Chương 260: 260： Modern Communication Rewrites War

Greywater Village Territory. Soren strode down the muddy road, his boots gripping the newly laid anti-slip wooden planks. A blistering winter gale howled through the settlement, whipping his black windbreaker cloak wildly behind him. Just moments ago, he had declared a Level-One Combat Readiness across the entire territory. A strict, mandatory martial law had been enacted: civilians and soldiers alike were only permitted to drink water that had been boiled and steeped with specific anti-toxic herbs.

But Soren knew full well that passive defense alone would never stop the biological nightmare of the [Cult of the Withered], nor the apocalyptic vanguard of the [Bloodbone Legion]. To win this war—and to completely commandeer Cullen's obscenely luxurious cache of rebel equipment—he had to forge his newly expanded, somewhat bloated army into a singular, cohesive war machine that answered exclusively to one absolute command. The core of modern warfare is communication!

It was the ability to deploy an instantaneous, real-time communication network that allowed for multi-point coordination and combined infantry-artillery strikes on a rapidly shifting battlefield!

"Isabella, if my theory works, this is going to completely upend the infantry combat doctrine of the entire continent," Soren said without looking back, addressing the woman following closely behind him. Isabella, wrapped tightly in a thick fur-lined winter cloak, had her golden eyes wide with burning curiosity. As a senior intelligence officer, she understood better than anyone the absolute, overwhelming advantage real-time information superiority provided on a battlefield.

The two quickly arrived at the heavy iron-bound door of an underground bunker. The air in the corridor was thick with the sharp scent of ozone, punctuated by the erratic, crackling sounds of burning mana. This was the magical laboratory of Greywater Village's Chief Silver-tier Mage, Victor. Pushing open the sturdy wooden door, a wave of sweltering heat rushed over them, carrying the musty scent of old parchment mixed with the sweet fragrance of alchemical reagents.

"My Lord! You're here just in time! I'm losing my damn mind!" The moment he saw Soren, Victor practically jumped out of his skin. His hair was a wild, frazzled bird's nest, and dark, heavy bags hung under his bloodshot eyes. Right now, the Silver-tier Mage had completely lost his usual aristocratic elegance. He looked exactly like a sleep-deprived, cornered artisan. Resting dead center on the massive workbench were the heavily carved stone tablets adorned with complex Orcish totems.

These were the magical communication tablets Soren had looted from the Orc Shamans in their previous ambush.

"Victor, report your progress." Soren walked up to the workbench. Victor violently rubbed his face with both hands, took a massive gulp of a bitter, stamina-restoring absinthe concoction, and pointed a trembling finger at the tablets, speaking a mile a minute:"Over the past few days, using reverse mana-stripping, I've managed to completely scrub the mental imprints left behind by the Orc Shamans."

"My Lord, here is my concept for the redesign." Victor picked up a faintly glowing Mithril engraving pen.

"Originally, these two tablets functioned as a two-way intercom. My plan is to keep one tablet completely intact here in your command center to act as the 'Master Tablet.' And then... I'm going to smash the other one to pieces!"

"Smash it?" Isabella blinked, caught off guard.

"Yes, My Lady. Using ultra-precise mana severing, I will slice the second tablet into a dozen or more 'Sub-Tablets'!" Victor's bloodshot eyes gleamed with manic brilliance.

"As long as I carve a localized frequency-resonance array into each fragment, even a piece the size of your thumb will be able to receive mana vibrations broadcasted by the Master Tablet from dozens of kilometers away!" Soren's eyes instantly lit up. Victor had pitched this raw concept to him before. This was exactly the fantasy equivalent of modern military Platoon/Company-level tactical radio receivers!

With the Supreme Command holding the broadcast terminal, and every frontline officer equipped with a miniature receiver, they could flawlessly execute synchronized tactical maneuvers, pincer movements, and encirclements even in the absolute chaos of night battles!

"Brilliant work, Victor! This is exactly what we need!" Soren praised without hesitation.

"But..." Victor's manic smile instantly collapsed. He groaned, furiously scratching at his scalp.

"There is an unsolvable, logical dead-end in the array design!"

"I am a Mage. I know how to build mana bridges. But... if a dozen frontline commanders holding these fragments are suddenly ambushed, and they all simultaneously transmit their voices to the Master Tablet to report their status..." Victor threw his hands up in sheer defeat:"Multiple mana waves layering on top of each other will trigger a catastrophic mana resonance feedback loop!"

"In layman's terms, My Lord, all you will hear from your Master Tablet in the command center is an ear-piercing, deafening screech mixed with a dozen distorted voices screaming over each other!" Victor sighed heavily.

