Chapter 432

2021-01-06

Chapter 432 Great decisive battle? (above)

Raven from the stone gate village sent the latest news: the ghoul army did not attack the fortress, but went around far away.

At first, everyone including Igor thought the enemy was jumping over this last stronghold and attacking Nightfort directly, but it was completely different from outside the Wall - this time, the Others didn't. Use any Magic means to harm any Skinchanger-possessed bird, preventing them from observing. Large-scale aerial reconnaissance, which began after dawn, quickly proved people wrong: after noon, the Northwest of Queenscrown discovered traces of a sea of corpses.

Maybe it is because he knows his whereabouts that he can hide it, maybe he is willing to start to frighten the living people from a few miles away...Under the slightly dark sunlight shining through the clouds, hiding the The corpse tide in the sky and covering the earth is so horrible to see.

Because the civilian evacuation rate has reached 100%, the ghouls have passed through countless villages along the way, but their numbers have not increased except for the thousands of soldiers killed and wounded in the storming of the fort last night. However, due to the different speed of action between different types and states of ghouls, and the Night King did not want to separate the troops, so-looking down from the air, the ghoul sea moving towards Queenscrown on the land-granting snowfield like a leisurely walk , the head and tail are pulled into a narrow strip with uneven spacing and density, because the front stops and waits for the tail from time to time, and it forms waves and stretches for several miles.

The dead in the marching rather than fighting state are not as densely packed, turbulent and frenzied as they were when they attacked the fortress, but after being spread out a little for ease of movement, from a distance they seem to have an increased proportion of the dead. The scale of the land makes them as difficult to see the end as the migrating herbivores on the savannah of East Africa, and they feel hopeless with another overwhelming imposing manner.

The alarm bell of the town rang frantically, and the already tense atmosphere suddenly stretched to the extreme. The walls and between the buildings were full of soldiers and residents running around... But the ghouls were there. After arriving outside the Queenscrown, it did not attack directly, but slowly opened its left and right wings to both sides, swallowing the Queenscrown package like a bloody mouth wide open like a sacrificial bowl, and finally turned into a huge black ring, turning the small The town was completely surrounded. After being elongated and spread out in this way, the original black corpse wave is only a narrow black line, but the majestic imposing manner of them extending south to north to the end of the field of vision still makes this scene visible on the city wall. Everyone was terrified.

......

Night King is waiting for dark - this battle is different from the attack on Shadow Tower and Sentinel Tower: the tactical purpose is not to quickly capture a specific target, but to Kill all the residents in Queenscrown, including hundreds of Giants, and turn them into puppets with the fewest possible casualties to increase your strength, strengthen your strength and solve future troubles, then go north to attack Nightfort, and still in a spurt of energy takes the Wall!
And if you want to reduce your own casualties, there is no more favorable condition than fighting at night: the cover and fear bonus brought by darkness can at least double the battle damage ratio of the dead to the living.

The good news for humans is that while the sky is still bright, Queenscrown will have time to communicate the new version of the defense plan that has been revised overnight to every grass-roots officer and related military and civilians. Arrangement; the bad news is - it's only two hours before it gets dark.

***

Under Igor's inquiries, persuasion, and the request of the highest authority, Bran Stark, who had been clothed in black cloth and became Night's Watch, finally revealed a new message: he Crows can be manipulated, and the Night King and Others can still find their approximate location without casting spells—provided, of course, that enemies don't cast spells on those crows.

Fortunately, with Wall's protection, this condition is barely met.

So, under the cover of different birds controlled by the Skinchangers of various tribes, among the birds flying around the Queenscrown ghoul army, there are many untamed, but they are similar to the ordinary ravens. The large-sized crow, blinking seemingly indifferent eyes, scanned the sensory enemy's formation over and over again.

"Have you found it yet?" In the inner castle of Queenscrown, after watching Bran close his eyes to control the crows for dozens of minutes, Igor couldn't bear to ask.

"The Night King was found long ago, in our Northwest direction, but I found another not so good situation, so I probed for a while." Bran opened his eyes: "Night King didn't get along with him. His men banded together, but seemed to divide the Others evenly in all directions of Queenscrown."

