God of the Battlefield (1)
“Ugh…”
Silence filled the temporary treatment room in the lord's castle, broken only by a rough groan amid the pungent herbal fumes. The mage, who had collapsed covered in blood, finally opened her eyes as morning arrived.
“You coming around?”
I asked from the chair beside her bed, fiddling with some herbs. She jolted in shock, trying to sit up, but the pain from her torn wounds made her scream and she buried herself back in the sheets.
“Ack…!”
“Don't move. You'll rip the wounds open. So, what's your name?”
I tossed the question casually without looking up from the herbs. She panted heavily, sinking deeper into the sheets, her eyes fixed on me with wary caution despite the agony.
“Serina. Serina von Ludwig.”
She barely managed the words, then took the cup of water I offered and gulped it down to soothe her parched throat. Looking confused, she fired back, “And you… who are you? Where is this place?”
“This is Eisengrad lord's castle, and I'm Kyle, the lord of this domain. Consider yourself lucky. A little later and you'd have been orc chow on the roadside.”
“This isn't the time for that! If you're the lord here… you need to evacuate everyone right now.”
Terror still lingered in Serina's eyes.
“They're insane. Purple drool dripping from their mouths, eyes rolled back. Even with arms hacked off, they laughed and charged swinging axes!”
What she had encountered in the northern mountains during her investigation was no ordinary orc pack.
“Their speed is unnaturally fast… At this rate, they'll be here in ten days.”
“Hmm…”
I left Serina behind, pushed open the door, and barked coldly at the anxious crowd gathered in the hallway.
“Don't panic. We'll find a way. Just like always.”
I immediately ordered Thomas to summon every merchant clerk who rolled abacuses or customs officer who kept ledgers—anyone skilled with numbers.
We desperately needed human calculators to handle field guns with the precision of a god's finger.
Ignoring the uproar outside the treatment room, I hurried straight to the First Armory.
The First Armory felt like the heart of a massive furnace, thick with heat and molten metal stench. Knights' armor melted into red liquid in the crucibles, glowing fiercely.
Vrrr—!
The metal molds Grody had hastily forged meshed with the waterwheel and began spinning with a shriek. Centrifugal casting, as I'd instructed.
Spin the mold at high speed while pouring in the molten metal, and centrifugal force pushes dense steel to the outer walls while impurities and bubbles gather in the center for removal.
But the first attempt was a disaster. The metal couldn't withstand the waterwheel's spin and leaked from the seams, spraying sparks like fireworks.
“Aaaagh! Stop! Close the sluice!”
Grody screamed, but I stayed calm amid the flying sparks, adjusting the numbers.
“Rotation speed was too high. Dial back the waterwheel. And spray water outside for water-cooling to match the cooldown rate.”
In that hellish heat, a couple more burst failures and countless retries followed.
Finally, as the waterwheel halted and the molds opened, smooth, glossy barrels with uniform strength revealed their majesty inside.
The moment the barrels were done, I threw an even more outrageous demand: rifle the insides with helical grooves.
“You mad?! How the hell do we cut rifling into that narrow bore?!”
Grody's shock was justified. Without modern machine tools, rifling was sheer insanity in this era.
But to efficiently shred thousands of berserkers, we needed the precision from rifling's spin.
Luckily, with my hints, Grody figured it out. “Got it! Gotta do this before I forget,” he said, rushing back to work.
Half a day later, back at the armory, Grody had already finished what I'd described.
Vrrr—Screee!
As the waterwheel bore the massive load and turned, the blade at the end of the steel rod advanced into the barrel—slowly, but with irresistible force.
Guided by the bar's grooves, the blade rotated at a steady angle, carving steel shavings. A piercing metallic screech filled the armory.
“Whoa… Milord! The machine's spinning and cutting on its own!”
Workers followed Grody's orders, pouring cutting oil, checking gear meshes, assisting the machine.
Thanks to the waterwheel's steady power, uniform helices—impossible by hand—were etched into the steel barrels.
Screeeeech.
