"Kill!"
The command erupted from both sides at almost the same moment.
Evan and the Shaman moved.
So did their armies.
The Skeletons surged across the forest floor toward the settlement walls, their bones clattering violently with every step.
Above them, Goblin archers lined the wooden defences and aimed downward.
The moment the undead entered range, hundreds of bowstrings were released.
FWOOSH!
A storm of arrows descended.
The first wave struck the Skeletons with brutal force.
Several of the weaker undead collapsed instantly as arrows pierced through their fragile bone structures, shattering ribs, skulls, and limbs.
More arrows followed.
The Skeleton formation began breaking apart under the constant barrage.
But the armoured Skeletons at the front continued advancing.
Their bodies were covered in layers of bone, earth, and ice.
Arrows struck their armour and bounced away, splintering against the hardened surface.
They became the spearhead of Evan's assault.
The distance between them and the walls rapidly disappeared.
Then the Skeleton wolves reached the settlement gate.
Their skeletal paws slammed against the enormous wooden doors.
BOOM!
BOOM!
The entire gate shook.
The wolves repeatedly rammed their bodies against it, claws digging into the wood as they attempted to force the entrance open.
The Goblins immediately focused their attacks on them.
Arrows rained down.
Spears were thrust over the walls.
Weapons smashed against the undead whenever they managed to reach the base of the defences.
One Skeleton wolf collapsed.
Another had its skull shattered.
But more continued, replacing them.
And above the battlefield, the Shaman was already casting.
Wind gathered around his staff.
Spells descended toward the approaching army, tearing through groups of Skeletons and sending broken bones scattering across the ground.
The undead were losing numbers rapidly.
One after another, they fell.
Even Skeletons that had survived the first assault were beginning to collapse under the combined pressure of the archers and the Shaman's magic.
For a moment, it seemed the Goblin defences were completely controlling the battlefield.
Only the armoured Skeletons continued maintaining their advance.
But Evan wasn't standing there helplessly watching his army die.
He remained behind the advancing undead, calm and composed.
His fingers moved.
Necrotic energy flowed through the battlefield.
The damaged Skeletons began receiving his support as he restored and reinforced those he could still save.
At the same time, attacks shot toward the walls.
BOOM!
A Goblin archer was struck and thrown from the wooden platform.
Another collapsed with a hole through his chest.
A third barely avoided an attack before the next one struck him.
Evan continued attacking the defenders while supporting his undead.
But there was one problem.
The Shaman.
The Goblin spellcaster was becoming increasingly troublesome.
Every time Evan damaged the defensive line, more archers appeared to replace them.
At first, there had only been a limited number.
Now the line was becoming thicker.
Evan narrowed his eyes.
He watched carefully.
One fallen archer was replaced, then another.
A new group appeared behind the previous line.
More bows were raised.
More arrows were prepared.
The Shaman was calling additional warriors toward this section of the wall. The situation was becoming increasingly favourable for the Goblins.
But Evan didn't look worried.
If anything...
A faint smile appeared beneath his armour.
The smile slowly turned into a cold grin.
'It's time.'
His eyes swept across the settlement.
'The real assault begins now.'
Evan casually raised one finger.
Then he flicked it upward.
A tiny movement. Nothing more.
But the Shaman noticed.
His attention immediately snapped toward Evan.
The Goblin's expression became serious.
He entered a focused state, carefully observing the flow of mana around the human.
He expected an attack.
Some kind of spell.
Some elemental disturbance.
Anything.
But there was nothing.
No surge of mana or visible elemental reaction.
Nothing changed.
The Shaman frowned.
'What is he doing?'
He continued watching.
One minute passed.
Then another.
Still nothing.
Evan remained standing exactly where he had been.
As though he hadn't just given some unknown command.
The Shaman's frustration deepened.
He hated situations like this.
He couldn't read the human.
He couldn't understand what that gesture meant.
And every second he spent watching Evan was another second his attention was being pulled away from the actual battlefield.
Just as the Shaman was beginning to dismiss the strange movement...
A Goblin came sprinting toward him.
The warrior nearly stumbled as he climbed the wall.
"Master!"
He dropped to his knees, trembling.
"It's a disaster! We're doomed!"
The Shaman's face twisted with irritation.
"What nonsense are you shouting?"
His grip tightened around his staff.
"Has this battle rotted your brain?"
The Goblin swallowed hard.
"Sir... we're being attacked by Skeletons."
The Shaman's eyes narrowed.
He glanced toward the battlefield below.
"I can see that."
His voice became colder.
"Stop panicking. Fall back if necessary. We will still emerge victorious today."
"No, sir!"