"I know how to channel magical energy, but I have absolutely no idea how to bring order to those voices. If dozens of people transmit at the exact same second, I cannot control the chaotic frequency jamming." This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it. Hearing this critical bottleneck, Soren furrowed his brow. Frequency interference—it was indeed the fatal flaw of early radio communication technology.

Just as Soren was about to draw upon his past life's knowledge of modern military comms to suggest a "push-to-talk" multiplexing system, Isabella suddenly stepped forward.

"Master Victor." Isabella's clear, sharp voice rang out. The professional, highly analytical aura of the Ironpeak Duchy's Senior Intelligence Officer was on full display.

"You are trapped in an unsolvable dilemma because you are approaching this purely with a Mage's mindset. Actually, we can partition this array using the logistical logic of military messengers!" Victor froze, blinking his exhausted eyes.

"The logic of messengers?"

"Exactly!" Isabella strode confidently to the drafting table. Snatching up a piece of charcoal, she rapidly sketched one large circle surrounded by a dozen smaller circles on a fresh piece of parchment.

"You just said that a dozen voices rushing in simultaneously causes chaos. So... why do they have to speak at the exact same time?" Isabella's tone was crisp and decisive. Stripped of all obscure arcane terminology, she laid out the most pragmatic structural concept imaginable:"Master Mage, you simply need to install an 'Authorization Override' on the array—a switch that only Lord Soren controls."

"Normally, the Master Tablet held by the Commander is locked into a 'Transmit Only' mode. It does not receive."

"This is the broadcast state, used for the Supreme Commander to issue core military directives to the entire army."

"Meanwhile, the Sub-Tablets held by the field officers only have the authority to listen. They cannot speak!" Victor's eyes slowly widened, a sledgehammer of realization hitting him. Isabella continued drawing sweeping arrows on the parchment.

"When combat breaks out and a field officer desperately needs to contact command, you simply carve a single-syllable 'Pulse Array' into their small tablet—a button that essentially says, Requesting to Speak."

"The officer wanting to report activates the pulse. Ping."

"On Lord Soren's Master Tablet, a corresponding dot of light flares up. Lord Soren looks at the lights and decides which unit he wants to hear from first. He channels his mana to connect to that specific light. He listens to the report, gives the order, severs the connection, and moves to the next light!"

"No jumping the line. No speaking out of turn. If you aren't called upon, your only job is to obey!" Isabella turned her head, flashing Victor a breathtaking, triumphant smile.

"By establishing a hierarchy of sequence, only one person is permitted to transmit at a time. Doesn't that perfectly solve your frequency interference problem?" Silence. The underground laboratory was so quiet you could hear a pin drop. Then, Victor violently slapped his thigh, letting out an ecstatic, hysterical shout!

"A genius concept! An absolutely brilliant logical reconstruction! How the hell did I not think of a one-way blockade circuit?!" Completely forgetting his exhaustion, Victor snatched up his Mithril pen and lunged at the communication tablets like a starving wolf.

"Yes... yes! I just need to add a simple isolation loop to the front of the rune... If I turn the Wind-resonance array into a unidirectional channel... then I can engrave color-coded micro-luminescence runes to represent different troop types for the ping signals..." Watching Victor's previously deadlocked mind suddenly crack wide open as his research and development progress skyrocketed, Soren stood off to the side, a look of profound satisfaction settling over his features.

His smile was laced with unbridled, absolute ambition. Marrying the supernatural might of arcane magic with the strict, hierarchical logic of modern military communication. A flawless fusion. A tactical radio network that outpaced this cold-steel era by hundreds of years was about to be born in the swamps of Greywater Village!

"Orcs... Traitors..." Soren's eyes burned with cold anticipation.

"You are all about to learn just how terrifying a human army can be. An army that is not only armed to the teeth, but one that can execute perfectly synchronized, multi-pronged maneuvers in the pitch-black fog, completely unified under a single, absolute command!" Meanwhile. The howling northern wind savagely battered the grey, jagged cliffs of the Broken Blade Mountains.

Ever since Talon had led the surviving remnants of his Steppe barbarians off this high ground to seek asylum with Soren in the Misty Swamp, this critical defensive line had become perilously empty and desolate. Cedric, the Heavy Infantry Commander of the Ironpeak Duchy, currently stood atop a towering boulder at the mountain's peak, fully clad in fine steel plate armor. He had been inspecting the freezing front lines for hours. A fine layer of white frost had already crystallized across his thick beard.

His piercing gaze cut through the relentlessly falling snow, looking down upon the frozen plains below. There, just at the edge of the obscuring mist, large numbers of Orc vanguard cavalry could be seen. They were pacing back and forth with ravenous greed, their Wargs snapping their jaws, constantly probing for even the slightest vulnerability in the human defensive line.