Raven moved at the center of his formation, his voice steady as he led all twenty thousand men toward the right side of the wall.

On his left, Eliza's thirty-thousand-man battalion marched a little behind him, about a hundred meters back.

It wasn't a mistake, they did it on purpose so her unit could avoid as much battle as possible until they reached the gate.

On Raven's right, Vincen's twenty thousand marched at the same speed as Raven, shoulder to shoulder with his line.

The ground trembled under all those boots.

The cold wind pushed against their armor.

Every step carried them closer to the walls of the Tramplin estate.

When Raven's battalion reached about three hundred meters from the wall, the sound hit them, sharp, fast, countless.

The snapping of bowstrings.

Raven's eyes widened.

"Heavy armor, raise your shields! Archers, take cover!" he shouted at once.

The front line of heavy soldiers stopped in perfect sync. With a roar, they lifted their giant shields.

The sound of metal crashing up together was like a hammer striking stone.

Archers moved behind them quickly.

Knights crouched lower, their armor brushing the frost-covered ground.

The whole formation became tight and solid in only a few seconds.

Raven ducked too, shield above him as he looked up.

The sky had turned black. It wasn't clouds, it was arrows.

Thousands of them, falling fast, falling straight, like the air itself had turned into needles.

And this rain wasn't going to stop quickly. Raven knew it would last at least a full minute.

"Archers!" he shouted, voice sharp despite the noise. "Pull your bows! The moment the arrows stop, you fire. Is that clear!?"

"Understood, Vice General!" the archers answered together, voices firm even as they crouched under the shields.

Raven gritted his teeth. "Now!"

Every soldier dropped low, shields locked tight.

Whosh! Whosh! Whosh! Whosh!

The first wave of arrows slammed into the iron wall with loud, heavy thuds. Sparks jumped.

Some arrows broke. Some bent. A few slipped off at angles and struck the ground.

Twenty thousand men braced themselves as the storm fell on them.

The sound of arrows hitting shields filled the air, loud and endless, like hard rain on metal roofs.

The arrows kept falling like a storm that refused to end.

Each one slammed into the front shields with a heavy thud.

The force ran down the arms of the heavy-armored soldiers, shaking their wrists, elbows, even their shoulders.

Some men grunted. Some clenched their teeth. But none let their shields drop.

Raven watched the strain spreading through the formation.

He lifted his hand, wetting his index finger with a quick swipe of his tongue, then raised it into the air.

Arrows were still falling, fast and deadly, but none touched his hand.

A thin layer of air curled around his fingers, his mana forming a small protective shell.

It blocked the arrows, but not the natural wind.

He closed his eyes for a moment, feeling the direction, the strength, the push.

After a few seconds he lowered his hand, and a small smirk formed on his face.

"Good," he whispered.

The wind was blowing toward the wall, not toward them.

That meant when his archers fired, the air would carry the arrows farther, not slow them down.

This also explained why the Tramplin defenders waited until Raven was only three hundred meters away.

Even with their height advantage, the wind forced their arrows to drop early.

If they had fired sooner, the arrows wouldn't have reached Raven's men at all.

The final wave thudded into the shields, the sound slowly fading.

Whosh… whosh… whosh…

Then silence.

Raven rose to his feet first. His eyes locked on the wall.

The enemy soldiers were still ducking behind the parapets, afraid to expose their heads.

He drew in a breath.

"Archers!"

All seven thousand archers in his battalion stood up at once, bows ready, strings drawn.

Their breath fogged the cold air, but their hands didn't shake.

Across the right flank, on Vincen's side, another seven thousand archers rose as well.

"Fire!" Raven roared.

The sky filled with sound, sharp, fast, endless.

Whosh! Whosh! Whosh! Whosh!

Fourteen thousand arrows shot upward at the same moment.

The wind caught them and carried them forward, pushing them higher, faster, farther.

The black sky that had moments ago been full of enemy arrows now turned into their answer, a rain of death aimed straight at the Tramplin wall.

And this time, the wind was theirs.

"Move!" Raven shouted, and the command rolled through the formation like a wave.

The moment their arrows were released, the entire battalion pushed forward again.

Their steps were steady but fast, using the short window they had created.

The enemy on the wall was still hiding, still waiting for the storm of arrows to pass.

Once those arrows stopped hitting the stone, the defenders would pop back up and loose their own shots without a single second wasted.

