You had to admit, the system's fortress mechanics were kind of broken.

The rolling logs and massive boulders never seemed to run out, pouring endlessly over the walls, crashing down in a relentless stream, then vanishing the instant they hit the ground as if they had never existed at all. Compared to this, even the mythical Man-Fruit looked rare, at least those were single-use items. Up on the walls, the NPC defenders pushed, rolled, and hurled their weapons without pause, tireless and infinite unless someone actively stopped them.

Back at the western fortress, Leo's crew had managed to scale the walls only because they had brought a full roster of ranged players, people who could snipe the NPCs off the battlements and create openings. Meatball's skeletons had no such option. They surged forward again and again, only to be crushed in a brutal, grinding stalemate. His legion fed itself into the fortress like an offering to a bottomless pit. From the way things looked, even if he threw every last bone he had into the assault, the walls would never fall.

Yet Meatball didn't change tactics.

He didn't retreat, didn't adapt, didn't issue new orders. He simply stood there and watched.

Before him stretched a vast ocean of green soul-fire. With every passing second, a new wave surged toward him as countless skeletons were destroyed. The flames within his own empty eye sockets churned and thickened, growing brighter and denser as each stolen soul was absorbed. The fortress remained standing, but Meatball seemed entirely unconcerned.

---

At the southern extreme of the Northern Frontier Region, directly opposite Meatball's position, Ethan and Lyla finally moved.

This time, Ethan didn't transform. He had discovered earlier that when he rode atop Myrga during its color-shift camouflage, the concealment extended to him as well. As long as he stayed close, he was effectively invisible. That meant he could stand right beside Lyla and drop bombs continuously, without forcing her to fly back and forth to resupply him.

Their offensive began much later than Meatball's. By the time they started their run, Meatball's skeletal legion was already being completely annihilated against the walls.

The Renegade Alliance forces watching from below, along with the millions tuned into the WCC broadcast, stared upward with mouths hanging open.

An airstrike.

So that was the Druid God's method.

Player A: "That's so cheap… I love it."

Player B: "Well, it's a trick only he and his partner can pull off."

Player C: "Why does the Renegade Alliance get all the cool stuff?"

Player D: "Seriously. Everyone around Druid God is either a hidden class or a pro-level player."

Player E: "I heard Leafen, the former leader of the Leaf Guild, joined them recently."

Player F: "Old news. I heard Leafen has basically taken over Skyblade's logistics."

Player G: "Wait, did Skyblade get sidelined?"

Player H: "You're an idiot. Obviously, he was assigned to something more important."

Player I: "Yeah, that makes more sense."

The chat scrolled at a frantic pace as viewers watched from the god's-eye feed. From above, they could clearly see plumes of smoke erupting from precise points within the fortress. Ethan's bombing runs weren't random. Each pass targeted a specific component of the defensive grid.

Every fortress was built differently, shaped by its terrain and architecture, yet Ethan moved as if he had memorized this one's blueprint. His first salvos focused on the anti-air installations, systematically dismantling the threat before it could respond.

Even with Myrga's camouflage active, the broadcast's high-resolution cameras still caught faint, ghostly outlines in the sky, making their destructive dance impossible to miss.

After completing a full circuit of the fortress, Ethan finally peeled away. He shot upward and shifted into Eagle Form, separating from Lyla to double their bombing efficiency. With the air defenses neutralized, he had nothing left to fear from below. This was already the third time they had executed this exact playbook, and the results were familiar. The inner defensive structure of the fortress quickly collapsed into chaos.

Ethan glanced at his inventory and grimaced. "Damn, this is expensive," he muttered.

He was down to his last ten crates of high explosives. By now, he had already burned through a full third of all the black powder he had stolen. What Master Roger had originally offered him for ten thousand gold had only amounted to a tenth of that stockpile, and it hadn't even been refined into bombs, just raw powder.

His original plan had never involved capturing multiple Advanced Fortresses in one campaign. That idea had only formed after Master Roger casually said, "Take whatever you can carry." The moment those words left the man's mouth, something far greedier had clicked into place in Ethan's mind.