"This is bad news." Igor took a deep breath, "So, let's fight together, Queenscrown. Maybe the pressure in the other direction is not inferior to the direction of the Night King, maybe even more?"

"That's right."

"Got it." Igor facial The expression grave is nodded, but fortunately this has been considered in the new plan, "But people can't Avatar after all, and in this battle, only by killing the Night King can we win, I have no choice, I have to face this damn King of the Others. I'm taking someone out of the inner castle, and use the crow to guide me—to the wall closest to the Night King."

...

The snow was getting bigger and bigger. , the temperature seems to have dropped a few degrees with the arrival of the Others. Sun, who had been hiding behind the clouds all day and never showed his head, reluctantly began to sink to the horizon after barely illuminating the world for less than ten hours. As the sky darkened, smoke from the kitchen wafted from all over the town - since it was judged that the battle would break out after dark, Igor ordered the meal to be opened an hour earlier than usual, and the defenders took turns eating to avoid the situation where the battle would start on an empty stomach.

Finally, the night sky was lifted up by Heavenly God from the east to cover the sky above everyone's heads. When the invisible murderous aura and the chill gradually pervaded, for the sake of courage...there were even soldiers who pretended to be calm and bet each other when the ghouls would attack.

Then the other side immediately revealed the answer.

After the last rays of the sunset refracted by the atmosphere disappeared in the west in the sky, the ghoul army did not waste even a minute and immediately started the general attack.

......

In the mournful horn sound, under the walls of this town where the land-grant nearly one third population gathered, a record of intensity and scale that has never been approached. and will never be approached again The battle between the people and the ghosts has begun.

Since Queenscrown is not connected to other fortresses through the ice wall, it is impossible to obtain support after the war, so it directly reserves the equivalent to or even exceeds the proportion of the population. The abundance of Wildfire allows them to use fire more generously for defense. The moment the corpse tide began to move towards the wall, the two walls of fire were ignited by rockets and formed to wait for the visitors - but this time, the decisiveness of the enemy also exceeded the expectations of the defenders: there was no foreplay, after a few games The Others, who were already familiar with human tactics after the tough battle, used their trump cards at the very first moment of the battle.

Anyway, when attacking Nightfort, Magic will be difficult to take effect, and saving magic power is meaningless. Night King simply made a bold and correct decision: let the priests who have enough magic power, all be on Queenscrown Go into battle during the attack, replace casualties with magic power loss, and reduce the consumption of ghouls as much as possible!
So, the defenders around the wall were shocked to find that the whole line of defense was facing the three directions of the three gates, and the fire could not be lit from the very beginning!

This is indeed mentioned in the new supplementary plan, but even the writers only use it as an addendum, and no one didn't expect: the worst-case scenario would be The first minute of the battle took place.

"I've clicked it a few times, but it still doesn't work!"

"Stop beeping, we can all hear it! Do as the plan says, blast the bomb! Quickly blast the bomb! Come here!"

There are no more ghouls rushing into the fire to die, and all the dead armies poured in with a clear purpose from the gaps in the firewall opened by magic power, surrounded by The corpse elephants and corpse giants who were playing the front slammed into the gate firmly.

Boom!
It took a midnight effort and a new door closure fortification built during the day, which has withstood the test. In the sound of a crash that seemed to make the earth tremble, although the door panel was quickly smashed and topped off, the solid support behind the door, which was made of mud and stone and watered and frozen, firmly supported the inwardly slanted door panel. . The corpse elephants and the corpse giants smashed all the bones of their heads and shoulders without being able to make a gap, and finally changed their methods under the command of the Night King... They squatted on the spot and set up a ladder of flesh and blood to help the rest of the ghouls quickly Created a passage to the top of the fence!

The fire can't be ignited, the ghouls shot by the Dragonglass arrows just roll down and fall to the foot of the wall, instead of being burnt to ashes and shrinking in size - they fall into corners The corpse reinforces this slope passage, and the wall is less than ten meters high. Even if the defenders immediately put in bombs to block it according to the plan, it will only slow down the speed of "slope building"... After just a few minutes, the three city gate sections of The wall was forcibly built by the ghouls and piled up on the fleshy slope, and the fast troops, such as the corpse wolf and the corpse bear, who had been waiting in the rear, immediately went up the slope and rushed to the top of the wall.

