A low trumpet, a thunderous war drum! A fearless roar, a tragic wail before dying!

Since the beginning of the siege, these voices have never subsided.

On the second day of the Battle of Aston, at 9:27 a.m., the south wall!

As another round of horns sounded, groups of players rushed out of the trenches and quickly formed phalanxes in accordance with the pre-rehearsed methods.

At the top of the list are warrior players wearing heavy armor and holding large tower shields, with high strength stats that allow them to carry heavy equipment and provide solid protection for their comrades behind them. Every fifty of these warrior players form a horizontal column, and such a horizontal team has a full three columns.

They are followed by archers in leather armor and armed with bows and arrows, who try to keep their bodies as low as possible to avoid long-range attacks from the walls, and use their weapons to counterattack enemies on the walls once the phalanx is close to the walls.

Then there are the mage players, including mages who specialize in energy magic, priests who practice light spells, and even warlocks, who throw out the protective spells they had prepared the moment they jump out of the trenches, imposing several statuses on the warrior players.

Finally, there are players in light armor and armed with short swords or daggers, whose job is to protect the flanks and rear of the phalanx, providing a safe environment for mages and archers to attack.

Each phalanx consisted of 2,000 players, arranged in a 50 by 40 rectangle, and when it was formed, the entire phalanx began to slowly advance towards the walls.

It's not easy for players to master this style of combat. The configuration of professions, the unification of equipment, these are just the basics of the basics. After solving these problems, each commander also needs to consider the distance between each row and each column, how to ensure the attack angle of the mage and the shooter, and so on.

You must know that even in the real Middle Ages, being able to arrange the soldiers under your command into a rigorous phalanx according to orders is an important criterion for judging whether a general is qualified. In this regard, it has long been accustomed to the use of heat under modern means of communication. Players who fight with weapons simply can't get used to it.

Fortunately, the natives of the Entagri world have long been accustomed to this, and for thousands or even tens of thousands of years, they have almost engraved this ability in their blood. After the strict guidance of hundreds of instructors that Raphael borrowed from the Dreadnought Wall Legion, as well as dozens of battles large and small since the beginning of the counterinsurgency, the Angel Covenant finally had an army of players who could still be seen, and based on this, the current four legions were formed.

There are 300,000 people in each legion, and this full 1.2 million players can be said to be the main force of the war in the Angel Covenant. It was also the confidence of Raphael's determination to launch the Battle of Aston.

Although to outsiders, the number of only one and two hundred thousand does not seem to fit the huge size of the Angel Covenant, the other small and medium-sized guilds can even pull up so many players to fight. For example, the Moonlit Night Tiger Guild invested more than 100,000 players in the battle to recover Arella City, and this is still because the Moonlit Night Tiger Guild has not been established for a long time, and the funds and appeal are insufficient.

There has been a lot of opposition to this within the Angelic Covenant, especially those on the board. They believe that with the strength of the Angel's Covenant, they should put as many players into battle as possible, exchanging time for quantity, so as to end this counterinsurgency war as quickly as possible.

But Raphael, who was influenced by Yu Bin, vetoed the proposal and insisted on building a regular military force. And the Battle of Aston is the best time to test the Angels' Covenant, a regular army that has invested a lot of effort.

Once the campaign is lost, Raphael's prestige will be greatly reduced, and the Angel's Covenant will likely return to square one, under the influence of the Board of Directors, and use crowd tactics to fight the war like other guilds.

In order to avoid this consequence, the top leaders of the Angelic Covenant, led by Raphael, invested a lot of effort in this army.

The first is the strength of the player. In order to meet the numerical superiority, other guilds put a large number of first-order, or even zero-order players into battle, the Angel's Covenant strictly stipulates the criteria for players to participate in the battle, such as the heavy infantry responsible for the defense at the front of the phalanx, which requires players to meet many standards such as occupation, strength attributes, academics, etc., and at least requires players to reach the level of third order.

