My Goblin System : Levelling up with my SSS Class Devouring skill

But nineteen more were right behind him.

The eastern wall section, twelve feet wide at the top, suddenly had twenty human heavy infantry fighting hand-to-hand against Commander Vex’ahlia’s defenders. The confined space meant skill and individual combat prowess mattered as much as numbers.

Settlement defenders fought with desperate intensity. Goblins used their lower center of gravity to duck under sword strikes and attack legs. Serpentfolk used their natural flexibility to dodge and strike from unexpected angles. Orcs used raw strength to bull-rush enemies off the walls.

But the humans had armor, training, and relentless pressure. More soldiers were pouring across the tower’s bridge every few seconds.

"Eastern wall is engaged!" Commander Vex’ahlia reported, her mental voice tight with combat focus. "Twenty enemies on the walls, more coming. We’re holding but taking casualties!"

"Urgak, send twenty of your orc shock troops to eastern wall. Reinforce Vex’ahlia’s position before it’s overwhelmed."

"Moving now!"

Sixty seconds later, Tower Two’s assault bridge crashed down on the central wall near the gates. Kelvin’s section was suddenly swarmed with human soldiers pouring across the bridge. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝕨𝕖𝗯𝚗𝚘𝕧𝕖𝗹.𝗰𝗼𝕞

Ninety seconds after that, Tower Three’s bridge dropped onto the western wall where Skar commanded.

All three wall sections were now fighting desperate hand-to-hand battles against assault troops delivered directly onto the ramparts by siege towers.

Hour Twenty-Seven:

The pattern for the next hour became a brutal grind of close-quarters combat, desperate defenses, and mounting casualties on both sides.

At the eastern wall, Commander Vex’ahlia fought with the skill of someone who’d survived impossible odds before. Her dual short swords moved in a blur, parrying, striking, creating space in the press of bodies.

She killed another human soldier—a sword thrust through the gap in the man’s armor at the armpit. The soldier screamed and fell, blood fountaining.

But while Commander Vex’ahlia was focused on that kill, another human soldier got past her guard and slashed deep into her shoulder. Pain exploded through her arm. Her left sword dropped from nerveless fingers.

She fought one-handed now, using her remaining blade to defend while backing toward friendly positions.

Urgak’s orc reinforcements hit the eastern wall like a battering ram. Twenty orcs, each standing a head taller than human soldiers and massing twice as much, crashed into the human assault troops with overwhelming force.

The orcs didn’t fence or parry. They bull-rushed, grabbed, threw, and crushed. One orc seized a human soldier by the armor and simply hurled him off the wall to fall thirty feet to his death. Another orc used his battle axe like a club, smashing through raised shields with raw strength.

The eastern wall battle stabilized—not won, but not lost. Human soldiers continued pouring across the tower’s bridge, but settlement defenders and orc reinforcements held them from advancing further along the wall.

Casualty count after thirty minutes of wall-top fighting:

Eastern wall: 9 settlement defenders dead, 14 wounded (including Commander Vex’ahlia with a deep shoulder wound who refused to leave the line). Estimated 23 human soldiers dead, unknown number wounded and pulled back across the tower bridge.

At the central wall near the gates, Kelvin commanded eighty-one defenders against Tower Two’s assault troops.

The fighting here was even more desperate because the tower had positioned its bridge directly adjacent to the gates, giving human soldiers the option to attack either the gate from above or push along the wall toward defender positions.

Kelvin made a tactical decision in the heat of combat.

"Burn the bridge!" he shouted to his goblin warriors. "Oil and fire! Burn the connection between tower and wall!"

Defenders produced pre-positioned oil flasks and hurled them at the tower’s assault bridge. Flaming arrows ignited the oil, and flames erupted across the wooden bridge connecting Tower Two to the wall.

Human soldiers on the bridge scrambled backward to avoid being burned. The assault from Tower Two was temporarily halted while engineers scrambled to extinguish the flames or deploy a secondary bridge.

That bought Kelvin’s defenders five precious minutes of reduced pressure.

But in those five minutes, Tower One and Tower Three continued pouring assault troops onto their respective wall sections.

At the western wall, Skar’s serpentfolk defenders fought with the natural advantages their species provided—superior speed, flexibility, and the ability to use tails as weapons.

A serpentfolk warrior named Viss wrapped his tail around a human soldier’s legs, yanked him off balance, then drove a spear through the falling man’s chest. Before the corpse hit the ground, Viss was already engaging the next soldier, his serpentine movements making him nearly impossible to track.

But human soldiers had shields and armor that serpentfolk attacks struggled to penetrate. A sword thrust that would drop an unarmored opponent glanced off plate metal. A tail-strike that would shatter ribs was absorbed by thick padding.

The serpentfolk were inflicting casualties, but taking them too. Their natural armor—scales and tough hide—was good against cutting attacks but poor against the crushing impact of maces and hammers that human soldiers increasingly deployed.

Skar himself fought with the cold efficiency of a predator. His spear work was economical—no wasted motion, every strike aimed at gaps in armor where serpentfolk weapons could be effective. Throat. Underarms. Inner thigh. The vulnerable points where even plate armor had weaknesses.

He killed seven human soldiers in fifteen minutes of combat.

But his warriors were dying too. The numbers advantage was grinding them down. For every human killed, two more stepped forward from the tower bridge. The serpentfolk killed efficiently but couldn’t sustain the casualty exchange ratio.

"Western wall is holding," Skar reported through the network, his mental voice carrying reptilian coldness despite the desperate combat. "But we’re losing ground. Every minute we hold costs three of my warriors. At this rate, we’ll be overrun in another hour."

Lyra coordinated defensive responses from the command post, her mind tracking three separate battles simultaneously through Seraphina’s telepathic network.

"Vex’ahlia, deploy fifty of your elites. Distribute them—fifteen to eastern wall, twenty to western wall, fifteen held in reserve for wherever the breakthrough comes."

The demon commander’s mental voice carried professional acknowledgment. "Deploying now."