“Platoon sergeant! Order every squad to spread out immediately! Keep at least twenty meters between squads! The soldiers need to space themselves out too! Move! Move! Move!”
Sensing the crisis, Molin roared out his orders, waving both hands to make the soldiers around him spread out.
Though Platoon Sergeant Klaus did not understand why, by now he had an almost blind trust in Molin. He immediately blew his whistle and relayed the order at the top of his voice.
The soldiers of Third Platoon moved quickly. Under the puzzled stares of the soldiers from the other companies, they rapidly spread into a loose defensive formation.
After giving orders to his own unit, Molin’s next thought was to have Major Thomas spread the other troops out as well. Time was short, and he had no chance to think it over. He immediately found Captain Hauser, who was directing soldiers in preparing their defenses.
“Captain! We can’t bunch up here!”
Molin’s voice was extremely urgent.
“The enemy must have the coordinates for this high ground. Their surviving artillery could carry out saturation fire on this place at any moment!”
Captain Hauser’s movements paused. He glanced at the busy soldiers around them, then at Molin’s grave expression.
“Your concern makes sense, but we really do need to prepare our defenses now. This high ground is important—the enemy will definitely counterattack!”
“I understand! But I hope the troops can at least spread out a little. That way, even if the enemy artillery attacks us, the casualties won’t be so disastrous.”
Captain Hauser hesitated for less than two seconds before nodding heavily.
“All right! I’ll go remind the major at once. But you still need to have your troops ready to withstand the enemy counterattack!”
After warning Captain Hauser, Molin returned to the position of Third Platoon. Only after seeing that the soldiers under him had all spread out as required did he find a shell crater and lie down in it.
Yet Molin’s heart was still in his throat. Right now, he could only hope that his premonition was wrong.
Unfortunately, this time his premonition was entirely correct.
Just as the soldiers of the 1st Battalion had finished using the shell craters to build simple defensive works and were preparing to catch their breath, a strange shrieking sound came from the distant sky.
That sound was completely different from the whistling of ordinary shells. It was sharper, more piercing, like the cry of some bizarre bird.
Immediately afterward, in the sky above the high ground, a dazzling blue sphere of light appeared out of nowhere, then burst apart violently.
There was no earth-shaking boom, only a muffled explosion.
“Boom!”
An invisible, terrifying force spread outward from the sphere of light, and countless fragments of unknown material flashing with cold light poured down like a torrential rain, instantly covering a large area at the center of the high ground.
“Boom!”
“Boom!”
Two more identical muffled explosions rang out. Two more identical blue spheres of light burst one after another in the air above different positions on the high ground.
Molin only felt his ears buzzing. He pressed himself tightly into the shell crater and could clearly hear the sound of fragments going “pupupupu” as they stabbed into the soil around him.
He did not know whether he had been hit by any fragments. He only knew that, for the moment, he was still alive.
After the three airbursts, this stretch of high ground instantly became hell on earth.
Shrill screams and wails rose and fell, replacing every sound from before.
With a sense of dizziness, Molin struggled up from the ground. After confirming that he was not wounded, he looked toward the 1st and 2nd Companies positioned at the center of the high ground.
Mutilated corpses and wounded men groaning in agony were everywhere on the high ground. Blood had dyed the scorched black earth a dark red.
The scene of utter devastation showed that those two companies had been almost completely enveloped by that rain of shrapnel.
The range of the final explosion had also affected the positions of the 3rd Company and company headquarters.
On the system map, the blue unit markers representing the 1st Battalion were flashing wildly. Even without looking at the system’s annotations, Molin knew this meant they had come under attack and suppression.
Molin quickly realized that this should be an attack from magic-crystal cannons.
And this “magitech weapon” from Britannia, whether in terms of the power of its airbursts or the accuracy of its strikes, greatly astonished Molin.
“They didn’t even fire for correction just now. The other side fired a direct salvo at this high ground, and every shot hit.”
“Airburst plus first-round hits… I guess now I know why magic-crystal cannons can go toe-to-toe with field howitzers.”
While Molin was marveling at that outrageous attack accuracy, three kilometers away, at a camouflaged magic-crystal cannon position, preparations for the next round of firing had also begun.