It is precisely because of this strict standard that the Angel Covenant can only raise an army of 1.2 million, otherwise, with the size of the Angel Covenant, it is not difficult to magnify this number tenfold.

In addition, unlike other guilds that require players to bring their own weapons and equipment, Angel's Covenant comprehensively covers the equipment of these players, using a unified standard of equipment, although the attributes are not comparable to the equipment that players have worked hard to collect, but it is convenient to supplement, and easy to manage and use.

And these are actually the results of the players slowly summed up a few years after the start of the faction war in the previous life.

The phalanx moved slowly.

For the first 300 meters, the threat to the player is the various traps placed on the ground by the rebels, most of which have been broken by the Rogue players belonging to the Legion before the campaign starts, but there are still some remains, so it is common to see a cloud of cyan smoke or ice blue mist suddenly explode from the ground as the phalanx marches.

Since the players in the front row are heavily armored and highly defensive, these traps can barely inflict fatal damage on them, and even the most disgusting poison traps cannot stop the phalanx with the help of the clerics' antidote and healing.

When the phalanx had walked this short distance of 300 meters, what was waiting for them was the real battlefield.

The first thing they encountered was an attack from the siege engines on the city walls. Most of the boulders that roared across the sky smashed into the empty ground, but some of them landed in the phalanx. In the face of this kind of boulder, which is often counted in tons, even a solid tower shield is useless, and once it is hit, there is only one consequence, that is, it becomes a puddle of meat sauce.

The boulders that had been carefully polished by the rebels had long since been wiped off the edges, allowing them to roll on the ground with ease, and each boulder could plow a flesh-and-blood path through the phalanx, causing massive damage to the players and terrible psychological stress.

In addition to this, there are attacks from heavy ballistas. Heavy ballistae mounted on the walls of the city wall fire large basin-sized giant bolts, which are usually used to attack attacking giant creatures such as dragons or cyclops, and those with sharp magic can easily pierce the dragon's scales, inflicting a terrifying killing effect on the target.

And when this deadly weapon is aimed at the player, the damage caused is even more terrifying. Often, a single crossbow arrow can shoot through several rows, whether it is the player's equipment, shields, or even temporary magic shields, in the face of such deadly weapons, there is no effect.

To make matters worse, the accuracy of the Heavy Ballista is very different from that of a less accurate defense, such as the Heavy Catapult, and under the precise control of the manipulator, each giant bolt can take the lives of several or even a dozen players.

In the face of these weapons, the skills and combat skills that players are proud of are useless, and the only thing they can rely on is the favor of Lady Luck!

There were ten phalanxes attacking in this wave, and two of them were on the verge of collapse before they could advance to a distance of 800 meters from the city wall, and the number of players still alive in the entire phalanx was not even half, and in the face of such a situation, the officer in charge of commanding the phalanx could only give the order to retreat. The remaining players picked up the corpses on the ground as quickly as they could, bringing back those that were largely intact so that the priests could resurrect them, while the fragmented corpses had to be discarded, and as for the equipment, only some of the parts that were still usable were taken away.

The departure of the two phalanxes allowed the rebels to concentrate their defenses on other concentrated phalanxes, which led to a noticeable increase in the player's losses, and soon three more phalanxes had to start retreating.

As the phalanx of players moved on and began to reach a distance of eight hundred meters, they were greeted by a second attack from the rebels - magic!

Due to the mana shield, the player cannot suppress the rebels on the walls, but the rebel mages can attack the player phalanx below the walls with impunity. The basin-sized fireballs were fired by the rebel mage and smashed into the player's body, and for a while, smoke and dust rose on the ground, and the flames exploded.

Although there are mages in the player phalanx who can provide magic protection for the phalanx, this protection is not enough to completely neutralize the magic attacks from the city walls, only reducing the damage they cause, and due to the distance, the bows and arrows fired by the players cannot threaten the enemies on the walls at all, and can only withstand the magic bombardment unilaterally.

