Blood and fire mingled with the rain. Cannons roared from the walls of Alubarna, and every shell that fell claimed several lives.
The rebels, utterly fearless of death, charged Alubarna in successive waves.
Soon, the rebel general who had first issued the furious charge was the first to scale the city walls, braving the cannon fire.
Meeting him was a Royal Army soldier, clad in armor, wielding a long spear, and far more exquisitely equipped than the rebels.
"Hoooah!!!" the soldier roared, thrusting his spear forward.
The brave rebel general was unable to maintain his luck. The spear immediately pierced his chest, and blood gushed out.
But a stubborn will seemed to support him. Ignoring the spear, his scimitar also fell, slicing open the soldier's chest armor, though the force was spent and the blow had little real effect.
His body, still impaled by the spear, was flung out and tumbled down the sand ramp.
The next second, the Royal Army soldier drew his waist-saber, charged toward another rebel, and was quickly struck down, also tumbling down the sand ramp as a corpse.
With the top of the city wall as the boundary, sixty thousand Royal Army soldiers and over a million rebels engaged in fierce close-quarters combat. In virtually every moment, countless soldiers died. Whether rebel or Royal Army, at this juncture, the Grim Reaper showed no favoritism.
The members of the Nefertari Family's guard corps were already fighting side-by-side with the Royal Army, drenched in blood.
The Jackal Warrior, Chaka, decapitated a rebel with a single swipe of his large scimitar. Enduring the rain, he charged and cut down the rebels on the wall several times, forcing them back.
Only then did he slightly relax, glancing down at the foot of the city wall where the million rebels were gradually spreading out. Not everyone was charging this one spot; more were moving left and right, beginning to encircle Alubarna.
"These damn bastards! His Majesty has never wronged them!" Chaka roared furiously.
"They should be called pitiful bastards, misled without knowing it!" Pell walked over from a nearby spot, scimitar in hand.
In reality, many of the so-called leaders among the rebels were Crocodile's men.
How could they possibly try to understand the truth?
And the common rebels below had no such means. The information they received was about the Nefertari Family's tyranny, the misuse of Dance Powder causing nationwide drought, and the complex, burdensome taxes levied by various nobles. Were these truly unrelated to the Nefertari Family?
As the king of a nation, when such things occur, even if he didn't personally commit them, he cannot escape responsibility.
So, this kind of war was a very natural outcome.
"How is the situation on your side?" Chaka asked Pell.
"Not good. Although we repelled the assault, it's clearly just a probing attack," Pell shook his head.
Chaka wiped the rain from his face and frowned. "The fighting will continue after this. A battlefield involving nearly two million people won't end in a day or two."
After a brief pause, Chaka asked, "What about the Revolutionary Army? Didn't that Dragon tell His Majesty that there would be troops to support us?"
"Who knows? I haven't seen them yet. Those Revolutionary Army members are completely untrustworthy. In the end, we still have to rely on ourselves!" Pell shook his head.
Before Chaka could say anything else, the rebels below the city walls blew their charge horn once again.
"We have to find a way to collapse this damned sand ramp! This must be the dirty work of that bastard Crocodile!" Chaka cursed.
Without this sand ramp, the rebels couldn't possibly charge the walls on camels; that would be suicide, they'd smash directly into the masonry.
But now, these sand ramps had forcibly created a direct path to the top of the city wall, severely disrupting the Royal Army's deployment.
What should have been a battle where they rested and waited, unleashing cannon fire, bullets, arrows, and spears from the walls, had been forcibly turned into a close-quarters battle over the defensive line.
If the fight continued like this, they couldn't last. Even with their superior equipment, the difference in numbers was too large. The rebels could easily rotate into two waves and assault them relentlessly day and night. How long could the Royal Army endure this continuous onslaught without sleep?
One day? Or two?
A new round of intense slaughter began.
A white-haired general of the Royal Army sliced down a rebel leader with a swing of his saber and roared, "Prepare the fire oil!"
"General, it's raining!" a Royal Army member reminded him, perplexed.
"Idiot! It's precisely because it's raining that the fire oil will be even more effective! Didn't see that coming, did you? I was waiting for the rainwater to gather into streams!" the white-haired general cursed.
Quickly, large quantities of fire oil were poured out, flowing directly down the sand ramp along with the water.
A torch ignited the oil, and surprisingly, the oil began to burn on the surface of the water, even in the midst of the rain, gaining increased flow and mobility.
Oil floats on water, and this sudden tactic completely caught the rebels off guard.
Who the hell would expect them to use fire when it was pouring rain and the ground was covered in water?
In a short while, the entire sand ramp was ablaze with the fire oil.