With the infernal screech, silver steel dust poured out. Days of endless cutting in hellish grind passed, and finally, the interiors of all six barrels bore the exquisite rifling, the essence of modern artillery.
Meanwhile, on one side of the training grounds, selected townsfolk had begun drills with Serina.
Using crystal orbs to relay distances to the gun crews, converting sightings to numbers.
Serina, somewhat recovered, sustained the orbs' mana, barely holding the neural net between observers and batteries.
I'd told her to rest and use the premium herbs freely, but she stubbornly stormed out of the treatment room.
“I can't just lie here thinking of my dead comrades. And you said it yourself—these are just scrap without comms.”
Her pale face and bitten lips burned with resolve, turning slaughter-terror into fury against the orc horde.
She slammed her staff into the ground, resonating mana between observer and gun orbs, volunteering as our radio.
The other side was pandemonium of screams and chants.
They gripped unfinished gun carriages sans barrels, caked in dust, thrown into a hellish drill that would give reincarnated gunners seizures even in sleep.
“Gunners, attention!”
Theo, appointed battery commander, bellowed across the grounds. Turns out he had a god-given talent for calculations.
Now he drove the crews mercilessly from the center of the six guns.
“Specs incoming! Enemy formation spotted! Range…”
Theo's eyes bulged at the observer's voice through the orb. No proper ballistic tables yet—just basic formulas I'd taught for range and angle.
“Range eight hundred! Azimuth two-two-zero-zero! Elevation three-zero-zero!”
Theo roared the finished calcs, and gunners leaped into action.
The six battery chiefs echoed commands, cranking handles.
“Range eight hundred! Azimuth two-two-zero-zero! Elevation three-zero-zero!”
Gunners moved like machines, not men. One wrong turn of the adjustment screw or misjudged range could annihilate friendlies—the fear dominated their minds.
No time to wipe sweat stinging eyes; Theo glared like he’d devour them, double-checking specs.
Veins bulged on the handlers' hands.
“Number One gun ready!”
Still primitive aiming by feel over formulas, but repeated hell-drills shaved their setup time bit by bit.
Five days—half our remaining time—flew by.
The six field guns gradually took shape on the grounds, but the heart of the guns, the powerful propellant, still sat on my desk.
I picked up the glycerin bottle, turning it this way and that.
Machines and manpower were ready. Now for the devil's brew to fill them.
Gazing out at the grounds, soldiers repeated mounting and aiming under Theo's shouts.
But no matter how sturdy the barrels or sharp the gunners' eyes, crude blackpowder wouldn't stop five thousand orcs.
“Thomas! Fetch Serina.”
Boris ran at my order, and soon Serina entered, pale from mana drain. She still didn't fully grasp my obsession with numbers and iron.
“Using the orbs drains mana bad. What's the point?”
I silently raised the glycerin bottle to her eye level.
“See this clear oil?”
“What does that have to do with stopping orcs?”
“Everything. Now we wake the sleeping monster.”
I pointed to the lab bench beside the desk. Custom flasks from the glassworks and jars of nitric and sulfuric acid loomed ominously.
“Alchemists call this strong water, but I call it nitric acid. And that's sulfuric.”
Serina backed away from the jars, her sensitive mana-sense detecting their vicious aura.
“These… aren't these what alchemists and mage tower researchers use? Where'd you get them?”
Truth was, mass-producing strong acids wasn't easy here. But Eisengrad was an old mining town; a corner warehouse stocked alchemy reagents for precious metal extraction from ore. I'd scraped up a hefty, ancient stash.
“This melts any metal! Using it is crazy!”
“Yeah, crazy. But mix these acids with soap byproduct glycerin, and you birth an explosion stronger than magic.”
I shook the glycerin bottle.
“It's called nitroglycerin. So sensitive and vicious, one slip could blow the whole castle sky-high.”
Serina's eyes widened in horror. No alchemical mix this deadly in her knowledge.
“But with your precise mana controlling the temperature, we'll wield firepower mimicking god's might. Ready?”
Serina swallowed hard, gripping her staff tight.
“Dunno if the world's gone mad or I have. …Let's do it.”