After hearing Niu Zida's command, Yor charged along the torchlit city wall, pulled out her kunai dagger, and instantly took down several archers. The people on the city wall hadn't expected someone to suddenly break in, and with the knights all down below annihilating the thieves, those on top were just archers with no melee combat ability. Yor's charge quickly threw them into chaos.
Niu Zida, lying on Yor's beautiful back, told Yor not to linger in battle, but to quickly cut through the middle of the archers. The archers began to scatter and flee, leaving only one tall, thin middle-aged man in armor in the center. Yor, without asking, went straight up and killed him with a single strike.
When the surrounding people saw the tall, thin middle-aged man killed in a surprise attack, they all scattered and fled.
Amidst the chaos, Niu Zida had Yor continue to pursue and kill, quickly dispersing dozens of archers on the city wall. Yor captured a fleeing archer, and Niu Zida asked him to point out where Spring was. The man stammered and pointed to the armored corpse on the ground, saying:
"The person you just killed was the Viscount."
Good heavens! No wonder these archers started scattering and fleeing after Yor casually cut down a few people. It turned out he had directly carried out a decapitation strike. But this was also good; it saved him effort. Niu Zida looked at the situation below and found it was quite lively there too.
The chaos on the city wall also affected the confused melee below. The thieves had been pushed against the city gate. Facing these knights in chainmail, who were better equipped than them, they had no ability to resist. Seeing that they were about to be completely slaughtered, many thieves began to surrender. After all, they had only been incited by Niu Zida to plunder and had no intention of fighting to the death.
"Viscount Spring is dead! Viscount Spring is dead!"
Niu Zida had Yor force the archer to shout from the city wall. The knights, who had already surrounded the remaining thieves, began to waver upon hearing the news of their lord's death from the city wall. Just then, Niu Zida had that archer raise the city gate. The iron-clad gate of this small city was not heavy; one person could operate the pulley mechanism. Once the city gate was raised again, the thieves outside also rushed in, instantly increasing their numbers.
The remaining knights, seeing this, became even more disorganized and began to retreat. However, they were not like the less-trained Militia. They retreated in an organized manner towards the castle in the center of the small city. As long as they could return to the castle and hold out, there would still be a way. There was food there, and stone walls that were much stronger than the rammed earth walls outside, as well as some small defensive machinery. With a dozen people, they could even resist an army of several hundred.
The remaining thieves rushed into the city in a swarm. However, their combat power was indeed not very good. Many of them had no intention of pursuing the foot knights but instead began to break into civilian houses to plunder. Niu Zida was too lazy to bother with them; in any case, the city was now in chaos. He rode Yor, descended from the city wall, and, with the few thieves who could still barely follow him, continued to pursue and cut down the remaining foot knights. These dozen or so foot knights reached the castle gate and had the castle open. As soon as they entered, two of them instantly lost their heads. Then, a large group of Goblins leaped out from all directions and trembled with these foot knights in the darkness.
If it were face-to-face combat, these dozen or so foot knights, in formation, would likely be able to withstand thousands of Goblins, but in the chaos of the night, these foot knights were crowded together, completely mixed with these short Goblins who appeared from nowhere.
They couldn't see clearly and didn't dare to exert too much force for fear of injuring their own people, but these short Goblins specifically targeted the chain links of their mail armor or their less protected legs.
In just a few moments, several knights were injured in the legs and fell to the ground, and once they fell, several Goblins would pounce on them and begin to strip off their armor.
Without their armor, knights who were originally difficult to kill in close combat became like lambs to the slaughter in the melee.
Moreover, in the midst of the chaos, a beautiful young woman with long black hair also moved like a ghost, ambushing these human knights alongside the Goblins.
This was Misato Shizuku.
At the start of the battle, Niu Zida had ordered Misato Shizuku to lead the Goblins over the wall to preemptively occupy the castle, preventing any knights from the city wall from retreating there and continuing to resist stubbornly.
This kind of melee didn't last long before these dozen knights were completely overwhelmed.
Several of them even died tragically, especially after Yor joined the fray and killed several knights in quick succession.
Finally, the remaining knights couldn't hold on any longer and requested to surrender their weapons.
Niu Zida blew the Goblin bone whistle amidst the chaos, and immediately, the Goblins who had just been entangled in combat disengaged.
He ordered a quick count of the battlefield.
On the knights' side, 9 knights remained, 2 severely wounded, and 7 dead.
On the Goblin side, 15 died.
Niu Zida was quite surprised that the short Goblins, in a chaotic night battle, could achieve such an exchange ratio against proper human knights.
He felt that if these short Goblins were utilized well, their combat power would be considerable, as they listened to him, were willing to fight to the death, and their fighting spirit could be guaranteed.
Conversely, the human rogues in this battle truly disappointed Niu Zida.
Although the previous fighting did involve him using these rogues as cannon fodder, they collapsed at the first contact in frontal engagements, were unilaterally suppressed, and then, during the follow-up attack, only a few rogues followed him, while the rest all ran off to loot.
Even if he had promised to allow them to plunder, that was meant to be after the battle.
How could they go off and do that during a war?
Niu Zida felt it was a good opportunity to clean up this group of rogues.
"Alright, order everyone to gather in the castle."
"I didn't expect my master's judgment to be so accurate.
How did you know the castle would be their last stronghold?"
"The center of such a small town must have developed around the castle, so capturing the leader and having the short Goblins raid here while the battle on the city wall was ongoing was the best choice.
I just didn't expect Yor to kill the lord on the city wall.
This task was originally given to you all, and it would have been even better if he could have been captured alive."
"I'm sorry, Master..."
"No need to apologize.
It was so chaotic during the battle, and none of us knew Lord Spring, so what could we do?
Oh, where is Aponia?"
"According to your orders, she has already taken control of the lord's family."