Chapter 76: Compassion and Command

Upon returning to the arrow tower, Wu Qingsong realized the battle situation was far better than it had seemed while he was in the thick of it. To his relief, the wall segment he was responsible for had not been breached yet. The hastily conscripted militia, initially in disarray, gradually found their rhythm in the battle.

His primary concern now was the shortage of soldiers. Given the prevailing chaos, he abandoned any hope of obtaining additional troops through regular means.

“Get the stretchers up here! Move the injured off the walls,” he commanded a houndman serving as a courier. “Tell Ram to examine their wounds. Clean them with fresh water, apply bandages, and return anyone capable of fighting back to me.”

Facing a lack of fresh reinforcements, Wu Qingsong was compelled to maximize the utility of his current forces, including the wounded.

Another motivation for this tactic was his observation that the agonizing cries of the injured were severely impacting morale, causing disarray and fear of a potential breach.

Evacuating the wounded would at least allow the remaining fighters to engage more effectively.

His orders were promptly put into action. However, Ram, along with Ling and Liuli, was swamped. Wu Qingsong again descended from the tower, this time not to fight, but to motivate and direct. He vocally boosted the morale of the combatants, reassuring them of a positive outlook and imminent reinforcements. He then hurried down the walls to mobilize the elderly and weaker citizens to dismantle more buildings, supplying additional stones and wood for the wall’s defense.

Wu Qingsong instinctively conscripted every able-bodied individual in sight, irrespective of status, gender, or age, assigning them to his part of the wall as soldiers or laborers. Even those unable to fight were put to work dismantling houses, hauling stones to the wall, and transporting the injured away.

Some tried to escape conscription by leveraging their social status, others pleaded with claims of connections to influential figures, some resisted outright, and a few attempted to flee. In these dire circumstances, Wu Qingsong resorted to using the wolfmen, temporarily reassigned from Ram, to enforce submission through force.

In times of war, mercy is a luxury.

Wu Qingsong had neither the time nor the luxury to consider individual desires or the risk of offending. With the city’s survival at stake, all that mattered was victory and the means to achieve it.

He soon discovered that many potential conscripts had been overlooked. Numerous shops, protected by either their connections or bribes to Esola’s officials, had been spared from conscription by the corrupt bureaucracy. But now, they all suffered under Wu Qingsong’s inexperienced but determined command.

After the most vehement dissenters were subdued and forced toward the wall, the majority, albeit grudgingly, complied.

In Esola, known for its abundance of hired warriors, many shops had their own guards to deter troublemakers. These guards’ combat abilities were on par with the city’s mastiffmen defense forces. Unbeknownst to him, the number of fighting-capable militiamen under Wu Qingsong’s command had quietly exceeded four hundred, with nearly two hundred additional laborers aiding in the efforts.

Beneath the city walls, a mound of stones, wood, and the corpses of antpeople accumulated. Many antpeople, struck by heavy objects hurled from above, had lost their climbing ability. Those who managed to scale the wall were typically met with four or five beastmen wielding long hammers, who shattered their scythe-like claws and sent them crashing back down.

The growing pile of antpeople’s bodies near the wall formed a makeshift ladder, enabling their comrades to climb more rapidly and increase the efficiency of their attack.

Wu Qingsong bellowed, “Bring the oil! Pour it down!”

Flames and dense smoke quickly engulfed the area below the walls. The antpeople’s bodies, the first to catch fire, twisted frantically in the blaze, attempting to flee from the walls. The thrown wood soon ignited, turning that section of the wall into a sea of fire.

This segment of the wall appeared momentarily safe, providing the soldiers a moment of respite. The relentless tension had left many with their hands aching and numb.

However, at that moment, chaos broke out on a nearby part of the wall. Several colossal antpeople emerged atop the battlements.

“Damn it!” cursed Wu Qingsong.

“Keep this area secure,” he commanded Harold, and then, with his mercenary troop, rushed toward the disturbance.

The antpeople had penetrated that section of the wall, though not in overwhelming numbers yet. The giant ant soldier, their heads resistant to conventional weapons, gained formidable momentum once all six legs were grounded, charging like tanks across the wall.

Numerous beastmen were hurled away by their impact. Faced with these monstrous creatures, their morale shattered and began to desperately seek retreat.

The crowded battlements could not hold the surging mass of beastmen in their panic. Many were shoved off by others, and even more, in their extreme terror, chose to leap down on their own.

“Molotovs!” shouted Wu Qingsong.

If this section fell, the part of the wall under his command would undoubtedly be next. At this point, there was no room for second-guessing.

Four or five Molotov cocktails arced over the heads of the crowd, homing in on the closest giant antman. The bottles burst upon its enormous head, instantly setting the hideous beast ablaze with intense flames.

Despite being engulfed in fire, the massive antman kept charging forward. But soon, it began to thrash its head in pain. Seconds later, it lost balance and plummeted off the wall into the city below.

“Return to battle!” Wu Qingsong commanded, urging the houndmen to echo his call.

Amid such tumult and disorder, his lone voice could not possibly stand out. The death of the giant antman briefly caused a few beastmen to pause, but the majority continued to push through, desperately trying to flee past them into the city.

“Back to the fight!” commanded Wu Qingsong, as the houndmen, following his lead, continued to shout and swung their war hammers. The closest deserters collapsed, bloodied, and injured, halting the flight of their fellow soldiers.

“We can’t hold this anymore!” someone exclaimed in a mix of terror and despair.

“Then where will you run to?” Wu Qingsong roared with all his might. “If we can’t defend this spot, do you think running into the city will save us? If the city falls, we all die. Our only chance of survival is to fight right here! Return and fight!”

“Return and fight!” the houndmen’s voices rose in unison with his.

“Cowards who run, die!”

“Cowards who run, die!” the houndmen repeated, advancing in orderly rows toward the deserters, their war hammers striking down with ferocity. Their uniform dark red armor and disciplined formation eventually forced the deserters to concede, pushing them back to their posts to confront the ant people who had climbed the walls amidst the turmoil.

More Molotovs arced over them, smashing into the ant swarm and halting their advance. Finally, the defense at this location steadied.

But on the other side of the wall, the defense forces had completely crumbled.