Boundless Family Upgrades For The Deadbeat Lord

The collapse of the outer wall should have been the moment Althoff’s defense fell apart. For several seconds, that was exactly what it looked like.

The western breach widened under repeated impacts from heavy Magic Beasts, Frostfang Wolves and armored boars poured into the outer district, and the guards who had spent the past hour fighting from prepared positions suddenly found themselves retreating through streets they had hoped never to use.

Raymond stood behind the secondary barricade with blood still drying across one glove from his failed fight with the Stonehide Bull, his breathing finally under control as he watched the first defenders fall back past him. Some were limping.

One man had an arm wrapped tightly against his chest. Another had lost his helmet and half the side of his face was covered in blood. None of them looked victorious. The noise from the northern district had changed completely now that beasts were inside the town.

Beastial roars bounced between the buildings, timber shattered somewhere beyond the nearest intersection, and civilians assigned to the logistics teams rushed backward carrying arrow bundles, water buckets, and wounded men while Boris shouted orders to keep the retreat organized.

Raymond should have been terrified that his first defensive layer had failed, but after nearly getting himself killed in the street, something inside him had become strangely calm.

He had already learned the most important lesson of the battle: he was not a swordsman, and pretending otherwise would only waste the things he was actually good at.

Boris reached the secondary command point a moment later, breathing heavily beneath his armor as he slammed one hand onto the crude street map stretched across a wooden table.

"The western wall is gone completely. The central section is still holding, but not for much longer. We have beasts moving through the abandoned outer houses, and the western kill corridor has become useless because they can bypass it through the breach. Garret is trying to stop the heavier creatures from reaching the second barricade, but if we continue feeding men into that district, we’re going to lose people faster than we kill the beasts."

His finger moved rapidly across the map as he spoke, tracing the narrow residential streets leading away from the broken wall. "We need to seal these three intersections immediately and pull everyone into the inner defensive ring. If we give up the outer western quarter now, we can still keep the tide from spreading toward the granaries."

Raymond stared at the map without answering. The obvious decision was exactly what Boris had said: contract the defense, abandon the damaged district, and protect what remained.

It was sensible. Conservative. Safe.

It was also the same kind of thinking that had almost doomed the first line once the trenches became filled with bodies.

They had designed the outer defenses around controlling movement, then lost that control the moment the wall broke somewhere unexpected.

If Raymond simply withdrew again, the beasts would hit the next barricades as another mass. The inner streets were stronger than the outer quarter, but they would eventually suffer the same problem.

Thousands of beasts had more bodies than Raymond had walls. His eyes moved over the street layout again, following the path from the western breach into the abandoned residential blocks.

The outer district was old, messy, and full of narrow lanes because the original town had never been properly planned.

Until this exact moment, Raymond had considered that layout another example of Althoff’s terrible infrastructure.

Now he realized the narrow streets might be the most valuable defensive structure he possessed.

Boris noticed the change in his expression and frowned. "My Lord?"

Raymond lifted one hand and tapped the western district. "How many beasts have entered through the breach?"

"Hard to tell. Several dozen already. More coming behind them."

"And they’re spreading?"

"Yes. That’s the problem."

"No," Raymond replied slowly, his eyes still on the map. "That’s only a problem if we let them choose where they spread."

Boris stared at him.

Raymond dragged three small wooden markers from the edge of the table and placed them over separate intersections. "Look at the western quarter properly. The streets are too narrow for the large beasts to move side by side. Most of the old houses are already empty because we evacuated everyone before the battle. The main road from the breach widens here, then splits into these three lanes before reaching the inner district. If we seal the exits after enough beasts enter, they can’t use their numbers anymore."

Boris’s brows furrowed as he followed the routes.

Raymond’s finger moved again. "We’re not losing the western district."

The captain looked up.

A slow, hard smile formed on Raymond’s face as he traced the road from the breach toward the center of the abandoned neighborhood.

"We’re feeding it to them."

For several seconds, Boris looked as though he genuinely believed his lord had finally lost his mind. "You want to let more beasts inside?"

"I want to let exactly as many inside as we can kill at once." Raymond leaned farther over the map, his voice becoming faster as the plan formed completely in his head. "That’s been our problem since the tide arrived. We’re trying to fight thousands of creatures as though they were one army. They aren’t. They have no command structure. No formations. No communication. They’re just bodies moving forward because the bodies behind them keep pushing. So we stop fighting the tide. We cut pieces off it."

Boris’s expression slowly changed.

Raymond continued, pointing toward the buildings around the three lanes. "Pull the defenders back from the first western intersection and make it look open. Remove the closest street barricade completely. Let the beasts rush deeper into the quarter. Once enough have crossed this point, Bronze Knights close the road behind them usingthe heavy wagon barricades. Silver teams strike from the side streets and rooftops. Hunters fire from the upper windows. Then we seal the inner exits and kill everything trapped inside."

Boris looked toward the northern end of the map. "And the beasts still outside?"

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