The Coastal Fortress and the Steel Fortress
The author’s note at the top of the chapter has been translated as part of the narrative flow for completeness: Based on 12:30 p.m. on May 30th, the content of chapter 24 has been significantly revised.
The battle composition has changed quite a bit, so those who read the previous version would be greatly appreciated if they could take another look. I’m truly, truly sorry for the inconvenience…!
Kwaaaaaang—!
When the massive explosion erupted from the battleship’s bow, every soul on the bridge tensed. Acrid smoke swallowed their vision and the hull shuddered violently.
No matter how the age had changed, the stature of mages remained untouched—their power was still overwhelming.
The captain’s voice cracked with urgency. “Damage report on the forward deck!”
“Two wounded, minor fire on the deck! No damage to the forward armor plating!”
“Engine room shows no anomalies!”
“Turret One shows no anomalies!”
Yet an attack of that scale could not inflict meaningful harm on twenty thousand tons of steel. As the smoke thinned, the battleship’s deck emerged unscathed.
Aside from a few crackling flames, nothing seemed out of place. The embers were swiftly doused by waves that washed across the deck.
The mages’ opening strike had failed to leave a single scratch on the Dreadnought’s hull.
Now it was the ironclad’s turn.
“Turret One, fire!”
Kwa-gwa-gwang—!
Two streams of orange light lanced out in flat trajectory, smashing one magic tower to rubble and soaring into the sky.
“Hard to port!”
The enormous vessel swung left. At seven hundred meters, the battleship and the fortress walls ran parallel. Every weapon that had been facing starboard now trained on the enemy stronghold.
Eight main guns. Ten 76 mm secondary batteries on the starboard side. And dozens of 20 mm autocannons besides.
All that firepower—enough to erase the fortress itself—was concentrated on the five remaining spires.
“Turrets Two, Four, and Five, pick your own targets and destroy them! Turret One, reload at speed!”
The fire-control section burst into renewed activity.
Kwang—!
A lightning bolt slammed into the battleship’s aft deck. A wave the size of a house surged upward, and a huge explosion bloomed along the hull. Yet the bridge remained eerily calm. Twenty thousand tons of mass simply crushed the oncoming waves and kept sailing.
The lightning could not pierce the deck armor, and the thick side plating that could shrug off even 305 mm shells easily swallowed the fireball’s blast.
Then every gun on the Dreadnought spoke at once.
────────!
A roar too vast for words shook the heavens. The 305 mm shells fired at point-blank range shattered the magic towers; the 76 mm secondaries collapsed the harbor’s sealed gates.
When the smoke cleared, a broken shield flickered into view. Beyond that battered barrier, one of the towers was already crumbling.
“One magic tower completely destroyed! Two others moderately damaged!”
Only then did the enemy respond with desperation. Magic circles of every color bloomed across the sky. The remaining mages poured out their lives in spells that dyed the sea in violent hues.
The brutal close-range slugfest lasted roughly three minutes. The sky vanished beneath black clouds, the ocean roared like a beast, and thunder rolled without cease.
When at last every sound died away, all the spires of Aquitaine Fortress had been blasted into oblivion.
On the now-tranquil sea, only a single warship drifted calmly, trailing wisps of gunsmoke.
When the main force—including the 2nd Division—reached Aquitaine Fortress, every defensive asset had already been neutralized. The six magic towers surrounding the stronghold lay in ruins. Resistance?
There was none. Soldiers who had watched their defensive towers collapse before their eyes possessed no will left to fight.
“Your Western Army’s main force has already been annihilated by our troops! Will you die waiting for reinforcements that will never arrive, or will you surrender and accept the inevitable?”
They shoved the captured Eric Smith forward to deliver the message. His desperate attachment to life proved useful here. No one could match the passionate expression with which he urged his own army to surrender.
“I am Eric Smith, Supreme Commander of the Western Army! Our forty thousand troops were wiped out by the Southern Army without inflicting even a single casualty!”
When the Western Supreme Commander himself declared it, the troops defending Aquitaine Fortress began to waver. Eric Smith then faithfully recited the script they had forced into his hands.
“I do not wish to see our Western soldiers throw their lives away for nothing! Therefore, as Supreme Commander of the West, I command you all: lay down your weapons, open the gates, and surrender!”
It was almost comical coming from a man who had always treated commoner lives like insects, yet the effect was extraordinary.
Perhaps it was precisely because he was that kind of man. When someone who regarded commoners as vermin spoke those words, it carried the weight of genuine truth.
