“Complacency is the greatest enemy when it comes to long battles.” - Zi Sun-Bi, tactician from the Huan Confederation, famed for being the tutor of the renowned Liang Shi-Zu.

At first, there seemed to be nothing unusual about the next day’s battle. By that point the besiegers were all too aware that the defenders in and out of the city were regularly exchanging notes, as it was hard to disguise the large avian figures of the Free Lances’ flying scouts when they were flying in or out of the city proper. Fortunately there was nothing the besiegers could actually do about it.

After all, not even the best archers were able to hit such distant, moving targets, and the fliers also took care to remain at high altitudes unless they were descending to one of the camps or the city.

The forces were arrayed the same way as the previous day, with fifty thousand of the Podovnians standing across over forty thousand Caromans and Levainian troops from the reinforcements. At the same time, around seventy thousand of the remaining enemies were busy besieging the city itself, with their focus of attack being the north-western side, where the outermost wall was already ragged and in disrepair.

As sturdy and formidable as Levain’s walls might have been at its heyday, after two decades of disrepair and lack of maintenance due to the raging civil war, there were quite a few weak spots on the outermost wall. The section that the besiegers focused on was one that had previously been broken during one of the early sieges in the civil war, and while the Levainians had repaired it, the repair job was noticeably worse in quality than the rest of the outermost layer of walls.

It was something the defenders had kept in mind as well, however, as their defenses were also the heaviest around that section of the wall, though they generally avoided directly standing on the repaired section when they could. That day, a few hours after the battle began in the morning, that caution proved to be life-saving as the repaired section of the wall crumbled underneath the constant bombardment of the siege engines.

At first it was just a single brick that fell off seemingly on its own, then another projectile happened to land in the same area, and a small cluster of bricks and cement fell off as a clump. When another two projectiles landed roughly above where the clump used to be, the top section of the wall seemed to shake, and moments later, chunks of rubble crumbled down as the upper half of the weakened section of the wall collapsed onto itself.

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Raucous, deafening cheers came from the besieging Anduilleans and Podovnians as they saw the wall crumble, and the besiegers immediately set their siege ladders over the rubble in order to cross over the broken section of the wall. Even though the Levainians rained arrows on them without mercy, the besiegers were running on a high and pressed hard without a care for the casualties they took.

Once some of the soldiers reached the top of the pile of rubble, long planks of wood were carefully passed on to be laid down on the other side, which would allow the besiegers to climb down safely – to climb down directly on the pile of rubble would risk a further collapse, which they wished to avoid – and begin their assault of the seventh wall from the inside.

Since the Podovnian army was closer to the breach’s location, they were the first to climb over and charge into the region of ruins between the sixth and seventh walls. There were staircases that led from that region to the top of the walls, and they rushed towards them with alacrity, determined to make the most of the time they had while the defenders were slow to react to their presence.

As more and more Podovnian – and some Anduillean – soldiers rushed through the breach and assaulted the wall from the inside, all while their remaining troops outside kept up the offense, they slowly but surely pushed their way to the top of the walls, and the Levainian defenders were soon forced to withdraw via the walkways that connected the seventh wall to the sixth wall further inside. While some of the besiegers attempted to force their way through those as well, they failed as the walkways formed natural chokepoints that strongly favored the defenders.

Because of that, the besiegers instead focused on pushing away the defenders from the entirety of the seventh wall and claimed it for themselves, a process that lasted until noon that day. Around twenty thousand Podovnian soldiers and fifteen or so thousand Anduilleans were either standing atop the seventh wall or navigating the ruins below by that point, while the forces outside prepared to send more people in.

To the south, the fifty thousand strong Podovnian army led by their general Simeon faced off against the Levainian reinforcement in a series of skirmishes where they constantly turned them away from the city. The Levainians had made several attempts to get closer to the city ever since the wall fell, but had been turned away at every juncture.

It was at this moment, while the Podovnian and Anduillean forces were in jubilation over their success to overcome the seventh wall, that several things happened at the same time.

With a sound that resembled a deep groan, the seventh wall – which was now populated by Podovnian and Anduillean troops – trembled and shook, and before many surprised eyes, the entirety of the outermost wall that surrounded the city collapsed upon itself. Many of the soldiers standing atop the wall during the time of its collapse failed to escape in time and found themselves suddenly falling down.

The lucky ones fell atop the pile of rubble that used to be the wall, whereas the unlucky ones were mixed in amongst the pile of rubble. Those who were amidst the ruins were luckier as they could use the ruins as shelter from the collapse, but soon found that they were trapped between the pile of rubble and the sixth wall, all while the defenders manned the battlements of the sixth wall and began raining arrows and rocks from above.

At the same time, the Caroman-Levainian joint force to the south of the city sounded the horns and beat the drums for an all-out assault towards the surprised Podovnian army.