Abe the Wizard

“Very scary, I see.”

Wizard Calder didn’t just say that out loud sarcastically. He was watching the whole thing through his screen. The pecker orcs had a straightforward train of thought. When they were told to do something, they would do it without considering anything else. Yes, even if it meant something crazy like sacrificing thousands of their own kind.

The firewall was pretty much extinguished after a few minutes. Still, some of the heavy fire oil remained. Wizard Calder knew that there was something that he could do with it. He was a calm man. After having fought at the miracle wall for about a century, he had a deep understanding of how the orcs fought their walls. To him, it was only a matter of preparation for the miracle wall to be defended.

Even as the pecker orcs continued to charge forward, the knights did not bother to waste their ballistas and gold juice. They could kill these horrifying creatures very easily, but it was the same as in chess. Most of the time, there was just no point in sacrificing a bishop for a pawn. They wanted to save the better weapons for the stronger troops.

About 500 meters away from the pecker orcs, the knights took out their arrows and launched a long-ranged attack.

“Shoot at your will!”

After the commanding knight gave his command, many of the knights on the miracle wall all started looking for their own target. It wasn’t like they had to be very precise. They had the high ground. All it took was an aim downward to hit the pecker orcs that were all cramping next to each other.

Not that it mattered for the pecker orcs. They didn’t have the same goal as the knights. Their goal was to go to the miracle wall and die there. One of them had an arrow through its neck, but the red light glistening from its eyes showed nothing but bliss. It would die very soon, but it was just very happy to have completed the only mission in all of its life.

And a second one through its skull. It was about a meter away from the miracle wall, and that led it to die in a very unsatisfied manner. It wasn’t too upset though. Soon, its comrades would go over its body and finish the same job. Once they were all the dead, their corpses would only go higher and higher, and that was going to make the miracle wall more brittle than it was before. It was the same for the pigs that they were riding. It was the same for the boulders that they were carrying. The way they died might be too easy, but it was not for nothing.

Thousands of knights continued to shoot their arrows at these pecker orcs. Normally, an archer would be too tired after the thirtieth shots, but since they all received proper training, they could use their combat qi to produce ten times the output. Not that it was enough for the incoming pecker orcs. There was just way too many of them to be taken down by manually shooting at them.

Wizard Calder’s eyes were dead cold. He could see what was displayed on the screen. About a tenth of the energy used to set up the miracle city’s defense was already gone. These pecker orcs were just too persistent. If the barrier were broken through, it would take at least ten minutes for all the expended mana gemstones to be replaced. The humans didn’t have ten minutes. Even a minute was enough to change the whole situation.

“Close down the defensive circle!”

It was a weird decision, but the instruction Wizard Calder gave was implemented immediately. The pecker orcs didn’t stop at all when this happened. Still, their desperate attempts were nowhere near enough to do anything to the barrier that was already there. It was the same for the miracle wall itself. As every brick contained many spell runes, it was very difficult to lay even a single chip at it.

When the barrier was taken off, the entire miracle wall was dyed in red. The blood of the pecker orcs turned the entire bottom red. The pecker orcs still didn’t stop. The humans already took ten rounds to switch their unit, but they just kept coming and coming. It was enough to make anyone sick.

After a while, the pile of corpses and boulders became even taller. The 500-meter difference in altitude became 200, and that number was still falling. The human knights could smell the blood that was coming up from below. They were getting more and more scared of what’s coming at them. As the barrier was taken off, some of them started to fall at the sound of the orc war drum.

“Dragon horns!”

As Wizard Calder sent his command, a loud horn could be heard at the top of the miracle wall. It was the dragon horn. Due to how rare its main ingredient (the hyoid bone of a giant dragon) was, there was only one at Miracle City.

Upon hearing the horn, the knights that were affected by curses quickly got up from the ground. They all started to feel a lot better. Then, they picked up their bows to continue shooting at the pecker orcs. There were about 80 meters of difference in their altitude to the pecker orcs. Things were starting to get dangerous.Now that the number of deaths had gone up so high, the question “why” just had to be asked. In fact, the Orc Empire had been plotting this tactic for years now. It all happened several years ago when one of their historians discovered a terrifying truth from the documents he had been researching.

And what was that truth? After compiling all the climatic records he could find over the last few millennia, the Orc Empire historian discovered their nation’s weather cycle. Every once in a thousand years, the temperature would get so cold that it would be impossible to have a sufficient amount of products to feed the whole population.

This was why the Orc Empire decided to do something crazy: they deliberately saved up a huge fraction of their products, which was then used to start an explosion in the pecker orc population over a very short period of time. To prevent the humans from knowing about this, they would still send some of the pecker orcs to die at the miracle wall. This way, the humans would not prepare the massive incoming troop that was supposed to flood them all at once.

Wizard Calder instructed, “I want two sharpshooters up.”

Under a flash of white light, two old men appeared on the miracle wall. They were the last two sharpshooters left at Miracle City. After receiving bows from every knight within their view, they readied themselves for what might’ve been the biggest fight they would ever be in.

One of the commanding knights screamed, “You! Yes, you! The four ice element knight commanders! If it is what fate tells you, you will die here today, but do not let anything harm these two!”

Without saying anything, the four ice element knight commanders all nodded in resolution. They were knights meant to defend. While their attacking ability was nowhere near as good as the fire element knights, they could protect a target many times better.