Age of Adepts Chapter 822 The Battle for the City

Many orcs crouched on the city walls.
They looked on as their loved ones fought with the terrifying undead outside the city, and they watched as they failed to break free of the undead. This situation caused them to become increasingly worried and anxious.
The harpies were fighting with the wraiths in the sky.
The minotaurs, centaurs, and wolfriders were fighting with the ghouls on the ground.
From the looks of the situation, the orc warriors were living up to their ferocious name. They were splitting the ghouls in half like cabbage and turning the monsters into mincemeat.
However, the forces sent to reinforce the survivors of the war were kept four hundred meters away from each other. They could not gather together, no matter how they tried.
At this moment, conflict abruptly erupted within Witherwater City.
No one knew when, but hordes of black shadow creatures with evident otherworldly traits emerged from various shadowy corners of Witherwater City. These shadow creatures immediately launched the most ferocious of attacks at the orcs closest to them.
At this moment, the only ones left within the city were either women, children, or the weak elderly. Massive numbers of casualties started to appear when such a group of people suddenly faced these fierce monsters.
The orcs that had been worried about their relatives outside the city immediately let out deafening roars. They charged down from the walls wildly and engaged these uninvited shadow creatures.
A dozen Dark Witches had also infiltrated the city. They didn't confront these orcs in direct combat. Instead, they relied on their shadow stealth abilities to move about the place. Every time they reached a new area, they opened up a tiny portal to the Shadow Plane at the foot of some wall. They would then summon a squad of apprentice shadow creatures from within.
Occasionally, First Grade shadow creatures would be mixed within the ranks as well.
Taking down a fortified city defended by fifty thousand orcs with these small fries was an impractical idea. However, they couldn't be more suited to introducing chaos into the orcs' ranks.
All orcs lacked affinity with elementium. Apart from the orc shamans being capable of manipulating and summoning some degree of elementium power, most of the other combat professions relied entirely on physical attacks. Strongwoods Plane fairly lacked in magical resources. That caused the orc warriors to lack any kind of magical equipment and resulted in them being unable to effectively and rapidly exterminate the shadow creatures.
The unique ability of shadow creatures to ignore defenses and armor also resulted in many casualties amongst the orc warriors. Moreover, traces of shadow power would be attached to their wounds, making them incapable of healing until orc shamans dispelled the shadow energy.
Thus, with an army of shadow creatures, the one dozen First and Second Grade shadow witches managed to create a massive commotion in Witherwater City and terrorize the orcs.
Meanwhile, the Death Witches' undead tide could already be seen on the horizon. Bit by bit, they were flooding the orc remnants and their rescuers, both of whom were struggling outside the city walls.
The massive undead horde did not pause at all. It crashed against the walls of Witherwater City like a dense black tide.
Witherwater City only had two city gates: the east, and the west. Watchtowers and bastions made up most of the towering walls, while powerful ballistae and rapid-fire crossbows could be seen peeking out from the battlements. Every one of the bolts on these crossbows was two meters long and as thick as a baby's arm. The bolt itself was forged with refined iron, making them gleam with a cold light in the day.
As the tide closed in on the city, the bolts rained down from the walls, whistling through the air, passing through the undead, and turning them into skewers on the ground.
This terrifying scene would have scared the wits and morale out of the attackers, had they been human. However, the undead of the witches had no such problem. They continued to howl and lunge at the twelve-meter-tall wall against the rain of arrows.
The walls of the orcs were made of rough and hard stone. Countless sharp wooden stakes had also been placed on the wall. These stakes were meant to be used against the large-scale beast stampedes that occasionally occurred. No one had ever expected them to be used against these terrifying undead.
The undead tide surged near the wall, gathering into clumps of flesh and pushing against each other as they tried their best to scale the wall. The zombies were exceedingly slow and had extremely clumsy movements. However, as the pile of bodies continued to grow in size, the undead started to extend toward the top of the wall slowly.
The faces of the orcs who were throwing rocks down the wall were green with terror. Even their limbs were trembling from the very sight of the enemy.
From their vantage point, all they could see were the reckless and vicious undead and their ugly mugs. These undead did not seem to know the concept of fear. They continued to reach with their filthy claws and howl at the enemies above them, even as rocks fell upon their heads and arrows descended on them.
They were not living beings, only dead corpses moving under the effects of magic!
If an orc were to be devoured by such undead, their soul would probably fall to the lower worlds for eternal torment, even with the blessing of the Beast God.
