Chapter 32
The key to fighting the barbarian tribes is the fortress wall.
Warriors who charged without knowing pain or fear, madmen who casually used sorcery that shortened human lifespans, and who believed paradise awaited after death in battle.
From the very way they shouted with delight as they charged, it was obvious they were insane.
There was a reason they were called barbarians.
That was why Edwin and the other lords of the West’s smaller cities focused on building fortress walls.
Once a full-scale wave began, they had to endure inside the city until the bastards grew tired and withdrew on their own.
Obviously, sacrifices were unavoidable in the process.
Not everyone living outside the walls could come inside. The West was not such a wealthy region, and the fortress in the middle of the city was not large enough to hold everyone in the domain.
So even while watching his territory burn before his eyes, Edwin had to hold out inside the walls until support from the center arrived.
That was Edwin’s common sense.
Facing warriors who charged mindlessly, unaware of pain, even the fortress wall was on shaky ground—but fighting them head-on was even more insane.
That was why he had come in person to meet the commander of the Southern reinforcements.
“I’m Edwin, lord of Eirene.”
“Ah, so you’re the lord. A pleasure to meet you. I’m Captain James, commander of the 17th Company.”
Around where the two of them were talking, construction was in full swing. The infantry digging into the ground with shovels and various tools looked as if they were carving out a moat around the fortress.
But there was a slight difference from an actual moat.
Unlike a moat, which is a giant man-made waterway filled with water, what the soldiers were digging was a pit barely large enough for one person to hide in.
“Are you perhaps making a moat? If so, you’d better dig it deeper and wider. Those barbarians have no ordinary physical abilities.”
“Ah, no need to worry. This is a trench our soldiers dug to hide in.”
“A trench?”
It was a concept unfamiliar to Edwin.
Trenches were a product of the age when firearms became fully established on the battlefield.
To defend the entire city of Eirene, they had to fight outside the walls, and there was nothing better than trenches when hurriedly building a position on bare ground outside the city.
“Wouldn’t that prevent a retreat if the enemy closes in in an emergency?”
“It’s fine. The enemy won’t be getting close enough for that, and there won’t be any need to retreat.”
The moment James finished speaking, soldiers brought out machine guns and began mounting them on top of the trench.
To Edwin, who had only ever seen wheellock firearms or muskets, it was a strange weapon in many ways.
“This weapon is called a machine gun. It’s a device that pushes the performance of existing firearms to the extreme.”
Even then, Edwin still couldn’t shake his doubts.
It wasn’t as if he had never used guns himself. He had fired muskets that had been hard to obtain for use against the barbarians many times.
But muskets had no real stopping power. Their ability to punch holes through a human body from a distance was amazing, but that was all they could do.
He had quickly given up after seeing bastards keep charging even with holes blown through them.
“You needn’t worry. This thing’s performance is incomparable to early firearms like muskets.”
James quietly watched the look on Baron Edwin’s face. Even after hearing such an explanation, the baron still looked as if he couldn’t quite believe it.
He understood.
At first, James had worn the same expression too.
“...I see. If necessary, I’ll have our domain’s defense force moved here as well.”
The reason Edwin spoke that way, still half in doubt, was simple.
The West had effectively become the South’s second company now.
It was the South that had been propping up the West’s economy and bureaucratic system, which had been thoroughly ruined over the past fifty years. Since they were supporting the West’s backbone, of course His Excellency Kyle’s influence would be that much greater too.
Baron Edwin himself would also find it hard to leave the Western army to fight on its own.
His Grace the Grand Duke had even said this just before departure to prepare for that very situation.
‘Don’t drag the Western army out to the front lines if they don’t particularly want to fight.’
The South had to become a trustworthy friend and a dependable family for the West. Forcing family onto the battlefield did not fit that image.
So James replied with a smile, as if to reassure him.
“No need to worry. I understand Baron Edwin’s intentions well, but now is the time for the Eirene domain to strengthen its foundations.”
In any case, infantry with spears and swords had almost nothing to do in a war led by machine guns.
James and his 17th Company spent the rest of the day digging trenches and clearing the battlefield until evening.
“Clear out everything within about two kilometers! Anyone who can use Aura Breathing, move the rocks; bring saws and shave down all the trees too!”
