remaining Green Pine troops began to scatter in all directions, like tens of thousands of pigs scattered on a plain, forcing the warriors of the Vast Ocean to frantically capture them.

The defenses of the vast sea could not ultimately cover every mountain and field. A small number of soldiers, under the desperate attacks of the mid- to high-ranking generals, slipped out of the encirclement along the edge of the defensive line or through gaps in the mountains and fields, disappearing into the vast wilderness.

The vast majority of the rest became prisoners or corpses over the next few days.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Hysen was no exception.

The kingdom's youngest count once thought himself very brave.

He clearly overestimated his courage.

How can an heir raised under his father's whip fight against weapons on the battlefield that are even more ferocious than the whip?

On the battlefield, he stripped an ordinary soldier of his armor, suppressed his nausea, wiped away the foul-smelling, unidentified substance hanging from the clothes, and put them on himself.

He wasn't this vulnerable before. He had killed people before, and even during the period after his father's death, he would beat to death one or several servants almost every day. He thought he was cruel enough.

Now he knows he was wrong; his bravery in the face of the weak is worthless.

When the fear of death gripped Hysen, he was as weak as a newborn lamb.

Unlike the other generals or knights of Green Pine, who could reveal their identities, save their lives, seek a future to be redeemed, or simply switch sides, he could not.

The Zircon family and that little necromancer lord have a deep-seated grudge.

All he could do was pray, pray that he could get through this.

After putting on the filthy clothes, he grabbed a handful of dirt, mixed with blood, and smeared it on his face, over and over again, until his face was covered in it.

Finally, he touched his hair, the long, flowing hair he had meticulously maintained for twenty years, which was carefully styled and polished daily by three maids.

Heisen gritted his teeth, picked up a chipped knife from the ground, and began to slash.

The cut hair fell to the ground, mixing with the soil and blood, splashing ripples in the bloody water.

He voluntarily raised his hands, hunched his back, and shrunk his neck, making himself appear as a short, hunched, and inconspicuous figure, blending into the long line of prisoners step by step.

He wondered if any of the passing prisoners recognized him. Probably not, for he had disguised himself so thoroughly that who could believe he was the kingdom's youngest earl?
It's possible, but those high-ranking generals intentionally or unintentionally avoided the issue, either because they didn't want to get involved or because they felt sorry for their own kind.

Hysen didn't know, and didn't want to know.

He just wanted to live!

And so, Zircon Heisenberg was escorted all the way to the prisoner-of-war camp.

The prisoner-of-war camp was built on an open area, surrounded by barbed wire. Every few dozen steps there was a watchtower, with heavy weapons that could breathe fire mounted on it. The sentries of the Hanhai Army looked down at the camp from their high positions.

The prisoner-of-war camp was already packed with people, densely packed, like a herd of livestock kept in a pen.

Heisen stood at the entrance of the prisoner-of-war camp and quietly let out a sigh of relief.

He thought he was about to overcome another hurdle.

Then he saw that person.

That familiar face.

A middle-aged auxiliary corps captain stood not far away, directing several of his men to lead a string of prisoners in another direction.

The prisoners were strung together with ropes, like a long string of grasshoppers, walking very slowly, one after another. The auxiliary captain was getting impatient and kept yelling at the prisoners, "Hurry up, hurry up, what are you dawdling for?"

"Those behind, hurry up and catch up!"

After yelling, he turned his head.

He saw Hysen.

In that instant, his eyes widened and his face was filled with ecstasy.

Heissen stared incredulously at the damned man, at the face that had appeared countless times in his sleepless nights.

This was an old acquaintance and former subordinate of his.

He was once the deputy captain of the Radiant City patrol team and a trusted and beloved general entrusted with important responsibilities by Prince Haisen.

It was also Darian, the person who was originally tasked by Haisen to hunt down Chen Mo.

It was this "stupid" guy who repeatedly messed up his job, and finally, fearing that Hysen would hold him accountable, he simply picked up the bucket and ran away.

The bucket also contained a large amount of military pay that Radiant City was about to distribute.

The eldest son, gritting his teeth, offered a high bounty for Darian, but after so many years, there has been no news of him.

In fact, this guy, who knew the style of the Zircon family well, quickly dismissed several of his men after escaping Turquoise, pretended to head south, but actually plunged into the north. He became a guard in the Northern Caravan of the Dwarf "Seven Luminaries Garland" Merchant Guild and stayed there.

Only in this chaotic land under the control of orcs could he successfully evade the Zircon family's massive manhunt.

What happened next is clear: during the major reorganization of the Han Hai Army, he seized an opportunity to enlist as an auxiliary soldier in the National Defense Army.

When he joined, he honestly confessed that he had served in the army in Turquoise and had been forced to flee due to "persecution" by the Turquoise Zircon family.

That statement... doesn't seem to make any real difference.

Han Hai didn't care about these past experiences. There were many soldiers in the National Defense Force who had served in Green Pine, including several army commanders and division commanders. What did a few auxiliary soldiers matter?

And so, thanks to his rich experience and good skills, Darian managed to get the position of a guard squad leader.

At this very moment, enemies meet on a narrow road.

Overjoyed, Darian shouted, "Quickly! This is Zircon Heysen, the head of the Zircon family, who has been plotting to assassinate the lord!"

"I caught him!"

"Help! Someone come quick!"

Zircon Heisenberg's vision went black.

(End of this chapter)