Chapter 13
They had defeated five thousand with only three hundred.
And without a single casualty.
In the Empire's history. No, in all wars of the past, there had never been a victory with such overwhelming exchange ratios.
The South was thrown into an uproar by the result of this overwhelming encirclement and annihilation.
Winning could be understood.
Cases of overcoming a force disparity of more than ten to one and still winning did occasionally appear in history, thanks to the great generals of old.
But successfully encircling the enemy and then carrying it through to annihilation was nearly impossible in Imperial military theory.
Because encirclement and annihilation were completely different concepts.
Paradoxically, encirclement is completed by not perfectly surrounding the enemy.
There is a saying about making a stand with your back to the river.
Soldiers who are in a situation where they'll die no matter where they go will make a final desperate struggle to survive.
That is why encirclement by an inferior force is carried out by letting a few unimportant enemies slip through.
So under normal circumstances, perfectly encircling the desperate struggle of five thousand with only three hundred infantry would be insane.
But the Southern army pulled it off.
It was the moment a thousand years of evolving military theory collapsed before overwhelming technology.
Everyone in the South knew who it was thanks to.
The South's pioneer. Kyle Leopold.
Thanks to him, there was no need for flashy propaganda in the first place.
It was the most perfect victory imaginable, one that left nothing at all to propagandize.
While the citizens thrilled at the victory, the entrepreneurs thrilled at the 'battle results' Kyle Leopold had brought back.
3,500 prisoners of war from the Western army.
"These are the prisoners who took the most active part in the West's native extermination campaign and tried to invade Sarsen to slaughter our citizens."
"Meaning...?"
"It means they're not citizens of the South, so South laws, including the Labor Standards Act, don't apply to them."
For factory owners already suffering from a labor shortage, prisoners who didn't need to be protected under labor law were highly attractive labor resources.
Their loyalty to Kyle Leopold, who had brought them these results thinking of them, rose another notch.
Support for the war naturally rose as well.
More young people volunteered for the army, and opposition to the taxes raised under the pretext of increasing defense spending also disappeared.
It was because the illusion of victory in war had blinded people's eyes.
As people in the 20th century did when imperialism was raging mad, they thrilled at their nation's victories.
The people of the South had spent their whole lives being despised and ignored by people from other regions, and beaten one-sidedly the entire time.
Now that grievance had been relieved, no one could casually talk about taxes or opposing the war.
"Those are the poll results."
"...I see."
There was only one person in such a South who couldn't smile.
It was the Grand Duke of the South himself, Kyle Leopold.
"Do you have some kind of concern?"
"Was it that obvious?"
"You have a habit of becoming calmer when you're uneasy, Your Grace. You speak less and don't really hear what people around you are saying."
Only then did I remember that I hadn't said a single word while Lucilla gave her long explanation.
How had she noticed a habit of mine even I wasn't really aware of?
Is this what childhood friends who grew up together are like? I never had one in my past life, so I didn't know.
Wanting to lighten the suddenly heavy atmosphere, I made a casual joke.
"At this rate, your future husband is going to get jealous. He'll say you care more about the Grand Duke of the South than you do about him."
"Ah, you needn't worry about that."
But unexpectedly, I got a heavy answer back.
"Like how Your Grace married the South, I'm already married to the South too. We're comrades in revolution, aren't we?"
While I was briefly thrown off by the sudden response, Lucilla lifted a tiny smile onto her usual expressionless face and asked,
"So if you have something on your mind, you can tell me. As your adjutant, as a comrade in revolution. If not that... maybe even as a childhood friend, I'll listen."
"Haha, when you put it like that, it makes it hard to back out."
I gave a small laugh and let out the worry I'd been holding in.
"Truth be told, I'm scared."
Even after rebuilding the South, building up technology, and producing killing weapons, I was still afraid.
I wasn't talking about the West. The West didn't scare me at all.
The same went for the East, which ruled the Empire's seas, the North, the Empire's elite army, and perhaps even the Empire itself.
The republic trying to devour the Empire, or the demon-beast wave that would one day sweep across the world, weren't things I feared either.
The novel's 'heroine'?
She concerned me, but not to the point I could call it fear.
There was only one thing I was truly afraid of.
"I'm scared that I'll get swept up in this atmosphere."
I had brought back huge results twice in a row. As a result, support for war in the South had shot up, and the South clearly wanted war.
In the short term, it was a very ideal phenomenon.
If I thought about the enemies I'd have to fight in the future, citizens supporting war would be a huge help.
But...
"If I make one wrong move, it'll end in catastrophe."
How long would the South keep wanting war?
The machine gun was originally a weapon meant to end all wars.
The idea was that if one person could wield firepower enough to mow down hundreds, war would be deterred by fear alone.
It was a spectacular miscalculation.
Soldiers went to the battlefield carrying a 'weapon to end all wars.'
That battlefield was called the First World War.
Ironically, it was a battlefield called 'the war to end all wars.'
And... that 'war to end all wars' became the cause of the worst war in history.
The Second World War.
Humanity only realized that imperialism and nationalism were wrong after creating 80 million victims.
