Mo Lin’s group mounted their bicycles again and chased at full speed in the direction the villagers had said the Royal Army unit had disappeared.
After being crushed under the march of several hundred men and horse-drawn carts, the country dirt road had been left with an unmistakably clear trail. There was no need to trouble themselves looking for it.
“Sir, look!” Corporal Bowman pointed at a military cap in the grass by the roadside.
It was an old, worn cap from the Aragon Royal Army. There was still mud stuck to the brim; clearly, some soldier had dropped it by accident during the march and had been too lazy to pick it up.
Mo Lin merely glanced at it before continuing to pedal forward.
They had not gone far before they saw an abandoned ammunition crate. The box was empty, tossed brazenly right in the middle of the road.
Farther ahead, clumps of untreated horse manure were scattered along the road like signposts.
Mo Lin almost wanted to laugh.
What kind of regular army march was this? It was clearly a bunch of rabble out on an outing.
This level of military discipline was worse than the university students doing field training before he transmigrated. At least university students knew to take their trash with them.
“Looks like they really did go straight back to Seville.”
Mo Lin called out to Corporal Bowman behind him.
Judging by the traces they had left behind, this unit’s direction of march was extremely clear. There was no sign whatsoever that they intended to split their forces or set an ambush.
He had no idea where they got the confidence to think the Saxons would not catch up so quickly.
But that confidence—or rather, ignorance—instead provided Mo Lin and the others with excellent cover.
Following the “signposts” the Royal Army had left behind themselves, they advanced southward without obstruction.
As they drew closer and closer to Seville, the terrain also began to rise gradually.
Finally, when they rode to the top of a small hillside, the scene before them made everyone stop.
Roughly two kilometers ahead, the ancient outer buildings of Seville could already be seen in the distance.
And on a rise outside the city, a unit was resting in place. A flag of the Aragon Royal Army fluttered in the wind at the top of the high ground.
“Found them.” Mo Lin took the binoculars from around his neck and adjusted the focus.
Through the lenses, he could clearly see the Royal Army soldiers in black uniforms.
Their numbers were about the same as what he had heard from the old farmer. This should be the same unit that had passed through Alcolea Village earlier.
If the Royal Army’s organization was roughly the same as the Saxon Empire’s, this should be around half a battalion’s worth of troops.
On the high ground, scattered tents and hastily built shelters had already taken shape.
Royal Army soldiers in black uniforms wandered back and forth in twos and threes. Some had even started fires at the front of the position, showing absolutely no sign of vigilance.
Mo Lin’s gaze swept back and forth across the high ground. Soon, several strange objects caught his attention.
Farther to the rear of the high ground, several “cannons” with rather peculiar appearances had been deployed.
They did not resemble any artillery used by the Saxon army, and they were also very different from the tube artillery Mo Lin knew.
Their barrels looked unusually thick and short, almost like some kind of mortar. The gun carriage structure and the short barrels seemed to be inlaid with some sort of glowing crystal.
Just as Mo Lin was wondering about them, the system interface in his mind automatically popped up a translucent window.
As his gaze focused on those odd “cannons,” a new line of information surfaced.
[Special unit information detected. Analyzing.]
[Magic-Crystal Cannon Position affiliated with the Aragon Royal Army]
[Weapon Model: Britannia “Comet” Type I Magic-Crystal Cannon]
[Effective Range: 4,500 meters]
[Ammunition Type: High-Power Magic-Crystal Shells, Fragmentation Magic-Crystal Shells]
“Magic-crystal cannon?”
Mo Lin silently repeated the name, and an ominous premonition rose in his heart.
Just from the sound of it, this thing was no pushover. It was very likely a product of this world’s unique magitech.
He shifted his gaze back to his system map.
Around the town icon representing Seville, on the high ground they had just discovered, two different red unit markers had already appeared.
They represented the half battalion of Royal Army infantry and the magic-crystal cannon position behind them respectively.
And what made his scalp tingle even more was that, as he continued observing the surroundings with his binoculars, several more red diamond-shaped unit markers representing organized forces appeared one after another southeast of Seville on the map.
This meant the Royal Army and the Britannians likely believed that the outlying villages alone could not stop the advance of the Saxons, the National Army, and the International Brigade.
So they had directly contracted their defensive line to the city’s outskirts, relying on these magic-crystal cannons of unknown details to construct a complete defensive ring.
And their six-man reconnaissance squad had, at this moment, already passed through all the outlying villages and plunged headlong into the belly of that defensive ring.
On the map, the tiny golden star marking their squad looked so isolated and helpless amid the vast red area representing enemy forces.
“Fuck…”
Mo Lin lowered the binoculars, a layer of cold sweat seeping out across his forehead.
They had overdone it. They had charged too deep in one breath.
Because the Royal Army had not set up any checkpoints on the road to Seville at all, Mo Lin and the others had encountered no obstruction along the way. Their speed of advance had also been much faster than Mo Lin himself had expected.
The soldiers around him still had not realized the severity of the danger. They were merely amazed by the scale of the enemy positions and those weapons they had never seen before.
Only Mo Lin, through that god’s-eye-view map, could clearly see the situation they were in right now.
The good news was that this round of reconnaissance had indeed obtained quite a bit of valuable information, which could help the follow-up forces launch their attack.
But the bad news was that their current situation was still somewhat dangerous.
“Sir, we…”
Corporal Bowman also noticed the change in Mo Lin’s expression and nervously moved closer.
Mo Lin took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.
As the backbone of this squad, panicking now would serve no purpose. It would only lead everyone here to their deaths.
He quickly pushed his bicycle into concealment behind the slope and laid it down. Then he lowered his body and made a “take cover” gesture to the others.
“We may have gone a bit too deep.”
“Then what do we do now, sir? Retreat?”
Corporal Bowman and the other soldiers all gathered around. Every one of their faces was filled with tension.
Mo Lin did not answer immediately.
He lay on the hillside, raised the binoculars again, and carefully observed the enemy position in the distance while his mind spun rapidly.
Retreat?
No. They had come all this way—how could they go back after seeing only this much?
Although the Royal Army’s defensive deployment looked tight, the lax state of their soldiers was simply full of openings everywhere.
“We’re already here…”
Mo Lin muttered that classic line from back in China.
Since they had already entered the tiger’s den, it would be too much of a loss to just go back like this.
Fortune was found amid danger. High risk also meant high reward.
As long as they could obtain valuable intelligence, making the subsequent attack proceed more smoothly and reducing the casualties suffered by the troops,
then his own chances of survival would also increase accordingly. This risk would be worth taking.