You've Gotta Be Good at the Gacha Draw!
Dusk settled over the Daehan fleet.
"Fire the slingshots!"
"Yes, sir!"
Mounted ten apiece along one side of the ship stood what the sailors called slingshots, and the soldiers were busy loading fire pots into them. The weapon hurled the clay vessels through the air from a round barrel-shaped tube.
Thud-thud-thunk.
Since it was only a small bow, the soldiers simply cranked it back by brute force to reload. Truly, Daehan's finest — muscle before all else.
"Hey, you fire it the second it's loaded!"
"I know, damn it!"
Throwing fire pots by hand had been fine, but this was genuinely terrifying. One mistake and the ship itself would catch fire.
Clack. TWANG. Whiiiine—
Small as it was, it was still a Daehan crossbow — the shot sailed far into the distance. Part of it was surely because the fire pots were made of such thin porcelain that they weighed next to nothing.
"Hey! You idiots! Twist the fuses in properly — not a single one of them is catching fire!"
They were firing with all their might, but with nothing igniting on the far end, the deck boss's scolding rang out across the deck. Some flames snuffed out mid-flight, but the real problem seemed to be the lit fuses tearing loose from the pots.
"Keep this up and I'm sending letters home to your families!"
"Gasp!"
"No! Please, this is a defect in the pots themselves!"
"Anything but that!"
A letter home — meaning a letter would be sent to the soldier's family reading, "Your boy doesn't do his job properly."
"Hey! Hey! Do we even need to jam this into the pot?"
"What do you mean?"
"Just tie it on and fling the whole thing!"
"Oh! Let's try it!"
After all, with that cord, didn't it just need to arrive over there and set something alight? Come to think of it, there was no need for the tedious business of stuffing it into a pot at all.
Vmmmmm—
The flame clinging to the cord tore through the air at high speed with a fearsome roar. It was called a cord, but it was soaked in oil — under almost no circumstances would the fire go out.
WHOOMPH!
"What the—? What was that?"
"Why is it doing that over there?"
At night, sound carried lower across the water than in daytime, spreading much farther. Apparently, one of the fire pots that had been flying fuse-less all this while had finally landed right on a patch of congealed oil that had been dripping from previous shots onto the ships.
"Well, look at that — it burns beautifully."
"You slackers! Quit goofing off and fire faster! We don't go home until every last pot is gone!"
"No way..."
Firing everything did mean clocking out, but with how many fire pots were loaded aboard a ship this size, "fire them all" meant working through the night.
"You're telling us to pull an all-nighter!"
"And home? Forget home — we're sleeping on the ocean tomorrow too."
"I hear nagging!"
"Our apologies!"
On the other ships as well, the crews were finding their own tricks of the trade, and the number of fire pots streaking through the air ablaze kept climbing.
Across the way, the Sui warships were in chaos, belching black smoke. As the fires spread, the area around the Sui fleet grew bright as day — and now all Daehan had to do was aim at the glow and fire at will.
The fleet commander and the squadron commander stood side by side, gazing out at the hellscape unfolding across the water.
"If only we'd done this from the start, our soldiers wouldn't have died. It's a shame."
The squadron commander felt a twinge of guilt as he watched the flames. If they had been capable of inflicting one-sided devastation like this, perhaps the men who had died that afternoon might have made it safely home.
"Well. We were short on experience, that's all. You know what comes up at every single War Department meeting?"
"What's that?"
"That we have far too little experience with war."
Just today, in their very first engagement, they'd failed to deploy the weapons they had on hand. What if they'd brought out the slingshots from the beginning?
And the problem with the fire pot fuses — during the test launches there had been plenty of time and everything had worked perfectly, but today it had caused trouble.
"Still, forcing a war of aggression would go against Haneul-nim's will, wouldn't it?"
"Which is exactly why we have to think that much harder."
"I suppose so..."
The battle was flowing along far too peacefully. Keep firing, and the shots rained down even on the enemy they couldn't see, lighting them up — so the soldiers just kept launching, adjusting only their range.
