Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

"KEEP THEM OFF THE WALLS!" Salicious screamed from the bottom of his lungs before throwing a broken spear he just pulled out of a random corpse at an imperial trying to charge him down. "PUSH THEM DOWN!"

Regardless of Salicious desperate shouts and battle bravery,Nôv(el)B\\jnn

one wouldn't expect from a cripple, the situation continued to deteriorate.

Mere hours, right at the deepest hour of the night, Salicious watched how the brave men of the patriarchate stepped out of the second gate, burning and tearing down the makeshift fortifications the imperial army littered all over the ramp.

Their construction efforts reached nearly all the way up to the gate, forcing this desperate sortie against all odds. A rush that with every step, brought those brave soldiers closer and closer to the mass of imperial soldiers gathered below the ramp, where patriarchate forces couldn't accurately strike them down with projectiles.

In fact, those makeshift fortifications on the ramp also served to further reduce Salicious' ability to strike from the height of the wall.

It was all because of the unfortunate perspective of reinforcements like that, where due to the ramp's incline, even a small structure cast a long shadow at the

fortress first floor below. A shadow that perfectly outlined the area where

patriarchate's projectiles couldn't reach.

At first, the sortie went smoothly, with a third of the embankments, piles of garbage

and mobile shields falling to the axes and torches of the counterattacking force.

A third of the ramp's length

were as far as those brave yet poor souls got, before the empire mounted a proper defense, revealing the scattering of skirmishers hidden amidst the artificially moved rubble.

Back then, everything was still okay. The expeditionary force consisted mostly of the injured veterans who were there to shield the operation and young recruits

who, saved from

battle up until now, could now make use of their energy to hack away at the makeshift defenses on the ramp.

Those veterans, though…

Most of them were injured if not outright maimed. And the simple rule through which they were selected for this likely suicidal mission was as cold as it was pragmatic. A rule straight out of Banjay's book.

All the veterans picked for this raid were unlikely to live till the end of the week. Some lost their limbs,

others were already reeling from the

gut-wounds. And soon, this difference in

health of the soldiers started to weigh on the ongoing battle.

Bit by bit, the sortieing force started to give ground.

There were simply too many imperials for the weakened veterans to push through. And what was even worse, with every passing moment, the sounds of the ongoing battle attracted more and more legionaries to the fray, only accelerating the rate of the patriarchate's retreat.

Soon, the last of the imperial fortifications fell, clarifying how much progress the sortie could achieve.

Upon the signal from the tower, the recruits rushed into a disorganized retreat, all chasing their fate back to the gate. In the meantime, the veterans held their ground, buying as much time as they could for the recruits… and paying more and more of their own blood for the extremely costly strategy Banjay decided on.

Those veterans… They all knew what was coming and, for the most part, managed to make their peace with what

laid in store for them. And so, despite their overwhelming advantage and odds still growing with the endless stream of further legionaries joining the battle…

Continue your adventure with empire

The fighting came to a stall, creating a stalemate that neither side could break.

Patriarchate's veterans

has long since

gave up on trying to push forth, now fully content with the idea of just stopping the imperial advance.

For but a second, ten seconds, a minute…

Since they were all aware of their fate, the fate that was set in stone

with the moment the second gate shut back close behind their backs, they were at least making sure their lives would come at a great expense for their enemies.

And so, for the next hour and a two, in the flickering light of the sparse few torches that have yet to burn out down at the ramp, the veterans continued their stand, valiantly culling down the imperials while their own numbers continued to whittle down.

A sortie that lasted about two hours at best, consisted of over one and a half

hour of this valiant, determined stand to the last man.

'Thinking about it, in a sense, that bloody sacrifice was the main point of the sortie, not the destruction of their fortifications,' Salicious thought, shaking his head to cast away the memories of the battle and focus on its current moment.

After defeating the veterans and reclaiming the entirety of the ramp, the imperials didn't bother trying to reconstruct their fortifications.

Maybe they feared the repeat of the story? Maybe the determination of

patriarchate's veterans made them wary of another battle like that?

Or maybe they simply didn't want to fight below the second wall, from where a constant stream of projectiles continued to thin down their numbers.

And so, rather than repeating the same, smart thing as before, their officers called for a general attack instead, pushing hundreds upon hundreds of soldiers into the relatively narrow passage of the ramp.

Some fell down the ramp's edge. Quite a lot of others fell prey to the patriarchate's archers. After all, with how squeezed together they were, pretty much every arrow found a target, even if not its intended one. There were even some who ended up squeezed to the death once the mass of soldiers

inevitably crossed the breaking point and turned into an

unamanageable crowd.

And yet, ignoring all those losses, the imperials continued to push.

It was as if the legion's officers decided they wasted enough time on the Lunagar fortress already and were dead-set on taking it in this attack, regardless of the cost.

This was obviously a stupid idea. More and more legionaries died with every passing minute.

Their makeshift covers worked great to shield the first floor of the

fortress, but did only a little when it came to those actually climbing the ramp. The density of the soldiers on the ramp also didn't make it any easier for even the ladders to be brought to the front, with all of the siege engines Empire worked on currently stuck way down at the bottom of the ramp.

