The Pied Piper of Hamelin

"Advance toward the watchtower!" a player roared, tearing himself free from the rat-men's grasp.

Another explosion rang out, and the player was blasted down on the spot.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Consecutive explosions made everyone's ears ring incessantly.

The Ceramic City was arched in shape, protruding from a section of the wall and enclosing an area, serving as a buffer zone after the enemy's massive breach of the gates; they were currently on such a wall segment, where the cannons on both sides had been activated simultaneously, frantically shelling their position.

"Don't scatter! Find a way to cluster together!" Xu Xiaoyou issued her orders. "Priests, prepare to defend against the next round of shelling!"

Simultaneously, she used her Hand of Silence to quickly clear the monsters surging around her, her mind racing as she thought of a counter-strategy.

With monsters everywhere, almost every gap within sight was filled with distorted faces; the scattered players could only rely on intuition to break through toward the golden-haired girl's direction.

A female saber-wielder deep within the monster horde roared, drawing her blade to slash the monsters before her; she grabbed another rat-man's face and threw it far away, but there were simply too many monsters, and she was submerged in moments.

A burly man was likewise covered in rat-men, his body riddled with terrifying lacerations; he was eventually dragged down into the monster heap due to exhaustion, and in the blink of an eye, he was devoured until only bones remained.

"You... don't come over here, eek!"

A little priest sat on the ground in a panic and was torn into fragments by the rat-men.

"Watch out..." A player coming to support was hit by a rat-man's projectile, and half of his body rotted and suppurated.

The number of players dwindled at a visible rate; once these monsters entered a state of frenzy, the battle became almost entirely one-sided, with tragic scenes playing out at every moment.

"Save... save me..."

A girl, chewed until she was nearly a skeleton, struggled to crawl toward her, the light in her pupils flickering briefly before going dark.

Xu Xiaoyou's strength alone was far from enough to save the situation; her Hand of Silence had consumed countless rat-men and now dragged heavily across the ground, its movements turning sluggish.

When the players finally managed to regroup, their total number had decreased by nearly a quarter; as the commander-in-chief, Xu Xiaoyou naturally could not escape responsibility. Moans, accusations, and laments echoed in her ears.

"Commander, think of something!"

"Call those people back to help! If this continues, we'll all be wiped out!"

"What kind of commander are you? Our people died because of you!" A player from the King's Clan pointed at Xu Xiaoyou's nose and shouted, only to be silenced by her calm, piercing gaze before he could finish.

To say things that shake the army's morale on the battlefield is a cardinal sin in warfare.

Xu Xiaoyou immediately called out the man's name and ordered him, along with several others who were complaining, to go to the front and withstand the monsters' pressure.

"Members of the Light-Chaser Garden, no matter who you are, if you dare to say another word that lowers morale, I will either handle you personally or you can get out of this combat unit yourself!"

The heroic shout preserved what remained of the flagging morale; while these words seemed directed at those from the Light-Chaser Garden,

any discerning person could see she was warning everyone present.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The cannon fire arrived once more, and a series of shells exploded against the golden barrier with a deafening roar.

Following the order to regroup and despite the heavy price paid, the remaining players gathered once more; with the priests erecting a defensive line, they successfully withstood the next round of volleys without suffering further large-scale losses.

"If you have better ideas, propose them! If you want to vent, chew it up and swallow it! Anyone can express dissatisfaction with me, but not right now. Understand?"

Everyone lowered their heads, and no one said another word; they simply defended against the monsters' pouncing attacks while slowly pushing forward.

"Guild leader, do we need to fall back to defend?" Shadow Weaver Poem's voice came through her ear.

"No. Lead your Heifeng and maintain the push."

"Akabane, same for you."

The monsters were like a boundless ocean, frantically surging from every corner; from above, the line formed by the clustered players was like a small, solitary boat in this vast sea, buffeted by the turbulent waves and in constant danger of being capsized.

"Roar!"

