Chapter 432: The Final Battle? (Part II)
"Wights have breached the outer walls in the East, South, and North. The fighting has moved from the battlements into the residential areas." As the champion and runner-up of the Queenscrown Archery Tournament, Anguy and Theon Greyjoy had naturally been kept by Egger's side—tasked with the mission of sniping the Night King. But with the target nowhere to be found, these men meant to play the role of heroes had become little more than deaf men's ears—mere ornaments. "If the Lord Commander permits, it would be better if the two of us took 'Lightbringer' to the sectors in distress. We can relieve the pressure on our Night's Watch brothers."
"Can you find the Others without my guidance?" Melisandre's voice, usually forced into a cold and steady tone, could no longer hide her urgency. She looked solemnly at the Prince That Was Promised she served. "Has the Lord of Light given you no new signs? Should I remain here waiting for the Night King, or go assist the defenders against the other White Walkers invading the town?"
Egger took a deep breath. Instead of answering Melisandre, he turned to the side. "Lord Beric, Ser Thoros, take a squad each. Escort Anguy and Theon with Lightbringer to assist within the town. Harvey, return to the keep immediately and relay my orders: have Bran use his crows to guide every archer carrying dragonsteel arrows to the location of the Others—if they dare set foot in Queenscrown!"
Given the overwhelming numerical disparity, sending the only Red Priestess capable of pinpointing the enemy commander to deal with ordinary White Walkers was like trying to stop a boiling pot by adding a cup of cold water. It might offer brief relief, but it did nothing for the greater situation. The only way out was to stick to the original plan: find a way to eliminate the Night King.
"Melisandre, do you have no magical means of flushing him out directly?"
"There are active detection methods to find living beings. But firstly, such spells are designed for the living and are unsuited for use in a sea of death. Secondly... if the enemy I am probing possesses greater power than I, he can hide from me, or even use my own detection magic as a conduit to strike back at me!"
"What about baiting him? Last time at Castle Black, your spell to feed the fires drew an attack from the Others. Can you repeat the trick? Deliberately expose your position to lure the Night King into attacking you?"
Theoretically, it was possible, but it undoubtedly meant risking the life of the person acting as bait. If someone volunteered, it was one thing—but how could someone else suggest it?
Egger was not so socially inept as to miss the implication, but he possessed no magic himself and could not play the hero. Fortunately, the trust between him and Melisandre was firmly established. The Red Woman did not view this blunt proposal as an insult or a wish for her death... and besides, if sacrificing her life could win the entire war for R'hllor, as a faithful servant, she would leap into the sea of corpses without a second word.
"Very well. But what must I do to provoke the Night King into striking at me? And if I succeed, I must survive his initial blow long enough to tell you where he is!"
"Shields!" Egger shouted, ordering the remaining soldiers to bring up thick wooden pavises, lining them up in a row before them as a meager comfort. He then offered a suggestion with a heavy expression. "It cannot be just any spell. The Night King must feel a threat or a pressure. Tonight, the wights did not mindlessly throw themselves into the fire, which shows the enemy has begun to value the 'basic units' he controls. Can you cast something high-powered? Something that wipes out a significant number of wights at once to force the Night King's hand?"
"High-powered magic?" Melisandre shook her head helplessly. She truly loathed explaining the basics of sorcery to a layman repeatedly, but the man before her was the Prince That Was Promised. "Magic does not work as you imagine. Spells involving touch are usually effortless, but acting at a distance is far more difficult... Mana consumption and casting difficulty increase exponentially with range. Destroying dozens or a hundred wights at once is not hard if one is willing to spend the power—but it requires me to be in close contact with them. Your little Greenseer says the Night King is to the northwest, yet the wights in the northwest haven't even attacked the walls. Trying to strike wights standing beyond the fire-trench from a hundred meters away... I might burn a handful at most. Such a loss will hardly stir an enemy's wrath."
Egger honestly admitted that when he mentioned high-powered magic, his mind had been filled with Meteor Swarms and Flying Scorching Flames—the kind of spectacles found in games and films. Clearly, this low-magic world could not support such feats. Ignorant in this field, he could only take Melisandre at her word. After another period of silent, grueling thought, a bolt of lightning suddenly pierced the fog of his mind.
"Do you remember what you did to my sword?"
The witch's blank expression showed she hadn't followed his train of thought. "What?"
"That time you secretly cast dozens of Light spells on my sword without permission and nearly blinded me..."
"I remember. Why? Are your eyes still bothered?"
"They've long since healed. What I want to know is—you said dragonsteel is a far superior magical conductor than ordinary steel. Can you do the same to the arrowhead of a Lightbringer? Make it incredibly bright?"
"Of course. A superior conductor makes it easier and the effect more potent. What are you planning?"
"Light up a Lightbringer, and I will shoot it toward the Night King."
"Hoping for a lucky hit?" Melisandre was confused. "Have you lost your mind? We have so few left, and you want to waste one?"
