On the second day of the Battle of Aston, at 6:05, the weather was clear!

The bombing campaign for Aston City continued until 3 a.m., and when the first rays of sunlight rose from the horizon, the whole of Aston City was like a pile of burning charcoal, and countless curling clouds of smoke and dust soared up to 9,000 feet, silently indicting the players of the crimes committed against the city.

"The report sent back by the Observation Group fifteen minutes ago confirms that the two first-level targets, the Teleportation Array and the Magic Tower, have been confirmed destroyed, and that the rebels have abandoned the repair of these two facilities. In addition, secondary targets such as armories, material warehouses, smelters, griffin cages, stables, etc., have been confirmed to be temporarily incapacitated, but can still be repaired, and are expected to take three to five days. "Eleven of the forty-six towers, six of the seventeen towers have been confirmed destroyed, and the southern wall is the main area of loss, and it is estimated that the defensive capacity of the entire southern wall will be reduced by 7% to 10%!" ”

"Where's the city-level mana defense shield?" Mikael asked without looking back, as the front-line commander of the ground offensive, he didn't care about the results of those air battle groups, he only cared about the siege battle that was about to start!

"Still alive! Last night's bombardment did not cause damage to key nodes of the Magical Defense Shield, and in fact the three teams that carried out the bombing mission were abandoned by Commander Kasai's orders after four deaths, and the bombardment only destroyed part of the energy evacuation port of the Magic Defense Shield. ”

"What a bunch of rubbish! Let Kasai immediately prepare at least three regiments of bombardment troops, and after the ground offensive begins, I want him to carry out another targeted bombardment of the three key magic nodes marked by the magic defense shield! Mikael gritted his teeth and said, he knew very well that for the next siege, the biggest threat was not the soldiers of the rebels, nor the various city defense equipment, but the layer of magical defense shields that looked as thin as cicada wings, but were extremely tough.

In the world of Entagre, the magic defense shield is the most critical and important thing for the city's defense, and every city needs to bury a huge and complex magic pipeline underground at the beginning of its establishment to form a magic protection covering the entire city, even those cities that continue to expand from villages and towns, at a certain point of development, will spend a lot of resources to supplement this important defense facility.

It is precisely because of this city-level magical defense shield that the defenders of the city are protected from the enemy's magic, otherwise, a single legendary magic can turn the entire city into a living hell, and the city will not be able to play its important role in the war at all.

For example, in the original Battle of Radre, Martan used the magical defense shield of Fortress Radre to limit the siege methods of the Kingdom of Virgil, forcing Mantein Virgil to invest a large number of soldiers in the most brutal battle for the city walls, and paid a lot of price for it.

If it weren't for the arrival of reinforcements that made Maltan turn defensive into offense, and Antonidas seized this opportunity with a sudden attack, a legendary battlefield magic wiped out a large number of undead soldiers in the wild, and Maltan would not have failed so quickly. Of course, the magical defense shield of Fortress Radre is not the most advanced kind, and the inability to resist legendary battlefield magic is also a big reason.

Compared to the magical defense shield of Fortress Radre, the defense shield of Aston City is significantly more advanced, after all, it is a magical defense facility used to protect a provincial capital city, and it was designed and built with various issues in mind, so that the city can obtain a strong enough defense capability.

For the natives of the world of Ntagre, this is a matter of course. In the face of the camp war that swept the entire continent, no one dared to guarantee that their country would be safe and sound, in this case, whether it was humans or undead, elves or demons, of course, they tried their best to increase their strength, especially in terms of defense capabilities, and they were racking their minds.

It's just that the ancestors who designed this Aston City probably didn't expect that one day the city would fall into the hands of the rebels, and facing the problem of magical defense shields, it was the counterinsurgency army with the purpose of recovering the territory of the empire.

The world is impermanent, that's what I'm talking about.

As long as this layer of magic defense shield still exists, the player's magic attacks will not be able to harm the enemies in the shield at all, and even the purely physical attack methods such as bows and arrows and catapults will also be affected by the magic shield, producing a deflection effect, and even greatly reducing the range due to the additional magic blocking.

