Barton had already deployed his strongest combat power near the Gate of the Abyss, and he just had to nail himself there.
But even so, it still cannot stop the progress of mankind.
The Gate of the Abyss was destroyed, and although Bristone was still in the hands of the devil, it had no value.
However, Bristone is a completely converted hell city. As long as the heart of hell is not dug out, humans cannot destroy this city.
In the inner city, there are still towering walls, dense fire demon towers, and although the morale is not high, there are a very large number of demons.
It is the same as capitals such as Lion Heart City and Qingfeng City.
The inner city walls of Bristone are also taller, thicker and more durable.
In addition to the higher durability of the city walls, there are also many catapults in the inner city that were smashed before and were barely repaired in the past two days.
In addition to the catapults that were destined to die on the wall, there are also a large number of crossbows that have no time and no chance to be used.
The long-range advantage has returned to the devil's hands.
Looking back at the human coalition, there are many shops and narrow roads everywhere outside the inner city.
Not to mention the catapult, even the ballistae is inconvenient to discharge.
On the two main roads that cross the north and south, and intersect east and west, there is not enough space for the siege infantry and covering shooters alone.
If they want to attack the city with all their strength, the human coalition must first clear out all the buildings around the inner city.
How long this will take, no one knows.
At this time, the devil had no interest in human affairs.
Barton issued an order to release all restrictions and allow the demons hiding in the inner city to plunder crazily.
The human craftsmen who were previously retained for various purposes no longer need to be retained.
After all, the Gate of the Abyss has been destroyed, and Barton's only chance of survival is to defend the inner city and the Heart of Hell with all his strength.
If the Gate of the Abyss is destroyed, it will be destroyed. Since His Majesty Cregan was able to rebuild it before, he may not be able to rebuild it in the future.
Anyway, His Majesty Kerrigan gave him the mandatory order to guard Bristone for at least a week.
As long as he can get through today, he will have completed the task in three or four days.
When the time comes, no matter how Kerrigan punishes him, at least he cannot kill him.
However, just as Barton racked his brains and tried every means to boost the demon's morale, the human coalition quietly retreated.
They did not retreat too far, but formed a formation one kilometer outside the inner city, where neither the ballista nor the Fire Demon Tower could hit them.
Human beings seem to be planning to trap them to death through siege.
Indeed, the inner city of Bristone, whether it is used as a temporary palace of the Western Empire or as a palace of Kerrigan.
This is a place where ordinary human soldiers and demons cannot approach.
There are not many food supplies stored in the inner city, and too many demons poured in at once.
If these hundreds of thousands of demons were allowed to eat, even including those low-level demons, they would probably only be able to last for about a week.
'But those humans must have never imagined that this time I am desperate, and even humans are just food for our demons. ’
Including human craftsmen and their families, even if it is only enough for the devil to last one more day, it is enough.
Half of a week's requirement has passed, not to mention that if the rations in the inner city are slightly regulated, it will be enough to last ten days and a half.
After such a long time, His Majesty Kerrigan must have rushed back.
By then, even if His Majesty Cregan failed to come back, his mission would have been over.
Mendis can fly. As a Balrog, although he cannot fly, he still has his own life-saving tools.
This time Xu Lai is not here to fight to the death, but to fight to the death.
So neither Xu Lai nor Reina is equipped with war shackles.
Barton deliberately allowed some demons to escape before, just to test human interception methods.
If it were just a physical interception by the knights, Barton would still be very sure that he could escape.
However, the result was not ideal, because humans almost did not intercept them, but instead allowed the demons to leave.
Because of this, the huge demons in the outer city all fled collectively as if they had discovered a new continent.
Had it not been for Barton’s quick control, he might not have been able to save the last 300,000 demons.
The outer city has been lost. Barton has little confidence in whether he can hold the inner city or whether Kerrigan can return reinforcements in time.
Since humans are not attacking the city at this time, it is also a good thing for Barton.
He ordered his demons to keep an eye on the slings and not allow them to fire ammunition privately. He then summoned the remaining demon generals in the city for discussion.