The Goblin shook his head desperately.
"Not here."
The Shaman froze.
"What?"
The Goblin pointed toward the settlement.
"We're being attacked from the other sides too."
For a moment, the Shaman didn't understand.
His eyes widened slightly.
"Which side?"
"There are three gates into the settlement."
The Goblin struggled to catch his breath.
"One is already being attacked by that human's army... but the other two..."
His voice trembled.
"They're under attack too."
The Shaman's expression changed.
"What did you say?"
"Massive groups of Skeletons are attacking both sides."
The Goblin forced himself to continue.
"We don't have enough warriors to defend the walls properly. The army attacking those sides is almost the same size as the one here."
His eyes shook with fear.
"And they have armoured Skeletons too."
He swallowed.
"Some are even riding wolves."
Silence.
The Shaman slowly turned his head.
His gaze moved toward another section of the settlement.
There on the distant wall, Goblin archers were already firing downward.
Again and again.
The sight confirmed everything.
The Shaman's pupils contracted.
Then his face twisted with fury.
"Human..."
His voice became dangerously quiet.
"I'll rip that head from your shoulders."
His eyes returned to Evan.
The human was still standing there.
Calm and indifferent.
And suddenly, the Shaman understood.
The finger.
That meaningless gesture.
It hadn't been meaningless at all.
"He was waiting for this."
The realisation struck him like a blade.
"While forcing our attention toward this wall..."
His teeth clenched.
"He sent the rest of his army around the settlement."
The Shaman's breathing became heavier.
"He wanted us to commit everything here."
His fingers tightened around his staff.
"Then he would strike both remaining gates."
The realisation burned through him.
"I played directly into his hands."
For a moment, rage threatened to overwhelm him.
But the Shaman forced himself to think.
There was still a way to respond.
He turned toward the warriors.
"More than half of the archers!"
His voice thundered across the wall.
"Return to the other defensive posts immediately!"
The archers hesitated.
"Defend those walls!"
He pointed toward the gate.
"And open this section!"
The Goblins stared at him.
"Warriors, march forward!"
His eyes burned with determination.
"Slaughter those bone monsters before they reach the settlement!"
The wooden gate began opening.
CREAAAAK!
A force of armed Goblin warriors surged through the opening.
They charged directly toward the Skeletons.
"We defend until the reinforcements arrive!"
The Shaman's voice echoed across the battlefield.
"That is our only hope!"
The Goblins roared.
"Don't lose hope!"
The Shaman raised his staff.
"There are only a few Skeletons left here!"
His voice grew louder.
"We can crush them!"
"We can survive this!"
"And we will restore our glory to the tribe!"
The warriors charged.
The Skeletons attempting to advance toward the gate were suddenly forced backwards.
Goblin warriors poured through the entrance and formed a defensive line directly in front of the settlement.
The archers began abandoning their positions one after another, rushing toward the other walls.
For a brief moment, the Shaman disappeared from Evan's sight.
He had gone to inspect the other defensive positions himself.
And what he saw...
Destroyed the last trace of confidence he had.
The Skeleton army attacking the second gate was not small.
It was enormous.
Nearly the same size as the force attacking his own position.
Armoured Skeletons were mixed throughout the formation.
Skeleton wolves tore into the defensive lines.
And the same terrifying miniature warriors he had seen beside Evan were present there as well.
The Shaman rushed toward the third gate.
His expression became even darker.
The same thing.
Another massive undead army.
The same armoured Skeletons.
The same wolf riders.
The same relentless advance.
There was no weak point.
No side he could safely abandon.
No battlefield where he could afford to withdraw warriors.
Every gate was under serious attack.
The Shaman returned to Evan's side of the settlement.
His green face remained grim.
The tension in his expression could no longer be hidden.
'He split his army perfectly.'
The thought gnawed at him.
'If I send more warriors to either side, this wall will fall.'
'If I reinforce this wall, one of the others will be breached.'
There was only one option.
They had to kill the army in front of them.
Then move to the next wall.
Then the next.
And survive long enough for the tribal reinforcements to arrive.
The cost would be enormous.
He knew that.
But there was no better choice.
The battle continued.
Only now, it was no longer a simple defensive fight.
The Goblin settlement was being attacked from three directions simultaneously.
Its walls shook beneath repeated impacts.
Skeletons climbed over fallen bodies.
Goblins hacked them apart.
Archers fired until their fingers bled.
The Shaman's spells tore through undead formations.
Evan continued supporting his army while striking at the defenders.
Every few moments, another body fell.
Goblin.
Undead.
It no longer mattered.
The forest around the settlement had become a battlefield.