Therefore, Mikael must solve this problem, or the Angel Covenant will have to pay two, three, or even more, to capture the wall, which is nearly thirty meters high!

"Your Excellency, Mikael, I am afraid that your request will not be fulfilled." Malton shook his head regretfully, "After the bombing is over, Vice President Bell issued an order for the reorganization and replenishment of the entire air combat force, and the process is expected to continue until the afternoon of the day after tomorrow, during this time, the air force can only provide air reconnaissance, limited ground attacks, and ensure air supremacy, and other than that, it cannot play a greater role." ”

The brutal battle for air supremacy and the night bombing operations not only laid a good foundation for this campaign, but also exposed many problems in the existing air force formation. Before that, the Angel Covenant had never invested so many air combat groups and conducted such a large-scale air battle in a single battle, and this battle was both a test and an attempt for the Angel Covenant's air power.

In addition, a large number of air combat players have experienced multiple deaths in yesterday's battle, both psychologically and physically, it takes time to recover, and the lost soul energy needs to be replenished, especially for those air combat players whose soul energy limit is damaged, Angel's Covenant not only needs to provide them with the means to restore the upper limit, but also needs to pay a large amount of compensation and wartime bonuses.

In addition, the large loss of air combat equipment and the large amount of ammunition consumed also make it impossible for the entire air combat unit to launch a large-scale air operation again in a short period of time, and it will not only require a lot of money and manpower but also time to replenish these lost equipment and materials.

Mikael clenched his fists and reluctantly accepted the result. He believed that Bell would not be unaware of the situation that needed to be faced in ground combat, and under this premise, the other party still issued the order to reorganize the air combat force, which means that in Bell's opinion, this is more important than destroying the magic defense shield.

"Alright! Then it's up to us to do what we do! Have the legions already reached the starting position? ”

Marton replied: "Two hours ago it was all in place, the distance between the trench prepared for the attacking troops and the wall is 1,300 meters, and the engineering troops said that if they want to excavate any more, it will expose the people in the trench to the fire of the wall, and the height of the wall of Aston City is the highest so far, reaching 33 meters, and if you want to excavate, you will not be able to meet the protection requirements and provide protection for the attacking troops before the attack." ”

1,300 meters, that's a desperate number.

When the Tigers attacked Arella on a moonlit night, the trench was less than three hundred meters from the city walls, and even this distance required the shield-wielding player to run for nearly two minutes to reach the walls, and during this time, the player had to withstand dozens or hundreds of rounds of arrows and magic attacks from the city.

And when this distance is stretched to 1,300 meters, the price to pay to cross this distance is almost desperate!

A player wearing a full suit of heavy armor can move at a speed of about 1.5 meters per second while running slowly (any faster it may cause a lot of physical exertion and cannot be maintained for a long time), and it will take about 15 minutes to cross this distance of 1,300 meters.

Even taking into account the effective range of the magic, the player would need to be exposed to the rebel mage's attacks for up to 5 minutes, which is enough for a rebel mage to fire a full 60 large fireballs, and even if a large fireball can only knock out the player by 100 health, that's a full 6000 health!

At this stage, how many players can have that much health? Not to mention that they also need to retain their health and stamina to climb the city walls, and even fight for the top of the city, killing and injuring rebel soldiers!

It's an unattainable goal!

"Where's the tunnel?"

The General Staff had long considered digging under the walls through tunnels and then destroying them by using large quantities of alchemy explosives, a siege method that has often appeared in real history.

"It has been calculated that destroying a section of the city wall no more than five meters wide will cost 3,500 kilograms of alchemical explosives, and the success rate is less than half, and the rebels can also use their own magicians to temporarily repair the gap in a short time by turning mud into stone. Coupled with the fact that the progress of the underground excavation operation was much lower than expected, the geological environment here was very complex, and six of the eight tunnels where the earthwork was carried out in advance had already collapsed on a large scale, and the remaining two had to be detoured because of hard ground such as granite, and the General Staff had decided to abandon the combat plan. Malton said disappointedly, "In the same way, the plan to destroy the city wall through a large number of mages using fossils for mud spells has also been abandoned, according to field tests, the walls of Aston City are mixed with a small amount of mythril and magic metal, and the resistance to magic has increased significantly, and a fossil of mud spells can only peel off the surface of the wall less than the size of a palm, and we don't have so many magicians to squander." ”

Mikael held his forehead with his hand: "In other words, is there only one plan left now?" ”

"If you don't find a way before the offensive starts, that's really the only option left."

