Volume 6: Job Change Chapter 12 opens: Long-range battle
"Crack!" Another thunderbolt flashed, hurting people's eardrums. On the plain outside the city, the translucent magic portal gradually became thinner and finally disappeared. The air became clear and transparent again, but it was tainted with a hint of iron and salty smell, which made people feel a dull pain in their lungs.
The last person to walk out of the magic teleportation gate was a giant troll who was as tall as two people stacked together even when he was bent over, with a face painted with scary patterns of chalk ink. In his hand was an extremely large staff, the top of which was inlaid with a human skull carved from magical black crystal, almost as big as a normal human skull. The name above his head showed that this was the leader of the troll race who betrayed the Falvi continent, the evil troll magician named "Hand of the Void" - Mlak.
The dark clouds gathered again, the light of lightning and magic gradually disappeared, and the sky and the earth seemed to become dim at this moment. I could no longer observe the enemy's appearance as carefully as before. Looking around, I could only see a heavy darkness.
"Boom, boom, boom..." A thrilling drumbeat came from the opposite position. A row of towering chariots slowly pushed out from the enemy's position. These chariots were incredibly large, almost as tall as our city walls, with a thick layer of wooden boards hanging on them, and a long staircase behind them that went all the way to the ground. Once these behemoths got close enough, the wooden boards would be laid on the city walls to form a bridge, and the soldiers of the Doomsday Empire could use it to continuously attack the city.
At the same time, a low horn was blown in the Dark Cloud Fortress, and the silent native soldiers lined up in battle formation, standing on the city wall and silently looking at the approaching enemy. On the city wall, the catapults made by the dwarves and gnomes began to operate, and the strong minotaur soldiers twisted the capstan hard, and the rope tightly tightened the thick log machine, making a teeth-grinding "creaking" sound. A violent destructive force was concealed behind this heart-shaking sound.
"It's so slow, how can we fight..." Although my comrades beside me complained, they still raised their weapons and prepared for the battle.
Now is the most depressing moment before the battle begins. There is no contact between the enemy and us yet. Even the city defense weapons with the longest range cannot reach the enemy. However, at this moment, there seems to be an invisible steel string on the silent battlefield, which is gradually being tightened. With each step forward of the enemy, the string is tightened a little bit. As the row of siege weapons gradually approached, the string seemed to have been stretched to the limit...
"Bang..." When the enemy's siege chariot was about a hundred steps away from the city wall, a catapult placed at the highest point of the fortress threw out a huge stone bullet. The spring ejection made a low sound, like a majestic sigh, breaking the silence over the battlefield. The stone bullet drew an ominous curve in the air, and finally hit the body of a siege vehicle with a loud bang. The siege vehicle was severely damaged, and suddenly the whole body trembled violently. The momentum of its advance was blocked, and then it continued to move forward. Although it can still be used, it looks much more damaged and its forward speed is also slower. At the top of the siege vehicle, the green bar showing its durability has lost half.
This was an encouraging start, after which the other catapults on the city wall also started to move, huge stone bullets flew out from the top of the city wall one after another, and then found their own value on these siege vehicles. In the face of the huge destructive power of the catapults, these tall siege vehicles were not as strong as they looked. As long as they were hit by the stone bullets twice, they would be completely destroyed and broken into a pile of wood chips.
Faced with the threat of catapults, the siege vehicles of the Doomsday Empire Army were like ugly reptiles, crawling forward tremblingly, and would suffer a catastrophic disaster if they were not careful.
However, the number of catapults on the top of the city was limited after all. They could not cover the entire battlefield, and the number of enemy siege vehicles was so large. In the end, more than 30 siege vehicles successfully avoided the rain of catapults and approached the fortress wall. In the enemy's position, there were still many of these big guys slowly moving forward. The defenders on the wall shot sharp feather arrows at the enemies below the city; and on the top of the siege vehicle, two dark elves named "Imperial Army Far Attackers" were not to be outdone, and they retaliated with a dense rain of arrows on the wall.