With the huge advantage in numbers, soon... the front-line defenders who were facing the gap in the firewall were roaring and being drowned by the ghouls.

If it is next to The Wall, the defenders should call Jin Jin at this moment to withdraw their troops, abandon the wall and retreat to the stairs to the city, and flee to the top of the ice wall. But Queenscrown is built in the wilderness in the center of the land grant. Although the inner fort wall in the center is a little higher and thicker than the outer wall... But in front of the sea of ghouls, it is just a fragile little reef, and the defenders have no way to retreat. There is no choice but to kill the enemy one after another, hoping that the reserve team that will immediately enter the battle and the reinforcements who have come from the section that has never been captured along the wall will be recaptured through a bloody War General gap, and will continue to hold on until the enemy's magic power fails. Suppress Wildfire again!

Queenscrown is a town whose scale far exceeds that of any purely military stronghold along the Wall. Because of the huge area, if only the commander holds all the reserves, it is easy to appear "the wall is broken". It took half a day for the reserve team to arrive at the designated location for support." Therefore, Igor established three subordinate headquarters in the city that were distributed in an equilateral triangle with each other, each holding a reserve team with considerable number and battle strength, including Giant, and two or three qualified to use The diving archer of "Lightbringer", respectively responsible for one third long wall, and the core Queenscrown inner fort form a solid and reliable second and third insurance.

No one didn't expect second Insurance would be triggered less than ten minutes into the battle, but Igor's handpicked commanders dutifully performed their duties, and they lost first place in the city wall section. The correct response was made in an instant: a large number of reinforcements were sent to the lost point where the wall was climbed, and together with the frontline defenders who came from both sides, they launched three directions towards the ghouls who climbed the wall. Siege and vow to drive the gang off the walls of Queenscrown.

The defense plan works correctly and perfectly like a brand-new and sophisticated mechanical watch, and the enemy's each step operation must be dealt with by plan 1, plan 2 or plan 3... until plan n. There will only be "unexpected" situations on the battlefield, and "unplanned" situations are absolutely impossible... But only Igor oneself knows: in the case of selective failure of Wildfire, the biggest reliance against the sea of ghouls, even if the defense plan It can work perfectly from beginning to end, until the final chapters of "Inner Fort Defense Battle" and "The Last Stand in the Command Hall", even if every Dragonglass bomb in the entire Queenscrown can kill a hundred ghouls, this time The war will also end with the ghouls completely submerging oneself.

Igor dislikes personal heroism and dangerous land counterattacks and win-at-risk episodes. Influenced and influenced by familiar culture, he prefers dignified bullying and crushing. Stance to win, do not give the enemy any illusions and opportunities. But the cold Magic that the enemy showed only after the battle shattered his good wishes, and the Others finally pushed him to the point where he had to resort to a last-ditch plan.

The only hope for victory at the moment is that oneself kills the Night King with these two "Dragonsteel bombs" made by consuming an average of ten "Lightbringers" each, like a real Child Of Prophecy, he personally ended the "fate rival" and ended the war.

However, at this moment, the fulfillment of the prophecy encountered a problem:
At the moment when the enemy began to attack the city, Melisandre instantly sensed the precise positions of the eight casting enemies. Unfortunately, according to her, these eight None of the spellcasting sources is particularly different from the other seven or more powerful than the other seven, most of them are just ordinary Others... And of these eight Others, none of them are facing the wall in the Northwest where oneself is sitting at the moment.

Is Greenseer Bran deceiving everyone or giving wrong information because of limited ability?

Or because oneself is the Child of Prophecy, so you don't need to know the exact location of the Night King and just throw it out to hit the target?

Or the most likely - the enemy hides in a sea of ghouls outside the walls for their own safety, leaving them nowhere to be found and no way to start?
——

(end of this chapter)