Author: Arion's Dolphins

Bock's letter to Tang Zhao described the situation very optimistically, but in fact it was not necessarily the case.

The main problem on the Tang Zhao side was the serious shortage of soldiers, while the main problem on the human side was the serious low overall quality of the soldiers.

It is true that there are elite warriors from the Church of Heim in the city. Their total number is about eight or nine hundred, which is more than enough to guard a castle. However, Luford was built on a plain, and the city wall stretches for dozens of miles. The defensive area is too long and there are not enough manpower.

Although there are about 300 elite city main guards and private guards of various caravans with decent combat effectiveness, the total number of people is about 2,000, but it is still not enough. The defenders on the city wall are mainly human militiamen who have undergone simple training.

If it is the human civilians on the eastern border, they have experienced some necessary compulsory training. These civilians in the west have almost never fought in a war in their lives. The only people who are close to being a warrior are hunters and other professions. One can imagine their military literacy.

.

Even if the city lord issued a notice before the hobgoblin attack, the Cyclops gang dispatched in time to cooperate with the security team in trying to stabilize the order in the city. The effect was certainly there, but it was not immediate, and panic and other emotions still spread in the city.

In this state, the militiamen who have only experienced a few days of simple training may be full of enthusiasm, but the battlefield is the place where the enthusiasm is best consumed. Blood, death and corpses will quickly wear away the courage of these young people.

In addition to the morale problem, there is also a very serious problem before them - they lack the mainstay combat effectiveness, the high-level combat effectiveness is barely equal, and they cannot free their hands. There are far more third-level and second-level hobgoblin warriors.

Compared with the number of human warriors, these extra enemy warriors need to be blocked with human lives.

As long as one such hobgoblin successfully scales the city wall, it can set off a bloody storm on the city wall, causing at least a dozen casualties before the strong men on the city wall come to support.

The Blood Fist Hobgoblin's offensive was far more ferocious than that of the Green Spear. They carried out several waves of attacks in one day. The defenders in the city suffered terribly and suffered heavy casualties.

The fifth-level hobgoblin supervisor army participated in the offensive on the city wall on the first day. The beholder and Bock worked together to draw a tie with the opponent, curbing the opponent's attempt to seize the city gate.

The beholder is quite arrogant, but at least it has the most basic spirit of contract. On the premise of ensuring the safety of its own life, it does try its best to fight, and the effect is obvious.

Although they suffered a lot of casualties, they still managed to hold off the hobgoblin's offensive, and used various means to initially stabilize the situation within the city walls, and the panic did not develop into a major collapse.

After surviving the first wave of attacks, the benefits of strong war potential were realized. Bock commanded several merchant ships with emergency ballistas installed to shoot at the hobgoblins on both sides of the Duwa River.

The Helm Church soldiers transferred from the eastern seaport city came into play at this time. They have rich experience in water warfare, and their own hard power has an overwhelming advantage. Facing the black lizard people lurking in the water, they

Successfully suppressed the opponent.

Fortunately, the Black Lizards have not received any special training and are not very good at dealing with ships. In addition, the number of enemies is not large, so they can still gain a certain advantage on the water.

In addition, the elite warriors on the walls of Ruford City are also constantly conducting small-scale counterattacks and trying to harass the camp where the hobgoblins are stationed at night, causing considerable trouble to the enemy.

The two sides fought inextricably. The hobgoblins were unable to break through the defenses of the city wall, and the humans did not have enough offensive power to go out of the city to repel the enemies. For a while, no one could do anything to the other.

This can be regarded as complying with the wishes of the defenders in the city. Their minimum goal is to delay even if they win. Anyway, the royal army will come to reinforce sooner or later.

However, in reality, everything could not go as planned, and the war entered a new stage two days later.

I don't know if they got inspiration from Tang Zhao, but they used a very insidious trick - using trebuchets to throw rotting corpses into the city.