And so, the land between the Eirene domain and the Western border, cleared away by a hundred soldiers, became a completely flat plain.
A perfect kill zone with nowhere to hide and nowhere to take cover.
Then three 76mm field guns were deployed as well.
They had been specially attached to the company so they could blow away enemy shamans the moment they were spotted.
But to the soldiers of the barony, it was just an incomprehensible act.
“The Southern Army prepares for battle in a really strange way.”
“Wouldn’t that actually make it easier for the barbarians to come in?”
“Well, I’m sure they have their reasons. They did say they brought new weapons too.”
“Even so, aren’t they underestimating the barbarians too much? Those crazy barbarian bastards can keep moving for minutes even after you drive a spear through their heads.”
The soldiers of the barony also knew very little about the Southern Army’s new weapons.
They just watched, thinking that since their lord had returned without saying anything, he must still have some plan in mind.
Half concern. Half distrust.
The first night of the Southern Army’s arrival passed like that.
And then the next day came.
“Barbarians! It’s a barbarian raid!!!”
At dawn.
What covered the plain beyond the field like a swarm of ants were barbarians who had stripped off their shirts and armed themselves with axes and swords.
A red halo floated above their heads.
The trace of a body-enhancement spell.
“Damn it, there are that many...?”
All the soldiers standing on the walls of the Eirene domain swallowed hard at once.
By rough estimate, about nine hundred to a thousand.
It was the largest-scale invasion they had ever seen.
It seemed the barbarians were thoroughly enraged that their ‘proposal’ had been rejected.
“Those crazy Temelicans have really made up their minds.”
The Barony of Eirene was a small regional city. Its domain defense force barely exceeded five hundred men.
Even adding up all the Southern troops sent as support, there were only about six hundred.
Which meant...
“Shit, that means we each have to take down two of them.”
It meant a two-for-one exchange against barbarian warriors who feared death and didn’t even die properly.
“I just hope the Southern troops deal with exactly two hundred of them, no more and no less.”
As they said that, the soldiers gripped their weapons.
The battle began with the signal arrow fired by the barbarians.
Fiiiiii-!
The scream of the arrow ripped through the quiet dawn sky, and battle began.
“Waaaaaaaaa!!!!”
A thousand barbarians rushed forward at once.
Toward the plain the Southern soldiers had finished leveling just the day before.
The company commander of the 17th Company, James, watched that sight and gave the order.
“Let’s make it crystal clear where those bastards dared to set foot. All units, fire!”
A half-beat later, twenty 7.62mm machine guns and five 20mm autocannons began pouring out a crossfire all at once.
At the barbarians who had willingly stepped into the kill zone.
***
“I’ll show them what happens when they reject a proposal.”
The Temelican tribe’s chief had led out half of the tribe’s combat force.
They had to utterly crush Eirene for rejecting the proposal so that the other regions would accept it out of fear.
So, three times the usual number of troops gathered on the plain.
Until that moment, not a single Temelican warrior doubted victory.
Because on the plains, they were invincible.
Fiiiiii-!
The moment the signal arrow announced the start of battle, a thousand Temelican warriors charged in unison.
Every warrior rushed straight at the defensive line—
“All units, fire!”
Ratatatatatat-!
With a roar like thunder, beams of light poured out from everywhere.
“...Huh?”
The bodies of the warriors in the front rank shattered.
If a bullet hit an arm, the forearm flew off; if it hit the waist, the body split apart. Anyone struck in the head collapsed into a shape too horrific to even describe.
Blood sprayed in all directions. Bodies trembled weakly like marionettes with their strings cut. Bodies were torn open, and warriors died before they could even scream.
In front of that, sorcery that removed pain was meaningless.
Nearly a hundred people vanished on the spot.
Less than half of the corpses left behind were even recognizable as bodies.
“W-what...”
It was a shocking sight that even sorcery could not hide.
Not even any god from the myths believed by the natives would kill people that cruelly.
Only then did some reason return to the warriors in the second rank.
“We need to retreat—”
Thwack-!
But unfortunately, the warriors in the second rank had no time to hesitate.
Because the stream of machine-gun fire that had swept across the first rank and spread to both sides was already turning back toward the center again.