Raven knew that gave them maybe one minute, two if luck stayed with them.

Boots thudded against the earth. The shield wall stayed tight, pushing ahead with disciplined force.

Archers moved low behind them. Knights stayed watching the sky, ready to react the moment the defenders returned fire.

Raven kept his gaze fixed on the wall.

Attacking always revealed the harsh truth: defenders lived easier.

If his men were up on that wall, they wouldn't need to lift their shields again and again.

They'd fire, duck, maybe take a hit or two from stray shots, but the pressure would be nothing like this.

Down here, his heavy-armored soldiers took every impact.

Every arrow slammed straight into their shields.

Even with thick armor and strong arms, the shock traveled through the metal and wood, into bone and muscle.

A good hit could bruise a forearm. A stronger one might fracture it.

They weren't made of iron; they were men pushing past their limits.

Raven judged the timing in his head.

They could probably endure three, maybe four more full waves of arrows.

After that, even the strongest veterans would start dropping their shields from pain alone.

He tightened his grip on his sword.

The wall grew closer.

The window grew smaller.

The next clash of arrows could come at any moment.

And the ground shook under twenty thousand marching feet, each step carrying them deeper into danger, and closer to the victory they needed.

Raven knew the rhythm now, the grim heartbeat of a battlefield.

The arrows fell silent on the enemy's side for half a breath, the kind of pause that's barely a gift, barely a mercy. He didn't waste it.

"Shields up! Heavy armors, raise!" His voice cracked through the formation like a whip.

The front lines obeyed instantly. The wall of metal rose, overlapping plates catching the faint light like a dull silver tide.

Behind them, the archers drew again, their bowstrings stretching under trembling fingers.

The moment had to be timed with needle-threading precision; too early and the volley would fall short, too late and they'd take the full bite of the enemy's returning storm.

The enemy bows sang first.

A cold wind rushed as thousands of arrows scythed downward.

Whosh, whosh, whosh,

A vicious rain, each shaft slamming into shields hard enough to rattle bone.

Raven could almost feel the impact in his own arms.

Heavy armor or not, a man's wrist only had so much strength before it cracked like a clay pot.

Three more volleys, four at most, and the front line would start collapsing.

The storm eased.

"Archers, fire!"

Their answer was immediate, a thunderous release:

Whosh-whosh-whosh-whosh.

Fourteen thousand arrows tore the air apart, streaking upward into a darker sky.

And then came the most important command:

"Move!"

Feet pounded the earth. Their formation lumbered forward another precious stretch, eating up ground like a slow-moving beast.

In the brief window created by their own arrow curtain, they had crossed nearly a hundred meters earlier, closing the distance to just two hundred now.

Two hundred meters.

One more push and they'd hit one hundred.

At that range, the defenders would unleash their cannons.

The first blast would tear men apart. Raven had already accepted that.

But cannons needed time to reload, and those few seconds would give the heavy armors just enough room to slam against the wall, alive or half-dead, didn't matter, as long as they made it.

That was the bargain of storming a fortress.

Blood for stone.

As the army surged again, Raven kept calculating, running battle math in his head like a cold machine.

Fewer casualties reaching the wall meant fewer knights needed to die taking command of the breach.

And the knights would take command, that was never in question.

They were bred for this, trained for this, hungry for the crash of steel at close range.

As they moved Raven shouted again,

"soldiers in formation!!!"

The soldiers dropped again on command, shields slamming down like the carapace of a giant iron beast.

Another storm of enemy arrows shrieked against them.

At a hundred and fifty meters, the incoming volleys were brutal, arrows struck with enough force to dent steel, the ripples of each impact running up elbows and shoulders until every man felt like his bones were being hammered from the inside.

Raven braced through it, but his mind was no longer inside the rain.

Something was wrong.

He kept staring toward the gate, narrowing his eyes between the gaps of shields and arrow shafts.

He was sure, absolutely sure, he'd seen the generals rushing toward the gate.

The speed was unmistakable.

Only someone who had stepped into that upper threshold, Grandmaster, could move like that, like wind threaded through muscle.

Yet now…

Nothing.

No silhouette.

No aura.

No pressure in the air.

Just the empty section of wall and the battlements packed with ordinary bowmen.

He muttered under his breath, barely loud enough for those near him to hear, "Where are the generals…?"

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