It was the moment the runaway locomotive of the great powers, racing without brakes, slammed into a cliff and came to a stop.
"Right now, the South has no brakes."
The South had overwhelming technological power.
It had the resentment of having lived discriminated against by Imperial citizens for the past thousand years.
That resentment had become overwhelming support for war.
And the Grand Duke of the South, Kyle Leopold, had ridden that support and cashed it in.
It really was a situation eerily similar to some mustached art student.
On top of that, there was no force that could stop the runaway momentum.
This was a city run under the one-man dictatorship of the Grand Duke of the South.
Brakes?
There were none.
"I already broke those brakes."
The moment I built the dreadnought, symbol of the great powers, I may as well have smashed the brakes myself.
Because in this romance-fantasy world where the Empire's destruction and invasions by the republic and demon beasts were all foretold, that was the only way to survive.
What a ridiculous world.
A world where nationalism and imperialism are the lesser of two evils.
"I feel like a train driver steering a train with no brakes."
To tear down the rotten corpse that was the Empire, I needed to maintain overwhelming production.
To do that, I had to grind the workers down.
But the more you grind up workers, the redder they become.
Then I'd end up with the revolutionary gallows ending like in the original.
The only way to make workers keep working happily even while being ground down was to exploit nationalist sentiment.
In the end, for the South to survive, it couldn't abandon the methods of the great powers.
But the more you used the methods of the great powers, the more the state would run wild. And that end would be a catastrophe like the great powers of the 20th century.
"So I can't let myself get swept up in this atmosphere."
There was only one thing I could do.
Stick to the methods I'd used so far, but not be swept away by the power of those methods.
Hold the reins of the South without getting drunk on imperialism, suppressing twisted ideas like eugenics and racial discrimination. Don't do anything insane like mass slaughter.
Never forget that imperialism is madness.
"I was only keeping myself in check. I have no intention of turning this land I love into a cruel empire of blood and steel."
Wield imperialism without becoming an imperialist.
It was an extreme balancing act.
"...Even worrying about something like that makes you a good person, Your Grace. So I'm sure you can manage it."
"You think so?"
"Yes, I'll help from your side too."
Lucilla said with a faint smile.
"If we're both married to the South, then the South is like our child, isn't it?"
That was a rather amusing joke.
***
Unfortunately, I didn't have all that much time to be lost in thought.
I'd never once thought that the Western Grand Duke, Charles Raymonds, would back down like this.
The existence of anti-air guns greatly diminished the value of the wyvern knight order.
For the West, which had secured a major position within the Empire on the strength of wyvern knights alone, that was something that should never have happened.
If I had been the Western Grand Duke, I probably would have considered bombing the Southern industrial zone too.
"How many anti-air guns have been produced so far?"
"Roughly 120 guns, sir!"
Fortunately, we had managed to secure the minimum number of anti-air guns needed for airspace defense.
We couldn't protect everywhere with this number, but with radar's help, if we deployed them where they were needed, they could carry out air-defense combat properly.
So anti-air guns were no longer my concern.
No matter how good a shield you have, without a spear you're just a permanent punching bag.
And the only spear our territory had right now was one.
The dreadnought.
There was something we'd been developing for the past month to make that spear sharper.
"So, how's the destroyer construction project going?"
Destroyer.
Literally, it refers to a small class of warship that destroys targets threatening battleships.
Was there anything that could threaten an invincible battleship?
Of course there was. The West's wyvern knight order and the East's undersea demon-beast legion.
A battleship was a class of ship that put everything into a single decisive exchange with the enemy.
Because of its inadequate anti-air and anti-sub capabilities, it couldn't go out to sea alone carelessly.
That was why it needed escort ships to handle anti-sub warfare and serve as floating anti-air batteries at sea.
"A month ago, the shipyard stopped building additional dreadnoughts and started on five 1,000-ton destroyers first. We estimate it will take about two more weeks before launch."
Compared to building a battleship, building a destroyer was really easy.
Armor? Size? Those didn't matter much. These were just floating naval anti-air batteries that accompanied the battleship.
Thanks to that, we were able to finish five of them in no time.
"Good."
With this, a proper 'fleet' was complete.
Honestly, I still couldn't be sure whether the West would really launch a large-scale attack.
But if... the West truly crossed the line,
then I had no intention of holding back either.
When I opened the drawer, the operational plan the staff had drawn up over the past two weeks came into view.
[ Western Invasion Operation Plan ]
A simple summary of the dozens of pages of the plan would be this.
1. Advance a combined 10,000 troops from the 1st and 2nd Divisions through the western coastline all the way to the capital.
2. Any obstacles along the coast, such as fortresses, defensive lines, or enemy corps, will be blown away by the naval fleet.
3. The distance between the western port city of Akiten and the western capital, Porbin, is 5 km. After taking the port, ram the battleship into it and crush Porbin's defenses.
4. Quickly occupy Porbin and secure its surrender
Combined-arms doctrine, in which the fleet annihilates and the infantry occupies. One-sided bombardment using the technological gap. A swift and decisive strategy. It was intuitive, and just as effective.
Hoping the West wouldn't choose its last resort, I quietly tucked the documents back into the drawer.