But clearly, although the oil flowed better, its destructive power and lethality were somewhat reduced under the erosion of the rain.
Nevertheless, the burning of the fire oil successfully interrupted the rebels' second wave of attack.
"I knew it! Hahahaha!" the white-haired general burst into laughter.
But before he could finish speaking, a massive boulder violently crashed down from the sky, landing directly on him. Splat! He was instantly crushed, half an arm flipping through the air and rolling down the sand ramp.
"Catapults!?" another general roared.
In front of the rebel camp, several tall catapults had already been assembled.
While they couldn't afford powerful weaponry like cannons, the rebels could certainly afford catapults, a relatively cheap siege weapon.
"Prepare the cannons! Prepare the cannons! Blast those damned catapults to pieces!" a general of the artillery corps roared into a Den Den Mushi.
The cannons lined up on the city walls quickly adjusted their angles, and soon, a barrage of shells began to explode within the catapult camp.
In a short time, several catapults were destroyed.
During this exchange, the catapults continuously hurled huge stones onto the walls of Alubarna.
This war seemed to have become extremely perilous from the very beginning.
In the rebel camp beneath the sand ramp, a young leader wiped the rain from his face, watching the fierce fighting ahead. He signaled, "Gruto, take a squad and charge again! You must buy us enough time! We need to set up camp at the foot of the walls so that follow-up supplies and soldiers can quickly join this final battle!"
"Yes, Koza!" The burly man named Gruto responded, grabbing his morning star. He led his men to the front line without looking back.
Koza, one of the rebel leaders, was one of the few who had not been bought off or controlled by Crocodile.
He had participated in the construction of Yuba since he was very young and had watched, heartbroken, as the oasis city he personally helped build withered away. He was once a good childhood friend of Nefertari Princess Vivi.
And now, Koza desperately wanted to shatter the Nefertari Family's royal city!
Meanwhile, on the top floor of the Oasis Hotel, Diarmuid clenched a cigar between his teeth. He watched the gradually lessening rain outside the window and the intense fighting on the city walls, his heart filled with emotion.
As a Marine Admiral, he had also climbed up from the bottom, experiencing countless battles large and small, including numerous sea battles on a scale of tens of thousands of men.
But this was the first time he had witnessed a siege battle where tens of thousands, reaching nearly a million people, were engaged in slaughter.
Observing it from this bystand's perspective allowed him to see it clearly and understand its cruelty more deeply.
"The Revolutionary Army, the rebels, and the Royal Army… in the end, everyone is fighting only for their own interests. The truly unfortunate ones are the people of this country..." Diarmuid sighed softly.
"Do you also feel sadness over this transient scene?" Vergo looked at Diarmuid in surprise.
"This isn't sadness; it's just a lament. It's an ancient, unchanging truth: no matter how many times this world is destroyed and rebuilt, this cycle will never change," Diarmuid said with a smile.
Vergo nodded, choosing not to dwell on the topic. Instead, he asked, "Admiral, what is your assessment of the current battle? Who holds the advantage?"
"Currently, the Royal Army has the advantage. Honestly, if that strange sand ramp hadn't appeared, the Royal Army would hold a much greater advantage. They wouldn't have had to engage the rebels in close-quarters combat so quickly," Diarmuid said, stroking his chin.
After a slight pause, he continued, "But after this, the advantage will gradually shrink and turn into a disadvantage. Haven't you noticed? The morale of the Royal Army is far less fervent than that of the rebels, and the rebels have the advantage in troop numbers. Most importantly, Vergo, look at the battlefield. Tell me, in whose hands is the initiative?"
Vergo was silent for a moment, then replied, "The rebels!"
"Exactly. The power of the offense belongs to the rebels, and that is their greatest advantage. This advantage will only grow over time. If I were the Royal Army general, I would immediately find a way to destroy their supplies and provisions. Otherwise, with adequate preparation, the rebels could easily use rotating assaults to wear down and exhaust the Royal Army until they die," Diarmuid said with a slight smile.
However, Diarmuid quickly added, "But regardless of the specifics, I long ago judged that the Royal Army, the Nefertari Family, are bound to fail, along with Dragon's Revolutionary Army."
"Why? Is it because Crocodile has formidable help on his side?" Vergo asked, curious, after a moment of thought.
"No, it's because in this vast kingdom of Alabasta, the Nefertari Family can only maintain actual control over the capital, Alubarna. This in itself is a very unusual phenomenon. And whenever this phenomenon occurs, it means... failure has already become inevitable," Diarmuid said softly.
Vergo was stunned, but upon reflection, he realized it was true.
A vast nation, with only its capital still under royal control...
Doesn't that already mean they have failed?
Failure is clearly inevitable!