Riches and Bitches: I have a gate to an isekai and leveling-up system!

Chapter 466 This is it (not dropping, that's the chapter's name...)

"If I knew how long it's going to take, I would much rather park it on the other side…"

Despite Claudy's many requests to hurry it up, we still spent roughly a quarter of an hour climbing up the relatively easier incline, a few miles down from the massive dam. Our speed accelerated only once we reached the narrow plateau aligned with the top of the damn-turned-fortress, from where we took a further ten minutes to ride the gentler parts of the slope down.

In total, from when we first heard Claudy's call, it took us nearly thirty minutes to arrive, taking into account the time it took us to land and then move up to where he asked us to come.

"So? What seems to be the problem?" I asked as soon as I stepped out to a small platform, located all the way at the deepest end of the second wall of the fortress.

It lay beyond the gate, several tens of meters beyond the last point anyone would ever bother assaulting. And yet…

The space beneath was littered with so many corpses, so many different equipment…

"They were really trying to get here?" I asked in a low voice, not even needing to take a look at the small lake of used-up casings scattered all over the platform to figure out what made Claudy freak out so much.

"Taking down this gun is what I would do if I was in their shoes, but still…"

Fay walked up from behind and wrapped her hands over my arm.

Even though I was long used to the sight of blood, even though there was this strange part of myself that still struggled to consider the people of this world to be the same kind of people as back home… It was a gruesome sight, to stare down at a pile made up with over a thousand corpses.

"They were trying to rush this place for the last five hours," Claudy reported with a grim look on his face and a slight, bloody spot near his shoulder. "At first it was ugly but went relatively fine, with more and more invaders falling to the barrage, but once enough corpses gathered…"

There was no reason, other than a gun, for anyone to attack this particular part of the wall. It laid beyond where the approach slope met the gate. And even from below, anyone could see that the area beyond the gate… was locked off by a whole other set of defenses.

And sure, the area beyond the gate was where the wall was relatively at its lowest… But with how narrow it was in that part, only a handful of soldiers could ever gather in the free space. And with that many swords, only a madman would dare to challenge perfectly well-defended secondary defenses located even further above.

No.

The only reason why the invading empire would throw so many men to their deaths to reach this spot… was the gun. Judging by the scar on Claudy's shoulder, they went ahead and committed much more than just simple soldiers.

"How many supremes?"

Rather than asking for an extensive run-down of what happened, I took my observations and moved the topic ahead. There was simply no point for Claudy to waste time elaborating how much of a tough time he had fighting the supremes, something he was bound to do if he wanted to adhere to his current job description.

As a representative of Estaria and her southern empire, the more achievements he gathered, the better the negotiating position of the empire would be once it came to sharing the spoils.

"A total of five, but only four of them engaged in two waves. The first supreme was fine, but with three of them attacking just before, I barely managed to hold them off."

Claudy didn't appear to regret losing his opportunity to boast and add to the imaginary rating of his homeland.

"I believe it's only a matter of time before they concentrate even more of their elites."

Claudy didn't need to say a lot to low-key brag.

For a single supreme to ward off attacks from three different supremes and come out with only a slight injury?

That was one hell of an achievement, especially after I saw how the battle between supremes would usually go.

'On the other hand, he went through the hell of the starlight plain,' I thought, taking a short look at the man before turning my eyes over the bottom of the ramp, where the imperial forces were already gathering for yet another attack.

"Will they even run out of men?" I muttered under my nose only to take a glance over to the supplies at the machine gun's nest.

They still had three more cases of ammo to go through, giving us maybe enough leeway to leave this place for as long as it would take to recharge the stable gate back at the main camp. Or so it would be the case, if not for the supremes lurking in an unknown number within the imperial ranks.

"Those legions have each nearly five thousand line infantry," one of the fortress defenders who manned the machine gun reported. "And judging by their flags, they've brought an entire host. Meaning, that when the siege started, we faced pretty much ten thousand of them. And if you count all the support and logistic troops…"

The soldier shook his head while gently tending to a bloody cut stretching all the way across the man's chest, making it seem as if the tightly wrapped bandage was the only thing keeping his torso in one place.

"Right, a unit of this size wouldn't be able to operate with enough support to keep it going…" I muttered, looking down at the bottom of the ramp where the northern empire sent yet another thousand soldiers charging up the ramp.

And with just a single look, I could spot quite a few men wearing outfits much different from the units leading the attack, with quite a few of them lacking any sort of proper armor and, in some cases, weapons.

'They are filling the ditch with corpses so that their supremes can climb up…'

There was only one reason for any sane commander to cannibalize his troops like that. And whatever the background of this reason was, it mattered not.

The only important thing was that the empire, by throwing its non-combatant units into the fray, simply had to fill the quota of bodies thrown at the enemy. And if a whole thousand of their soldiers could be sacrificed just like that…

I gulped my saliva down and took a shallow breath.

"I think this is going to be an actual push."