Seeing the players curl up like a hedgehog, the female general in the distance let out a roar, her double-edged spear striking the bell hard, and the halting tolling of the bell rang through the entire night.

The cannoneers received the order and stopped firing in volleys, switching to shelling the players' line in waves; before the echo of the previous shell faded, the next one followed!

This forced the priests to change their strategy; whereas they could previously find a moment during the intervals between volleys to recover their spirit, they now had to maintain the barriers for an extended period. At this rate, as soon as someone failed to sustain the consumption of spirit, the line would be blasted open.

In this situation, even a momentary lapse would be fatal.

By a conservative estimate, there were over thirty thousand monsters in the Bastion, and they were continuously converging on their position. If they remained bogged down here, it wasn't just a question of whether the players' stamina and spirit could withstand the long-term depletion.

Once the main enemy force successfully unified, it would be the end for all of them.

The members of the Heifeng and Red Glow squads were currently deep within the Bastion, constantly expanding their field of vision; the vast majority of monsters were being drawn toward the main group, and it was clear that if these stealth classes tried to break through the layers of monster blockades to provide support, it would be no different from seeking their own deaths.

Should she have the people on Angelina's side fall back to defend?

Those attackers with outstanding frontal combat capabilities might be able to support them before the enemy's main force united, but if they did that, the decapitation strike against the enemy's elite creatures would be declared a failure.

She knew very well that only clunky elite creatures like vomit monsters and swollen trolls were frontally assaulting them; it was because Angelina and the others were tying up the firepower of more elite creatures that they weren't facing even greater pressure.

There were currently two paths before her.

Immediately call Angelina for help and have Yan Ze, Angelina, and the others lead a rescue; the result of this would be an entry into the watchtower's interior, but afterward, they would have to face the offensive of countless elite creatures simultaneously, which was highly unpredictable.

Unpredictability often meant the possibility of even greater risk.

Alternatively, she could rely on the players beside her to carve a way out of the encirclement, entering the watchtower before the enemy's main force united and utilizing the complex terrain of the Bastion to lose their pursuers.

How should she choose?

For the golden-haired girl, a few short minutes felt like an agonizing and interminable ordeal.

The fighting, numb, and desperate faces of the players were deeply etched into her eyes.

Just as Xu Xiaoyou's mind was racing, judging how to make her choice, the ground suddenly began to shake violently.

The continuous shelling had eventually weakened their line; exhausted priests were wavering and being swallowed by the surging rat-men, some even falling directly downward.

Shells exploded in the center of the players, and several more were immediately blasted off the high wall.

The surging rat-men broke through the players' line once again, their hideous faces biting into flesh as they let out screeches.

As for the previous violent tremors, they came from the swollen trolls and vomit monsters charging toward them simultaneously.

The size of these two elite creatures was far greater than any they had seen before; they were like mountains charging frantically toward them, and with every step they took, the world vibrated.

Just as they were about to collide with the players' line and the defense was on the verge of total collapse, time seemed to be paused by someone, and everything in the world froze in that instant.

The mountain-sized monsters came to an abrupt halt.

The players' bellows of struggle stopped.

The monsters' screeches stopped as well, their twisted forms frozen in mid-air.

A flute's melody drifted from nowhere, as if to carry away all the pain in the world, stripping away all mundane and trivial emotions to bring peace to everyone's heart.

A girl in a grey cloak stepped lightly upon a blue water moon, as graceful as a feather, looking at her own reflection in the mirror as everything turned blurry in the rising ripples; only the girl upon the water moon was so beautiful as to be unreachable....

Her beautiful eyes were slightly closed, and her pale, thin lips were slightly parted.

Her tied hair escaped her grey hood, and her slender, white wrists were exposed from her sleeves.

Her fingertips rested upon the carved, pure-white mouthpiece of the flute.

She had deep, serene eyes.

She had long hair like a vast sea of stars.

Her hands were as delicate as porcelain.

Her waist was more graceful and luminous than the moon's disk.

It was she who was playing the long flute, the Coronation of Poppea.

The Pied Piper of Hamelin.