The densely packed buildings in the city are also cover for human troops.
In addition, the slingers trained before were basically killed in the shooting battles with humans in the past few days.
Humans have the means of resurrection, but demons do not. They can only let those demons who are good at throwing stones to die in battle.
The inner city has limited resources. Shooting when the hit rate is not high and the enemy's subordinates cannot be clearly seen is basically a waste of ammunition.
It's also a good thing for humans that demons don't use catapults.
This is the only weapon that demons can use to attack humans. It is impossible for Xu Lai to withdraw his troops outside the city to prevent catapults, so it would be meaningless for him to capture the city.
For Bristone, Xu Lai’s only obsession is the Gate of the Abyss.
After destroying the Gate of the Abyss, Bristone was just an ordinary hell castle-level city.
In such a city, even if one Bridgestone is destroyed, there are still countless Bridgestones.
Therefore, he has no obsession with whether Bristone exists or not, and he does not want to fight the demon army now.
It is foreseeable that even if he captures Bristone through a fierce battle, the following days will not be easy.
Because what he has to face is probably Kerrigan who has gone crazy.
The most important thing is that in order to break through Bristone as soon as possible and destroy the Gate of the Abyss, he consumed countless ammunition and smashed all Bristone's walls and arrow towers to pieces.
Let’s not talk about whether he can dig out the Heart of Hell in time. Even if he can dig it out, he will not have time to convert it into a human city.
The only faster way is to choose to destroy the city directly, and then choose to lead a large force to leave, or to build a human city on the spot.
No matter which option he chooses, he has no chance of defending and can only engage in hand-to-hand combat with Kerrigan.
But if he abandoned the inner city, Xu Lai would have at least three or four more days to arrange it.
Just like now, he is arranging for Emilia and her Naga guards to leave.
Emilia and Naga troops are extremely powerful and have advantages when defending the city, but their movement speed is relatively slow.
Secondly, there are those catapults outside the city. Even if these catapults are detachable, it is very difficult to pack them all and transport them back to Graycastle. However, Graycastle lost a lot of catapults before. Now that we have this opportunity, we can naturally transport back as many as we can.
The remaining items that cannot be taken away will be put back into the warehouse ring and dragged back to Qingfeng City.
In addition to catapults, Bristone's warehouse also stores a large amount of supplies.
Among these supplies are food hoarded by previous humans.
Demons have little interest in food, and nearly all demons are carnivores.
However, demons can also eat food when supplies are scarce. Like humans, they are omnivores.
When there is really nothing to eat, the devil will compromise on this food in order to survive.
Therefore, these grains are still piled intact in the warehouse and have not been damaged.
However, some of the original weapons warehouses, resource warehouses, and material warehouses have suffered various degrees of damage.
Some of the precious resources, such as mercury and sulfur, which were in great demand by demons but had little demand by humans, were all moved into the inner city.
On the contrary, the gems, crystals and other resources that humans need most have been moved from the inner city to the outside.
As for the weapons, none of the most precious magic weapons can be seen.
But those ordinary weapons, regardless of their level, are stored here almost intact.
Because there is a huge size gap between humans and demons, these weapons, armors and other equipment cannot be used directly.
This is also the reason why demons leave behind a large number of human craftsmen.
Without these human craftsmen, relying solely on the demons themselves, they may not be able to digest these equipment even if they are given another ten years.
In the remaining warehouses, the highest-level resources such as fine gold and mithril are naturally invisible.
But in the warehouse outside the city, the number of gold coins is actually not that small. They are all calculated by boxes. You can find dozens or hundreds of boxes in any warehouse.
Any job in the city requires the resource of gold coins.
Whether it is recruiting soldiers, training soldiers, or building weapons and equipment, city defense weapons, or even the most important thing, hatching demons, gold coins are indispensable.
It is unrealistic to store all gold coins in the inner city.
Even Xu Lai has multiple gold coin warehouses outside the palace.
For example, the administrative building has a gold coin warehouse specifically used for taxation and salary distribution.
