The battle is over.

The southern wall of Rock Fortress was completely unable to resist the bombardment of heavy magic crystal shells after losing the shield protection. It turned out that when fighting against solid rigid targets like the city wall, Magic Crystal shells had a higher damage efficiency than the Calibrator beam. Sir Maryland once believed that Rock Fortress still had dozens of minutes of resistance after the shield was extinguished, but in the end it turned out that he miscalculated the different effects of the shell and the energy beam: the wall ended up only lasting for sixteen minutes.

The heavy gate of the fortress has completely collapsed under bombardment. At the same time, there are hundreds of meters of walls extending out from both sides of the gate. All arrow towers, prisms and external mage towers within this range are all destroyed. The outer city area behind the walls and the inner city area in the southern part have also been damaged to varying degrees. The military camps, armories and other facilities between the first and second walls have been razed to the ground.

This is a level of destruction that would never happen in traditional aristocratic wars: the Cecil army almost ended the battle with the fortress's defense facilities completely smashed, leaving no room for stalemate or maneuver for the people in the Rock Fortress.

After the shelling ended, the first and second combat regiments of Cecil led by Knight Philip and Wald Perici began to advance towards the fortress and arrived at the fortress in the evening. What made the Knight Wald sigh most was that his army spent more time on the road to receive the results than to destroy the fortress’ defensive power.

First, the Second Legion encountered almost no resistance after entering the Rock Fortress - in fact, there was no resistance at all. If you had to say it, a scared horde suddenly rushed out of the ruins was probably the only enemy the soldiers faced.

On the evening of the 58th day of the 736th month of Fire in Ansu, the flag representing Ansu royal family fell from the flagpole in front of the Rock Fortress. The marks of the Cecil family's sword and plow flew above this fortress with special significance.

Gao Wen's boots walked past the fortress stone road that seemed to be still warm and trembling. He was lined with ruins and buildings that were still smokey. His fortress soldiers, who were frightened and frightened, stood on both sides of the road. When Cecil's flag passed by them, these people crawled on the ground to show their surrender.

"All of them are temporarily held in the dungeons below the castle. If there are not enough rooms, they will be locked in solid buildings in the inner city," Gao Wen whispered to Knight Philip beside him. "It is strictly forbidden to abuse prisoners and kill wounded people, and send medical teams to treat them - these people will be part of Cecil."

Philip stood up and saluted: "I understand."

Sir Maryland, disarmed and looked gray, walked beside Gao Wen under the escort of several Cecil soldiers. He heard what Gao Wen told Philip and couldn't help but look up, with a little surprise in his eyes: "I didn't expect you to be still abiding by the noble spirit..."

"The prohibition of abuse of prisoners has nothing to do with the so-called aristocratic spirit," Gowen glanced at the former commander. Although the other party was a respectable knight, he was obviously a traditional aristocrat. "The 'captive' I forbidden to abuse not only includes knights and nobles."

Sir Maryland opened his mouth, but ended up saying nothing, just lowering his head again.

Gao Wen looked at the Knight Wald Peric on the other side. He nodded to the old Knight: "Take people to check the entire inner city and the secret passage cellar under the castle, search the entire city to prevent anyone from hiding. In addition, you must cooperate with Knight Philip to count the city's materials and houses, and report them in time. Don't forget to emphasize military discipline in this process: prohibit private stolen goods, prohibit plunder, theft, and concealment."

Wald Peric gave a knight salute with a serious look on his face: "Yes."

The old knight understood very well that letting the Second Corps lead the team to search this fortress city was not only a glory, but also a test. In this battle, the Second Corps finally became active as a formal army, but whether these soldiers from Kant area could become troops trusted by the lords for a long time would have to withstand the test of military discipline after entering the city. At this point, the Second Corps, which was converted from the original private soldiers of the nobles, had to face no smaller than what they had to come when they first went to the battlefield.

Then, Gowan arrived at the castle area of ​​the Rock Fortress - the castle spanned between the first and second walls. In fact, its main body is part of the second wall. It used to be the most magnificent and tall building in the fortress, but now... it has only less than two-thirds of the structure left.

The entire top floor of the castle and all attached tower buildings have been destroyed by the Calibrator beam.

Cecil's flag was hung on the flagpole in front of the castle by the first team to enter the city. Next to the flagpole, Gowen saw a woman wearing a light and noble long skirt and looking slightly thin.

Penny Ronald Glen stood there quietly, beside him the loyal middle-aged housekeeper, and behind them were the viscountesses leading the visor from Glen to Panshiling, and then from Panshiling to Panshi Fortress, with a hundred always loyal and firm guards.

On the other side, the high-level ranger Saldrin and dozens of steel rangers led by him stood.

A shadow flashed quickly in the air, rushed to Gao Wen's side and condensed into an amber figure. The half-elf-like lady raised her head with a smug look on her face: "Hey, I'll tell you, I helped hang the flag!"

