Kays Translations
Just another Isekai Lover~
Chapter 92: The Battle at Winter’s End (Part 1)
As winter drew to its close, the northern city wall finally faced its last wave of attacks—nearly a thousand ferocious undead creatures charging toward it in succession.
Their numbers were clearly greater than last time—this was nothing less than a final frenzy.
On top of the wall, every unit was fighting at full strength.
Although Kadir had witnessed such scenes many times before, he still felt a twinge of fear at the sheer ferocity of this assault.
If they could just repel this wave of undead, the long struggle to defend their homeland would truly be over.
Their ability to hold out through the entire winter was thanks not only to powerful weaponry, but—more importantly—to their will to fight.
And that will came from none other than the lord of Bianshu Town—Owen.
Kadir stole a glance at the lord standing atop the bastion, and felt deep respect.
From the moment they spotted the horde of undead at dawn and sounded the horn, until now—more than six hours later—Lord Owen had never left his post, occasionally casting spells to aid sections of the defense that were in crisis.
Whenever it was time to muster the units on the wall to prepare for an attack, the lord would personally go to the front lines, fighting alongside the soldiers.
And really—what could inspire the troops’ fighting spirit more than that?
“Reload complete!”
“Fire, quickly!”
The spearman in front took a step back, clearing space. Kadr hurried forward with his musket to fill the gap.
Gun barrels jutted out over the edge of the wall, raining fire down on the undead below. Even if they didn’t strike the head to destroy the magic core inside, it was enough to slow the monsters’ advance.
Bang! Bang! Bang! Gunfire roared in unison.
A zombie wolf took a bullet to the skull, collapsing and twitching a few times before going still—Kadir had gotten lucky and taken one down.
There was no time to savor the satisfaction of the kill—he immediately stepped back, letting a spearman retake the position to keep suppressing the enemy.
If an undead did manage to leap onto the wall, those in the rear would swiftly surround and destroy it. The front-line troops could focus entirely on suppressing the enemy, confident their backs were safe.
By now, musket production had ramped up. Over the course of the winter, they had made about two hundred of them.
Bianshu Town had formed two musket units—one human, one lizardman—each with half of the weapons.
In battle, the two units alternated fire. While the human musketeers fired, the lizardmen reloaded, then swapped roles. This minimized the gaps between volleys, keeping constant pressure on the undead.
Kadir bit open the paper cartridge’s tail with his teeth just as the lizardmen finished loading and stepped forward to fire.
This time the battle line was stretched thin, unlike before when fighting had been concentrated in the middle of the wall. Still, the fiercest combat was there—after all, the barricades had funneled most of the undead toward that section.
While reloading, Kadir glanced in that direction.
Good grief—the base of the central wall section was already piled high with corpses, giving the undead an easy climb up over their fallen kin.
Fortunately, that section’s defense was held by the most respected force of all—the Holy Order of Knights.
By the middle of winter, Bray finally arrived with the Holy Order of Knights stationed at Dongsheng Fortress to provide support.
With them here, morale soared.
The unit had fewer than fifty members, but their strength was formidable.
They were usually entrusted with defending the most difficult sections of the wall and dealing with the toughest undead creatures.
There were also powerful individuals like Lusha who moved along the wall to provide rapid support.
Thanks to this, casualties among the militia dropped significantly in the battles that followed.
Perhaps the undead also realized that the middle section of the wall was too difficult to breach, for they began spreading to both flanks, widening the attack range and stretching the defensive line.
Kadir also had to admire the lord’s foresight. A month ago, Lord Owen had recruited a fresh batch of commoners into the militia, adding two hundred more men.
When Kadir first heard of this expansion, he had been puzzled.
Back then, he thought their current force was more than enough to fend off the undead—there was no need for reinforcements.
After so many battles, with muskets in hand and the Holy Order’s support, the militia who joined at the same time as Kadir had grown extremely confident.
Looking back now, everyone had been too arrogant.
Even their one-eyed instructor—the man with the most experience fighting the undead—had no objections to enlarging the militia, which showed that the enemy was not to be underestimated.
Sure enough, no one had expected the final assault to be so ferocious, nor the battle line to stretch so far.
Thanks to the reinforcements, they could rotate in and out of combat. Those coming off the wall could grab a bite to eat at camp, rest a while, then return to the fight.
Without that, after six straight hours of high-intensity combat, few would have been able to keep going.
In hindsight, it was no wonder the wall had been breached at the end of last winter—the undead truly could not be taken lightly.
The new militia recruits, after a month of training and real combat experience, had matured quickly. They had become brave, skilled at fighting the undead, and precise in their use of spears.
Take Joel, the man fighting in front of Kadir—he had been notorious in town as a coward, often bullied by others.
Who would have thought that now he stood on the wall, spear in hand, facing the undead head-on?
If you’d said so before, no one would have believed it—but Kadir saw it with his own eyes.
Joining the militia really could transform a person.
Kadir himself had changed greatly. In the past, his short stature had made him a target for bullies, leaving him deeply self-conscious.
But now, he was a proud member of the spear unit.
Musket in hand, Kadir walked with his head held high, full of confidence.
When the lizardmen finished firing and withdrew, Kadir quickly loaded his musket and stepped forward again to fire down at the undead.
On the other side, Viscount Javis was holding a brand-new musket.
Unlike the smoothbore muskets used by the musket units, his weapon was a rifled gun, firing Minié balls.
With the rear sight unique to rifled guns, he took aim at a distant target.
Bang! A zombie leopard creeping up the corpse pile, ready to leap onto the wall, was struck in the head. Its magic core shattered, its body collapsing instantly.
The rifled barrel made all the difference—its range and accuracy had greatly improved. In skilled hands, it could even hit targets a kilometer away.
The advantage was so overwhelming that, the moment Viscount Javis tested the new gun, he rushed to the castle to see Owen, hoping to recall all smoothbore muskets, rifle their barrels, and convert them into rifled guns.