To bolster the morale of the people along the Wall, Egger had sent twenty Lightbringer arrows to various castles. Last night—or more accurately, early this morning—the decision to create the Dragonsteel Bombs had consumed twenty more. Between the originals and the high-quality replicas, they had started with seventy-seven; now, only thirty-odd remained. Over twenty had been distributed to marksmen in the reserves, and Anguy and Theon had just taken several more. At this moment, Egger had only five in his hand. Melisandre's claim that there were so few left was no exaggeration.
He didn't actually expect to hit the Night King with a single illuminated arrow shot at random. He wanted to use it as a display of power—a provocation to bait the Night King into exposing his position!
The enemy were emotionless magical creatures; under normal circumstances, Egger would not think to provoke them in such an odd way. But pressed by the situation, he had to try something unconventional. The Others, after all, were complex biological entities, not simple machines. And as long as a creature possessed high intelligence, it was impossible for it to be truly devoid of emotion or perfectly rational!
Whether it was his own success years ago in killing an Other with a dragonglass dagger because it was careless, or Moqorro and the soldiers at Eastwatch sniping two Others who chose to stand and fight because of their killing intent, the evidence was clear.
This move had at least a thirty to forty percent chance of working!
"I am the Lord Commander and the Prince That Was Promised. Do as I say!" The battlefield was changing by the second; Egger had no time for detailed explanations. He snatched up his yew longbow with one hand and drew a dragonsteel arrow with the other. He held the arrowhead right under Melisandre's nose. "Enchant it! I only need it to stay lit for a moment, but until it hits the ground, the brighter the better!"
Melisandre ceased her arguing. She gripped the shaft with both hands, pressing her index and middle fingers to the arrowhead. She bowed her head, eyes closed, murmuring an incantation. Suddenly, the dragonsteel head flared to life like a high-powered LED light suddenly connected to a battery. The brilliance was so piercing that every soldier on that section of the wall had to look away or shield their eyes to avoid damage.
A similar effect had appeared on Egger's ordinary steel sword before, but that time Melisandre had used the massive amount of mana released by the cremation of Maester Aemon's body, stacking the spell multiple times to create such terrifying brightness. This time, the witch cast the spell only once, yet it was already too bright to look at. This was because the magic had been placed upon the highly mana-conductive dragonsteel and set to consume all energy within half a minute. This magical lightbulb was operating at near-maximum efficiency and power!
As if holding a military searchlight, Egger had to squint his eyes to the point of closing them to avoid injury from the glow. Holding the blindingly bright Lightbringer for a second, he tilted his face away, nocked it to the string, and drew the bow to its limit at a nearly 40-degree angle. With a sharp twang, he released the sphere of light toward the northwest, into the distant wight army.
...
The dazzling Lightbringer #64 soared like a moon on a stick, passing twenty to thirty meters above the sea of corpses. The pure white light it shed illuminated the dense, waiting heads of the wights below. After flying aimlessly for nearly two hundred meters, it plunged into the outer edge of the corpse-sea. It punched through a gaunt, skeletal wight and, with energy to spare, buried itself in the body of a second. Only then did it stop.
Even buried in the abdominal cavity of a fallen wight, it continued to emit its magical light with stubborn pride, glowing faintly from within the sea of death.
Even gods do not possess inexhaustible power. Precisely creating a field of low temperature to disable human wildfire was tactically brilliant, but there was a point where it could no longer be sustained. Upon realizing that the human defenses could not be destroyed within that short window to take Queenscrown in one go, the Night King temporarily changed his orders: he commanded the spellcasting Others to mix with the wights, cross the walls under the cover of chaos, and infiltrate the town. They were to live off the land—causing destruction and casualties while recruiting new wights from within. By rotting the town from the inside out, they could bypass the tough shell of the wall defenders and take the town while minimizing the loss of puppets.
As the Others responsible for suppressing the wildfire crossed the walls and ceased their spellcasting, the firewalls finally roared to life, completing the defensive circle. The frantic defenders, momentarily stunned, accidentally ignited wildfire jars that had been knocked over during the previous bloody struggle on the battlements. This sent the wall-top, which had nearly been lost, into a massive blaze. The roaring flames instantly engulfed the flesh-ramps and the bodies of both sides killed in the struggle for the gaps—preventing the defenders from reclaiming the lost sections, but also cutting off the wights and Others who had already entered the town from their reinforcements outside.
Coincidentally, this happened less than ten seconds after Egger fired the Lightbringer.
The soldiers along the entire northwest wall witnessed this spectacular scene. They didn't know it was a desperate, hail-mary provocative shot by Egger. All they saw was their Lord Commander, at the most critical moment of the battle, firing a great ball of radiant light toward the distant sea of wights like a miracle. The enemy struck by it fell, and immediately, the gaps in the firewall that had refused to ignite erupted in rolling, yellowish-green flames.
The don't understand but feel it's awesome effect and herd mentality played an unexpectedly positive role. Though still trapped in a dire situation, the walls of Queenscrown erupted in a wave of heartening roars and cheers as if victory had already been won.
...
Accompanied by this inexplicable cheering, the giant Wun Wun smashed a wight-wolf into a pulp with a single punch.
