Dawn broke. Golden-red light bathed the earth, illuminating Dylan’s mud-streaked face.
Leaning on his shovel, voice hoarse with disbelief and trembling slightly, he asked, “Boss, everything you said… is true?”
“Of course it’s true. When have I ever lied to you?”
Dylan clutched the crumpled note, saying nothing.
But the gloom in his heart was quickly swept away by the sudden good news. Tears welled uncontrollably, mixing with the mud to leave two clear tracks.
“Bella… Bella is really alive!” He laughed and cried like a child, repeating, “I knew it! I knew she wouldn’t leave so easily! She’s my daughter, after all!”
“Enough already,” Lin Jun said. “It’s not like you’re anything special. If you ask me, your daughter is way stronger than you. She’s almost diamond-tier adventurer level at forty-eight.”
Dylan suddenly remembered something. He threw down the shovel and scrambled out of the pit. “I have to find her! Right now!”
A Puchi leaped to the pit’s edge. Mycelial tentacles whipped out like lightning.
Dylan spun in mid-air two and a half times before landing “thud” back in the pit.
“Feeling better?” Lin Jun asked.
Dylan, lying there, nodded after a long moment.
Times were different now. The west coast was in chaos. Dylan going out wouldn’t find Bella sailing the seas; he’d just lose his life.
“You don’t need to worry too much. Their group looked pretty strong. Should be fine.” The three-kilometer sniper had left a deep impression on Lin Jun.
After a long while, Dylan slowly sat up and wiped his face. “You’re right, Boss… I lost my head.”
Regardless, knowing his daughter was alive and seemingly doing well was the best news imaginable.
He walked back thinking of her, swinging between joy and worry, only returning to the Puchi House at noon.
Pushing open the door, Bianca’s enthusiastic voice greeted him.
“Welcome… Boss? Where the hell have you been? You have no idea how many customers came this morning asking about the new potion prices! I didn’t know what to charge and had to turn them all away! We lost so much business!”
Bianca had every reason to care; she earned a few coppers per bottle sold.
But Dylan was still lost in thought, only mumbling, “Yeah, yeah…”
Bianca narrowed her eyes suspiciously, swallowing the rest of her complaints to secretly observe her oddly behaving boss.
Distracted, swinging between sadness and joy.
Classic lovesickness symptoms!
With her “vast” life experience, Bianca made her judgment.
Hiding in the kitchen, Bianca sighed. She wondered if work would still be fun once there was a lady boss…
…
Meanwhile, Goldvalley City.
Though the transport team had lost half its members, they brought back far more corpses than expected, many still fresh…
Compared to expected civilian or regular soldier bodies, fresh pigfolk warrior corpses provided far more mana for the fungal mat.
With Lin Jun’s deliberate subsidy, even more Puchis sprouted from the mat.
At the same time, regular soldiers were converted to Puchi masters.
Days later, Puchi master numbers neared a thousand.
The inexplicably turned Puchi master Angela was among them; now she truly deserved the title of Puchi master commander.
The expected demon attack arrived as scheduled.
The familiar snakefolk, plus an unfamiliar group of lizardmen.
Enemy numbers exceeded four thousand.
Most worrying to Angela were the lizardmen.
Lizardmen weren’t as physically imposing as snakefolk, but they had the highest proportion of archers.
Puchis feared ranged troops most.
After voicing her concerns to the viscount, he made a decision no one expected.
He abandoned the walls, ordering everyone into the complex urban terrain.
Another commander protested, reasonably.
Street fighting would scatter the troops; morale was already low among garrison forces. They’d collapse quickly.
But the viscount felt head-on defense had even less chance. The enemy clearly understood Puchis now; they wouldn’t send men to die uselessly again.
Puchi mushroom cannons had only a hundred-meter range; far shorter than lizardmen bows.
Having soldiers trade shots was hopeless with the numbers gap. Only street fighting offered any chance.
Sure enough, when the demons attacked, the lizardmen first washed the walls with arrows, killing most exposed Puchis. Only after confirming no threat did they advance wave by wave.
Climbing the empty walls, they even thought the humans had given up, guessing which way they’d flee.
But direction didn’t matter; most would be caught and enslaved back in the Empire.
Then inside the city, they ran into Puchis again.
In street fighting, Puchis exceeded even the viscount’s expectations.
Snakefolk could still resist ambushes; lizardmen suffered massive losses.
A single missed self-destruct Puchi in their ranks instantly left four or five lizardmen half-dead, howling on the ground.
The small creatures darted between buildings or hid in roadside trash, rushing out when demons neared.
Puchi masters generally stayed a safe one or two hundred meters back, not micromanaging, just issuing attack orders when distance looked right.
One Puchi master sensed his Puchis nearly wiped out and decisively retreated.
But a lizardman arrow struck him, piercing his chest. The Puchi master collapsed, wailing.
Angela walked over, snapped the arrow, and yanked it out. “Quit howling. You’re not dying! Take him away!”
A soldier carried off the rookie Puchi master who still didn’t realize how tough his new life force was.
Puchi masters rarely died from a single shot unless instantly fatal.
The toughest one before had survived a heart-and-lung piercing after timely arrow removal. A chest shot was nothing!
Angela looked at the distant demons mired in poison mist and explosions and knew they had won again.
Puchi master street fighting wasn’t about morale like traditional urban combat; it was the enemy trading blood and morale for Puchis that weren’t much loss when dead.
Get close, and these little things were any army’s nightmare!
Sure enough, advancing less than a kilometer, the snakefolk and lizardmen leaders saw the problem and recalled their troops.
After so long fighting, they had only killed an unknown number of magical pets that seemed far from depleted.
Who dared continue?
Forced to withdraw.
The snakefolk leader wanted to slap himself. Why had he come back to this cursed place?
He never imagined that after so many days, the city’s Puchis seemed even more numerous than last time?!
How were the humans replenishing them?
Before leaving, he glanced at a fungal mat in the city and gained some insight.
…
After they retreated, Goldvalley City’s reputation as “untouchable” spread completely among demon raiding parties.
Until the demon dukes recalled these forces to the main army, Goldvalley faced no more large-scale attacks, becoming one of the few western cities to hold until the end.
(End of Chapter)
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