Chapter 23
What rattled most in this situation were the Western conscripts.
The Western elite troops being directly battered by a battleship?
They had already been crushed beneath the naval gunfire. The dead, as always, say nothing.
The conscripts knew very well just how strong those so-called 'elite troops' were.
The Western Front elite troops fought natives, the monsters of the Arbel Mountains, and the rebels every day, and more than half of them were aura users.
Even if they weren't knight-class, the Western elite soldiers had at least learned the basic aura breathing method.
And yet those very men were being melted down without any resistance at all.
It was only natural that they trembled in fear every time they saw an explosion burst out inside the gorge.
Because the moment that explosion was directed at them, the number 30,000 would mean nothing at all.
And that wasn't all.
"Enemy forces!"
Southern troops began to appear on the opposite side of the Arcal Plain.
They led with the cannon that had shredded the wyvern knights at Sarsen Harbor and on Albion Night.
I had already heard rumors about how powerful their weapons were.
The story that 5,000 infantry sent to attack Sarsen Harbor had been completely swept away by only 300 infantry was already quietly spreading.
There was no way anyone would feel like fighting under those circumstances.
"Let's surrender."
Of course, that was what came out.
Surrender, then die if the Southern Army lost? From the beginning, the thought that the Southern Army would lose didn't even occur to them.
Besides, every conscript knew exactly what their situation was.
Thirty thousand meat shields to help the elite troops break through.
There was no way they could feel any patriotism toward a country that had shoved them out there as meat shields.
"Listen up, Western conscripts! His Grace, the merciful Grand Duke Kyle, knows full well that you didn't come here of your own will!"
"Our army is here to liberate our families, friends, and fellow countrymen from the corrupt nobles of the West! Those who do not wish to fight, throw down your weapons and surrender!"
And so, all the soldiers of the West surrendered before the Southern Army's 1st Division.
***
The path of destruction left by the battleship's merciless bombardment was nothing short of horrific.
The Arcal Plain and the gorge cutting through it had once been the West Coast's largest road, but no trace of it remained now.
The mountain crushed by the 305mm shells had collapsed onto the gorge and swallowed everything beneath it.
And yet, even at that gruesome scene, there were a few who survived.
Knights. Mages. And soldiers who had learned aura breathing.
There was only one fate awaiting them.
"Kill them all."
To industrialize, it was vital to crush the landlord class that owned vast tracts of land.
And the power of the landlord class came from land and people.
The 'people' here meant the private soldiers their families had built up over the course of hundreds of years.
The elite troops were also recruited from those nobles' private armies, so... from my position, where I had to industrialize the West, they were targets that had to be wiped out no matter what.
"Today, no enemy will leave this valley alive."
My Guard moved forward at my command.
Having gained discipline through several battles and intense training, the Guard entered the collapsed valley in neat rows and columns.
Leading the way were heavy machine gunners wearing thick steel-alloy armor.
As the unit's shield, they advanced while spraying machine-gun fire at everything they could see.
And behind them came riflemen in gray coats.
Bullets infused with mana and aura annihilated the enemies who survived the machine-gun barrage.
Gunfire and screams rang out inside the valley for a long while.
It took less than two hours for the West's 10,000 elite troops to be literally annihilated.
Watching that, I gave the operations officer an order.
"Tell the 1st Division and the support unit to stay in the Arcal Plain, control the Western conscripts, and carry out civil affairs operations by using the conscripts to stir up the locals."
"Yes, Your Grace!"
"And the 2nd Division will advance with the fleet to the port city of Aquitten."
This was why I had deliberately brought not only two divisions but also 5,000 support and logistics troops, even though we could carry out one-sided slaughter.
This wasn't a fight that ended just by capturing the capital quickly and forcing a surrender.
Our ultimate goal is the merger of the West and the South. For full unification, we need legitimacy and public sentiment.
Corrupt Western nobles who had used their own people as meat shields.
And the Southern army, which treated surrendered enemies warmly.
The 1st Division and the support unit were meant to make that contrast crystal clear.
That's why the support unit also included quite a few civilian specialists in medicine, education, and construction.
A 21st-century-style civil affairs operation.
"Tell the main force of the 2nd Division that follows behind us to march straight ahead. We'll catch up soon enough."
Forty thousand troops who had been defending the capital vanished.
There was no longer anything in this West that could block our army's path.
