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This was a mistake on the part of the skeletons. With no Crusaders on the walls, the mages who still had any mana left squeezed their last strength and bombed the top of the wall, destroying dozens of skeletons at once.

Dozens of deaths also meant dozens of cores self-destructing at the same time and releasing a fog of darkness over the walls that made it impossible for the Crusaders to scale the walls again.

It wouldn’t last long, but it would be enough to obstruct anyone trying to climb in the next few minutes.

The gate also began to sag under the impact of the battering rams, now that the barrier was no longer strengthening them. There were skeletons trying to hold the gate, but that did little to stop the impact of the enchanted battering rams.

With a final blow from the battering rams, the gate were breached and the Crusaders stormed in with full force, massacring every skeleton that tried to stop them. Athos had positioned over 3000 citizen skeletons to stop the advancing church forces and even the Crusaders were forced to slow their advance against the bone mass.

It would only serve to delay them, however. The skeletons of Faltra’s citizens had no sense of combat or teamwork and just attacked in a haphazard fashion. Their equipment was also just a weapon or agricultural tool, unable to do any real damage against the armored crusaders.

Very few Crusaders suffered damage from the skeletons, while the undead were slaughtered as soon as they approached. Black bones were piled on the floor as the crusaders advanced, but none of them could notice the strangeness.

They didn’t notice it in the heat of battle, but it was strange that the bodies were piling up instead of exploding in a haze of darkness, but the skeletons kept advancing and the Crusaders didn’t have time to think about anything. The only thing on their minds was to purge the evil in front of them.

.....

The crusaders advanced slowly with bloodshot eyes and roaring like beasts, but that was a mistake.

‘Now.’ Athos was hiding in a nearby building watching the situation and ordered the moment he saw half of the skeletons in pieces on the ground. The skeletons’ empty orbits released a dark glow for a second before detonating their cores.

It was the first time that Athos had detonated so many undead at once and the result was incredible. An explosion of gigantic darkness rose up, devouring everything and everyone around it.

Many of the crusaders who were trampling the bones just a second ago didn’t even have time to scream before being swallowed up by the darkness, their bodies withering like dry twigs in seconds before turning to dust.

The explosion went further and devoured everything alive around the gate. The Crusaders who were pushing each other to storm the fortress were trapped and died within moments. The blast of darkness spread for nearly 200 meters and formed a cloud around the gate.

Even the stone floors and nearby buildings couldn’t resist and were completely swept away by the blast, the air around them becoming toxic and unbreathable. The cloud of darkness began to spread beyond the gate, but was stopped by the shields of light.

“Damn it, keep the shields up! We can’t weaken now!” The bishop cried out in despair, feeling the priests around him weaken. He had taken a special-grade potion so its effects were still circulating in his body, but the others drank only high-grade potions and their effects were already wearing off.

The moment the effects wore off, everyone would fall to the ground suffering from mana detour, a condition where mages pushed their cores beyond their limits and became temporarily unable to use magic.

‘It was really a success, master! Darkness is blocking the gate and they cannot climb the wall either.’ Emilia spoke happily in her mind, but Athos was bitter.

‘No, we made some mistakes here. I couldn’t count, but I doubt we’ve killed more than 500 crusaders with this explosion, while our side has already lost more than 1500 skeletons. But the biggest miscalculation was the storm.’ Athos spoke as he looked at the sky.

Their skeletons did the same and immediately noticed the problem. The ring of clouds appeared to be dispersing, though the hive hawks continued to spin. The lightning was also getting less and less frequent, its power diminishing to less than a fraction of what it was at first.

Its charge was almost gone and the hive hawks were expending more and more mana to attract the remaining energy.

‘Now that the priests don’t have to worry about the lightning, they can move all the energy of the shields to block the blast of darkness. We should have saved some of the storm’s energy and attacked along with the blast. May it be a lesson to us.’ Athos spoke and refocused on the front gate.

Just as Athos predicted, the bishop noticed the weakness of the lightning and focused all shields of light in front of the crusaders, blocking the cloud of darkness. With no one to control the cloud of darkness, it began to disperse while eroding some of the energy from the light shields.

Skeletons also took advantage of the cover of darkness to attack the shields of light, but their attacks were only scratches.

‘My core is much better than those priests and the potion I took too, so I can still hold out for a little while longer, but the same can’t be said for the priests. The effect of the potions will end at any moment and with them the shields of light that keep the crusaders alive.’ The bishop thought as he weighed his options, but the choice was taken out of his hands.

Under normal conditions, the priests should have enough power to cast the barrier and recover mana with the potions to cast another large-scale spell. Unfortunately for them, the power of the storm clouds was much greater than expected and the black lightning not only caused damage, the darkness in them corroded the light on contact.

They expended a lot more energy than they intended, pushing their weak cores beyond their limits and were about to pay the price for it.

One of the priests suddenly dropped to his knees on the ground, vomiting blood. He was a new priest who had just been promoted from an acolyte, so he was less experienced and a lot weaker than usual. The problem is, he wasn’t the only one on the verge of a breakdown.

One by one, the surrounding priests fell to the ground, adding to the burden on the remnants. The bishop had no choice but to give up on keeping the shields of light, but that didn’t mean he was going to just waste the entire spell.

With a snap of his fingers, all the shields of light concentrated in front of the crusaders exploded, releasing a wave of shock and light towards the skeletons. The bishop took care that the energy of the shields moved only in one direction and did not damage the crusaders.

The blast of light drove away the cloud of darkness and with it all the skeletons attacking the shields, shattering them to pieces.

The Crusaders resumed their advance just as the darkness disappeared and this time nothing stopped their advance.

“All paladins, conjure a holy field immediately. We will never advance if all the undead we defeat turn into an explosion of darkness. The holy field must reduce the power of the explosions to a minimum.” the bishop ordered.

The paladins weren’t confident in their ability to successfully cast a large-scale spell, but they complied anyway. Like most mages and priests, they were trained to cast spells alongside other mages, but rarely practiced thanks to their duties as paladins.

The bishop took the lead on the new spell to ease the burden of inexperienced paladins while following the Crusaders’ advance. They resumed their advance just as the darkness dispersed, destroying all the undead in their path, even though they knew they would explode.

They came with the determination to die and with their eardrums burst, the only order they recognized was to go forward. The bishop knew this as he himself had trained hundreds of crusaders to fight like this and bit his lower lip in frustration, but he didn’t stop casting.

The bishop felt regret every time a crusader destroyed a skeleton only for the bones to explode and drown the crusader in a cloud of darkness. But their sacrifice was not in vain.

A sphere of light was forming on top of the bishop and in a few more seconds the spell would be ready. The holy field was much less complex than the hexagram barrier and was also much faster to cast.

‘Stop them from casting the spell.’ Athos felt the danger of letting them cast a second large-scale spell and ordered the skeletons in charge of the siege weapons to destroy them, but the order came too late.

Human army siege weapons fire, but aiming at skeleton siege weapons. They learned their positions thanks to mages and their familiars, adjusting their positions accordingly.

Rocks, explosive arrows, and firebombs rained down on the skeletons’ siege weapons, destroying most of them. A few shots missed their targets, but explosions dealt area damage and just hitting close was enough.