"Looks like we really will run out of fire pots and have to head home, sir."
"Oh dear."
They'd shortened the cargo hold to thicken the bulkheads and hull, but the Horned Whale was still the largest warship Daehan possessed. They had loaded a staggering amount of cargo — and the crews were firing with terrifying enthusiasm.
"What are they burning through so much for?"
"Beats me."
The two commanders had been too busy chatting to catch the deck boss's pronouncement: fire everything and we go home.
"They'll probably head straight for Joseon from there?"
"Shall we pursue?"
"The orders are already given — how would we?"
At night, the only signals available were light and sound; there was no way to exchange anything beyond the simplest of codes. Every instruction about how to act had been settled in advance. Sending new orders now was next to impossible and would only breed confusion.
"Besides, how would we know where the ones who slip away in the night have gone?"
"A shame. We likely won't get to see how this ends."
"The 3rd Fleet will clean up whatever's left."
That was what they said — but how many ships would actually survive to make it to Joseon?
FWOOSH!
"AAAGH!"
"Fire! It's fire!"
"The enemy is using fire weapons!"
The Sui fleet had long since become a sea of flames. It was as if they had fallen straight into hell.
"What in the world is happening?!"
He had never seen anything like it. What manner of fire refused to die even when doused with water? In some cases it had actually exploded instead.
"Oil or not, this is beyond anything reasonable, isn't it?"
"This is my first time seeing it as well."
"Where is the enemy?"
"Our side is lit up so brightly we can barely identify anything."
However they phrased it, in the eyes of the two men the situation was utterly hopeless.
"Humiliating, but there's nothing to be done. Sound the retreat horn. We head for Joseon..."
The Sui commander gritted his teeth. He had never imagined a battle like this. Fire arrows, perhaps — he had braced for those. But nothing like this.
"I'll see to it at once."
"How many of us will even survive?"
"Can we not signal the ships to pull away from the flames?"
"Hand signals won't work at night. For now, we'll try sound."
"Whew... nothing else for it. Do whatever it takes."
Here was one of the reasons night fleet battles were impossible: command was. You simply could not command.
"Save as many ships as you can."
However many vessels survived, they would no doubt face punishment upon their return — the thought soured the commander's heart. And yet worry for the future pressed in ahead of everything else. Could even a single ship still sail these waters afterward?
And if not — how were they supposed to feed the army camped across that sea? So many soldiers had crossed over that even a few days' delay in food supplies would throw everything into chaos.
Thus the Sui ships fled the battlefield, scattering into several groups and making for their original destination — the port at the southwestern tip of Joseon.
April 7th.
"Whew... we've arrived."
"No sign of pursuit, General."
"This is disastrous. How are we supposed to fight them now?"
Two full days of desperate sailing had barely brought them to port. It had been utterly hopeless. If they had fought like that in broad daylight, would even one ship have escaped?
"Count the ships that made it, and begin unloading. I'm sorry to say it, but we'll have to land less than we planned — we have two more ports to stop at."
"Yes, sir..."
The Sui fleet used three ports in total, and it turned out that transferring cargo by ship was somewhat better than moving it overland.
"If only we had ships shaped like the Daehan ones, we could have loaded so much more..."
Sui vessels simply had far too little room for cargo. They had been built for superiority in battle — and even in battle, they had been crushed.
After this war, if the Sui ever built ships again, surely there would be sweeping changes.
And then, April 8th — the hour when the sun climbed toward its zenith.
The 3rd Fleet, split off from the main force at Gunpo and bound for Joseon.
"Well, there's nothing here at all."
"Not a single ship worth the name, sir."
Having arrived in the area around the evening of April 4th, spent the night, and begun working southward along the islands and nearby coastline from morning, the 3rd Fleet had run into absolutely nothing. They hadn't encountered a single vessel worth calling a ship, just skimming the shore as they pressed southward.
"Still, there are plenty of rough patches of sea around here, so order the ships not to hug the coast too closely."
