Wizard: Starting from the Skill Tree-Chapter 498: Siege

The guards coldly watched the chaos below, only unleashing merciless suppression with their bows when the disturbance threatened to breach the gates.

Few were as fortunate as Tom, who was granted entry for his combat prowess.

They were under strict control, with heavy tasks and severely reduced rations, but at least they survived with sturdy stone shielding them from the elements.

Tom was assigned to reinforce the walls and patrol. Every time he stood atop the fortress, gazing at the refugee tide below that resembled Hell, his stomach would churn tumultuously.

He saw familiar faces struggling and disappearing in the crowd, heard faint cries and curses carried by the wind.

He clutched his meager portion of rations tightly, feeling that every bite he took was weighed down with guilt.

Tom gave half of his rations to his parents. Old Bill and his wife, seeing their son’s increasingly sunken eyes and haggard face, accepted the food with trembling hands, swallowing not just sustenance, but also bitterness and heartache.

Stone Shield Castle, the last fortress of Bessom County, had split into two worlds.

Inside the fortress loomed fear and faint hope, while outside lay stark death and a world turned Hell.

Viscount Barton’s banner still waved atop the castle’s main tower, but the sanctuary and order it symbolized had long recoiled within the cold walls in the face of brutal reality, ruthlessly shutting out most it should have protected, abandoning them to their fate.

The air within Stone Shield Castle was as heavy as water-soaked wool.

Old Bill and his wife huddled in a small corner allotted to them at the base of the wall, listening to the faint, unsettling rustling from outside, as if countless feet scuffled the earth.

Tom had just been called to distribute the assignments for guarding the fortress, leaving the elderly couple relying on each other in the thickening twilight.

"Listen... what is that sound?" Old Bill’s wife suddenly clutched his arm, her bony fingers whitening with intensity.

Old Bill tilted his ear to listen. The rustling grew louder, converging into a nerve-wrenching tide.

Soon after, harrowing screams and a teeth-numbing corrosive sound erupted from beyond the walls, as if Hell’s gates had opened at arm’s length.

"They’re coming! They’re really coming!" Someone screamed.

The interior of the fortress erupted in chaos. The civilians huddled together in terror, women tightly covering their children’s mouths, and men’s faces were etched with despair.

Old Bill trembled as he stood up, like the others futilely trying to peer through the crenellations to see the situation outside.

He saw nothing, but the sounds told him everything. 𝓯𝙧𝙚𝒆𝙬𝙚𝒃𝙣𝙤𝒗𝓮𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

The hissing of acid spray, the thud of Bone Blades slicing flesh, the short lived human wails before death, and the sharp, emotionless screeches of the Insect Race...

These sounds mingled together, hammering everyone’s hearts like a heavy blow.

The thick, acrid, and charred scent of blood wafted into the fortress with the wind, causing many to vomit on the spot.

"Gods..." Old Bill slumped to the ground, his clouded eyes brimming with fear.

He thought of the neighbors and friends left outside the gates. What were they enduring right now? Perhaps death was a release?

"Tom... my Tom is still on the wall!" His wife suddenly realized, letting out a stifled sob.

At that moment, the battle erupted atop the walls.

"Archers, release! Release quickly!"

"Boiling oil! Ready the boiling oil!"

"Hold the parapets! Don’t let them climb up!"

The officer’s hoarse shouts, the soldiers’ running footsteps, the buzz of bowstrings, the roar of rolling boulders, and the piercing scrape of the Insect Race’s carapace against rock intertwined overhead.

Suddenly, a small splash of sickly green acid sprayed through a gap in the parapets, landing on the ground near Old Bill and instantly corroding a small pit, emitting acrid white smoke - terrifying those nearby into retreating with cries of panic.

"Duck! Everybody, duck! Find cover!" a passing soldier shouted at them.

Old Bill tightly hugged his wife, shrinking to the deepest part of the wall’s base as every tremendous shudder of the wall sent a tremor through them.

He heard above the furious shouts of soldiers and the sharp screeches of the Insect Race, and occasionally the dull thud of a heavy object falling, unsure if it was a soldier’s corpse or a fallen insect.

Every echoing crash against the gate brought everyone’s throats to their mouths.

The fighting at the gate was most intense, a tumult of men’s shouts, clashing metal, and the Insect Race’s cries - as if Hell were just beyond that barrier.

Time crawled by in extreme terror, with no idea how long had passed, the screeching and crashing outside seemed unrelenting, yet the defense on the walls continued.

Old Bill and his wife clung to each other in the darkness, praying for their son’s safety.

Every quake of the wall was like a strike on their frayed nerves.

The reserve oil and boulders were limited, and the soldiers’ strength was waning, but the screeches outside seemed endless.

Beyond Stone Shield Castle’s walls lay a hellish scene.

A dark purple swarm of insects covered the once refugee-crowded area like sticky oil.

The air was thick with cloying, nauseatingly sweet stench, mixed with the pungent scent following corrosive acid.

The ground showed barely any intact bodies, just shattered bones, melted flesh, and dark purple Insect slime mired together, forming a thick and slightly squirming muck.

A few acid-spitting bugs moved sluggishly, their bloated abdomens contracting to spit the last bit of acid onto a few scorched remains still recognizable as human, with sizzling sounds as the remains quickly turned into bubbling sludge.

More insects busied themselves, their sharp mandibles efficiently gnawing at all organic material.

Be it long stiffened limbs, scattered leather bags, wooden carts, even nails, and hair.

Behind them, they left only rocks and sand as cleanly licked as if by tongues.

A few swift Bone Blade insects stood as still as statues among the carcasses, congealed dark red blood clots hanging from their scythe-like limbs, their compound eyes coldly surveying the abattoir they had made.

Occasionally, they would quickly thrust out a limb, plucking a not fully corroded bone from the bloody muck with precision, snapping it with a crunch to suck out the marrow.

More unsettling was the dark purple, organism-like fungal mat spreading with visible speed from behind the insect tide.

It covered the blood-soaked mire, emitting a soft, sucking sound.