Castle of Black Iron

”Peter is coming...”

At the sight of Zhang Tie, 4 fighters in front of a position of steam ballista were happy at once. These days, Zhang Tie had become a ”Sniper” who could operate steam ballista very well on the city wall. Each day, he would work with other fighters in shifts to operate a ballista S137 on the north city wall of Mocco City.

When other ballista operators operated this middle-and-short distance ballista, they could hardly kill one demonized puppets due to the strong vitality of demonized puppets unless their heads were exploded. Even if their bodies were penetrated through or their limbs were broken, they would still rush forward.

7 days ago, the fighter who operated this ballista dislocated his arm and suffered a severe bruise due to the long-term work. Coincidentally, Zhang Tie was on his side. After saying ”Hand it to me”, Zhang Tie then sat in the gunner’s location. With his excellent ability, he soon gained the approval of the other fighters of this emplacement and became a special person who was out of the personnel scheduling of emplacement S137.

Those who were responsible for S137 and the other emplacements on its side was a ballista camp of No. 7 City Defense Regiment under the affiliation of garrison corps in Mocco City, Symbian Republic. Usually, those who didn’t belong to the ballista camp like Zhang Tie who worked as a paladin were not allowed to sit in the location of the gunner. However, nobody cared about that at such a critical moment, as long as he could kill demons.

All the other gunners were stunned at the sight of Zhang Tie sitting in the emplacement of S137. After receiving the report, the battalion commander even came here out of fury and prepared to scold Zhang Tie; however, after watching Zhang Tie operating for 2 minutes, all of his fury faded away as he tacitly approved Zhang Tie’s special status as a gunner out of the establishment. At this critical moment, everyone in Mocco City was qualified for defending demons; therefore, military uniform did not become that important.

Watching Zhang Tie coming here, the gunner who was operating the ballista hurriedly jumped off his seat like relieving a heavy burden as he gave the gunner’s location to Zhang Tie, ”F*ck those b*stards...”

Zhang Tie immediately jumped onto the seat and adroitly drew the reset catch of the steam ballista. Closely after that, he put his hands on the handle of the ballista and pressed down the trigger. With a short glance, he shot out a bolt towards the head of a demonized puppet who was holding a corpse and rushing towards the city wall more than 500 m away, blowing its white and red brains out.

All the other fighters of S137 emplacement exclaimed at once. It would take others a least 3 bolts to precisely hit a demonized puppet; however, it depended that which part of the demonized puppet could they shoot. If they shot its torso or limb, besides opening a hole on the demonized puppet, they could still not stop it running towards the city wall although it would slow down its speed. If they wanted to kill one demonized puppet, they had to consume at least 7-10 bolts. However, with 10 bolts, Zhang Tie could precisely kill more than 4 demonized puppets.

”Hurry, get some more ammo here!” The monitor of that emplacement roared as he also rolled up his sleeves and joined Zhang Tie’s supporting crew.

From then on, the ballista S137 kept firing 3 times per 2 seconds and shot bolts towards demonized puppets constantly who were 30-500 m away from the city wall.

Zhang Tie, who was sitting in the gunner’s seat, repeated his movements like targeting and shooting as his body faintly quivered with the ballista. As ballistas on the city wall were driven by steam high-pressure ejection, its principle was similar to that of bombs before the Catastrophe. However, the powder was replaced by a rotating high-density steam compression can. When the steam compression can was broken, the thrust would trigger a sliding barbette which was similar to a piston, shooting the bolt out of the tube of the ballista.

When the high-intensity steam compression can released its thrust, the barbette would suffer a great counter-force. Although there were devices like torsional spring on the emplacement, a part of the counter-force was still transferred to the gunner. Commoners could only keep operating it for 1 hour before their arms became numb; if longer, their arms would be dislocated; in the worst case scenario, their joints would be severely worn.

However, Zhang Tie was not influenced by that bit of counter-force at all. For a person who could stand almost 900 kg’s trike, that bit of shake was too trivial.