That was why he had split the Alliance into three separate forces.

With the fortress defenses thoroughly smashed, Ethan and Lyla finally ceased fire and climbed higher into the sky, hovering above the battlefield once more. After a brief pause, Ethan opened his comms and gave the signal to Leo.

Charge.

The moment the signal came through, Leo's eyes lit up like a kid set loose in a candy store.

"Alright, you lot," he shouted, grinning wide, "follow me!"

He surged forward with a cask of ale strapped across his back and his greatstaff clenched in both hands. Two successive Energy Bursts detonated beneath his feet, launching him ahead of the pack. He scampered across the ground with manic enthusiasm, the weight of his gear seeming to vanish under pure adrenaline. Leo reached the base of the wall first. His grappling launcher fired with a solid thwump, the hook biting into the battlements, and he started climbing without hesitation.

By the time he was halfway up, the rest of the Renegade Alliance had arrived. Ladders slammed into place. Ropes flew upward and caught. The assault unfolded with practiced precision. At this point, the outcome was no longer in doubt.

The WCC broadcast exploded into chaos.

No one had expected Fortress Wars, a mode defined by drawn-out sieges and suffocating attrition, to be cracked open by one man's relentless, cheeky, and brutally straightforward bombing campaign.

---

Ethan's southern front was secure.

Leo's forces were already inside, locking blades with the fortress Commander.

Far away, in the frozen north, Meatball watched his final skeleton shatter into fragments. His jaw creaked open in another grotesque grin.

"Hehehe… all gone," he rasped. "But the staircase is ready."

He raised his staff.

"Forbidden Spell: Undead Cataclysm. Second Phase. Endless Corpse-Beasts."

The grinding incantation rolled across the battlefield like a curse etched into stone. At the same time, the condensed soul-fire blazing in his eye sockets erupted outward. The green inferno collapsed inward, then spilled free, turning a thick, bloody crimson as it cascaded across the devastated field.

Awooo… Grraaawl!

The response came instantly.

Bestial howls and savage roars tore through the air as creatures clawed their way out of the ground. Rotting wolves burst free first, followed by bears draped in putrid fur, then birds with torn wings and hollow eyes. There was no formation, no hesitation. The moment they emerged, they hurled themselves forward in a feral, mindless rush toward the fortress.

Their path was already prepared.

A mountain of shattered bone lay piled against the fortress wall, forming a grisly ramp, the staircase Meatball had spoken of. The Corpse-Beasts scrambled up this macabre slope, claws digging into skulls and splintered limbs.

At first, it was only a few.

Then a dozen.

Then a hundred.

Within seconds, it became a flood, a tidal wave of rotting flesh and shrieking fury.

The NPC defenders on the walls held at first, cutting down the leading beasts as they climbed. But the trickle became a surge, and the surge became an ocean. The Corpse-Beast horde crashed over the battlements like a putrescent wave.

CRASH!

The wall was lost.

Undead animals poured into the fortress courtyard in an unstoppable torrent. Anything with a health bar drew their attention, including the exposed siege engines, which were smashed, overturned, and torn apart beneath the sheer weight of bodies.

Under normal circumstances, an Advanced Fortress at this stage was nearly unbreakable. Its garrison, layered defenses, and remaining engines could stall an army indefinitely.

But under Meatball's second wave, the fortress was not conquered.

It was drowned.

Every step of this devastation had been built on the sacrifice of the first assault. The Boundless Skeletal Legion had never been meant to win. It had existed to die, to pile itself into a ramp that rendered the walls meaningless.

Soon, the interior defenses collapsed. Even the Commander was swallowed whole, buried beneath a writhing mound of Corpse-Beasts until its health vanished from sight.

Only then did Meatball begin to move.

His bone feet crunched against the path he had created as he stepped forward, climbing the slope of skulls and splintered bone, ascending calmly toward the top of the wall.

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