It was such an understanding that caused these usually pious believers to feel a trace of fear from the depths of their heart. A strong desire to flee quickly followed!
However, the savagery and strong will deep in the soul origin of the orcs washed away their fears immediately. The soldiers roared and continued their assault on the undead beneath the wall.
The bows were firing, and oil was splashing everywhere.
A single fire arrow followed, and a massive flame erupted on the ground below.
The pungent and vomit-inducing smell of burning corpses immediately filled the air.
Greem couldn't help but shake his head and sigh as he watched from behind the lines.
The undead army might be cannon fodder made by the Death Witches, but they couldn't be so recklessly thrown away either! Planar wars lasted for a long time. One had to be prepared for a drawn-out conflict whenever they wanted to conquer a fully-developed plane.
Now that the portal had been closed, these were all the undead that the witches had in Strongwoods. If all these undead were killed at the start of the war, what were they supposed to use to stop the real army of the Orc Empire later?
It seemed like he would need to help the undead tide a little.
With Greem's instructions, Split-Off Brain Gru once again led the Archers slowly toward the city walls. Gru stopped the machines once they had reached a suitable position. He then ordered the Archers to unleash all their firepower toward the top of the wall to suppress the garrison there.
Three hundred Archers outfitted with magic energy guns stood on the spot and let out beams of red lights from their rifles. These volleys of shots, each with three hundred Scalding Rays, was more than enough to cover a sixty meter stretch of the wall.
The orcs who had parapets to hide behind were fortunate and managed to evade this ferocious attack. However, the orcs who were throwing rocks at the undead beneath them were not so lucky. Their bodies were riddled with holes as they fell from above, crying in agony.
Orcs were ferocious and fearless. Orcs were the most powerful and mighty warriors of Strongwoods Plane! However, there was still no compensating for the massive gulf in equipment between them and their opponents.
The equipment of the orcs was made of materials from the desolate northwest plains. The plains lacked sizeable metal reserves as well as blacksmiths skilled at forging excellent weapons and armor. Consequently, it was hard to find excellent equipment on an orc warrior.
They only had their thin animal hides and their own tough bodies!
The orcs might be powerful, but their bodies were still ultimately made of flesh. Apart from dodging as well as they could, there was nothing they could do to defend against the volleys of Scalding Rays.
Dava, who was watching the battlefield from within a fortified bastion fort, punched the sturdy stone wall furiously. Crushed rock fell from the point of impact, where a massive crater had formed.
"These damned witches, where did they find so many metal golems. No, we can't let the soldiers defend while under such concentrated fire. Go, tell the cyclopes that it's their turn to fight."
A messenger immediately ran out of the room.
A short moment later, a dozen cyclopes slowly ascended the city walls under the lead of another cyclops.
Their appearance immediately attracted the attention of the witches below.
Cyclopes that could throw boulders? It seemed that those were the only long-range forces of the orcs!
Greem couldn't help but be anxious when he saw the cyclopes appear.
These three hundred Archers were his main force in this planar war. Greem would probably die of heartache if they were destroyed at the hands of these Second Grade cyclopes.
Thus, Greem grit his teeth and forced out a laugh. He lifted his hand and threw out two magical golem cores, summoning two five-meter-tall Flame Fiends. He roared and transformed into a giant Flame Fiend shrouded in flames.
The sudden appearance of three Flame Fiends caused all eyes on the battlefield to fall on Greem.
The two Flame Fiends of Terror followed Greem's lead on his left and right. The three giants walked before the Archers and started summoning large-scale Scarlet Firestorms, Meteor Showers, and Doomsday Volcanoes at Witherwater City's walls.
The offensive power of a Second Grade spell might be a limited threat to Third Grade creatures, but it was no less than an apocalypse for low and intermediate-grade orcs.
Several meteors crashed from the skies, causing devastating damage to the walls in the distance as the flame shockwaves blasted outward. Scarlet pillars of fire, ten meters in diameter, erupted all over the walls, devouring two to three dozen orc warriors every time they appeared.
These magical fires burned on the city walls. Those First Grade orc warriors were reduced to ashes in the blazing flames without the time to call for help. Even the Second Grade orcs could only rely on their strong bodies to escape from the flames. Even then, their bodies were charred here and there.
Moreover, these magical fires would not simply disappear. Instead, they continued to burn and even ignited the wooden siege machines on the city wall.
Witherwater City was immediately thrust into chaos!