It is said that the spread of the Black Death in Europe began when the Mongolian army besieged Genoa's stronghold of Kaffa on the Black Sea coast. The attackers used trebuchets to throw infected corpses into the city. In the end, although the Mongolian army failed to capture the strong city of Kaffa,

, but the Genoese fleet that subsequently returned to Italy brought the Black Death with it, and everyone knows the rest of the story.

For Tang Zhao, this trick was not very effective. Firstly, the various races in Karak Solma were relatively resistant to the plague. Secondly, they had a large number of druids (doctors) and rich medical resources.

For Luford, the meaning of this move is different. They do not have such abundant spellcaster resources. The plague is a very fatal thing for a densely populated big city. If it is not handled well, there may even be disasters.

The risk of a city collapsing.

As soon as he discovered what the hobgoblin was doing, Bock tried to organize the army to control the situation and let the people within the city wall evacuate to the inside, leaving a safe vacuum area.

Coupled with the hard work of the doctors in the city, the spread of the plague was temporarily contained. However, despite this, hundreds of people were still infected with the plague, and the infection was slowly spreading.

The physique of hobgoblins is simply the same as that of humans. They dare not or are unable to create a truly horrific plague like the Black Death.

After several days of violent attacks, the hobgoblins have realized a fact - like many fortified cities in history, Luford, a city built on the ruins of the former elven city, has a fairly complete defense system, making it difficult to use physical means.

Cracked in a short time.

Thousands of soldiers with good combat effectiveness are entrenched in the city, and the hobgoblins dare not bypass Rufud and continue deep into the hinterland of mankind. Otherwise, there will be a huge risk of being surrounded and annihilated by inside and outside cooperation.

The scene quickly turned into a war of attrition. Every day, goblin teams crossed over the harsh Cubango swamps to participate in the siege of Luford. The city wall defenses were threatened every day.

——

The situation on Tang Zhao's side was not much better than that of Lu Fudd. Although he severely dealt a blow to the Green Spear Clan's goblin offensive force during the siege, Tang Zhao was still unable to defeat the enemy with his own strength alone.

He had always maintained close contact with Bock and others, knowing that they would not be able to rely on them in a short time. Tang Zhao used Bock and Andrea to learn more about the details of eastern Oran.

After entering spring, taking advantage of the golden opportunity when humans were busy with spring plowing, the orcs once again marched southward, trying to break through Oran's fort chain defense network and threaten the core areas of humans.

Every time the orcs attack is huge, this time it is especially so. The Oran border garrison has an extremely fierce battle with the orcs, which also includes many high-level duels. It is said that within a week, the chief commander of the Oran border garrison

Three people were replaced.

In the past, the border garrison would have received direct support from the Oran royal family and various marquises, and it would have been easier to take on the orcs. However, this time they will not have such treatment.

In the eastern part of the kingdom, two marquises with real power joined forces with many small and medium-sized nobles to launch a rebellion against the royal family. At the same time, in various places, the demons that had been lurking before began to carry out activities again, and there were even assistance from gnolls and other races. The troops stationed in various places were suffering.

They were so embarrassed that they all asked the royal capital to send more manpower to deal with the local demon problem.

It was obviously not a coincidence. There was no obvious demonic problem in the territory of the two marquises. This was a colluded war.

The two marquis claimed that this was because they were "favored by gods", so the demons did not dare to harm the civilians in their territories. It was okay to fool people who had no ability to think. Everyone with a discerning eye knew the nature of this incident.

The royal family and the other marquises were extremely busy with this. All the elite legions stationed in the royal capital were dispatched. It is said that the sky was filled with flying vulture knights. At the same time, the royal family also issued a conscription order and hired a large number of mercenaries and adventurers from all over the country to fight.

.

In the vast territory in the east of Oran, it is almost a scene of vitality and competition. The two parties mingle in various places across the country.

Bock said that he had passed a letter with the Minister of the Interior and that the royal family could handle this chaos. He himself acknowledged this. The current situation will definitely cause the royal family to be a little strained, but it has not reached the point of complete defeat. The royal family's

The army is slowly gaining the upper hand, and victory over the rebels is only a matter of time.