At this distance, some of the volunteers who mainly use long-range attacks have already found their place. Whether it is the rangers holding bows and crossbows, or the magicians and warlocks who manipulate magic, they are all unwilling to be outdone and have joined the battle. These people are all strong men above level 40, most of whom have completed the job transfer tasks, and some of them have reached level 50 with rapid upgrades. Their attack methods are more diverse and more powerful, and they also come with a variety of additional attribute damage. The lethality is completely incomparable to the group of level 38 elf archers on the city wall. Although their current state is very strange, their movements are slow and stiff - they attribute this to "stuck" - but these minor problems will not cause much impact in the current long-distance battle.
At first, only those professionals who used long-range attacks as their main means of combat participated in the battle, but gradually, more and more people were no longer willing to be spectators of this battle, and chose their own different methods to join the confrontation.
The first one to lose his temper was our old friend, the former half-orc wanderer Chang Sanjiao. Like most people here, he had successfully completed the job transfer task and became a shadow thief. As an advanced class of wanderers, shadow thieves not only still have the ability to sneak attack, but are also good at making various sophisticated mechanisms and traps, and are good at mixing and using many different types of poisons, relying on these insidious means to fight the enemy.
However, at this time, no matter whether it is a trap or a poison, it will not work at this distance. The method used by the Yangtze River Delta is a completely unexpected method:
catapult.
As a competent shadow thief, it is a necessary skill to lead the enemy into the trap set by oneself. Therefore, every shadow thief must learn the skill of "stone throwing" to lure the enemy. By throwing small stones, the enemy's attention is attracted and he is led into the trap set by oneself. Of course, this is only a skill to lure the enemy. Its only lethality can only deduct a little health value from the enemy. Even in extremely low-level battles, this is a slight damage that can be completely ignored.
However, this is the only long-range attack skill that the Yangtze River Delta can use. I guess he wants to use such a skill here. The desire to create a gimmick, attract attention, and satisfy his vanity seems to be stronger than the purpose of participating in the battle and killing the enemy. In fact, this is indeed the case. When this unusually fat man shouted with full energy: "Get out of the way, watch me!" and then swung his bloated arms, and in a clumsy posture eager to try, he tried his best to throw a small stone that was not much bigger than a mountain date, it did cause a round of playful laughter and applause from the surrounding comrades.
The stone was thrown low and flat, with no target at all. Once it flew out of the city wall, it fell crookedly downwards. Judging from its flight path, it could only hit the chassis of a siege vehicle at most, and it couldn't even hit a person. This low-level stone throwing technique immediately attracted boos from the people on the city wall. Changgong Sheri said slyly, "Triangle, you are a national football player, right? I think your shooting posture is very similar to Henry."
This cheap joke obviously hurt Chang Sanjiao's self-esteem. He was angry and annoyed, his face flushed with shame, and he immediately retorted: "You are the international football player, your whole family are international football players." His unconvincing counterattack immediately caused another burst of laughter.
As he was speaking, the small stone that no one expected hit the base of the siege vehicle just as everyone expected, hit its heavy wooden board lightly, made a slight "to" sound, and then bounced away.
"Huacha..." The siege vehicle, as tall as a building, collapsed with a bang, wood chips flying everywhere, smoke and dust rising everywhere. At the moment of collapse, two pale green characters rose from the top of the siege vehicle, like a sudden countercurrent, choking all the laughter in the lungs - "-1".
Everyone's expression was frozen in that moment of amazement and astonishment. Their open mouths were each big enough to fit a large brick - some minotaurs' mouths were even big enough to fit two bricks - and their eyeballs were abnormally large, almost filling up two-thirds of their faces. I even thought I could vaguely hear the sound of the people's eye sockets shattering around me.