The wyvern knight brigade would be wiped out by the anti-air artillery unit, and the fortresses would be smashed to pieces before the overwhelming might of the battleship.
That was the inevitable outcome.
The West had nothing besides the wyvern knight brigade.
The West was a land completely cut off from the imperial center.
By land, it was blocked by the enormous Arbel Mountains, and by sea you had to pass through Southern territory to reach the imperial center.
So naturally, its pace of development had fallen far behind the center's as well.
Even though it was cut off like this, the reason the West had been incorporated into the Empire was simple.
The West was a pain to invade, but also far too irritating to leave alone.
A land blocked by the Arbel Mountains and the sea, a place that made everyone uneasy because they could attack at any time if left alone, and an aerial cavalry force known as the wyvern knight brigade.
For those reasons, the imperial founder had brought the West into the Empire.
For the past thousand years, things had probably been peaceful like that...
"But not anymore."
There is no land better than the West.
The mountain range was such an excellent natural barrier that even a 21st-century army could not easily cross it.
Besides, it had substantial cultural and ethnic differences from the imperial center. Since it was closer to the South than to the center, they were people we could trust to some degree.
In other words, it would become the South's rear base.
A safe rear area where we could build military factories that couldn't be built on the mainland, raise production with advanced agricultural technology, and conscript the population.
Of course, it's not as if there were no roads at all that continued beyond the Arbel Mountains.
Still, that didn't matter.
There was no better place for firearms, including cannons, to shine than a narrow pass through the mountains.
"So we'll take Aquitten quickly and then go all the way to Porvin."
In the end, speed was what mattered most.
The imperial center certainly wasn't ignorant of how important the West was.
They would definitely try to intervene, and before that happened, we had to cut off the route across the Arbel Mountains in advance.
"Is the cleanup finished?"
"Yes, Your Grace!"
"Then let's set out. Time is life."
Just as I was about to turn around after saying that, one machine gunner in heavy armor came over carrying a finely dressed man slung over his shoulder.
"Your Grace. We found someone who looks to be of fairly high rank. The standard procedure is to execute him, but I couldn't tell whether he was someone we could handle on our own..."
The man's condition after being dumped on the ground was miserable.
His face was white as a sheet as he coughed up blood. I don't see any external wounds, so it must be internal injuries.
When I drew up mana to inspect his insides, I saw his shattered aura core.
"He resisted, so I broke his aura core. He won't be able to use aura again."
"Hmm..."
He could use aura, and he wore flashy armor unlike ordinary knights. One look was enough to tell he was someone important.
When I grabbed the collar of the man lying face-down on the ground and hauled him up, he reacted.
"Guh... p-please spare me..."
For someone of high rank, that was a truly pathetic sight.
Still, from my perspective, it was a lot more convenient when they acted that pathetic.
The more craven they were, the better threats to their lives worked.
"Guard. Point the machine gun at his head."
"Hiiik...!"
Click.
When the heavy lump of metal touched his forehead, the man's body shook violently.
In a forceful tone, I asked him:
"State your affiliation, rank, and name."
"W-Western Army Supreme Commander Eric... Eric Smith!"
"Eric Smith?"
It was a name I'd heard a few times through the intelligence bureau. I knew he was one of the West's officers.
But wasn't he the one fighting the Western natives?
Why was he here?
When I asked that, the answer poured out of his mouth.
The situation among the West's upper ranks was a mess. The Western Grand Duke was shut away in his room. And he'd come here after gathering conscripts.
"Hah, so he treats the lives of 30,000 commoners as worthless, but his own life is precious?"
I let out an involuntary dry laugh at that hypocrisy, which was almost admirable.
Even so, the reason I didn't kill him was simple.
"Be grateful. You still have use."
A man who was basically the Western Army's supreme commander would have plenty of information to squeeze out of, and plenty of places to use him.
"Tell the rest to finish cleaning up the battlefield and return. We'll set out for Aquitten."
***
The Southern Army's advance was faster than the rumors had claimed.
Rumors are ultimately passed from person to person, and the 40,000 of the Western Army who were supposed to spread them had all been wiped out without a single exception.
So by the time the news that the Southern Army was charging toward Aquitten reached Aquitten...
the fleet, including the dreadnought, was already near the harbor.
Against the crimson sea at sunset, the dreadnought's massive naval guns were pointed at Aquitten Fortress.