Zhang Tie pressed his hands on the handle as steady as a huge rock on the ground as he constantly blew out demonized puppets’ heads. It was a bit similar to throwing javelins. Although Zhang Tie could not realize 100% precision like how he threw javelins; using his instinct, he could reach 30% to 50%. Although Zhang Tie couldn’t control the power of the high-intensity steam compression can, he could try his best to control the trajectory of the bolt in the air just like how he controlled the trajectory of his javelins.

With this ability, Zhang Tie became a respectable ”great gunner” on the city wall. He didn’t even remember how many demonized puppets had he killed these days.

It was worth being happy to have such a harvest for others; however, Zhang Tie felt it meaningless. But he had to do that. Although those demonized puppets were humans previously, they were just a larva or an egg of the parent puppet worm of demons at this moment. A puppet parent worm could lay hundreds of thousands of eggs per day. However, the real demon corps had not appeared till then. Perhaps demonized puppets corps were just cheap low-value consumables for demons corps. They were dispatched here for just to be a cannon fodder. No matter how many of them were killed, the demons would never feel pitiful about their loss.

Whereas, nobody across Mocco City knew that the famous Selnes Eagle was working as a gunner at an emplacement at this moment.

When the demonized puppets were less than 30 m away from the city wall, they were in a dead angle of the steam ballistas; instead, they were in the shooting range of the scattered strike weapons. The entire city wall was covered with layers of weapons. After reaching here, besides dropping off the corpses from their arms, they could never survive themselves; however, those demonized puppets didn’t intend to withdraw at all. Although being like sieves, the demonized puppets still gathered at the foot of the city wall, allowing alive ones to climb on them. Whereas, as long as they drew closer to the city wall, rows of sharp steel javelins would prick out and draw back repetitively from egg-sized holes. As a result, those demonized puppets were constantly killed.

Although demonized puppets would fail each time when they stepped on their partners’ corpses, the pile of corpses gradually increased their height while the demonized puppets became increasingly closer to the top of the city wall. After being blocked by dense corpses, the defensive weapons on the lower part of the city wall became ineffective.

Everybody knew that the real test had not arrived yet. However, it was not too far.

The moment Zhang Tie sat on the ballista had he forgotten about time. Gradually, besides burning torches, the lens headlights on the city wall were also turned on, brightening up the area within 100 m. However, the farther place became dim. Firepots were thrown out of the city wall one after another and burned up the open land in the dark so as to provide sufficient light sources for firing weapons on the city wall.

After it turned completely dark, the precision of weapons on the city wall started to decline. As a result, the demonized puppets became more restless as their striking density and frequency increased evidently. Additionally, demonized puppets could always put out the firebombs very fast and make the surrounding space recover to dark completely.

Demonized puppets kept flashing out of the dark and rushing towards Mocco City one wave after another while their grim looks were like that of ferocious ghosts.

With the dark vision ability, Zhang Tie could keep the same precision as he did in the daytime. Because the density of demonized puppets increased, Zhang Tie’s ballista even became more fatal. However, only Zhang Tie could do this across the entire city wall. Therefore, more and more demonized puppets evidently forced in the range of 30 m.

Not knowing how long had he stayed on the city wall, Zhang Tie suddenly heard a boom as his S137 stopped working...

A part of the emplacement suddenly cracked while a metal fragment immediately broke Zhang Tie’s face and left a 2-cm long wound on Zhang Tie’s left face...

”Ah, the high-pressure rifled tube is broken. What the hell? Motherf*cker...” The monitor of class 2 looked downward as he shouted. All the other fighters became flurried...

Regardless of his wound and the fresh blood, Zhang Tie casually wiped off the blood as he jumped off the gunner’s seat. He looked downward and found a tube at the bottom of the barbette had been destroyed evidently as a hot vapor spurted out of it...

”How’s it? Can we fix it?” Zhang Tie asked the monitor...

”As a key part of the emplacement, it should not be broken so easily. We could only change it. However, we need to move away the entire turret. It will take us at least 3 days to fix it.” The monitor of S137’s face turned pale...

In a split second, another boom was drifted from a ballista in the distance, causing it to break down too...

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