"Well, the four legions have a total of 1.2 million combat troops, based on the average death of each person twice, that is the investment of 2.4 million manpower, and the total number of rebel soldiers is about 150,000, with an exchange ratio of eighteen to one, at least theoretically there is still a possibility of victory!" Mikael said helplessly.

Regardless of the time of day, the player's best way of fighting is always small-scale, which is determined by the player's nature, even after three months of war, or even longer training before, it cannot erase this characteristic of the player.

One against one, even if the enemy is one level higher than themselves, the player still has a chance to win by relying on various props and means.

Five-on-five, relying on tacit cooperation and reasonable professional combinations, players can eliminate enemies that are not much different from their own strength at a small cost.

Ten to ten, there is a high chance of player death, and the number of injured and worn items will also increase significantly.

When it comes to the scale of a battle of 100 or even 1,000 people, whether the player can still defeat an enemy with the same strength as himself needs to be marked with a big question mark.

It can be seen that as the scale of the battle continues to expand, the influence of the player's personal strength on the victory or defeat will continue to decrease, and the discipline and obedience possessed by the aborigines will have a clear decision on the outcome of the battle.

This is one of the reasons why Yu Bin was determined to build an aboriginal army from the beginning. As long as you can ensure that the quality of the Native Army is not much worse than that of the player, then there is a high chance that the Native Army will control the outcome of the Native Army.

This is true of field battles, let alone siege warfare. According to the Covenant of Angels and a large number of other guilds, the ratio of players to rebels is at least six to one when facing towns fortified by the rebels, and this number rises to twelve to one when only small and medium-sized cities are considered!

It has to be said that the huge number of villages and towns has greatly reduced the total losses of players, making many players subconsciously think that this war is not cruel.

So, an eighteen to one exchange ratio, at least in the eyes of today's players, is enough to ensure victory!

But Mikael knew that just to cross that 1,300-meter length would cost countless players' lives, and in the process, the rebels would only consume a few arrows and mana!

"Inform all legions that the second phase of the campaign will start at 8 o'clock sharp! The east and north walls are feints, the west walls are diversionary attacks, and the south walls are the main attacks! The duration of the attack was four hours, and it ended at 12 o'clock sharp, during which time the observation groups and commanders had to take notes accordingly and submit their operational reports after the battle! Mikael said, and Malton quickly jotted down Mikael's order on a piece of paper.

No one had ever thought that it would take enough time to capture the capital of Aston Province in a single day, even if it was to kill 150,000 pigs, not to mention that the rebels in the city were not only not pigs, but also elite from all over the province, and for this reason, the rebels had effectively abandoned the defense of other cities in the province.

"The advance distance of the siege equipment troops is a thousand meters, and at this distance, at least the heavy catapults can still hit the city walls. In the morning attack, I don't ask them to do much damage to the city walls, I just hope that they can calculate the specific impact of the magic shield on various siege equipment, as well as the maximum safe distance that can be advanced! ”

Since the carpenter Kavrin joined the Covenant of Angels and became the most senior master carpenter in Raphael's territory, the various siege equipment produced in Venapyrion City has been greatly improved, whether it is damage, range, and variety, the Covenant of Angels has benefited a lot, and in this regard, perhaps only Yu Bin's Naxxramas can compare with it.

"Don't waste mana on offense, I ask them to focus on maintaining the protective magic on the attacking troops, especially the arrow protection enchantment, as well as magic deflection, mana shield, and fire resistance."

Since the rebels can't lose the protection of the mana shield, they can only find a way to increase the defense capacity of their side and ensure that more players can reach the city wall.

"Go and tell the commanders of the legions! This battle has just begun, tell them not to be knocked down by the difficulties in front of them, and not to be arrogant! ”

"Yes, Your Excellency Commander-in-Chief!"