Chapter One Hundred: Artillery and Education

Inside the fortress, Mister Cleverhands was brandishing his tentacles and hurling stones at the warriors of Flower Country. This was a drill organized by Sun Licheng, meant to test the results of their recent training.

Mister Cleverhands threw with great accuracy and remarkable speed. Cries of pain rose from the ranks of Flower Country now and then, followed by men collapsing to the ground. Because there was a healing magic circle in place, Sun Licheng did not worry in the least about his subordinates being injured. So long as they were not dead, every wound could be healed in short order.

Facing a rain of blows, Little Medusa used the weapon in her hand to bat aside the stones while keeping a close eye on the formation of the soldiers. The moment she spotted anyone faltering, she would rush over and lash them hard with her great tail, beating the unruly fool until he screamed for mercy.

Soon, the troops had advanced to about a hundred meters from the wooden fortress, and only fifteen men remained in the formation.

"Ha...lt!"

At Vina's command, the remaining warriors stopped in their tracks, quickly filled the gaps, and then began firing on the fortress under Little Medusa's direction.

By then, Mister Cleverhands had already withdrawn from the fortress and flown back to Sun Licheng's side. Listening to the relentless crack of gunfire and watching wood chips fly from the fortress, he said to Sun Licheng, "This way of fighting can indeed make up for the goblins' lack of combat strength, but it will not be easy against large magical beasts. The power of the Flower One rifle is hard to drive through the skin of higher magical beasts, and against clustered targets, there still are not enough rifles."

Sun Licheng looked at the battered fortress, which somehow still had not collapsed, and nodded. "Do you have any good suggestions?"

Mister Cleverhands replied, "We have a lot of magic crystal cannons. We could bring them in and use them."

Sun Licheng nodded, but then shook his head again.

Magic crystal cannons were good, but the consumption of magic crystals was simply too great. Sun Licheng remembered how, on Earth, every major war saw shells fired by the tens of millions. Though the underground fortress had discovered many magic crystals, there were even more uses for them, and to expend them in such a way was truly heartbreaking. Moreover, magic crystal cannons primarily struck enemies with beams of energy; their effect against fortresses and other structures was merely average, and when used against clustered targets they were not even as effective as ogres hurling stones. For that reason, Sun Licheng felt the army could only use magic crystal cannons as auxiliary weapons.

After pondering it for a while, Sun Licheng finally made up his mind and ordered the troops to be equipped with gunpowder artillery.

When it came to designing the cannons, Sun Licheng discarded the ancient bronze muzzle-loader outright and set his sights on the breech-loading cannon.

As a traditional Chinese artillery piece, the breech-loading cannon had served from the day it was introduced all the way to the War of Resistance, and its feats in battle were beyond question. On Earth, constrained by the technology and craftsmanship of the age, its range and power were limited. But here, in a world of magic, with Sun Licheng's enormous advantage, the cannons produced were naturally in a league of their own.

After test firing the next morning, Sun Licheng's cannon could send a five-kilogram round more than two kilometers, with very respectable accuracy. The key point was that this kind of cannon could be reloaded extremely quickly: all one had to do was open the breech, hook out the shell casing, and insert a fresh bronze firing tube before shooting again.

The only problem was that gunpowder left residue after burning, so after five to eight shots the barrel had to be cleaned. Even so, this did not diminish Mister Cleverhands's very high opinion of the weapon.

Sun Licheng designed a total of three kinds of shells: one solid shot, two explosive shells, and two magical shells. The solid shot was simple enough, just a bronze ball, mainly for battering down fortifications. The explosive shells all had the same shape, but their internal charges differed: one used the black powder Sun Licheng had recently developed, and the other used the blackfish gallbladder explosive that had been employed in the salt mine caves. Although that blackfish gallbladder explosive was relatively troublesome to make, apart from the destruction caused by the blast, it also released a fierce toxic smoke, making it terrifyingly lethal in enclosed spaces. The two magical shells each contained a magic crystal inside the casing. Once detonated, they would release either flames or lightning magic, used for arson or for killing enemies behind cover.

Sun Licheng used a magic circle as the shell's trigger fuse. By then, he and Mister Cleverhands were already highly experienced at carving tiny magic circles, and had even made specialized miniature machine tools and jigs.

Before the shells were fired, the soldiers could use dedicated equipment to charge the magic circles with magic crystals. Once such a magic circle struck a hard object at high speed, it would unleash violent lightning, thereby triggering the explosive charge or the magic crystal inside the shell. To prevent the gun from bursting, all of the other shells Sun Licheng designed, apart from the solid shot, were conical in shape, making it easy to identify the correct direction for installation.

After making several shells, Sun Licheng and the others carried out test firing, and the magic circles functioned properly without a single dud.

Having solved the problems of both the cannon body and the shells, Sun Licheng then copied the style of Napoleon's cannon, fitting the guns with large-wheeled carriages and designing a gun wagon, completely solving the problem of artillery moving in support of infantry.

"Fire!"

At Vina's command, the two cannons, now named Year One cannons, roared toward the distant fortress. At the same time, twenty warriors carrying Flower One rifles formed two ranks and slowly pressed forward.

Watching explosions erupt around the fortress while the wooden stronghold itself remained utterly unharmed, Sun Licheng's face darkened at once. The earlier test firings had all been handled by Mister Cleverhands, and the shots had landed with excellent accuracy. But only when the goblins themselves began operating the guns did Sun Licheng truly understand why artillery was called a technical branch of the military. Cannons were not the same as bows or rifles; they fired in an arc and hit targets at long range. Without concepts like trigonometric functions and the like, there was simply no way to make them work.

Of course, one could always mount a bayonet on a cannon and charge straight at the enemy, but would that not be sheer idiocy?

At that moment, the riflemen began volley fire, yet the two cannons still failed to bring down the fortress. Furious, Little Medusa Vina blushed bright red and lashed the goblin gunners with her great tail, sending them scrambling in all directions with their heads tucked under their arms.

"Sigh, I really will have to educate them," Sun Licheng thought with a quiet sigh as he watched the lively scene before him.

Grant had recently become deeply miserable again. Ever since, during a drill, he had failed to hit his target while operating a cannon and been given a vicious whipping by that little Medusa, it felt as though his luck had been stripped clean away.

After that drill, Clan Chief Sun Licheng issued an order that all goblins in the tribe must take part in an activity called night school, where someone would give them lessons every day.

Right, and a few days ago, after the boss came back, he issued another order saying that all goblins and hobgoblins would henceforth be called goblins. That made us feel rather awkward. How could civilized hobgoblins be given the name of barbarians? Later, in night school, the boss explained that in ancient times we had all been called goblins, and that hobgoblin meant traitor. So we had to go back to being called goblins. Anyone who disagreed would get no food.

Well, because of the food issue, we ultimately yielded. So we goblins began a painful life of study.

"Who can tell me why a goblin warrior would need to learn to read?"

After Grant shouted this in his room, he lowered his head again and looked at the bronze tablet in his hands, studying hard. The bronze tablet was covered from end to end with the writing of the Goblin Kingdom.