A large number of Royal Army artillerymen and magitech technicians were carefully maintaining the magic-crystal cannons that had just finished firing, checking whether the runes and crystals on the gun bodies had been damaged.
And in the air above this magic-crystal cannon position, at a height of roughly two hundred meters, a figure dressed in the robes of a Highland mage floated there quietly.
“Suppression of Hill 127 successful. Preparing to switch guidance target.”
“Received. Temporary maintenance on the magic-crystal cannons complete. Please provide attack information.”
“Hill 125. Target is a rebel infantry cluster. Fragmentation magic-crystal shells. Begin guidance once loading is complete.”
This mage apprentice from the Highland Mage Corps looked coldly at the position he had designated as the next target.
To him, those were not merely enemies. They were also his pass to shed his status as an apprentice and be promoted to a full mage.
Although he had long since been an apprentice of the Highland Mage Corps, he understood that only after completing his promotion would he be qualified to be called a Highland mage.
He was also grateful to these incompetent Royal Army artillerymen. If not for their skill being so poor that they could not bring out the proper power of the magic-crystal cannons,
High-Rank Instructor Eldridge would never have sent mage apprentices like them here to assist the other side with artillery guidance.
The bracelet worn on his left hand vibrated. This meant that the wearer of the other bracelet on the ground was sending a message.
Highland mages naturally possessed long-distance communication abilities, but such spells generally had many restrictions and were not very flexible.
Moreover, with a limited number of spell slots each day, it was impossible to load too many communication-type spells.
Thus, this kind of close-range magitech communication bracelet, cheaper than a “communication stone,” had become indispensable in guiding magic-crystal cannon fire.
“Fragmentation magic-crystal shells loaded!”
“Understood. Beginning guidance.”
The mage apprentice locked his gaze on Hill 125. He opened and raised his right hand, then used the web between his thumb and forefinger as a sight to aim. A ripple of mana appeared at that spot as well.
Soon, the magic-crystal cannons on the ground roared once more. The magic-crystal shells streaked across the sky and began to fall after passing their highest point.
Then, an invisible force began correcting the trajectory of those shells, guiding them straight down toward Hill 125, until they finally detonated in the air at a height of less than ten meters.
—
Meanwhile, on Hill 127.
Astonished as Molin was by the magic-crystal cannons, he also knew that in this world of magic and magitech, many things truly could not be explained.
At that moment, based on the trajectory of the attack just now, the system had also reverse-calculated the approximate position of the magic-crystal cannon emplacement and marked it.
Molin immediately took out his binoculars and looked in that direction. Very quickly, he found this “fish that had slipped through the net.”
It was a camouflaged position hidden inside a farm. Judging from the large number of dead branches and wheat ears scattered around the magic-crystal cannons, its camouflage must have been quite excellent. No wonder previous reconnaissance had failed to discover it.
However, after Molin spotted it, the system map also marked out a unit marker with its precise position.
“Messenger!”
Molin beckoned to a soldier not far away who was just as covered in soot and dirt.
As the other man ran over, he swiftly pulled a notebook and pencil from his pocket and rapidly wrote down the detailed coordinates and terrain description of that hidden magic-crystal cannon position on the paper.
“Deliver this to the artillery command in the rear at top speed! Tell them this is an enemy magic-crystal cannon position that hasn’t been taken out!”
The young messenger took the slip of paper, nodded heavily, then charged toward the rear without regard for anything else.
“Organize the defense! Prepare for battle!”
At the same time, the surviving officers on the high ground roared, reorganizing the soldiers who were still alive but had been scared witless.
Because below the high ground, a dense mass of Royal Army soldiers had already launched their counterattack.
“Entire platoon! Report casualties!”
Molin’s voice trembled somewhat, because he knew that Third Platoon must have suffered casualties this time as well.
Platoon Sergeant Klaus and several corporals quickly tallied the results, their faces filled with grief.
“Platoon leader! Second Squad is gone… all gone…”
“First Squad and Fourth Squad each have four dead! Third Squad has two lightly wounded! Fifth Squad has one heavily wounded and two lightly wounded!”
“The other squads were farther away. No casualties for the time being!”