The Grand Commander shouted himself hoarse.
Everyone had seen ballistae before, but one with such uncanny accuracy couldn’t help but make people suspect that a bit of magic had been mixed in.
Even as arrows rained down, snapping against plate armor, and warhorses whinnied in pain amid the shafts, Richard could not resist trying to track the ballista’s trajectory with his eyes.
But the sky had already become the domain of those abominable birds.
Aurina, like the commander of a tank, raised her hand and slapped Richard’s helmet hard—there was perhaps a touch of personal grudge in it.
The blow made his helmet hum loudly.
She pointed with one finger: “There!”
Following the direction of Aurina’s slender finger, Richard finally noticed that, at some unknown point, the bronze bell atop the clock tower had been removed, and a ballista had been placed there instead.
That ballista had three crossbow arms, with glowing runes inscribed on them.
This was a war machine used by the army specifically to shoot down giant beasts, known as the “Beast Slayer.”
Since it was designed specifically for giant beasts, in other words, hitting small targets was difficult and relied heavily on luck.
For a griffin flying in the sky, aside from sheer bad luck, there was no reason a ballista bolt could strike its neck.
Beside the Beast Slayer stood a large-headed figure in a long robe, holding a monocular telescope—this answered the question.
Richard recalled his knowledge and shouted: “Beast Slayer! A Beast Slayer with a guider! At our nine o’clock direction!”
A guider could lock onto enemies with their gaze, directing the powerful ballista bolts toward the target.
Richard had never participated in any proper human-versus-human war; his understanding of this relatively modern weapon came only from books.
But as soon as the Grand Commander heard it, his scalp went numb.
He roared: “Quick, hug the walls! Hug the walls!”
Two soldiers were straining to wind the “Beast Slayer.”
Although they held the high ground, due to firing angle limitations, it was difficult for them to shoot at the Knights of Tyr’s Hand on the street.
However, this also “guarded” the sky.
The border army’s archers, lightly armored, stood on modified rooftops, freely shooting down at the Knights of Tyr below.
Even the bridge was crowded with archers, constantly firing at them.
Richard felt that at least a hundred archers were shooting at them.
This was not a spur-of-the-moment ambush but a long-planned, terrifyingly organized trap.
It had been kept remarkably secret—they had received no prior intelligence about this ambush at all.
Sophia raised her shield wall, praying under her breath.
A curved, semi-transparent barrier blocked some of the incoming arrows.
But it was merely a drop in the bucket; the warhorses of the Knights of Tyr’s Hand whinnied pitifully and collapsed one after another, arrows piercing their lungs and filling them with blood.
Most of the paladins of Tyr’s Hand had to dismount and advance on foot.
Yet they did not lose order; even under the arrow rain, they distributed shields taken from dimensional pouches and held them in front as they moved forward.
But they could only take the beating.
Even though they wore full plate armor enchanted with magic, it did not mean they were immune to damage.
If enough arrows were fired, some would eventually strike weak points—under the arms, the buttocks, the inner thighs—areas protected only by soft chain mail.
There was even an archer standing on a three-story rooftop who pretended to drop his trousers and shouted: “Tin cans, drink my piss!”
In a moment of impatience, one paladin lowered his shield and tried to leap up.
“Follow orders! Keep charging forward!” the Haisha City commander shouted. “If you go up, you’ll fall from the roof!”
Richard still had his horse, thanks to Sophia.
He pointed at the archers on the rooftops and yelled:
“Fire! Fire! Burn the ones on the rooftops.”
“Know your place, pack animal!”
Arrows whizzed past Aurina’s side.
The more she listened, the more excited she became.
This reminded her of the time she went to the Elven Royal Court to take something.
The Elven King was petty; he had crammed the entire palace full of elven archers using so-called dragon-slaying arrows that really stung dragons.
After obtaining the treasure, she had deliberately played with those long-eared bugs.
How did she play?
Of course, by showing those long-eared little bugs—who could only wriggle and crawl on the ground—that being able to fly was superior.
Aurina stepped hard on Richard’s shoulders with both feet, leaped into the air, and transformed into a dragon mid-flight.
“Aurina!”
Richard reached out to grab her foot but caught only air.
“I meant for you to spit fireballs!”
The dragon Aurina completely ignored him.
She banked sharply and flew straight toward the archers on the rooftops.
Opening her jaws, she breathed fire while flying, the flames sweeping like feathers and instantly clearing the archers from the roof.
The archer who had tried to urinate screamed as he plummeted from above.
“Shoot! Shoot her now!”
The already-aimed Beast Slayer fired its bolt at the dragon Aurina.
Yet Aurina displayed agility completely at odds with her appearance.
If one hadn’t seen it with their own eyes, it would be hard to imagine such a chubby dragon could be so nimble—she flew close to the buildings, reached out with her claws to grip the wall, used it as a pivot, and with a flap of her wings effortlessly performed a ninety-degree turn, diving straight into the gap between houses.
The bolt missed entirely, passing clean through one archer’s body before disappearing into the roof below.
It was that easy.
As long as she wasn’t ambushed, a stationary ballista like that could only hit a dragon as clumsy as her little sister.
Aurina thought this as she flapped her wings hard to gain altitude.
“Where did she go?”
An archer on a rooftop shouted.
Before the words finished, Aurina’s dragon head emerged behind them.
She opened her mouth and breathed a linear stream of dragon fire.
Screams rang out: “Aaaaaah!”
Watching flames pass overhead and hearing the screams, the paladins marching forward with shields raised sighed: “How on earth did Brother Richard kill that dragon’s father?”
“Back then, I could still fly,” Richard said while riding his horse.
Yes, at that time he had the Fly spell cast on him.
The magical support had come from the world’s foremost dragon-vein sorceress, Frostsilver.
The arrow rain weakened.
On the rooftops, the archers began to cower and hide; some even started retreating outright.
Whenever they sensed the dragon Aurina flying toward them, they scrambled to descend from the roofs in panic.
Even though officers blew their whistles frantically to give orders, they could not stop the rout.
So far, Aurina had only burned twenty or thirty archers—negligible compared to the total number involved in the ambush.
But whenever the dragon Aurina feigned a dive toward them, every archer felt she was coming for him personally, intending to burn him alive.
Compared to dying by blade, they feared being burned far more.
Aurina the dragon knew this well—she understood exactly what the little bugs feared.
She would suddenly climb steeply, casually spitting small bursts of flame, making the bugs below think she was about to breathe fire.
This alone could scare large groups of archers, even those brave—or rather, foolhardy—enough to stand their ground.
In their peripheral vision, they saw flames ignite in the sky and the half-lit dragon silhouette within the firelight.
Their fully drawn bows slackened involuntarily; arrows flew wildly without aim, or they hastily loosed shots while shouting: “Take cover! Take cover!”
Richard and his group of twelve finally charged through the long street lined with archer ambushes and rushed toward the great bridge.
The archers in front of the bridge turned and fled.
Behind them, a tightly formed army parted to let the archers retreat through, then closed ranks again, blocking the path and sealing Richard’s group in.