Chương 111: 111：A Firepower Network to Shock a Commander

Watching the light of defeat flicker in Alaric's eyes, Soren remained as calm as a placid lake.

"The Grand Commander truly understands the art of war. From just a few words, you instantly saw through the absolute bottleneck of this formation."

"Exactly. Discipline is the absolute core." At this exact moment. Facing a man who had flawlessly, unreservedly laid bare his greatest tactical secrets, all the residual caution and innate, aristocratic arrogance in Alaric's deep blue eyes was utterly wiped clean. Alaric solemnly touched the Griffon badge over his heart and delivered a grand, perfectly leveled military salute to Soren! This was a salute of ultimate respect, used exclusively between high nobles of equal standing.

"Captain Soren. The art of war is a closely guarded secret, treated as absolute treasure by every military force on the continent. Yet you shared it with me, holding absolutely nothing back."

"Your magnanimity deeply humbles me. You have my profound respect." Soren was worthy of being his friend. A friend who could stand perfectly shoulder-to-shoulder with him as an equal. Suddenly, Alaric realized the sting of losing those military-grade longbows didn't hurt quite so much anymore. Forging a genuine bond with a commander like Soren in the middle of this brutal war against the Orcs? That was worth its weight in gold. The two men continued their tour along the muddy paths of the village.

Rounding a row of towering wooden palisades, the view suddenly opened up. Greywater Village's sprawling Siege & Artillery Training Ground was laid out before Alaric's eyes.

"Fire! Adjust the elevation angle! Grease mechanism number two!" Alaric followed the shouting voice, and his pupils violently shrank. In the center of the field, over a hundred goblins were weaving through the area like perfectly meshed gears in a massive machine. At their absolute center stood Luger, the 1. 9-meter-tall Hobgoblin. Wielding a hand-crafted caliper, he was professionally calibrating the sights on a twin-wheeled wooden construct.

It was an entire, long line of black-greased [Geared Heavy Repeating Ballistas]! As the goblin crews stepped down on the loading levers in perfect unison, the winches let out a terrifying, agonizing creak. THWACK! THWACK! THWACK! The snap of the firing mechanisms blurred into a single, continuous roar! Heavy iron bolts instantly crossed a distance of a hundred and fifty paces, brutally burying themselves into the center of thick cork targets.

The kinetic impact was so violent that the fletchings emitted a high-pitched, vibrating hum. On the flank of the ballista battery, dozens of other goblins were expertly operating four compact, lethally efficient Torsion Catapults. They were launching perfectly rounded granite boulders, dropping them with terrifying precision directly into pre-marked craters in the swamp mud.

"Gods of War above..." As the Commander of the Royal Griffon Knights, Alaric understood the absolute gold-weight of this kind of ranged firepower better than anyone. Deploy a line of these heavy ballistas right behind an infantry phalanx? If the orcs ever dared a massed charge, that level of penetrative kinetic force would skewer the front ranks of Blacksteel-armored brutes like meat on a stick!

Alaric let out a breath of pure, unadulterated awe:"Captain Soren, the firepower configuration you have here is practically a mobile fortress."

"With these machines set up, let alone defending a village, you could launch a frontal assault on a Blackstone outpost and crush them into dust!" However, in the face of the Imperial Commander's glowing praise... Soren simply crossed his arms and let out a deeply impoverished sigh.

"The Grand Commander overpraises me."

"You see these heavy weapons firing beautifully, but in my eyes? Every time those strings snap, they are shooting away Greywater Village's life savings."

"These [Geared Heavy Repeating Ballistas] have incredibly strict requirements for bolt precision. Even combining them with our captured loot, we've barely managed to scrape together a few hundred viable precision iron bolts."

"And the alchemical fire-oil needed for those catapults? We burn a drop, we lose a drop. There's no replacing it." Soren looked at Alaric and helplessly threw his hands up.

"The moment my fire-oil runs dry and my iron bolts are spent, these majestic, terrifying engines of war become completely useless. They wouldn't even make good firewood." Hearing this, Alaric paused for a moment, then nodded internally. Soren is, after all, from a destitute background. War is a game of logistics, and at the end of the day, his throat is still being tightly squeezed by the lack of resources in this godforsaken swamp. But just as that tightly wound nerve in Alaric's mind relaxed for half a second...

His gaze drifted past the light catapults and landed on the massive, open clearing at the very back of the artillery grounds. In that exact fraction of a second. Alaric's breathing completely stopped.