After stabilizing the rear, they will naturally be able to support Luford and the front line against the orcs.

In addition, Tang Zhao also learned a genuine piece of good news from the other party's letter - the royal family was very concerned about the safety of Luford City, and even though the troops were extremely empty, they still agreed to send five teams with a total of fifty horses.

The Eagle Knight supports Lufford.

This is much more effective than pie. It is the support of real guns and live ammunition.

These are fifty creatures with super mobility and impact, forty-five second-level warriors, and five third-level warriors. For the current Lufford, it can be said to be a timely help.

The situation of the allies has eased, which is also good for them. For example, Bock promised to use these powerful mobile forces to reduce the pressure on Tang Zhao.

Calculating the time, the Vulture Knight should have arrived at Luford, but we don't know exactly when Bock will fulfill his promise.

【Short of supplies.】

After reading various letters and summarizing the material status, what Tang Zhao wanted to say the most was this sentence.

After that siege, many of their material reserves had been depleted, such as ballista ammunition. The dwarves were reluctant to use these weapons when defending the city, and could only use crossbows and slings to deal with the enemy.

The elf rangers have now basically figured out the movement patterns of the hobgoblins. Every five days, a group of trains will rush to the front line. There will be about three hundred hobgoblins as the backbone, accompanied by thousands of goblins, and several groups of seats.

Wolf cavalry patrolled the surrounding area continuously.

Compared with last time, their defensive strength has become stronger, but the mobility strength in Tang Zhao's hands has become much less. Without the centaur tribe, the elf rangers themselves do not have the ability to attack the entire baggage train.

Most of them just harass them.

Tang Zhao had to keep an eye on the city wall and did not dare to act rashly. The current situation was very embarrassing.

Originally, he wanted to seize the opportunity and grab the baggage train. Now with Bock's promise, he decided to wait patiently for a few more days.

——

Bock spoke very reliably. This time he and the beholder reached some kind of consensus. On the third day after the vulture knights arrived at Luford, they overcame the pressure from the city lord and successfully defeated the two teams of fully armed vulture knights.

Sent to Karak Solma.

Tang Zhao was very happy about this. This was not a matter of courtesy and affection, but a real help in times of need. He really needed maneuverability now.

However, something was unexpected. Instead of two teams of twenty vulture knights, there were twenty-two vultures flying from the sky.

His eyes were fixed on these flying knights. Shortly after they landed, Tang Zhao finally found clues from the first two people.

[Obviously, there are more than just humans here, and now things get very interesting]

The first ones were two women. This was not an important thing. The key was that one of them had a pair of long elf ears, and Tang Zhao happened to know her by chance.

[Half-elf Guinevere Alberga Mikaela, one of the group of noble children who played role-playing games before, is pretty good, but this is not the key. This half-elf has a very special family background.

A family of diplomats from the Southern Elf Kingdom.]

The royal family wrote a letter to explain the sending of additional vulture knights to Luford. It is impossible that they did not know that there were two more knights in the team.

In special times, all the actions of the royal family must have deep meanings. Even if they didn't, Guinevea's own special identity would have to make Tang Zhao think about it a lot.

I had previously learned from Elena that there was some kind of rift between the elves in the western part of the continent and the elves in the southern part of the eastern part of the continent. There had not been much contact between the two parties, and there was still some subtle hostility between them.

.

Now, the elves in the west can be said to be facing annihilation. Both sides are part of the once powerful elven kingdom.

Whether they really want to influence their fellow tribesmen or want to gain some kind of benefit from them, they definitely need to interact with the western elves.

During this special period, Guinevere, the daughter of a diplomat, came to a stronghold that was directly connected to the western elves. There were even a large number of western elves in this stronghold.

If you say you don’t have any other ideas, I’m afraid no one will believe you at all.

Tang Zhao was still a little confused - in such a serious and formal occasion, Guinevere's diplomat father should be the one attending. It seemed a bit strange and incongruous to send a half-year-old child to the front line of the battlefield.

[There may be something fishy about the matter, and further investigation is needed]
Chapter completed!