At a short distance of fifty meters, three more phalanxes had to choose to retreat, not only bearing the attack of magic and defensive equipment from the city walls, but also guarding against various traps from under their feet, which can be described as difficult.

Three minutes later, when the last phalanx began to retreat, the attack finally came to an end. And this was only less than half an hour after the siege began.

"Legion Commander! The third round of the offensive is ready! "Guan Ning is the legion staff officer of the First Legion, and he is also a veteran player who joined the Angel Shield very early.

"Let's get started!" Pompey said.

As a veteran player who joined the Angel Covenant at the beginning of its establishment, Pompeii transferred from the position of vice president of the Angel Shield Guild to the position of the head of the First Legion after the war began, which once made others very envious, but Pompey knew that the reason why this position was obtained by him was because he was a retired officer in reality, and secondly because of his performance in Sky City. Otherwise, the commander of the First Legion would likely have been snatched up by the older Odyrus guys.

Therefore, he cherished this opportunity, and when Commander-in-Chief Mikael gave the order for the start of ground operations, the First Army Corps, as the main attacker, had to obtain enough results to prove that they were worthy of the title "First" and that he was no worse than Odellus.

Looking at the expressionless face of the legion leader Pompeii, Guan Ning said with some apprehension: "Legion leader, do you want them to rest?" After the two attacks, the number of dead in the battle has reached 17,000, which is too high! ”

In the era of cold weapons, when an army's battle losses exceeded 10%, it was already on the verge of defeat, and when the battle losses exceeded 30%, it would lead to a rout due to a decline in organization.

While armies made entirely up of players are not affected by this ratio, excessive mortality rates can still have serious consequences for players, who will consider themselves cannon fodder and refuse to continue the attack.

And now, after only two waves of attacks, the battle loss rate exceeded 40%, which was already a loss that had never been suffered by the First Army since its establishment.

"Didn't you hear my orders?" Pompey said coldly, "Let those guys who come back immediately go to the rear to reorganize, the dead can get half an hour of rest, and those who are not dead or resurrected must immediately return to their respective battle sequences!" ”

"Yes, Captain!" Guan Ning didn't dare to disobey Pompey's order, so he had to answer and convey the order to the officers at all levels.

"Isn't it too impersonal?" Pearl, who had been standing next to him and didn't speak, spoke at this time, as the deputy commander of the First Legion, she had partnered with Pompeii for a long time, so she knew this guy very well, and knew that he was not such a cold-blooded person, "Although I know that you want to prove the strength of the First Legion, you should know that it is impossible for this city to be defeated in a short period of time." ”

The horn sounded again, and the players in charge of the third wave of attacks jumped out of the trenches, forming a strategy as usual, and then stepped on the passage opened up by the first two waves of players with their lives, and quickly advanced, little by little, close to the city wall, and then received the baptism of death.

At this time, Pompeii still had the usual approachable appearance, but more like the kind of cold-blooded butcher who was not approachable, watching the attacking phalanx die and collapse under the rebels' defensive equipment, magic attacks, and waves of arrows, until they retreated.

"Of course I know that! But as the First Legion, on the first day of the war, we couldn't even touch the city walls, what would the other legions think? What will the old guys on the board think? "Pompeii doesn't want to get involved in the so-called politics if he could. struggled, but the problem was that his identity and status made him unable to break free from this shackles.

Pearl nodded, she was aware of the pressure on Pompeii, not only from other legions, but also from the guild hierarchy and the board.

In the telescope blessed with Eagle Eye, the third wave of attack lasted less than twenty minutes, and finally failed, and the result was only to advance less than 100 meters to the city wall again.

In less than an hour before the siege began, the First Army had suffered more than 25,000 casualties, and the rebels had paid for only a few defensive supplies.

"Go on! The fourth wave is on the offensive at once! Let the fifth wave go into the trenches! Tell Ghalin to speed up the reorganization, and today each wave will have to launch three attacks! Pompeii said to the other staff officer beside him, "Don't tell me about casualties, just tell me how far we are from the walls!" ”