Extreme exhaustion had sent Mo Lin into a dead sleep. It wasn’t until his stomach protested that he was forcibly roused from his slumber.
He opened his eyes to find the tent pitch-black. Only the faint glow of an oil lamp hanging outside stubbornly seeped in.
“Platoon Leader, you’re awake?”
A hushed voice sounded at the tent flap. It was his orderly, Hans.
“Why do I feel like I slept forever? What time is it?”
“Just past midnight. Have something to eat.”
“How did it get so late…”
Seeing him awake, Hans immediately passed in a mess tin warmed by campfire embers and a piece of black bread.
Mo Lin took the still-warm mess tin. When he opened it, the rich aroma of meat broth hit him right between the eyes.
It looked like the field kitchen had added something extra to dinner tonight. There was even canned beef in the “stock cube.”
Having not eaten a proper meal since the one before the reconnaissance, Mo Lin couldn’t care less about appearances right now.
He downed it with the black bread, making short work of the food—a veritable whirlwind of consumption.
Hans watched his platoon leader’s table manners, and the stereotype of him being the company’s undisputed mess-hall king only deepened.
“Right, Platoon Leader, a messenger from company HQ came by an hour ago. We’re to break camp at zero-four-thirty sharp.”
“Come again?”
Mo Lin looked up in surprise, wiped his mouth, and asked,
“Why didn’t you wake me when the messenger came?”
Hans scratched his head, a little embarrassed.
“The platoon sergeant said you were exhausted and needed your rest. The messenger also said Captain Hauser specifically ordered that if you were still asleep, to let you sleep and not disturb you.”
Mo Lin’s hand paused, the empty mess tin in his grip. He realized that in this army, which was still unfamiliar to him, something beyond mere discipline and orders seemed to be quietly taking root.
“Thank you, all of you. But since I’m the commanding officer of Third Platoon, you must wake me the next time a messenger arrives. Understood?”
“Yes, Platoon Leader!”
Having finished eating, Mo Lin did not go back to rest. Instead, he got up and stepped out of the tent.
He first made a circuit around Third Platoon’s temporary encampment, checking the sentry posts.
He also confirmed that the soldiers who had accompanied him during the day, including Corporal Baumann, were all getting proper rest in their tents before returning to his own with a quiet mind.
At zero-three-fifty, Platoon Sergeant Klaus arrived punctually outside his tent, just as Mo Lin was climbing off his camp bed.
The two exchanged a few brief words. At zero-four-ten, they blew the assembly whistle together, rousing the sleeping soldiers to pack their gear and strike the tents.
At zero-four-thirty, Third Platoon assembled punctually at the company rendezvous.
Soon, the entire company merged into the massive marching column of the First Battalion. Under cover of darkness, they flowed like a silent river of ink toward their predetermined assault positions.
It was then that Mo Lin noticed the new item that had appeared in the “Intel” tab of his system.
“Wait, armored airships??? What kind of unit is that? We have war behemoths entering the field on our side?”
A faint white light crept across the horizon.
On a hill outside Seville, the reveille of the Royal Army shattered the silence of dawn.
The soldiers at the magic crystal cannon emplacement crawled out of their temporary shacks, cursing and grumbling, and began their daily maintenance.
“Damn it, this thing’s harder to keep happy than my old lady back home.”
An old veteran complained as he carefully wiped the complex runes on the gun barrel with a soft cloth soaked in a special solution.
Another was inspecting and wiping the magic crystal that served as the core, ensuring it hadn’t been contaminated.
These soldiers had no idea that, behind a stand of slightly elevated woodland roughly four kilometers away, a Saxon field artillery battery had already taken aim at them.
Atop a hastily piled earthen rampart, the battery commander—a captain—stood on a two-meter observation vehicle, conducting final rangefinding with a pair of scissors-style artillery binoculars.
Having obtained rough distance and position data, he had the messenger at his side relay the information toward the howitzer firing positions via a temporary short-range telephone line.
The firing position featured four leFH 98/09 105mm howitzers lined up in a row. Besides them stood an artillery sergeant in direct command of the firing, and another messenger responsible for receiving data from the observation post.
Once the sergeant relayed the azimuth and range data given by the battery commander, the crew manning the leftmost howitzer immediately trained their eyes on the dial sight used for indirect fire and began furiously cranking the elevation and traverse handwheels.
When the moment arrived, the artillery sergeant swept the red flag in his hand sharply downward.
“Number one gun, ranging shot, fire!”
“Boom!”
The leftmost howitzer in the battery roared. The thunderclap of its shell leaving the barrel tore through the morning stillness.
A dozen seconds later, a small column of dust rose from the distant hilltop.
The Royal Army magic crystal cannon position immediately fell into chaos. Through the observation optics, they looked like a colony of ants that had suddenly been stirred into motion.
“Over! Hold azimuth, drop one hundred!” The battery commander shouted without lifting his head from the observation optics.
The correction was relayed back instantly. The crew rapidly adjusted elevation and reloaded, and the second report followed hard on the heels of the first.
This time, the round landed just in front of the magic crystal cannon emplacement.
“Bracketed!”
The battery commander atop the observation vehicle grinned. After two ranging shots, he had determined that the target’s exact range lay within that hundred-meter bracket.
“Hold azimuth, add fifty! Full battery, one round, fire!”
Moments after the order, the four 105mm howitzers fired as one.
The shells screamed through the damp morning air like the whistle of Death itself, landing precisely on the Royal Army magic crystal cannon position where the grumbling had yet to subside.
Amid the violent detonations, earth, stone, and human remains were hurled into the sky together.
The foremost magic crystal cannon, so carefully maintained, was in that first salvo reduced to twisted scrap.
Through his optics, the battery commander saw that the mean point of impact was slightly forward, and made his final adjustment.
“Full battery, add twenty-five! Three rounds rapid!”
“Boom, boom, boom, boom—!”
This time, the entire hilltop was utterly swallowed by flames and black smoke.
The surviving Royal Army artillerymen completely broke. They threw down their weapons, abandoned their precious magic crystal cannons, and fled toward the rear of the position, screaming, their order completely shattered.
And this was merely the prelude to the prelude of the entire battle.
On the outskirts of Seville, all the magic crystal cannon positions marked by Mo Lin and the other reconnaissance teams had, one after another, suffered devastating strikes from two 77mm field gun battalions and three 105mm howitzer batteries.
The Saxon artillerymen had proven with deeds that truth lies only within the range of heavy guns.
Britannia’s magic crystal cannons might indeed possess devastating power, but in range and the development of artillery tactics, they still lagged behind the Saxon Empire.
So much so that during the first wave of attacks specifically targeting the magic crystal cannon positions, the Royal Army artillerymen—trained by Britannia—were unable to mount any effective countermeasures.
On the Saxon side, aside from this 105mm howitzer battery with its clear field of fire that could use observation vehicles to direct fire, near those artillery positions with restricted lines of sight, several massive observation balloons had been raised.
These behemoths floated at nearly three hundred meters, not only providing precise targeting for the Saxon artillery but also allowing the observers in their baskets to overlook the entire battlefield.
From their vantage point, the Royal Army troops on the outskirts of Seville were like ants on a hot pan—panicked, disordered, and scurrying about.
One observer turned his telescope toward the outer perimeter.
Between the farmland, woods, and winding country paths, a massive gray arc had emerged, formed by soldiers in field-gray uniforms and motley attire.
Now, this arc was tightening like a noose—slowly, yet inexorably—toward Seville.