I noticed then that there were no more Yelenetta soldiers within our walls.
“Do not pursue the enemy!” Dee yelled. “Keep firing from atop the walls, towers, and smaller castles!” You would never hear these sorts of commands from any other Chivalric Order.
I turned to Murcia. “Brother, we’ve successfully defended the fortress city! Now it’s time for you to put together your own powerful order!”
Murcia blinked at me, then ducked his head and smiled.
Early the next day, I brought Murcia, Arte, Till, and Khamsin over to the destroyed front gates. I rubbed my sleepy eyes and looked up at the distorted steel gates and the precarious part of the wall. The wall was awe-inspiring at this distance, but I’d gone through all the trouble of repairing the thing, and now part of it was busted again. It honestly bummed me out that the Yelenetta-facing side of the wall and the unique gates I built for it were in tatters.
“I’ve got no other choice, so I’ll just think of it as a necessary sacrifice to protect us from the cannons,” I said to myself. “I need to come up with a way to handle those incessant cannon attacks.”
I headed through the busted gates to look over Yelenetta’s territory and the road heading deeper into it. From here, it was impossible to see the path they took to catch us off guard. Now that I thought about it, maybe this was important land that had belonged to some other nation before it became part of the Kingdom of Yelenetta.
“Lord Van, these cannons you speak of…” Till wore a puzzled expression. “Are they the cylindrical weapons the enemy used? I do not understand how they work, or how we could ever stop them.”
Khamsin drew his chin in, looking troubled. “I was operating a ballista in the castle when they deployed the cannon, so all I could see was smoke as something smashed into the gates. I think they used black balls.”
“Ooh, correct!” I answered in surprise.
Murcia cocked his head curiously. “It is? You know about their new weapon?”
Arte smiled at Murcia. “Lord Van knows everything,” she said meaningfully. I smirked and narrowed my eyes.
“Well, the first time I saw the black balls, I thought about the many ways they could be used,” I explained, my eyes locked on the road ahead. “They have lots of practical uses, but in combat, if you stuffed a cylinder with them and then placed an iron projectile over them, you could send the projectile flying. According to my calculations, you could send a super-heavy object flying at the same velocity as a bolt. And if you loaded one of those cylinders with a sphere filled with black balls, then fired it at the enemy, it would explode on contact. Its destructive power could even eclipse a first-rate fire mage’s.”
Murcia froze, wide-eyed. After several seconds of silence, he said, “I think you’re the only one who would come up with an idea like that.” Till nodded, looking pained, but Khamsin’s eyes gleamed.
“I don’t quite understand all the details, but what you’re saying is that you can do incredible things with them,” Khamsin said.
Arte, for her part, frowned disbelievingly. “Can the black balls be used for things other than combat?”
I got where she was coming from; it was hard to look at those explosions and see how the black balls could be viable for anything but war and bloodshed. I nodded. “For example, if you had access to the black balls, you could use them to open a hole in the hard rock surface of the mountain range.” I pointed at the Wolfsbrook Mountain Range, and everyone looked over at it. “Passing all the way through such a large range is difficult, but the black balls would let you open a hole in a mountain and build a road through it. You could also use them to increase the width of rivers to prevent flooding. Honestly, there are all sorts of useful… What?”
They had all turned away from the mountain range to give me weird looks. As I trailed off, Murcia’s expression turned exasperated. “You thought of all of that the first time you saw the black balls?”
“Well… Yes. A new tool like that would have all kinds of uses.” Obviously I couldn’t tell them that I already knew a little about gunpowder from my previous life, but I remembered belatedly that I wasn’t even ten yet. Genius or no genius, this was unnatural for someone of my age. Anxiety set in and I tried to come up with some excuses. “I mean, ever since I became a lord, I’ve had to put thought into so many things. Flood control, road construction…”
Unfortunately, my excuses did nothing for me. I was trying to figure out my next move when a messenger showed up, saving my butt.
“Lord Van! Aid has arrived from Seatoh Village! Adventurers and Sir Rango from the Bell & Rango Company!”
“Really? Thank goodness!” I felt bad for Murcia, but I really wanted to go home to Seatoh Village and take a bath. There was no shopping here and hardly any options for food. I wanted to get clean, eat a good meal, and walk around Seatoh Village. I smiled and turned back to everyone. “Let’s spend the next couple days remodeling! Murcia, I’m going to present you with the greatest fortress city ever made!”
Murcia blinked, then offered me an awkward smile that mirrored the ones I so often saw from Till and Arte.
Strengthening the fortress city. Fortifying it against this new cannon threat.
What was a cannon? To put it broadly, it was a tough steel gun barrel that you loaded with gunpowder and detonated, firing a heavy projectile at high speed. If you used enough gunpowder, launching a projectile through a stone wall would be a breeze. A cannon fired into a Chivalric Order’s formation would produce horrific results; even heavy infantrymen or soldiers with large shields would be annihilated, hit with a chunk of steel at that velocity. Mages were no different: say goodbye to their walls of ice or stone. If we wanted to stay safe from such a terrifying weapon, we’d have to ensure that the enemy couldn’t use it in the first place.