Barbarian Raid (2): They Fell Like Autumn Leaves
The Temelican warriors fell like leaves scattered by an autumn gale. Warriors who charged without feeling pain? Once their body parts physically vaporized, they could no longer advance; they could only collapse to the ground and wait for death to claim them.
Crossfire pouring from open ground with no cover literally shredded human bodies to pieces. Any warrior reckless enough to enter the kill zone failed to last even a minute before crumbling entirely.
The most flustered by this abrupt reversal was the shaman of the Temelican tribe. The charge that had worked so perfectly until now suddenly failed, and in his panic the shaman rushed to invoke his sorcery.
The trace of that spell was instantly picked up by the company’s mage, who had been cycling detection magic.
“Bearing zero-four-two! Distance approximately twenty-five hundred meters—I sense shamanic residue!”
Three field guns swung toward the shaman at once. Boasting six rounds per minute, they turned the ground where he stood into a churned wasteland. The spells laid on the warriors began to unravel one by one.
By then the enemy had already pushed too deep into the kill zone to turn back.
“Huh…?”
The halos hovering above their heads started to vanish. Only then did fear worm its way into minds that had felt nothing while their comrades died around them.
“Wait—why am I even—”
Thwack! The head of the dazed warrior beside him disappeared. Bullets traveling at unavoidable speed shattered limbs; shells plunging straight down erased more than ten warriors at a time. Slowly, the rest began to turn and run.
It was a terror even the barbarian warriors—veterans of massacre, plunder, and arson—could not withstand. Death by spear or sword at least allowed resistance. In fair combat at mutual killing distance, even they could accept an honorable end and keep fighting. But this was different.
Something they could neither perceive nor see was tearing their bodies apart. Far from an honorable death, it was a miserable finale that left not even a corpse to recover. A literal dog’s death—dying without ever laying eyes on the enemy.
The Temelican warriors, famed for never retreating on the battlefield, began turning their backs one by one and fleeing. Punishment for retreat? The hell that awaited those who ran from combat? What meaning could such threats hold when the ground before them was already hell itself?
“What the—aaaagh!”
“I don’t want to die like—”
“Guh…”
The 7.62mm rounds that turned men into rags and the 20mm autocannons that blew bodies apart gave no time for final words.
Of course, among the natives there were occasionally those who wielded unusual power—the Western equivalent of knights. Warriors wreathed in green energy charged bravely toward the machine-gun nests.
“Enemy aura user sighted!”
“Engaging.”
Countering such aura users fell to the elite heavy infantry of the Imperial Guard. The Southern Army never underestimated magic; they knew exactly how devastating it became when fused with technology.
At least one aura user per company. Even soldiers trained only in basic aura circulation and fundamental knightly arts wielded formidable power.
“Dieeee!”
Clang! The barbarian’s aura-infused axe failed to pierce the magic-stone steel alloy armor. In return, the point-blank barrage from the tens-of-kilograms heavy machine gun mounted on the infantry’s right arm shattered the warrior’s already depleted aura shield. With a sound like a chainsaw, the barbarian’s body split in two.
The heavy infantry—human-shaped tanks—held the line alone, cutting down every warrior who charged them. Before long, nothing remained on the plain but corpses. All one thousand warriors lay dead.
A flawless victory no one could criticize. The ones most stunned by the outcome were the territorial soldiers themselves. They had placed no faith whatsoever in the Southern reinforcements.
“If they could just handle two hundred, that would be enough.”
That thought died the instant the frontline machine guns opened fire in unison.
Rattatatatatat—!
While the sudden roar startled them, the brave barbarian charge began collapsing at a great distance. Their formation turned crimson. Every time the Southern weapons spat flame, entire groups of tribesmen were scythed away.
The solemnity of battle? The tension of possibly losing allies? None of it existed. In truth, could this even be called a battle? It felt more like a child tormenting an anthill.
When the Southern Army’s new weapons fired their streams of light, the barbarian warriors died in droves like ants crushed underfoot.
“Is that… magic…?”
The Barony of Eirene sat at the farthest edge of the West. Located in the most remote corner of an already remote region, news reached them slowly. The soldiers had no idea what machine guns actually were.
“You idiot, why would a mage visit a tiny barony like ours in such numbers?”
“Then what else could it be if not magic?”
Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, the saying went. While they still could not grasp what manner of weapon they were witnessing, the battle was already ending.
Once the shaman vanished, every halo floating above the Temelican warriors’ heads disappeared. Having finally understood the situation, they began to edge backward, then fled one by one.
“Those bastards are running!”
When the sharp-eyed soldiers first shouted it, no one believed them. Everyone knew exactly how insane the Temelican warriors were—madmen who would keep chasing even with a spear through the skull, undead-like fighters that refused to die, a crazed war tribe that viewed battlefield death as salvation. Those men were running away?
Such a thing had never been recorded in fifty years.
“Uh… they really do look like they’re running, sir.”