There are also multiple gold coin warehouses in the market. If Xu Lai wants to build a bank in the future, he will also prepare more warehouses.
These materials were either collected by demons, or were collected and stored here by previous nobles.
If Xu Lai doesn't take them away, they can only be left to the devil, and they will become capital and ammunition against him in the future.
Therefore, Xu Lai took away all of Bristone's resources as much as possible and never left any trace for the devil.
As the base camp of demons, Bristone, in addition to the materials left in the city, actually also has other resources paid tribute by demons.
Even if Xu Lai has a warehouse ring, he needs to put so many supplies into the warehouse ring one by one.
The action of collecting them is simple. The soldiers who arrive at the camp first arrange the boxes, and Xu Lai can easily collect them by touching them one by one.
But at the other end of Qingfeng City, people were already coming and going in the warehouse, almost one step at a time.
But even so, the warehouse is not filling up as fast as it is moving out.
Xu Lai had to accommodate Qingfeng City's speed.
After all, no matter how slow the Qingfeng City side is, it will definitely be faster than the soldiers carrying supplies on their backs.
After processing the supplies, a search was conducted and a population of nearly 100,000 was found in the outer city.
Most of these people are young and capable people, skilled craftsmen, and relatives who control them.
After the demon was driven away, these people naturally fell into Xu Lai's hands.
Although these people can stay alive, they are more or less helping the devil.
Even many of the catapults on the inner and outer city walls were restored by them.
Their hands were indirectly stained with the blood of countless compatriots.
But no matter what, they are also labor force and skilled workers. Even the devil did not kill them, so they should not die in the hands of fellow human beings.
Their sins should be repaid with their own labor force, their own skills and blood and sweat.
Such a labor force is of great use, especially when Graycastle is lacking a large population.
Unfortunately, they are very effective, but their movement speed is very slow.
These people are still pure farmers without any fighting ability. If they encounter escaping demons or wild monsters in the wild, they will probably have no way to survive.
Xu Lai's cavalry should be left to chase the demons, and since they move the fastest, they must stay at the rear.
The Xiandeng Battalion is composed entirely of independent warriors. If you stay with them, it will be more convenient no matter what you do.
In addition, there is no high-level hero in Graycastle to take charge of the overall situation, so Reina will take the Qingfeng Legion, Phantom Shooter, Priest and these farmers as the second batch to retreat.
The retreat was also in a hurry. Even after the Qingfeng Legion had packed up, it was already night and they had to travel all night without turning on the lights.
All the torches and lights were left in Bridstone by Xu Lai, and they were all illuminated.
Eric and others are frantically plundering everything in Bristone. As long as there is a little space in the warehouse ring, a lot of resources will be moved in immediately.
Even those catapults and crossbows that were smashed but still repairable, as well as equipment ripped from the bodies of dead demons.
As long as they are useful, valuable, or just beneficial to the devil, all resources must be moved away.
Under the bright lights, there are busy figures of human beings everywhere.
Barton and Mendis watched on the city wall for a long time, but in the end they still didn't dare to act rashly, and they didn't even dare to send some flying soldiers to investigate.
In a daytime battle, the 3,400-strong Angel Legion killed tens of thousands of fire elves in a daze. Hundreds of thousands of winged demons were defeated and lost, and they no longer had the will to fight.
There are still some abyss lords available under Mendis.
During the day, he was the shrewdest. He kept all his troops close to him and the losses were not big.
The demon found no abnormality and did not report it to Kerrigan.
The Gate of the Abyss was destroyed. Unless Kerrigan took the initiative to ask, Barton would not even bother to report to Kerrigan.
However, when a new day comes, Bridgestone, which was bustling with activity last night, is now as quiet as a dead city.
Having noticed something was wrong, Barton quickly sent out demons to investigate, but the demons who came back to report said that there was no one in the city.
However, although there is no one in the city, all the supplies and imprisoned humans are also missing.
However, after receiving the news, Barton was not too sad, but felt an indescribable sense of joy. (End of chapter)