Right now they didn't need a ballista to fire anything, they didn't need his grenades. But when the time would come for them to retreat, he was sure they'd depend on them to survive and go away with the least number of losses.
As everyone started to do their tasks, the ones who were fighting at the forefront were crushing it. Even William was surprised by how easily they pushed the enemies back, and killed tons of dark masters and monsters, turning this into a one-sided slaughter.
Even the masters he sent before to support them didn't have anything to do but kill the ones on the verge of dying, or collect the loot.
Things kept rolling in their favour for almost half an hour. And then, the main bulk of the two monster tides appeared.
The monsters came in huge numbers and they even started to run on top of each other. They looked ferocious, strong, and quite hard to stop.
The masters had to retreat for the first time since gaining that formation's boost while using the deadliest attacks they could release.
"This won't do," watching all this from the top of that hill made William mutter, "If we managed to push like this for an hour or so, then trying to retreat would be quite easy for us..."
He turned his eyes around and looked at the masters who were busy making the grenades and arrows he asked them to. "Gather all the ballistae, pick enough masters, all at gold grade, and head towards the frontline, stop those monsters."
He gave this order to Sara and Berry. Right now, he was feeling much better than before, and could at least stand erect without the need to use any help.
Part of this came from the impact of the critical moment they were all in, and another came from the formation. As the formation salvaged and concentrated the spirit power of everyone, he got his share of support, and his fatigue and weakness got cleansed pretty fast.
He didn't have time to think about any of that. He watched his girls move towards the front, with a large number of masters, amounting to a few thousand.
They spread the precious ballistae around and then released hell on top of these monsters.
Grenades fiercely exploded, and large areas of explosions appeared here and there. William didn't tell them what to do, but they got his aim from doing this.
Spreading such fierce explosive zones in the middle of the incoming monsters was enough to delay their advance, make these ferocious beasts unable to sum up their numbers, lose much of their momentum and so their advantage.
With the sudden appearance of the ballistae, things started to calm down after getting heated up. The masters at the forefront pushed the line further ahead again, returning to gain more distance while killing tons of monsters.
But this didn't come without any risks. All the time, many monsters would find gaps and run through these, heading towards the masters using ballistae.
If not for the high-end masters at the front to pay close attention to the team behind them, things would have been much worse for all of them.
Few ballistae got destroyed in the first hour, while masters fell down either dead or suffering severe wounds.
At the same time, William was this close to ending the supporting formation. He did enough, he and others did their best. And now all that remained was for the masters at the frontlines to kill more, pave a safe path for them to retreat.
Yet the moment he thought about asking them to start clearing the rear, which was a task handled by the masters he enforced, led by Sloth and a few others, some sort of a bang happened.
"This..." the source of it didn't come from the front, not from the enemy side. In fact, it came from the rear, from beyond the walls and trench.
When William and others looked, they were surprised to see tons of masters running towards here, a grand army of tens of thousands, all looking at gold grade or beyond! And there were still more coming from the direction of the forest!
"They are finally here," William heaved a deep sigh of relief, alongside many others. The reinforcements he hoped they'd arrive in a few more hours, came early, shifting the entire scale of the war.
It wasn't just the large number of strong masters coming here, but he spotted many moving fast in the air as if they were flying. "Thousands of high-end masters? That's great!"
These masters were enough to shift the tide towards them. When William spotted them, he decided to push forward towards winning this battle.
"Send more masters here, we are going to keep doing this!" He already had twelve rounds boosting the strength of everyone fighting at the frontline. This ended up with tons of masters weakened, feeling quite exhausted, unable to even lift a finger or move a muscle.
Yet when he spotted the incoming reinforcements, he decided to push further ahead. With the fresh blood thrown into this mess, it was possible to turn this place into a grand grinding place.
Not to mention, if he bought enough time for the ones making grenades down below, then things would turn for the better.
Even if they didn't have enough ballistae, arming up the masters at the frontlines with these would change the entire course of the war.
The moment his first batch of masters got arranged in line, he fortified the ones coming from the city. He knew his masters were fighting for hours, and they got exhausted beyond their limits. He planned to give them little rest, before throwing them at the slaughterhouse again.
Yet when he asked them to retreat, make room for the newcomers to act, and shoulder the toll, everyone literally refused to do so.
They knew he wanted to help them recover and rest, but that wasn't the right time to do it!