Yet once the barbarian charge halted, no one could deny it. Of course, fleeing did not mean survival. Tracer rounds chased the retreating warriors to the last and swept them away.
A kill ratio of 1000:0. It was an overwhelming result even among the barbarian conflicts of the past fifty years since Kaiser III.
Edwin, who had watched the battle from inside the castle, hurried down the walls the moment it ended. He was not a man skilled in politics.
While his fellow nobles bribed their way upward, Edwin had quietly tended only his own lands. He knew nothing of central noble social circles or the polished political language of high aristocracy.
Yet one truth was painfully clear. Standing before a lord who had openly refused to join the fight, the act of annihilating the enemy with such overwhelming firepower carried a very specific meaning.
If I had known it would turn out this way, I should have done something—anything—beside them.
It was his own fault for assuming “it’s fine” truly meant it was fine. Thinking exactly that, Edwin gathered his men and rushed toward the Southern Army’s trenches, praying the Southerners would not hold a grudge against the Barony of Eirene over this incident.
“The barbarian bastards are truly something else. Charging even after seeing that.”
“That was all the shaman’s boost. You saw them run the second the artillery took him out.”
Not a trace of tension could be felt among the soldiers cleaning up the battlefield. It made the territorial defense force—and Edwin himself, who had been so anxious—look like fools.
Has the technological gap between the South and us grown this wide over the last few decades?
They were armies living in the same era, yet the technology on display seemed generations ahead. Among the Southern troops, he could count fewer than three mages or aura users.
Yet their weapons emitted power that might as well have been magic. When bullets of such destructive force poured out hundreds per minute, no barbarian horde could possibly endure.
“If only our territory had weapons like those, we wouldn’t have suffered so much from the barbarians.”
But there was no time for regret. Finding Captain James came first.
“Ah, Baron Edwin.”
Captain James was inspecting supplies in the rear. The South had sent far more matériel than a single company required, thanks to the overwhelming production capacity of their total-war economy, the steady launch of large supply ships, and the logistical ease provided by military trucks.
Materials can be manufactured in twenty hours, but it takes twenty years to raise a single soldier.
An army marches on its stomach.
Following Duke Kyle Leopold’s maxim, the Southern Army had prioritized building supply capacity over expanding troop numbers. Edwin, himself a lord who had commanded forces, knew how difficult it was to deliver adequate supplies to remote regions.
Feeling the stark difference between the stagnant West and the ever-progressing South, he spoke carefully.
“I am truly sorry for not assisting in the battle. I lacked confidence and feared stepping forward rashly.”
“Haha, it’s quite all right. You trusted us enough to reject the proposal, so the responsibility naturally falls on us.”
Unexpectedly, Captain James brushed the apology aside. He cleared the surrounding personnel and moved to the main topic.
“The barbarians have been a longstanding thorn in the West’s side, have they not?”
“Indeed.”
“Therefore His Grace Duke Kyle is planning a large-scale barbarian subjugation campaign.”
A barbarian subjugation campaign—the West’s long-cherished ambition for the past millennium. With its eastern lands entirely covered by the Arbel Mountains and its southwest blocked by sea, the West had always suffered from a chronic shortage of territory.
The vast northwestern plains occupied by nomadic tribes had therefore always drawn the interest of successive Western Grand Dukes.
“Subjugating the barbarians… if it can be done, I would gladly join, but I wonder if it is truly possible.”
Yet every previous attempt had ended poorly. Advancing north across the border was difficult but feasible. Occupying the land and holding it, however, was an entirely different matter.
Once the powerful central army withdrew after completing its conquest, death-fearing barbarians would swarm back and retake the territory. Nor could the West repeatedly summon troops from beyond the mountains every time a raid occurred. Occupation without maintenance was meaningless.
In the end, Western barbarian campaigns had become nothing but repeated cycles of wasted budgets—land taken, then lost again.
Would this time truly be different?
Captain James answered without hesitation.
“Of course it will. His Grace Duke Kyle intends this subjugation as a joint operation led by the Southern Army in cooperation with the Western Army.”
“A joint operation? With our forces?”
Would the Western Army even be useful beside Southern troops wielding near-magical power? The doubt faded almost as soon as it formed.
“Participation is voluntary. However, any territorial army that joins us will be lent our weapons and taught how to operate them.”
“Weapons? You mean… those machine guns?”
“Precisely. Even after the Southern Army withdraws, sufficient strength must remain to defend the secured territory.”
Having just witnessed the barbarians being ground to pieces by those very machine guns, there was no chance the baron would refuse.
“Naturally the conditions will be strict. Since the Western Army will be learning our weapon systems, they must follow our command without question and accept our control. Is that acceptable?”
“Of course. Our army will cooperate fully.”
Among all the Western border territories where the Southern Army had intervened, not a single one refused Duke Kyle’s proposal for joint operations.
Modernization of the Western Army. Strengthening of trust and bonds through joint operations. Establishment of a command structure in which the South assumed leadership. The first steps toward merging South and West had begun successfully.