Crest of the Strongest Knight

Chapter 141 - Shifting South

"This isn't what I had in mind, damn it!"

Just a few hours ago, Medrauta had spent the entire night pushing oversized logs. Now, she was stuck in the middle of the open gate, swinging her sword incessantly for the sole purpose of fulfilling her lady's wishes. As one of the only two individuals who could permanently lay the attacking witchspawn to rest, she was assigned to be the speartip against the invading monsters that currently flooded through the gates.

Thanks to the soldiers' tireless efforts during the night, the garrison had managed to seal up the holes in the duchy walls with debris, planks, and just about anything large they could find. As it turns out, mud made a pretty decent substitute for cement in a pinch, and though their strength was hardly comparable, it didn't matter much when the main objective was simply to deceive the near mindless witchspawn.

As creatures that lacked any actual sentience, simple witchspawn like the beasts Medrauta slew incessantly were only capable of following basic orders, and the only orders they had received were to overtake the duchy as quickly as possible, overrunning the defenders with sheer numbers and undying tenacity. In other words, if an open gap in the walls already existed, the witchspawn would waste no efforts in attempting to break through the walls again, opting to flood through the existing opening instead.

With the gate left unobstructed, the monsters were funneled through the narrow entrance, all according to plan. Unfortunately for Medrauta, she was placed dead center in the formation, taking the brunt of each witchspawn wave that crashed mercilessly into the shield wall that the garrison had set up. For now, the soldiers held their positions steadfastly with Medrauta by their side but it was quickly becoming clear that their strategy wouldn't last for long. As the waves of beasts grew larger and larger, surviving witchspawn began piling up, climbing atop one another in a bid to bypass the shield wall and assault the spearmen standing behind.

"Push!" Medrauta roared, feeling her chest vibrate with the sheer volume of her shout. Her half-plate was stained completely black along with her sword, the blackened liquid mana that she extracted from her monstrous foes accumulating quicker than it could dissipate. In response to her command, the soldiers mustered their strength and shoved with all their might, ramming their tower shields into the approaching line of witchspawn and shoving them back even if only for a moment.

"Ma'am! We're being overrun!" One of the soldiers shouted as he spotted a witchspawn leaping straight over his head, diving into the spearmen behind. Without the ability to permanently kill the beasts, the only thing the soldiers could do was delay their advance by removing the creatures' limbs and forcing them to regenerate before continuing their attack or holding them back using thick and heavy war spears, impaling them and preventing them from moving.

Medrauta clicked her tongue in annoyance as she whirled around for a quick look. Things were going south already as she counted over seven witchspawn currently engaging the soldiers. Had the beasts not been stupid enough to try and flood through the narrow but tall opening, the soldiers most likely would have been overwhelmed already. The only reason why they were capable of lasting so long before Medrauta and Viviane arrived was due to their purely defensive tactics which centered on holding multiple fortified positions instead of attempting to push the creatures back from the gates.

Medrauta's endless symphony of violence paused for a moment as she weighed the risks of leaving the front lines momentarily to dispatch the witchspawn that had infiltrated the rear lines. She could return within seconds, but leaving for even a moment left the shield wall extremely vulnerable with no way to actually reduce the number of beasts bearing down upon them. While Medrauta could clear out around five or six witchspawn with a single horizontal swing of her sword, it was clear that the rate at which the monsters were arriving far outstripped the rate at which she could slay them.