"Yes, sir!"
Given the Daehan Sea's characteristic of draining twice a day with the tides, the sharp-bottomed Horned Whales were better off not straying too near islands or land.
"If I'd known it'd be like this, we should have brought more Dolphins, sir."
"I didn't think of it either. A pity."
Daehan built three classes of ships: the Dolphin, the Orca, and the Horned Whale. Only the Dolphin had a flat bottom. With those, their operating range would have been wider — the squadron commander couldn't help but regret it.
It was the moment he realized that bigger ships were not automatically better.
"Let's just hope nothing slips past us as we go."
"We'll observe everything in detail, save for what the mountains hide."
And so the fleet pressed another day southward. While the 2nd Fleet was still locked in battle at sea, the 3rd Fleet was only now on its first day of scouting the Joseon coast.
"Honestly — how can there be nothing at all?"
"There was something, remember? They just saw us from a distance and ran."
They had in fact come across Sui army troops waiting around at a port midway down the coast. But no one was about to sprint across mudflats with the tide out to go catch them, and a few volleys of arrows from long range had sent the lot of them fleeing.
"Didn't the 1st and 2nd Fleets already handle all of them?"
"Right? You should've been luckier with the draw, sir..."
"What was that, you brat?!"
Their assignments had been decided by lottery — pure chance that the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Fleets had drawn positions from the left in order.
"You were thrilled at first too, weren't you!"
Anger flared up in the squadron commander all over again. He had been delighted too, naturally, figuring that heading toward the side that had been attacked meant plenty of enemies waiting.
There had been enemies, all right. An army they simply couldn't manage to meet.
And so two more days passed. The morning of April 8th.
The Sui were in the middle of unloading their cargo at a Joseon port on the evening of April 7th.
The 3rd Fleet, too, was within easy striking distance — just three or four hours of coastal scouting away from meeting them.
. . .
"What the—? Why are there so many islands around here?"
"I was thinking the same. We'd best be careful, sir?"
With islands this dense, hidden reefs below the waterline were bound to be plentiful too. It was nearly time for the lookouts perched at the bow to earn their keep, scanning the water.
Then, the unexpected happened.
POP!
"Huh?"
A liaison ship attached to the 3rd Fleet had been combing the surrounding waters and fired a signal flare straight up into the sky.
"What color is it?"
"Red, sir!"
"Fire a flare right back — gather the ships!"
"Yes, sir!"
The flare they scrambled to launch burst green overhead — the prearranged signal for assembly.
The detonation carried quite a distance through the night air, and the ships nearby began hurriedly converging.
And it wasn't only Daehan that sprang into a flurry.
"General! Report from a ship on patrol! Enemy vessels sighted!"
"How many?"
"They say the ships were scattered in every direction, so they couldn't get any closer and turned back!"
The patrol ship had wanted to push further in and gauge the size of the fleet, but with another vessel appearing around every island they rounded, its crew had lost their nerve and withdrawn.
"Hmm... unfortunate."
"What are your orders?"
"What else? Hasten the preparations to set sail! All these islands mean plenty of detours. This could be the golden opportunity we need!"
The Daehan Sea was known for its massive tidal range — yet there were always places with little in the way of mudflats, and the harbor where the Sui fleet lay was one of them.
Joseon had used the port since days long past, and convenient docks had already been laid out — making it a highly useful staging point for the invasion of Joseon.
"We split the fleet in two! Set sail at once. The first half will wait in ambush near the islands to the north."
"Yes, General!"
With so many islands about, the plan was for one fleet to block the enemy head-on and hold them, while the other struck from the flank or rear.
It was a strategy only available to the side with superior numbers. Had the forces been anywhere near even, it would have been the perfect recipe for being annihilated piecemeal.
And against those weapons they had witnessed three days prior, daylight would only make them more devastating. Their range had looked extraordinary too — it was anyone's guess whether even arrows could reach them. But there was no avoiding the fight. There was no proper escape route out of this harbor.