And the longer the fighting continued, the worse the situation became.
Almost every Goblin in the settlement capable of fighting had already been mobilised.
Even the wounded who could still stand had been pushed back into defensive positions.
But many of them had already been injured during the previous battle.
Their bodies were exhausted.
Their strength was fading.
And now they were being forced into another prolonged battle without enough time to recover.
One Goblin fell.
Another stepped into his place.
A Skeleton was destroyed.
Another climbed over its remains.
The walls were beginning to crack.
The gates were shaking.
The defenders were losing ground.
And for the first time since the battle began...
The Shaman no longer saw victory waiting at the end.
He saw only one thing.
A settlement slowly being torn apart by all three sides.
And somewhere at the center of it all stood the human who had orchestrated everything.
Evan remained calm as he watched the battlefield unfold.
But he wasn't simply standing there.
His attention was divided across all three fronts.
Whenever an armoured Skeleton struggled beneath the combined attacks of the Goblins, Evan immediately reinforced it with necrotic energy.
Whenever a large group of Skeletons gathered near the walls, he released another spell.
The Shaman was doing the same.
His staff moved continuously as waves of wind magic tore through the undead army.
BOOM!
A massive gust smashed into a group of Skeletons attempting to climb the wall.
Bones shattered.
Several undead were thrown backwards.
Another spell followed before they could recover.
The battle had already continued for more than an hour.
And by now, neither side could hide its losses.
Nearly half of Evan's original Skeleton army had been destroyed.
The once-massive undead force had been reduced to roughly half its original number.
The Goblins had suffered casualties as well.
But their losses were noticeably lower.
Their defensive position and constant support from the Shaman had allowed them to survive far longer than Evan's ordinary Skeletons.
Even some of the armoured Goblin Skeletons had finally fallen.
Six.
Perhaps seven.
That was all.
Their numbers were small enough that the Shaman could still tolerate the losses.
The situation on the other sides of the settlement wasn't much different.
Normal Skeletons were constantly being destroyed.
But the armoured ones remained.
They stood against the walls like immovable barriers, absorbing attack after attack without retreating.
The sight was beginning to crush the morale of the defenders.
The Goblins had also developed another grim habit.
Whenever one of their warriors fell, the surviving Goblins immediately dragged the body deeper into the settlement.
They refused to leave their dead outside.
Everyone understood why.
Nobody wanted to watch a fallen comrade rise again and return as part of the human's army.
Evan watched all of it.
He could sense the condition of his summons through their connection.
The losses didn't concern him.
Not yet.
His army was dying.
But the battlefield itself was giving him everything he needed.
And he still had one card left to play.
The Shaman noticed another movement.
His attention, already divided between Evan and the battlefield, immediately returned to the human.
Evan had stopped attacking.
His hand slowly lifted.
The ground beneath him began trembling.
The Shaman's eyes narrowed.
Then the earth cracked.
A massive boulder began forcing its way out of the ground.
Stone after stone gathered together, forming an enormous mass above Evan.
The Shaman's expression changed.
He immediately understood the trajectory.
The human wasn't targeting the walls.
He was targeting the gate.
Evan looked toward the half-closed entrance where the Goblins were still holding back the Skeletons.
A faint smile appeared on his face.
"It's time we change the battlefield a little, don't you think?"
His gaze hardened.
"Let's play the second half inside."
The boulder shot forward.
BOOOOOOM!
It slammed directly into the wooden gate.
The enormous impact shook the entire settlement.
The already damaged gate couldn't withstand it.
CRAAACK!
The wooden structure exploded inward.
Fragments of timber flew across the entrance.
Goblin warriors standing behind the gate were thrown several meters backwards.
Some crashed against the ground.
Others were buried beneath broken pieces of wood.
And before the defenders could recover...
The Skeletons charged.
The armoured undead entered first.
Their heavy bodies pushed through the shattered entrance as they hacked down the stunned Goblins.
Behind them came the rest of the Bone Army.
The settlement had been breached.
The battle was no longer taking place outside.
It had entered the Goblins' home.
The first Goblin screamed.
A Skeleton blade tore through his chest.
Another warrior rushed forward and was immediately surrounded.
He fell beneath a dozen skeletal weapons.
Then his body twitched.
Necrotic energy spread through the corpse.
Bones twisted beneath the flesh.
Moments later, the fallen Goblin rose again.
Not as a warrior of the settlement.
As part of Evan's army.
The effect was immediate.
Every Goblin who witnessed it felt their courage weaken.
They were already struggling to hold the walls.
Now the dead were returning against them.
And there was nowhere left to retreat.
The Skeletons continued pouring through the broken gate.
