I looked back at Van, whose serious gaze was trained beyond the wall. In the past Dee had often butted heads with Commander Stradale over stratagems and battlefield decisions, but here he was wordlessly leaving overall command to Van. Dee must have had absolute faith in Van’s knowledge and strategic thinking.
I knew it. House Fertio, having banished Van, faces rough times ahead. As I stared at Van’s back, a pained smile crossed my face.
“Another strange cylinder spotted! Destroying now!”
“’Kay!” I replied breezily, though my mind was racing. I was honestly shook by the fact that they’d managed to break down steel gates. Those things were six meters tall and four meters wide! That shouldn’t have been an easy feat even with the black balls. Either the combo of successive explosions and a heavy impact bending the gates out of shape had been enough to do them in, or the section connecting the gates to the wall had been destroyed, causing them to fall over. Whichever it was, the castle siege weapon with a long cylinder that used gunpowder had to be a cannon. The timing checked out, too, with the gates destroyed right as we heard that massive blast.
Gunpowder had made its way over from the Central Continent, but its spread to our ally nations had been slow. That was bad news, because large nations from the Central Continent might come knocking. During the Age of Discovery, humanity’s range of travel expanded rapidly, but plenty of remote nations were left out, unable to access all those technological developments. Those sorts of places were ultimately turned into vassal nations and colonies. Powerful countries took over weaker ones; it was the way of the world.
It was possible that another, greater nation in the Central Continent had already turned Yelenetta into a vassal state, in which case Yelenetta was attacking Scuderia as that nation’s vanguard. This was all speculation, but on the chance that I was right, I had to teach Murcia the fundamentals of defense. Li’l Van’s weapons were awesome, but if you didn’t know how to use them, they were half as effective as they could be.
“Brother,” I said to Murcia, “this is the perfect opportunity for me to explain how to defend a fortress city.”
Murcia, who had been watching events unfold before us, stared at me. “What, right now?”
I smiled at his surprise and pointed at the main wall. “It’s simple. Going forward, we’ll enact a strategy against the enemy’s new weapon that will make it a lot harder for them to get past our front gates. While we do that, we’ll also strike with our ballistae and machine bows. That’s the gist of it. If the enemy gathers further from the wall, we’ll use our catapults. I’ve only made two so far, but I’m open to making a few more if necessary. This time around, the projectiles we used were full of bladed objects, but when the enemy is particularly strong, we can also use projectiles filled with oil. We can deal heavy damage to their forces if we shower them in oil and then shoot flame arrows. They’ll be really mad at us if we do that, though.”
“Y-yeah, I bet. What about using magic, or sending out the cavalry for a surprise attack?”
“We haven’t trained any elemental mages, and I can’t possibly engage in a fight that would result in casualties for my Chivalric Order. If we were to perform a surprise attack, it would be by expanding the city’s walls, installing a bunch of ballistae, and attacking the enemy from all four directions.”
“I see.” He turned his gaze to one of my ballistae. “It’s true, those ballistae of yours are astounding. Not just in power, but also in range. It would be difficult for even a mage to close the distance.”
It seemed like he understood how our defensive operations worked. Now he just needed to recruit enough people to form his own Chivalric Order, and I could rest easy.
But that wasn’t enough. If I were Yelenetta’s tactician, I would gather all the cannons together and bombard from afar. Not even a fortress city made by Li’l Van, local genius, could power through that. Preventing that worst-case scenario required a plan that allowed us to take down the Kingdom of Yelenetta swiftly. Our goal wasn’t just an invasion, but also a path to the Central Continent. I was going to smash through every fortress and stronghold between me and the ocean. Only then would I reach my goal.
“Murcia, I’m going to need you to work super hard.”
“Hm? Did you say something?” Murcia turned to me and blinked, at which point I realized that, with so many plans racing through my brain, I had accidentally voiced my thoughts aloud. I smiled back at him and shook my head.
“Oh, no. It’s nothing.”
“…Are you sure? Something is telling me I should be worried.”
His smile looked more like a grimace. I returned it with a silent smile of my own and went back to assessing the combat situation. It looked like our people had succeeded in destroying the enemy’s new weapon, and the enemy didn’t send any reinforcements. Meanwhile, over on our side, the small fortress Dee was stationed at was doing a bang-up job repelling enemy forces. Few managed to reach the gates, and those who were close to the main walls were gradually retreating. It seemed like victory was ours.
But no sooner did I have that thought than I heard a shout from the wall.
“Lord Van! The enemy has deployed another suspicious cylinder!”
“Destroy it!” I ordered reflexively.
“Yessir!”
My soldiers promptly fired their ballistae. In a normal battle, the enemy would deploy mages, forcing their opposition to follow suit to fight back. In all our battles with Yelenetta, though, that hadn’t happened; instead of mages, they’d used black balls. It was possible that they had a different use case for their mages, but for now, at least, they seemed to be leaning on dragons and black balls as their primary weapons. Whatever the reason was, once our invasion had penetrated deeper into Yelenetta, I was confident I would find out.