"That... what is that..." There, on a stretch of earth that had been specially leveled and compacted, dozens of goblin engineers were using complex pulley systems and massive scaffolding to slowly hoist two colossal throwing arms into the air—timbers so thick it would take two men just to wrap their arms around them. Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

Two [Heavy Siege Trebuchets] were quietly hibernating right here in the absolute heart of the Misty Swamp! Massive counterweight boxes. Torsion wheels wound impossibly tight with moisture-proofed beast sinew. And a colossal framework reinforced with cold, gleaming black iron rivets. You have got to be kidding me! A tidal wave of absolute shock crashed through Alaric's mind, utterly obliterating his aristocratic composure. Heavy Siege Trebuchets!

These were strategic, city-breaking super-weapons that the Holy Halycon Empire only rolled out during massive, continent-spanning crusades to shatter fortress walls! Forcing down the terror in his chest, Alaric locked his eyes onto the Hobgoblin standing in front of a structural blueprint board, rapidly calculating counterweight equations with a piece of charcoal.

"That Hobgoblin..." Alaric pointed at Luger, his voice incredibly heavy.

"The shear-rate of the mechanical gears... the fulcrum calibration of the counterweights..."

"That creature's assembly techniques are actually more professional than the highly-paid Master Engineers sitting in my Imperial Ministry of Works!" Hobgoblins were already a one-in-a-million anomaly among their kind, but this one clearly had his racial engineering talents maxed out to the realm of a Grandmaster. Alaric took a massive, deep breath. He turned to look at Soren, holding absolutely none of his praise back.

"Captain Soren."

"To make a naturally treacherous, xenophobic Hobgoblin serve you with such absolute, fanatical devotion... I have truly witnessed the terrifying peak of your leadership."

"Those pampered divas in the Imperial Ministry of Works demand fresh roasted meats every day just to lift a hammer. Yet you, trapped in this dead zone where even fresh water is a luxury, have subdued a top-tier engineering genius."

"No wonder Greywater Village is overflowing with Blackiron armor!" Faced with Alaric's awe, Soren remained as stoic as ever. He just offered a faint smile and replied with chilling modesty:"Just a blind cat finding a dead mouse, that's all."

"In Greywater Village, as long as you bleed and sweat for the territory, I don't care if you're a demihuman. I will guarantee you die of old age with a full belly." Those few, casually spoken words made Alaric's heart race even faster. This kind of ideological cohesion was infinitely stronger than loyalty bought with mere gold coins. Moving on from the deafening clatter of the artillery grounds, the two men stepped into a wide, open expanse of mud. The Warg Cavalry Training Grounds.

The moment Alaric set foot in the mud, his pupils shrank violently once again. Ninety-three Wargs, each as massive as a fully-grown bull calf, were arrayed in three reverse-V vanguard charging formations. Their pale grey fur was splattered with mud, and their beastly eyes radiated a bone-chilling, bloodthirsty intent. Yet, overriding this primal savagery, every single beast was fitted with custom-forged Blackiron saddles. And atop these Wargs?

Ninety-three cavalrymen, clad in Blackiron half-plate and gripping heavy lances, sat upon their saddles as motionless and solid as iron statues. Because the swamp was a nightmare of acidic mud and toxic puddles, standard heavy warhorses would suffer hoof-rot within three days of entering. Alaric had dreamed for years of establishing a highly mobile beast-cavalry specifically adapted for swamp warfare. But the difficulty was astronomical! Wargs were exclusively bred by Orcs.

Unless captured in battle, they were impossible to acquire. And taming them required a beastmaster of the highest order. Looking at this hyper-mobile squad of ninety-three riders, pure, burning envy flared in Alaric's chest. Accompanied by a low, piercing whistle, the man at the very tip of the charging wedge pulled his reins. The alpha warg beneath him instantly understood the command, slowing its pace to a light trot and approaching the viewing platform.

The rider dismounted, his movements as fluid and sharp as the wind.

"Reporting to the Lord Commander! The Warg Cavalry Battalion has completed its flanking and penetration drills!" Cavalry Captain Buck slammed his right fist heavily over his left breast in a crisp military salute. Soren nodded, using the moment to introduce him.

"Grand Commander, this is the Captain of my Cavalry Battalion, Buck."

"Buck is a formally trained, royal academy officer. Before I took him in, he served the Silvermoon Kingdom as the Border Cavalry Captain under the direct command of Viscount Blake." The moment those words dropped, a muscle in Alaric's cheek violently twitched. Viscount Blake? That famously greedy, spineless scum of a bureaucrat who the Holy Empire's high command knew could be bought out by the Orcs for a few chests of gold? An absolute waste of god-given talent! Alaric roared internally.

That brainless sack of garbage, Blake, had actually managed to alienate and drive away a battle-hardened cavalry commander capable of surviving a mountain of corpses?!