This was the definition of madness, a slaughterhouse for one's own men. And yet… the empire continued to push. And soon, they managed to push the patriarchate's defenders hard enough, that their

defences started to slowly crumble.

At first, it was just a single soldier lucking out and jumping over the edge of the wall right before someone pushed the ladder he was climbing off the wall.

Sure, the man found three spears

embeeded deeply into his guts before even landing on the wall's terrace…

But those three spears moving into action meant three men putting away their bows and having to refocus themselves on another task.

Then, two more soldiers made it up the wall, several meters off to the side of the first intrusion. Then, four more climbed up near the gate itself.

This process continued all the way to the point where Salicious found himself right now, desperately trying to maintain the defense of the wall, yet already realizing his efforts might fall shy of the

fortress needs.

'Shit,' cursing under his breath, the old general turned to get a quick look around and establish a proper

asessment of the situation.

By now, the entire defense was in shambles. There were imperial soldiers mixing with patriarchate soldiers on every section of the wall, while the several heavy ladders the imperials managed to pass up the ramp now lodged themselves against the wall, providing the imperials below

a proper access to the top of the wall.

'I guess it's time,' Salicious thought, pushing away his hopes and desperation

and, just like the veterans from the overnight sortie, he prepared himself for his fate.

A single breath of respite later, Salicious threw himself back into the fray, slashing, cutting

and crushing any imperial with either the sword in his right or the crafty mallet created by adding a pointy weight to the bottom of his walking stick.

"Augh!"

An arrow pierced the old man's left shoulder, causing him to relax his grip and let go of his secondary weapon.

Sensing the opportunity, two nearby legionaries rushed him down, one with an exaggerated overhand smite while the other

jumping off to the side, trying to move around Salicious without slipping off the narrow terrace at the wall's top.

'Amateurs,' Salicious grimaced, stepping away from the telegraphed, downward strike while putting the attacker right in the path of the legionary's companion.

Big moves, spatial movements

and wide steps making up an elaborate footwork…

All of those could work up to an average level of a dueling field. Placed against a master swordsman, though, those wide attacks were choke-full of openings, the elaborate footwork just a means

in which people directed their focus away from the weapon of their enemy.

That alone said a lot about the level of the legionaries, who couldn't be anything more than local bullies or maybe lesser nobles.

But this was all within the lacking constraint of an open-field dueling arena. And right now, the three of them were not in such a

comfortably, open space.

'It almost feels bad killing them,' Salicious thought as he snuck a short blade of his knife into the guts of the man right when his sword struck the wall terrace's floor. Following up with a kick to the man's abdomen, Salicious

both freed his handy weapon

but also used the dying man's body as a projectile, pushing his companion off the wall and into the embrace of the reinforcements waiting at the bottom of the wall.

"KEEP GOING!" Salicious screamed out, turning around to face a new danger that he sensed coming from his right…

Only for a sharp, mind-numbing pain to explode in his right shoulder when a spear pierced right through it.

'What's this…'

Salicious thought, his eyes widening

up as he realized it was now time for him to pay the

prize of Banjay's terrifying plan.

A price he knew all those who failed to retreat behind the third wall would come to pay. And a prize he decided to satisfy the very moment he learned of Banjay's schemes.

'I've watched countless soldiers rush to their death…'

Ignoring the strange, dull noise that seemed to

oscillate right at the edge of his

conciousness, Salicious focused on the task at hand.

He put the pain aside, accepting it as something that would accompany him until his very last moment. And by accepting this paint, he managed to not only let go of his sword, making it look as if he couldn't hold on to it any longer…

But when the enemy soldier tugged on their spear to pull it back out, Salicious raised his arm and grasped at the spear's wood.

'I guess this is where my story ends,' sensing the coming weakness caused by the bloodloss and the exhaustion of the long battle, Salicious jerked himself forth, along the wood of the spear, only to slam his body into the unsuspecting legionary.

A moment later, when the two tumbled down onto the wall's terrace, he once again managed to

made use of his petite knife, a blade that any respectable soldier would laugh at before coming to learn the perils of really dense, crowded battles.

For a few moments, the legionary's body twitched, convulsing as his internal organs did their best to stop the bleeding caused by the many shallow stabs Salicious

littered the man's stomach

with, before everything finally calmed down and came to an end.

Salicious didn't die, though.

He was losing blood, he was gravely injured and nearing the limit of what his old, battered body could endure…

But it wasn't the sweet release of a soldier's death that calmed the world for him.

'Again, what the hell…'

This time, Salicious realized that this dull, weird noise that he kept hearing wasn't the tune the death would play as it arrived to claim his life. It was something else, something else major enough to stop the madness of the ongoing battle.

As he raised his eyes, the old general quickly realized why both patriarchate and imperial soldiers alike all froze, not daring to make even the tiniest movement as they stared at the object ignoring the laws of the world and simply floating in the air.

An object the size of a proper house, made with all sorts of precious and - importantly - heavy metals, given the lustrous way it reflected even the tiniest spots of light.

'No… What the actual hell is THIS?!'

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