Chang Sanjiao's expression was particularly exaggerated. I was sure that the reason his jaw hadn't dislocated was because the belt strap that secured his helmet was tied too tightly. However, when a large and bright ball of soul power floated into his body, greatly increasing his experience points and allowing him to level up on the spot, he was the first to return to normal:
"I aimed before throwing it..." He lied without any shame.
"Tsk..." Anyone who believed him would be crazy.
The great achievement brought by this stone was undoubtedly a coincidence: the unfortunate siege vehicle had been hit by a stone bullet during the attack, and its durability had already been greatly reduced. In the process of approaching the city wall, it was unfortunately hit by the defenders of the city wall. It was hit by many magic missiles and burning arrows from the defense forces of the Dark Cloud Fortress, and its durability dropped sharply. It was only a matter of time before it was destroyed, which was impossible to avoid. It was just that Chang Sanjiao's luck was really weird. When the small stone hit the siege vehicle, its durability was just the last bit left, and it collapsed at the touch of a button. And because all the people who attacked the siege vehicle before were native defenders, they could not absorb the enemy's soul power into their own combat experience, so the credit for destroying the siege vehicle was all attributed to Chang Sanjiao alone, allowing him to pick up a huge advantage for nothing.
The good fortune of the Yangtze River Delta
Some warriors and wanderers took out some long-range weapons from their backpacks: crossbows, arrows, darts, javelins, etc. These were originally the spoils of war they obtained during their training. The reason why these things are still in their hands is that some of them have not been sold in time, and some of them want to find a suitable buyer to sell them at a good price. Before this, they may never have thought that they would use these unsuitable weapons to fight one day.
Although they had never learned the corresponding skills and the damage they could inflict was very limited, they were still weapons anyway, and could draw blood and hurt people. Under the control of these amateurs, all kinds of long-range weapons flew towards the approaching enemies. Many of them missed, but more of them hit the target, and some were even fatal on the spot. Although the results were very limited, in such a critical moment, every bit of damage was a gratifying result for us.
Although I didn't have any suitable long-range attack weapons in my collection, I had quite a few low-level weapons with no attributes in my backpack, about 20 or 30 of them. If I put these rags on a stall, no one would buy them; and if I sold them in a store, the price would be too low. So I kept them all, waiting for a moment like now when they would be useful.
I took off my long sword and shield, and casually took out a small level 2 dagger from my backpack. I aimed at an "Imperial Ranger" on the siege vehicle and threw it with all my strength. In a blink of an eye, the worn dagger pierced the guy's forehead. The red words "-120" floated above his head, and he fell to the ground without a sound.
Remember? This is the "All-out Throw" skill that I learned by myself. It can bring damage far beyond the weapon's own lethality at the cost of losing the weapon, which makes my long-range attack power much stronger than other amateur long-range attackers.
"Hey, Jeff, what's your skill? Can you teach me?" I turned around and saw Niu Baiwan looking at me with great envy. Our noble Tauren Paladin was holding a wooden slingshot with extremely rough workmanship and shooting stone projectiles vigorously. For Niu Baiwan, this slingshot was too small. He couldn't hold it in his palm at all. He could only pinch it carefully with the thumb and index finger of his left hand, and then carefully put the small projectile in place like threading a needle, and then use the thumb and index finger of his right hand to pull the bowstring and eject the projectile. The most awkward thing was that when doing this series of actions, the middle finger, ring finger and little finger of his two hands were gently and naturally stretched out, looking like he was embroidering, which always gave people an uncoordinated feminine feeling.
You can imagine a tall and burly minotaur with black lines on his face, his body covered with sacred marks of light, his hands delicately pinched with orchid fingers, playing with a slingshot. I don't know how you react to this scene, but I got goose bumps all over my body.
All I can say is that war is a crazy thing.
"Oh, it's called 'all-out throw', just throw your weapon away," I said to him.
Niu Baiwan looked at the big wooden stake beside him with reluctance, shook his head regretfully, and gently pinched the slingshot in his hand...
