Wolfheart, Fangtooth City in the Kingdom of Wolfheart.!
This once-great city, plundered by the church, has yet to recover its vitality. Standing at the highest point of the castle, one can see that many streets and alleys in the outer city have turned into ruins. But compared to Broken Tooth Fortress, ravaged by the Evil Plague, it is already much luckier. At least it won't be like the latter, where piles of corpses can still be found in wells or drains.
Months ago, this was still the territory of the Fangtooth family, a branch of the royal family. Tieaxe also followed the policy of first evacuating the people from small towns and villages, and then dealing with the nobles, ignoring the struggle between Fangtooth, Token, and Redstone Gate. However, the sudden appearance of the Red Mist forced him to make adjustments. After all, even if Fangtooth City is declining, it is still one of the leading hub cities in Wolfheart and connects the north and south thoroughfares. Opening it up would allow the teams evacuating from the Everwinter land route to enter safe areas smoothly.
The battle process was not worth mentioning. Even without the support of fortress cannons, the five squads he temporarily assembled, totaling five hundred men, used mortars and anti-devil grenades to breach the supposedly impregnable Fangtooth Fortress and the solidly walled Fangtooth City. Its lord, Hibock, was sniped by a sharpshooter while supervising and encouraging the troops at the front line, and the final counterattack collapsed before it even began. The remaining nobles surrendered one after another, and one of the three major forces in Wolfheart was destroyed.
As the first military figure to follow Roland from the first battle of Border Town, Tieaxe is one of the most aware of the speed at which Neverwinter's strength has improved. Five years ago, they were still fighting back and forth with Duke Longsong, but now, as long as His Majesty is willing, the First Army could conquer any kingdom without any problems.
It can be said that their growth has far outstripped others, and they are no longer on the same level as those nobles.
But this does not make him feel a trace of ease or complacency.
The greater the disparity, the clearer he is about the overall gap between humans and devils, and how astonishing it is.
Faced with devils supported by the Red Mist, the First Army can hardly gain a foothold in Everwinter. Every day, troops retreat back to Wolfheart, and casualty reports never stop. In the absence of permanent defenses, the enemy's advance and pursuit capabilities make it impossible for each squad to defend against, and intelligence indicates that they have suddenly appeared on the necessary routes for personnel evacuation several times – even though those places had been repeatedly scouted and confirmed safe.
This passive situation will undoubtedly bring a negative impact on morale. The easiest way to deal with this is to immediately transfer all personnel back to the Longshan area for rest, but Tieaxe knows that orders and tasks are above everything else. Since His Majesty needs people, he cannot withdraw all troops because of concerns about casualties.
Then the only remaining method is to counterattack.
Grasp the fist with all your strength and hit the devil in the face! Only in this way can their wanton pursuit be temporarily suspended, and the evacuated troops can catch their breath.
The interception point he chose was Fangtooth City.
"The devil's defenses seem to be weakening," Brian said, holding up his binoculars. Since His Majesty began to mobilize troops, he had rushed to Deepwater Bay from the southernmost border with the first fleet. Also transferred with him were fifteen hundred Mojin warriors. This is also the first Sha People unit to be recruited in an integrated form in the history of Graycastle.
"It started from the Everwinter border," Tieaxe nodded. "Edith was right, the devil's establishment of the obelisk on the Ridge of the Continent is a double-edged sword. It is indeed hidden, but it also hinders their southward movement."
Looking north from the top of the castle tower, one can see a blood-like cloud in the sky and on the earth. That is the constantly spreading Red Mist, which has now crossed the boundary between Everwinter and Wolfheart, and is slowly pressing towards Fangtooth City.
The city located under the dark cloud is Goldwater Town in Wolfheart - it has been half-covered by the Red Mist, but no trace of a "Fortress-type Behemoth" has been found. The number of Dreadbeasts circling in the sky is also pitifully small, as if they had been forgotten by the devils.
If it had been at the beginning of the appearance of the Red Mist, this would have been almost impossible.
After this period of engagement, the General Staff has a general understanding of the devil's course of action.
In a sense, their strategic intentions coincide with those of His Majesty Roland, which is to control more human cities and drive humans to work for them. Therefore, the First Army, which is evacuating people, is regarded as a priority target.
In order to occupy human territory as quickly as possible, they often take the initiative to attack, using Fortress-type Behemoths to create small-scale Red Mist areas, so that troops can move quickly from one location to another like frogs, launching attacks on cities before the Red Mist arrives.
But when most of the land of the Kingdom of Everwinter fell into the hands of the devils, their speed of advance slowed down significantly. This shows that, as the territory expands, the enemy is already a bit overwhelmed.
From the perspective of the situation, this is also easy to understand.
It takes time to coerce humans and build camps. In the case of insufficient manpower, the larger the occupied area, the less flexible the available forces. Another key point is that the devils do not need to assemble the main force to fight against humans. With sufficient logistics, they can rely on small units to pose a fatal threat to the evacuated First Army squads, and dispatching large armies would be superfluous.
Therefore, starting from the Everwinter border, the frequency of enemy advance operations has decreased a lot, or they have not reduced the total number of people invested in the attack, but at this moment, the contact surface between the Red Mist and the mainland has stretched from the "one point" at the beginning to the "one line" that is hundreds of kilometers long. It is impossible to take care of everything without greatly increasing the number of troops.
Tieaxe keenly noticed this.
"Sir, the 'goods' transported from Neverwinter have all been sent to the outside of Fangtooth City." A soldier ran to the tower and reported with a salute.
"Finally here!" He suddenly perked up, turned to Brian and said, "Come with me and take a look."
……
A group of people came outside the city, only to see that the open space at the city gate was filled with hundreds of iron buckets. They were about half a person tall and an elbow wide, and their appearance was seamless. There was not even an opening around them.
"Sir, this is... what?" Brian circled one of the iron buckets several times, unable to understand for a while. If it is a container for holding things, there should always be a handle to open it, right? If it is a weapon... practice has proved that the efficiency of fixed installation of explosives is far less than that of cannons. It is unrealistic to rely on it to defeat the devils.
He pushed it with his hand and found that the bucket did not move at all. Obviously, it was full of things and extremely heavy. It is not easy to transport these hundreds of iron buckets to the front line. It is worth spending precious transportation capacity like this. They must not be insignificant things.
"It's a new idea that His Majesty came up with, but you were still opening up territories for His Majesty in the far south when it was tested, so it's normal if you don't know," Tieaxe smiled. "These iron buckets are the protagonists of this interception strategy. If the effect is really as ideal as the experiment, then even in mobile warfare, we can catch the devils off guard!"