SWNOVELXO Chapter 454: Human Wave Tactic
"Just kill them already."
Banjay froze.
It wasn't the words that Peter just said that legitimately scared him.
It was the casual way in which he said it, the complete lack of interest in his voice… As if the result was already decided and the most natural thing to happen now.
Still, for how scary of a request it might be, it perfectly aligned both with what Banjay wanted to do right now himself… and what he absolutely needed to do to stop the Lunagar from falling into the imperial hands.
"I guess that's how I'm going to pay for my sins," Banjay muttered, only to feel Isera's hands twitch on his back.
Then, wasting no more words on excuses or time on consideration, Banjay braced himself against the ground, entrusted his back to Isera's hands… and pulled down on both of the triggers.
Like a wild horse, the weapon nearly jumped out of his hands. Whatever it was that made it work, also made it extremely hard to keep it steady and on the target.
Or so it would be for a mundane person. Stretching the reality out, maybe even an ascender would struggle to keep it steady.
But Banjay was no ascender. He wasn't even a normal supreme, born from the poison the empire spread through every country it ever came into contact with.
He was a legitimate supreme who reached that stage with his own efforts rather than the crutch of a herb that only served to kill his potential in the long term. And it was with this strength that, after an initial resistance, he managed to tame the weapon down and keep shooting in the general direction he was interested in.
It took him a moment, but Banjay managed to stabilize the weapon, finally allowing himself to look down, at where he was shooting…
Only to realize that by now, not a single living being remained anywhere near the foot of the wall.
All those who tried to climb before were now either dead or smart enough to escape as far away from the wall's foot as they could… Or rather, as far as the crowd behind them allowed them to.
Looking from above, Banjay could also see how this influenced the mechanics of the crowd of the imperial soldiers itself, with those at the back pushing in to see what happened and those at the front rushing back with all their minds, already knowing full well what would happen if they dared to step into Banjay's line of fire.
Deprived of further reinforcements, the few pockets of imperial control over the wall quickly shriveled and cleared out, with the defenders overwhelming those who already climbed up with the fury of those who survived up until now. Their numerical advantage also played a role albeit limited by the narrowness of the wall's terrace.
"I don't really know why you wasted so much ammo shooting at an empty spot," Peter muttered, forcing Banjay to release both of the triggers and then pull back while casting fearful looks at the weapon right before him.
In what seemed to be a mere instant, he cleared out tens if not hundreds of enemy soldiers while throwing pretty much the rest of the imperial army into disarray.
'And you are telling me I was… wasteful?!'
This made no damn sense.
No weapon could ever be that powerful! And even if it could, the cost of making it or operating it…
Banjay's eyes drew towards one of the few moving parts of the weapon that he noticed, the belt consisting of strange, metal cylinders of perfectly uniform, shoddy-gold color. They were all tipped at one end and flat at the other…
Yet, as if to prove this weapon was far more complex than what he expected, after every shot… A huge shell would bounce out of the weapon, creating a small pile of shadowy gold by Banjay's left.
The belt itself didn't seem to end, though, stretching all the way down to the ground, then sprawling on the ground for three steps before climbing up the side of an open container and disappearing in its bellows.
'Wait, could it be…'
Turning his eyes from the pile of the used-up ammunition and the box where it was coming from…
Banjay gulped his saliva down.
Yet, whatever realization he made on the spot had to wait, for the battle wouldn't wait for him to process all the information he continued to gather.
"Push forward! Don't give them a moment to rest!"
In the silence that followed Banjay's short attack, he suddenly gained the ability to make out the distant orders of the imperial officers, orders that would normally be hidden by the constant and complex noise of the ongoing battle.
And as slow of a process as it might be, the imperial legions got to work again.
Those trying to escape were either trampled, forcefully pushed back into their position or outright executed on the spot.
A standard imperial tactic to make the soldiers fear their officers more than they would fear the enemy, inspiring the troops to push through any and all adversity no matter the cost.
But now?
To some of the survivors of Banjay's first salvo, putting a sword to their neck was a death they were familiar with. But their body exploding into an uncountable number of parts as a god's rage washed over them?
That kind of death was something they were not familiar with.
Dying to a stone someone dropped off the top of the wall? It was an unfortunate death that any soldier might face. Bleeding out after an arrow knocked you down? Having your guts pierced by the blade of a spear, or neck severed by the blade of a sword?
All of those were things those simple soldiers could understand. But when faced with the barrage of invisible projectiles that had enough power to cut through every obstacle in its path, be it human flesh, wood, or even bricks, only to then bury itself quite deeply into the ground…
It was an unknown. As history often proved, what humans feared the most wasn't death, but the unknown hiding behind it.
The one thing, though, was that with Banjay's first salvo, he brought the unknown out into the open. And now, when faced with death and the inevitable unknown or just the unknown that promised death anyway…
Quite a number of the imperial soldiers started to have some doubts.
Still, the human-wave tactics have yet to fail the empire, especially when their enemies are on their last leg. And if it was all a cost to finally break the spirits of the Lunagar defenders, the imperial officers were more than willing to send a bunch of their men to their deaths.
And so, after getting rid of all the troublemakers who failed to hide from the officers, the legion advanced on the walls once more. They crossed over the area where rather than corpses, there were only deformed shards of what used to be human beings. They crossed over the area where Banjay's short series eradicated all the living.
Some even managed to reach out and grab the lower steps of the ladders.
But then, Banjay pressed the triggers again. And this time, keen not to waste what had to be extremely precious ammunition, he pulled the gun over to the side, sweeping it across the dense crowd of imperial units.