Because the narrow width of the wall prevented the wights from deploying their numerical advantage, and because the defenders' counterattacks and bombs were fierce, the wights who had crossed the firewall gaps failed to expand their foothold on the wall. Intending to slaughter civilians, they stopped fighting the front-line humans and instead leaped down from the battlements, charging into the town.
There, they crashed directly into the second line of soldiers who had been waiting below the wall.
Living giants were of low intelligence, slow-moving, and possessed poor endurance; they could not adapt to training, marching, or prolonged warfare. Though they looked terrifying, anyone hoping to turn them into elite soldiers was doomed to disappointment. However, in a stationary defensive battle, they were remarkably effective. In the pre-battle deployment, dozens of adult giants had been paired with New Gift soldiers and distributed evenly around each command post. Once the enemy crossed the outer wall, they were put to immediate use.
Now, Wun Wun, stationed at a crossroads, stood like a mobile, attacking statue firmly blocking the path. Together with the surrounding soldiers, ignited barricades, and archers on the rooftops, he formed a defensive line that merged active and passive defense—solidly blocking the wights leaping from the walls from advancing toward the center of the town.
An IQ similar to an eight- or nine-year-old child allowed the giants to distinguish friend from foe. The thick cloth and animal furs they wore protected them from the scratches of ordinary wights, and their battering-ram-like arms were reliable weapons. Even without dragonglass, a giant could instantly disable a fully armored wight. Clustered around these reliable big fellows, the human soldiers of the second line only needed to use dragonglass spears to finish off the wights that the giants had already flattened or torn apart. Though they had no bombs, their task was much lighter than that of the front-line soldiers currently fighting through fire and blood to retake the wall.
However, as more and more wights flooded down the streets, the soldiers were eventually forced into the fray rather than just finishing off survivors. Generally, though, the giants continued to bear the brunt of the pressure... and just as they were heartened by the sudden cheering from the wall, a pale, agile figure suddenly leaped from the wight swarm and slammed into Wun Wun's chest.
Staggered by the impact, Wun Wun let out a thunderous roar. Stabilizing himself, he pulled his arms inward, gripping the enemy on his chest with both hands. He prepared to squeeze and crush it as usual, only to find the pale little thing was inexplicably as hard as iron. No matter how much force he applied, he couldn't injure it in the slightest. He moved to hurl it away and let the small humans deal with it, but then a sharp pain pierced his chest. A terrifying chill, unlike anything he had ever felt, spread rapidly through his body, quickly drowning his brain and turning his vision black. He collapsed backward, hitting the ground with a thunderous boom.
Only then did the pale existence that had pounced into the giant's arms stand up unhurriedly from the massive corpse. It pulled a translucent longsword from the center of the giant's chest and turned its eerie blue eyes—significantly brighter than a wight's—toward the remaining humans.
"White Walker!"
A soldier was the first to recognize the enemy. He shrieked, fired a single dragonglass arrow, and then turned to flee for his life toward the next intersection. His squad was not equipped with dragonsteel arrows capable of piercing White Walker ice armor. Facing a formidable enemy with no chance of victory, he followed the protocol to retreat toward the command post where a Lightbringer was located to preserve himself!
This was not a rout; it was part of the plan!
The White Walker let out a high, shrill screech that sounded like a laugh at the fleeing defenders. It did not order the wights to pursue. Instead, it had them form a protective circle around itself as it began to channel magic.
The firewalls were fully formed, and the walls had been retaken by the defenders. Now, the eight White Walkers and thousands of wights who had entered Queenscrown had to rely on their own strength to break the deadlock.
Luck was on this one's side; it had encountered a giant right upon entering. Once converted into a puppet, one giant was worth dozens of men, and it could even be used to block arrows at a critical moment. It was perfect!
Surrounded by its wight guards, the White Walker placed its hand upon the cooling corpse of the giant and began to inject its dwindling reserve of cold mana, preparing to wake this big fellow up and wreak havoc within the town.
The larger the creature, the more cold magic was required to turn it into an undead puppet... but usually, the extra mana was well worth it. However, as the energy slowly seeped into the giant's body, the White Walker was soon shocked to find that, for some reason, there was a significant amount of fire-attribute mana within this massive frame. All the cold magic it injected was neutralized, like a drop of water falling into the sea. It had wasted its mana for nothing!
How was this possible?
Such a situation was not entirely unheard of; it happened if the source of the corpse was a magical creature—whether natural or artificial. Typical examples included dragons, the dogs of R'hllor, or those strange beings forever entwined with trees... One had to first disperse the residual mana in their bodies before injecting cold magic to turn them into puppets; creatures that were magical in life became incredibly powerful wights.
But how could a common giant have fire-attribute magic in its body?
In its shock, the White Walker immediately turned to another human corpse nearby and repeated the process. The result was exactly the same!
A shiver went through the White Walker—a being that usually knew no fear. Faced with this unheard-of, eerie situation, it felt terror for the first time. If it had nearly exhausted its mana and also lost the ability to turn slain enemies into puppets, then inside this Queenscrown full of powerful enemies and artifacts, would it not become a super-soldier waiting to be slaughtered?
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