Gao Wen randomly patted Amber on the shoulder (it seemed inappropriate to touch his head on such a formal occasion), and then walked towards Penny Glen. After seeing the calm expression on the Viscount's face, he knew that the other party's revenge had been completed.

"Your credit is irreplaceable, ma'am," said Gao Wen seriously, "Patty will be happy for your peace to come home."

He knew what this viscount was most concerned about.

After hearing Patty's name, a hint of softness flashed through Ropeny's expression. She showed a faint smile and bent down at Gao Wen extremely solemnly: "Please allow me to pay tribute to you. This fortress is yours--and please allow me to be loyal to you again. The Glen family will always be loyal to Cecil."

"I accept your allegiance," Gao Wen nodded slightly, "but don't be loyal to me or my family, but to a great cause."

When Sir Maryland saw this scene next to him, his expression changed a few times, and he didn't know how complicated the emotions he was in his heart, but in the end all the words he wanted to say turned into a long sigh with complex meanings: "Oh..."

He found that he could not even call the Viscount a traitor—Pennie's loyalty was unwavering, but she was loyal to Cecil...

"Just, don't sigh so much. Although the Rock Fortress has fallen, at least it has fallen into my hands, not in the hands of the East Rebels someday in the future," Gowen glanced at Sir Maryland and said lightly, "Maybe you are full of regret at this moment, but one day you will feel glad."

The main hall and military hall of the upper floor of the castle have been destroyed by the collapsed ceiling, and other areas have become precarious due to the collapse of the upper floor. Therefore, Gao Wen directly brought his men into the restaurant on the lower floor of the castle, and regarded it as a temporary post-war takeover command, preparing to make further arrangements for the fortress's wartime control, reconstruction and repair, follow-up management and other work.

Punching down the Rock Fortress is only the first step in work. How to re-arm and strengthen the fortress and turn it into Cecil's solid North Gate is more important.

Of course, before these work, Sir Maryland and all officer-level prisoners of war captured after the city was broken were sent to the temporary prisoner-of-war camp, and were detained and heavily guarded. Gao Wen gave them a better living environment, but they did not dare to relax in terms of security and defense. Although he did not think that Sir Maryland would make a move to escape from prison, he could not guarantee whether the other party's old subordinates would make any additional moves.

In his opinion, a chivalrous man like Maryland Onal, although not very popular in some aristocratic circles of power, he could easily cultivate extremely loyal subordinates. In this case, it was necessary to detain all commander-level prisoners of war in the Rock Fortress alone, and it was necessary to strictly guard it.

In the hall of the temporary command, Gao Wen looked around the crowd at the scene - Philip and Byron, two Cecil Knights, Wald Peric and Margarita, two Knights of Knights, Saldrin, the Iron Ranger Commander, Viscount Roppenni Glen, and Amber as the Guard, who was all attending the meeting.

"Everyone, we have won. The Rock Fortress has become the northern gate of Cecil, but before immersing in the joy of victory, we need to know that we have a lot of work to do. Saldrin, let's report on what you have to do first."

"Yes," Saldrin stood up, with a serious expression from the high-level ranger. "The King will soon know the news of the fall of the Rock Fortress-after the magic barrier of this city was extinguished, the commander who stayed in the city immediately released all the griffin messengers and pigeons, and sent a group of suicide squads to rush out of the city from the northern side gate. We only had time to intercept some of them, and the remaining messengers had disappeared on the Holy Spirit Plain. It was my fault to not destroy the griffin nest in the first time."

"No, you have limited staff, it is your mission to destroy the mage tower first, and destroy the griffin nest is not," Gao Wen interrupted Saldrin's words. "The situation is as I expected. The king will definitely know that the Rock Fortress is falling - even if the defenders in the fortress fail to send the information out, Earl Pompei will soon notice the situation and send a message immediately. There will still be griffin messengers on the Earl's territory, and there may even be magical messages."

Speaking of this, Goven paused: "So, the first thing we have to do is to strengthen the walls of the northern part of the fortress and completely transform it - in fact, no matter whether the king can receive the message or how long it will take, the first thing we have to do is this.

"The original intention of the design of the Rock Fortress was to defend against the Cecil family in the south, so its northern wall was far weaker and lower than the southern wall. Although the fall of the Rock Fortress shows that the old fortress that rely solely on walls and magic shields to defend against attacks has lagged behind this era, they still have their own needs. We must first thicken and raise the walls to the north of the fortress, so that we can even slow down the restoration of the South Wall; secondly, we must transform the northern wall, cover it with magic nets, and set up magic crystal rail guns above the wall, and install calibrators in the future; finally, the fortress as a whole will also be transformed, and this place will be built into a heavy industrial, military mixed fortress, and the entire plain extending south to the fortress will be included in the scope of this fortress city..."
Chapter completed!