It was something they'd learn later on by experience and trials, and that would help to accelerate their mission and widen the number of affected turtles by their combined attacks.
As things turned out to be this good, William controlled Charley to kill the turtles at their softest and weakest spots, their bellies.
He didn't want to speak about how to kill these turtles. Showing everyone the right way to do it was enough. As he expected, the moment Charley took down dozens of turtles, Stark sent more masters down there. And like this, a wide spree of killing happened.
Yet there was a single point that didn't match all these great things; the speed of doing all this and the magnitude of such actions.
The masters William's team gathered were in thousands, but they had to work together to either dig tunnels or flip these turtles. And so this limited greatly their speed of action, limited the scale of the entire process.
It was effective, but it wasn't enough to be a game changer. So when Stark asked William about the right way to do this tactic, William didn't hesitate to explain things over.
[Ok, I'll gather all the wind and earth based masters, send them down there and see what they will do] Stark seemed excited about doing this.
During the next ten minutes, the city masters started to flood the ground outside the walls. They didn't perform well at first. It wasn't only because they messed up timing the combined attacks on many occasions, but also it was thanks to the overwhelming number of monsters coming at the walls.
The turtles worked at impregnable shields, stopping most of the incoming attacks from the city walls. This helped in saving lots of leopards, and together they marched towards the walls.
Seeing this made William seriously consider using his berserk toxin. But when Stark suggested copying his tactic, he decided to wait.
Even if these masters committed lots of mistakes, their combined effort managed to put a hold over the scarily advancing army of monsters. The walls got lots of damage during the past ten minutes, showing cracks at many places. If this continued, then in less than a couple of hours, the walls would turn into a beehive, filled with lots of holes and gaps, before finally falling down.
"Good," William knew these masters weren't to blame for such lousy performance. They were summoned at last notice and didn't have any time to prepare even mentally for the upcoming task.
If not for William's guild's team to act for hours in front of their eyes, they wouldn't have even managed to succeed.
William then turned his attention towards the horizon. The initial charge was getting dealt with, either by his fire, or by the combined efforts of different masters. Yet that didn't mean danger was over.
The sea of fire spread in the middle of the forest like a deep burning wound. Fire kept spreading to nearby trees, but it wasn't enough to kill monsters around.
This spreading fire was a normal fire, lacking enough heat or destructive power. "I hope they'll give us time to push the monster slightly back before coming again," William knew this was just a desperate hope.
And in the next few hours, monsters kept increasing in numbers without showing any sign of decrease at all.
In the past few hours, William kept moving all over the battlefield with Charley. The two kept killing any leopard monster they could find, evading all the turtles they faced. As for the battle at the city walls, it was growing hectic and harder after these hours.
The main issue lay in the growing obstacles for the masters outside the city, stopping them from going directly towards their next targets.
All the turtles had giant bodies, and with the dead leopards, they started to form lots of hills that blocked the paths for masters on the ground.
That wasn't all, the masters on the city walls started to experience lots of difficulties to aim right and let their techniques hit their targets.
On many occasions, their techniques landed wrongly over the dead bodies of monsters, especially turtles. Seeing this made everyone frustrated.
If they got enough numbers on their side, then they could have sent a clearing team, the Scavengers. They roamed the battlefield, cutting any dead monster into pieces, collecting materials and cores, and even storing away the flesh.
If they got such teams on the ground, then nothing of this would have happened. On the other side, monsters never found it hard to pass directly through the dead bodies of their kin.
Even many turtles pushed away lots of dead carcasses, increasing their size in a scary way, while adding more defensive layers to them.
"I believe it's time to use that toxin," the struggle at the city walls was destined to grow in difficulty as more monsters showed up. William was now feeling the same pressure as when he went deeply into the enemy lines.
It was clear that the main bulk of the monster army arrived in the city at last. And that made William worry over the current situation of the defensive battles at the walls.
"It's time," as there was no other option left, and while the fire he caused started to die down after all these hours, William said to Lara.
[At last! Do you want me to activate all of the hidden barrels?]
"Just give the order for everyone to retreat first," William paused, "let the earth-based masters form a rugged terrain."
[What's that rugged terrain?!]
"It's like lines of small hills separated by lines of grooves," William knew this tactic wasn't known in this world, "let them circle the walls, do this for hundreds of metres or even beyond."
[But…]
"Don't worry, I'm going to stop the advancing army on my own," William wasn't speaking nonsense, "but you'll get half an hour at most. Make sure they'll make the best out of it. I'll handle monsters five kilometres away from the city. As for those within this distance, let the city masters handle them."