Boundless Family Upgrades For The Deadbeat Lord

”They’ll keep coming toward the breach, but they won’t all fit through at once. The rubble slows the large ones. Garret and Jonathan hold the entrance long enough for us to separate each group. We don’t need to stop the river. We build gates inside it.”

Boris remained silent for several moments before his hand moved across the map. ”If this works, the trapped groups will be isolated from the pressure behind them.”

”Exactly.”

Boris was silent for several seconds and then asked. ”And if it doesn’t?”

Raymond gave him a flat look. ”Then we fall back to the inner district like you originally wanted and pretend this conversation never happened.”

Despite everything happening around them, Boris let out a short, rough laugh. ”At least you have a backup plan.”

”I’ve discovered I enjoy being alive.” Raymond shot him a quick glance and said with a wide grin.

That was enough. Boris straightened and immediately began barking orders. Darric was summoned from the reserve guard line, runners were sent toward the western positions, and within minutes the defense began doing something that initially looked completely insane to anyone who didn’t know Raymond’s plan.

The barricade blocking the broadest western street was dragged aside. Bronze Knights abandoned one section that had cost them blood to hold. Archers stoppedfiring into the open approach.

Garret’s team retreated several dozen meters, apparently surrendering ground as Frostfang Wolves and smaller boars rushed through the breach after them.

The beasts followed exactly as Raymond hoped. Once the pressure disappeared, they surged toward the easiest path rather than wasting time smashing through buildings.

Raymond climbed onto the roof of an old two-story warehouse overlooking the western district, not because he intended to fight again, but because he needed to see.

Boris joined him with two messengers, while Jonathan remained below coordinating the summoned Knights.

From the elevated position, Raymond could observe the movement through the narrow streets far more clearly than he had from the wall.

The first group of beasts flooded into the main road, then split around a stone well exactly where the map suggested they would. Frostfang Wolves moved fastest and entered the narrower lanes first.

Several armored boars followed behind them, forcing smaller creatures forward. A large mountain cat leaped onto a low rooftop before Tristan appeared from an adjacent building and struck it so hard that the beast disappeared from Raymond’s sight entirely.

Raymond ignored the individual fights and watched the numbers.

Thirty.

Forty.

Fifty.

”Not yet,” he muttered when Boris looked toward him.The beasts continued entering.

The civilians responsible for the barricades waited behind buildings with ropes wrapped around their hands, their faces pale as they listened to roars getting closer.

Bronze Knights stood beside them, ready to move the heavy wagons the moment Raymond gave the order. Hunters crouched behind upper windows with arrows already drawn but remained silent.

Seventy.

Several Silver-class creatures were among them now.

Raymond’s heart accelerated. This was the dangerous part, too few and they wasted the trap and too many and they overwhelmed it.

A massive plated boar entered the district, followed by another cluster of wolves.

Raymond raised one hand.

”Now.”

Boris shouted the signal.

Three horns blasted from different streets.

Everything moved at once.

Bronze Knights seized the prepared wagon barricades and dragged them into the road behind the incoming group.

Huge carts filled with stone slammed together across the main approach, then were immediately reinforced with heavy timber beams.

Anothergroup of Bronze Knights closed the inner intersections at almost the same moment. The Magic Beasts inside the district suddenly found themselves enclosed by walls, wagons, narrow buildings, and armed defenders.

The first wolves reached the inner barricade and tried to leap it.

Arrows fell from above.

Hunters positioned in second-floor windows and rooftop platforms shot almost directly downward into exposed necks and backs.

The narrow street left the beasts nowhere to dodge. Three wolves collapsed before reaching the timber barrier. A fourth cleared it only for a Bronze Knight to drive a spear through its chest before it landed.

Then the Silver Knights entered.

Tristan dropped from a rooftop directly into the center of one side street, his blade flashing so quickly that Raymond saw bodies fall before he understood where the strikes had landed.

Two other Silver Knights emerged from opposite alleys and hit the trapped group from both sides. Garret blocked the widest intersection with his shield and simply refused to move, forcing an armored boar to remain in place while Bronze Knights attacked its legs and belly.

The beasts panicked.

That was when Raymond knew the plan had worked.

Outside the town, the tide possessed momentum because thousands of bodies moved in the same general direction.

Inside the narrow district, that momentum disappeared. The animals couldn’t run forward because barricades blocked them.

They couldn’t retreat because the entrance had been sealed. Larger beasts couldn’t turn easily. Predators collided with herbivores. Frostfang Wolves snapped at boars that crushed them against walls. A frightened Ironhorn Elk tried to reverse direction and knocked two smaller creatures from their feet.

The massive tide had become eighty individual animals trapped in a box.

Raymond pointed toward the northern barricade. ”Open the side gap for Garret’s team. Don’t make him fight through our own barrier once they’re finished.”

Boris repeated the order.

Raymond shifted his attention toward the eastern lane. ”Tristan’s moving too far ahead. Tell the Bronze team behind him to close the distance. I don’t want predators slipping past while he’s chasing kills.”

Another messenger disappeared.

Within fifteen minutes, the first trapped group was dead.

The cost to Althoff was almost nothing compared with the previous hour of battle.

Several hunters suffered minor injuries from beasts climbing walls. One Bronze Knight had a damaged shoulder plate.

A civilian barricade worker sprained his ankle when a wagon shifted too quicklybut there was no deaths.

Raymond stared down at the streets filled with carcasses and felt something unfamiliar settle into his chest.

Not the rush of personal strength, not the thrill from earning System rewards. This was satisfaction of a completely different kind.

His plan had worked.

Boris looked at him. ”Again?”