Chapter 627 — The War Machine

Had it not been for the catastrophe that the Society of the End of All Things set loose, this war that pushed the Cecil Legion onto the stage might have been postponed for a very long time—but there are no ifs in this world. The Society of the End of All Things had conjured a man-made disaster on the Plains of the Holy Spirit, and so the steel legion from the Southern Border was bound to step onto the stage.

This steel legion was still callow, its tactical thinking and troop training all needing further tempering, and the battlefield of the Plains of the Holy Spirit was the finest training ground they could ask for.

At daybreak, the First Legion, advancing swiftly under cover, made contact with the first blockade line of the Crystal Cluster Legion in the small plains south of Red Maple City. This unavoidable encounter was the starting point of the entire campaign. It began with three salvos of naval gunfire from the Gorgon River, and the Legion's chariot troops massed into an arrowhead formation and launched a fierce assault on the Crystal Cluster defense line.

Iron-grey giant eagles skimmed beneath the cloud layer, casting the image of the battlefield into their riders' eyes. Suoyou Frostleaf looked down upon the Legion's advancing spearhead and took in every detail of the Cecilans' way of fighting—she saw the tanks, with their sturdy shields and powerful guns, massing into assault formations and hammering the weak points of the Crystal Cluster line with maximum fire delivery, pushing forward all the while. The Crystal Cluster Legion, caught by surprise, feared death not at all, yet against this concentrated bombardment it was utterly impossible to hold the line—whether it was flesh and blood reforged, or fortifications built upon walls and magic shields, all collapsed swiftly beneath the massed fire.

After a breach like that had been torn open, the tank assault formations would begin to accelerate, scattering swiftly as they advanced into several smaller arrowheads and relying on relentless forward pressure and shelling to widen the gap further. At the same time, the infantry cooperating with the chariot troops would enter the field and, centering on their respective "core chariots," begin cutting and penetrating deeper into the enemy positions. They were responsible for destroying any close-range enemies that might threaten the tanks, or for marking the location of enemy fortifications to guide tank fire, until the operation was concluded.

And throughout this entire process, the long-range magitech cannons on the rear high ground maintained an almost ceaseless bombardment—fire that blanketed the rear of the Crystal Cluster line and all but snuffed out any possibility of the enemy reinforcing it. Great numbers of crystal-infected, urgently rallied, were held off several kilometers away; they died ceaselessly beneath the shelling, until the entire line vanished, until their once-safe "rear" became the new front…

An offensive like this consumed an astonishing quantity of solid shells (even energy weapons burned through a great many focusing crystals), but the Cecilans' weapons reserves should be enough to sustain them until the end of the whole war—Suoyou knew that the entire Southern Border had been preparing for this war since last year (in fact, they had probably been preparing ever since the founding of the duchy; it was only that their first enemies might not have been crystalized monsters). Factory after factory, production line after production line, tens of thousands of workers, laboring day and night to produce shells and weapon crystals, assembling guns and chariot chassis without pause. Metal from the Eastern Border, magical materials from the royal house, and the vast resources the Southern Border held in its own reserves—almost all of it was transformed into these things that screamed through the air and burst with a bang upon the battlefield—

And to this very day, to this very moment, the factories of the Southern Border were still producing without pause, and even new production lines were being added every day. Every day, countless supplies were carried along the Gorgon River, along the Royal Way, along the temporary roads of the war zone, by mechanical ships or magitech vehicles to the front.

The entire Southern Border seemed to have become a vast machine, all resources fed into its hopper, and amid the thunderous clatter of gears and levers, their weapons and equipment only grew more numerous the longer they fought.

Gaoyang Cecil called this state the "wartime system."

"Magical massing observed in the northwest c12 sector—enemy reinforcements," Suoyou Frostleaf reported, guiding her giant eagle through the clouds. In a fleeting glimpse as the earth tilted and her altitude dropped, she sent the latest scouting intelligence back to the rear and broke away from the sector before the crisscrossing lightning nets from the ground could close over her. "Requesting naval gun support."

"This is the Pathfinder, received. Bombardment arriving in one minute."

At the beginning, the tactics of the Cecil Legion had not actually been this brilliant.

They had indeed forged a completely new and powerful army, but this army was also a wholly new thing to themselves. Gaoyang Cecil had designed a whole suite of supporting tactics and training programs for it, yet from commanders down to soldiers, it was very difficult to understand those contents out of thin air—they could only carry out the training mechanically, and relying on absolute trust in their lord, they recorded those techniques that had no practical evidence to support them. And in the early period of this war, almost no commander successfully realized those training contents.

Suoyou had seen with her own eyes tanks swarming at the enemy lines while the infantry meant to attack in coordination were left far behind (in fact, the fact that no soldier had been crushed to death by his own side's tanks was already proof that the earlier mechanical training had been effective), and she had seen combat squads describe the frontline situation in tense and exaggerated terms, causing the rear commanders to misjudge the enemy's scale, wasting fire support and throwing the original attack plan into chaos.

Had it not been for the sheer power of those advanced weapons and equipment, had it not been for the Crystal Cluster Legion's utter bewilderment when facing the Southern Border army, the army of the Duchy of Cecil could never have advanced so quickly.

Inside the command vehicle, Gaoyang was learning of the situation along the entire front through the Magic Web communications. Just moments ago, a company had unexpectedly withdrawn from combat.

They had misread their orders and moved into an enemy encirclement while on the march. Though they ultimately broke out, seven of their twelve chariots were destroyed and casualties were severe; they could only be pulled back to regroup.

A reserve company filled the gap left by the Fourth Company and continued to dismantle the giants' defense line.

The battlefield of the Plains of the Holy Spirit was the finest stage for real combat; here the legions of the Duchy of Cecil would receive the best training. And even now, soldiers and commanders were still constantly adjusting to and mastering what they had learned on the training grounds. What they did now was not yet good enough, but in Gaoyang's eyes, they were improving at a tremendous pace.

This should be credited to the soldiers' literacy rate.

More than eighty percent of the soldiers possessed basic reading, writing, and arithmetic skills, enough to give them better logical thinking, enough to let them rapidly accumulate relatively complex battlefield experience and understand their superiors' various orders.