Fifteen minutes later, the thick gates of Aquitaine Fortress began to creak open. From the shattered harbor gates to the inner citadel, every door was thrown wide. The soldiers laid down their arms.
Inside the fortress, however, chaos erupted. A handful of nobles, even after witnessing the towers’ destruction, demanded a fight to the death.
The soldiers who were expected to die for those orders rebelled. The struggle ended with the fortress lord being dragged to the main gate and forced to his knees.
I, Louis Armand, stand within Aquitaine. Not a single enemy shall pass this place.
For a man who had sent such a bold vow to the capital, it was a rather shabby end.
Across every era, the greatest victims of war are ordinary citizens. From antiquity to the twenty-first century, in every conflict on Earth, civilians were always the ones robbed, violated, and killed. Geneva Conventions and UN declarations meant nothing on the battlefield.
Conversations held by the powerful in safe places never reached the lowest trenches. The madness of war obscured too much. On battlefields where law and order had collapsed, civilian deaths were not even properly tallied. That truth was no different in this world.
The people of the West—already stripped of nearly everything by scorched-earth tactics—watched the Southern Army enter their fortress with eyes full of terror. They were familiar with war. They knew exactly what happened to cities that fell to the Western barbarians.
Even Western soldiers, whose duty was to protect the West, had plundered their own civilians. No matter how geographically close the South and West might be, these were still occupiers.
Nor was that their only fear. The sight of Kyle Leopold’s personal guard marching into Aquitaine behind the Southern Grand Duke was unnerving. Soldiers clad in heavy gray armor and others in long coats looked… disturbingly inhuman.
They seemed like killing machines wearing human skin. The thought occurred to many as they watched the guards march in perfect formation, limbs moving at precisely drilled angles behind their lord.
So the citizens moved frantically. The wealthy hid their treasures, merchants concealed their goods, and farmers hurried to hide their cattle and families.
“Hide the assets, quickly! If we can’t repay the loan, our trading company is finished!”
“We don’t know what the Southern Army will do. So none of you are to step outside, understand?”
“Run! If you stay here, there’s no telling what they’ll do to you!”
Some Westerners even tried to flee the city. In the chaos, remnants of defeated Western units began looting civilians. It was into this turmoil that the Southern Army entered Aquitaine.
“Any soldier who commits plunder, rape, murder, or any such crime will be punished severely under military law!”
“The citizens of the West are family and friends who share the same roots as we Southerners! Our army has come here to protect those families and friends from the corrupt nobles!”
Of course, almost no one believed those words at first. “We will not plunder. We are different.” Every army—from the Western regulars to the barbarians—spouted the same pretty lies.
Yet once the Southern troops actually entered the city, they behaved with surprising civility. The personal guard marching behind Kyle Leopold was not as rigid as rumor claimed.
When a small child ran sobbing into the guard’s encampment crying, “Waaah, please help! My mom and dad are trapped under the rubble!” everyone expected the worst. After all, these men in ash-gray coats with blood-red eyes and eerie weapons showed no trace of ordinary humanity.
People turned away, already imagining the child’s grim fate at the hands of killing machines—only to be stunned when the guards followed the boy, smashed the debris aside, and pulled his parents free.
“Thank you for saving us…!”
“There is no need for thanks. Protecting civilians is the duty of the Grand Duke’s personal guard.”
Kindness given where none was expected leaves the deepest impression. To Westerners long conditioned to see soldiers as nothing but looters, the Southern troops’ courtesy felt strangely warm.
Moreover, powerful-looking men who declared themselves protectors inspired unexpected confidence.
That night, the Southern Army focused entirely on restoring order inside the fortress. They pitched their own camps in open spaces and slept. For the Westerners it was bewildering.
Their fortress had fallen, yet there was no plunder, no arson, no murder. Instead, the invaders were helping them. Were these Southerners not better than the nobles who had stripped them bare under the guise of scorched-earth tactics and then fled?
Thus the night became strangely peaceful. A quiet, orderly evening that felt nothing like a defeated and occupied fortress. That single night’s experience became the greatest catalyst in changing Western perceptions.
The next morning, after receiving a report that the situation inside Aquitaine Fortress had stabilized, Kyle Leopold gazed toward Porvin with a satisfied smile.
“Now it is time to go meet that bastard Charles.”
Kyle Leopold’s calm voice became an order that spread throughout the army. The battleship anchored in Aquitaine harbor trained its guns, and five thousand elite soldiers began to march in unison—toward Porvin, the capital of the West.