Before flying to the village's western flank, Kael had finalized the plan with Lila: rally a ten-thousand-player army, take all fifty catapults, and march on the Point C chokepoint in the eastern forest.
While Kael slaughtered his way through the west, Lila's forces reached a position two miles outside the chokepoint.
The moment Kael was hit by [Choral Slumber], he sent their pre-arranged signal: "9." Receiving the cue, Lila ordered her massive army to advance on Point C. Her offensive was a classic feint within a feint. If Imperator didn't pull back to defend, she would steamroll the chokepoint. If he did, Kael would successfully corpse-camp his targets, locking Lorelei and over a thousand other players out of resurrecting.
Meanwhile, Imperator's UI blew up with messages. Every single one asked the same question:
What do we do?
To deal with Kael, he'd have to pull the Burning Horde from the front line. But that would cripple the chokepoint's defenses, guaranteeing its fall. Losing the chokepoint meant losing the mines and logging camps in the eastern forest. That was unacceptable.
Commit to a deathmatch in the eastern forest? No. By the time his forces arrived, Lila would just kite them back, leaving him at a disadvantage again.
Retreat to the village and turtle up? Also no. Without resources, their win rate would plummet. Trading the chokepoint and the eastern forest just to revive a thousand players was a losing equation.
He weighed his options and landed on the only viable call.
"Pull back!"
At Imperator's command, the two thousand players surrounding Kael retreated into the village. Aside from a skeleton crew on the walls, everyone else rushed to the front lines.
Lila was executing a textbook pressure tactic—striking an enemy's vital point to force them to abandon their current assault. Modern armchair generals often looked at ancient military strategies and assumed they could easily outmaneuver them from a god's-eye view, grossly underestimating the brilliance of a true forced move. Imperator knew exactly what Lila was doing, yet he had no choice but to dance to her tune and pull away from Kael.
The chaotic battlefield instantly emptied, leaving only Kael and a carpet of corpses.
Some dead players read the writing on the wall, realized a rez wasn't happening, and manually clicked 'Release Spirit' to exit the battlefield. Others clung to hope, convinced Imperator was still looking for a way to save them. A few tilted hotheads resorted to spamming chat bubbles over their corpses.
"Go fuck yourself, Dawnbreaker!"
"Fucking hacker! Piece of shit."
...
Kael sat on the ground, ignoring the salt. He weighed his next move: hold his ground at the western gate or head to the front line to join the main clash.
Breaching the west side by himself? He hadn't even entertained the idea. Without siege equipment, shooting arrows at a wall was a fool's errand, especially with enemy engineers repairing it from the inside.
If only Pierce worked on structures, he thought. Then, a sudden realization hit him.
Wait, can the [Explosive Blast] from [Primal Core Arrow] damage targets behind the wall? The blast had a fifteen-foot radius. There was no way a basic village wall was fifteen feet thick.
It might actually work.
Excitement spiked in his chest. The wall's HP maxes out around ten million. If their engineers go down, I can actually burst it down! With this new plan, he suddenly couldn't wait for his one-hour corpse-camping shift to end. He stayed seated, tuning out the trash talk, while his three clones stood idle nearby. Bored out of his mind, he micro-managed the clones, walking them around to sweep the nearby bushes for gankers.
Suddenly, another epiphany struck him.
Wait. Who says I have to siege the wall myself? My clones can trigger [Explosive Blast] too!
Thrilled, he steered the three clones toward the western gate. The moment they crossed the 100-yard mark, a volley of arrows rained down from afar.
-1,229
-1,854
...
It was the enemy watchtowers. Their aggro range was 100 yards.
Kael ignored the towers. He maneuvered the clones into a blind spot with minimal arrow coverage, drew their bows, and unleashed a synchronized volley at the wall:
-22,832 (Arrow Damage)
-7,732 (Explosive Blast)
-23,112 (Arrow Damage)
-7,564 (Explosive Blast)
...
Between the three clones, a single rotation pumped out nearly 90,000 damage. The wall's HP bar finally rendered overhead:
10,000,000 / 10,000,000
Do the math—it would take roughly 120 volleys to bring it down. A minute or two of sustained DPS, tops.
Kael had positioned the clones perfectly. Only one watchtower had line of sight. Against a clone with 150,000 HP, the tower's measly 1,000-to-2,000 damage arrows barely registered as a tickle. By the time the tower managed to kill a single clone, the wall would be rubble. To be safe, Kael occasionally micro-managed them, rotating the aggro to share the damage pool.
When the wall dipped to 8,000,000 HP, green healing text started popping up.
+50,000
+50,000
...
But immediately after, Kael's combat log chimed.
[System: You have slain an enemy Engineer. +1 Point.]
[System: You have slain an enemy Engineer. +1 Point.]
...
Five consecutive kill notifications flooded his screen. Kael grinned. It proved it—the explosive variant of [Primal Core Arrow] could penetrate right through the fortification! The wall's healing abruptly stopped; those five engineers must have been the only ones stationed in that sector.
The clones kept firing. A few moments later, the wall started healing again, only to be followed by another five kill notifications.
Watching the structural integrity melt, the defending players at the west gate ground their teeth.
"Fuck! At this rate, he's going to wipe out all our engineers!"
"Let's push out!"
"Yeah! His real body isn't even here. The clones are easy prey."
"A couple of high-tier Dispels and Purges will wipe them instantly."
"Do it!"
Moments later, a strike team of three to four hundred players poured out of the west gate. Knowing how lethal [Explosive Blast] was, they fanned out, keeping a strict distance from one another to avoid splash damage.
But they severely underestimated the clones' raw DPS.
The second the squad crossed into firing range, the clones unleashed a barrage of [Splintering Arrow]s, raining localized hellfire on their formation. Before the defenders could even close within the thirty-yard casting range, half of them were shredded.
"No good! The damage is insane!"
"Fall back! Retreat!"
"We need backup from The WarChief's vanguard!"
The survivors scrambled back behind the gates, leaving over a hundred fresh corpses in the dirt. But just as they regrouped inside, a pleasant surprise awaited them: a massive reinforcement battalion of 1,000 Orc grunts had just arrived from the front lines.