The pressure increased with every passing second.
Then another scream erupted from the opposite side.
The second gate had fallen.
The undead army there surged into the settlement.
The third gate followed soon after.
Another wave of Skeletons entered from the opposite direction.
The Goblins were being invaded from every side.
Their defensive formation collapsed into chaos.
Scouts attempted to take positions above the invading undead, firing down from the wooden structures.
But the armoured Skeletons noticed them.
Several undead leapt toward the elevated positions.
The scouts barely had time to react.
CLANG!
A skeletal weapon smashed through one of them.
Another was dragged from the wall.
A third tried to flee.
An armoured Skeleton caught him.
Moments later, the fallen scouts rose again.
Now they joined the very army they had been trying to kill.
The undead numbers began recovering.
Slowly at first and then faster.
Every corpse was another potential soldier.
Every fallen Goblin strengthened Evan's army.
The Goblins were beginning to understand the true horror of fighting a Necromancer.
Killing his enemies wasn't enough; they were feeding his army.
The Shaman's expression became increasingly grim.
He unleashed a massive wave of wind.
BOOOOOOM!
The storm swept across the settlement.
Skeletons were thrown through the air.
Several wolf riders were ripped apart.
The armoured Goblin Skeletons attempting to approach him were swept away as well.
The Shaman stood beside the two massive Goblins guarding him.
For a moment, they managed to hold their position.
But the undead kept coming.
The Shaman looked toward Evan.
Their eyes met.
The Shaman's gaze was filled with pure hatred.
Evan's expression remained unreadable.
Neither spoke, as neither needed to.
The Shaman already understood.
This human had never been afraid of losing his Skeletons.
From the beginning, Evan had treated every fallen undead as expendable.
Because the battlefield itself could replace them.
And the Shaman had unknowingly provided him with a huge supply of corpses.
Evan looked away.
His attention returned to the massacre spreading throughout the settlement.
This was the scene he had been waiting for.
The battle had reached its final stage.
Only a few dozen capable warrior Goblins remained.
The rest had fallen.
Some were dead.
Some were wounded.
Others had already been dragged into the Bone Army.
Soon, there would be almost nobody left.
Only the Shaman.
And the two enormous Goblins standing beside him.
The Shaman watched helplessly.
Every few seconds, another warrior fell.
Another scream echoed through the bloodied settlement.
Another body rose as an undead.
He could destroy the approaching Skeletons.
He could tear apart dozens at once with his wind magic.
But he couldn't be everywhere.
For every group he destroyed, another was already entering from one of the other gates.
His army was shrinking while Evan's army was recovering.
The Shaman's hands trembled with rage.
He had failed.
The mission he had sworn to complete was collapsing before his eyes.
He lowered his staff for a moment.
His breathing became heavy.
Then he looked toward the sky.
"Master..."
His voice was barely audible.
"I failed to fulfil my task."
His eyes returned to Evan.
"I don't know whether I'll return to you alive."
His grip tightened around his staff.
"But I swear..."
His voice became louder.
"I will take you down with me."
The Shaman's expression twisted with fury.
"This settlement will not fall without taking you with it!"
His roar echoed across the bloodied walls.
"You will pay for this!"
Then his voice erupted into a final, furious roar.
"HUMAAAAAN!"
Evan's eyes snapped toward him.
The Shaman was staring directly at him.
But there was something different in his expression now.
Not fear.
Not desperation.
Resolve.
The Shaman slowly reached one hand inside his robe.
Evan's eyes narrowed.
The Goblin pulled something out.
An object.
Something he had kept hidden until now.
The instant it emerged...
The entire settlement changed.
The air became heavy.
An invisible pressure erupted outward from the Shaman's position.
BOOOOOOM!
The bloodied battlefield fell strangely silent beneath the overwhelming force.
Skeletons stopped for a moment.
Goblins froze.
Even the air itself seemed to become heavier.
The pressure spread across the settlement like an invisible tide.
Evan's expression finally changed.
The casual calm disappeared from his eyes.
The Shaman raised the mysterious object toward the sky.
His voice echoed through the settlement.
"YOU SHALL FACE THE WRATH OF NATURE!"
The pressure intensified.
Wind began gathering around him.
But this wasn't the same wind magic Evan had witnessed throughout the battle.
Something deeper was responding.
Something ancient.
Something that seemed connected to the forest itself.
Evan stared at the object in the Shaman's hand.
His pupils narrowed.
For the first time since the siege began...
A trace of seriousness appeared across his face.
'This is getting deadly serious now.'
The battlefield had changed.
And Evan could feel it.
The Shaman had finally revealed his final card.