CH 32

Chapter 32 – Kingdom Army’s Formation

“――So I’ll get the rest in 12 hours.”

“Oh, please.”

If I ever get around to it. I smiled and waved at Simon, who disappeared into the light.

I’ve already got the supplies I need, and the rest is just an insurance policy in case we survive the war. I’ve heard that those who organize their affairs before the war die easily, but in a way, this is a half-hearted job I left behind to avoid such a death flag.

Oh, yes. The gold I gave him for the last deficit and for this and the next delivery was half a barrel; I wonder how much that would be in dollars. I don’t know, half a barrel is 60 liters, but I’ve never counted gold coins by volume.

I told him that depending on his contribution; I’d give him a bargain in the future. When I looked up the price of $500 per gold coin, I found it to be a rip-off, so I pushed Simon to come up with a price of $1,000 per coin.

Either way, it’s just another lucky charm left over after the war. In the first place, there is some sense in negotiating such a price ― not just accepting it ― and the amount is not a big deal. I don’t know the gold rate in Africa or the Middle East, and I don’t know how many grams of gold there are. I don’t even know the price of weapons. And no matter how hard I tried to negotiate, I couldn’t touch the world they were in. Both Simon and I are just pretending to cut each other’s profits. It’s just a game.

“Yoshua, they’re here.”

Myrril, who had stopped moving beside me, tells me in a quiet voice with a hint of a smile.

The escape from reality is over. From here on, it’s time for war.

The southern end of the Casemaian city wall. We’re positioned in our newly built gun emplacements. It was a culmination of our shallow wisdom to gather up all the long-range attack weapons available and use them to our advantage to shoot down the enemy and win the war.

I’ve just gotten some new weapons and some shiny new recruits we picked up last night, so we’ve gone from 30,000 to 40 (excluding non-combatants) to 30,000 to 100.

“…It’s finally happening.”

“Well, I’ve been waiting for this. This is the stage prepared for me.”

Yes. It’s started.

Next to the excited noja loli dwarf, a worm of weakness rises in me, and fear and trepidation make me shy away.

I’ve done my best, and everyone else has done their best, but we’re not even halfway through the preparations. As I had thoroughly informed everyone in Casemaian, the time was up once the enemy forces entered the other side of the plain. Work on the plains would be halted. After that, we will only work within the city walls.

We reinforced the highland wall, opened the gun sights, and set up a gun position on the east side, a short distance from the wall. The difference in elevation was too great for half-baked weapons to be of any use. As with the enemy, our attacks would also be limited. In the first place, the angle of elevation is too tight to cause secondary damage. If we sweep from level ground, the loose bullets can damage the rear, but if we look down at almost 45 degrees, we can only shoot at the target.

So, in the new gun turret was a hidden mortar that I got from Simon. They were the same 60mm light mortars, but one was an Eastern European M57 and the other was an American M2, each with three barrels on tripods for a total of six, with 190 rounds for the M57 and 120 rounds for the M2. I plan to use them up in the early stages when the enemy is crowded.

Simon said that since the Eastern European version is a copy of the American M2 (and moreover, the M2 is also a licensed production of the French mortar), it should be able to share ammunition, but if something happens to the “should” version, the gun turret will blow up. We made sure not to mix the shells just in case.

As we proceeded with our preparations, the kingdom’s armies were advancing one after another as if they were filling the plains.

It’s unclear at this point how much damage the supplies I’ve taken, and the soldiers I’ve destroyed have done to the enemy. Whether the shortage was filled by the following or by additional troops in time, supplies were brought out from the wagons lined up in an orderly fashion on the supply line far away, and a group of people wearing uniform clothing, whether they were slaves or engineers, were steadily transporting the supplies and building their positions.

Seriously, this is outrageous.

I heard that the total military strength of the kingdom is about 30,000, but… I didn’t understand how big it was in reality. Myrril tilted her head at me with a curious look on her face.

“No, this is a lie, isn’t it?”

“Hmm? What?”

“No, I thought it would be okay because it’s only the size of the Saitama Super Arena. But this is totally too many! There’s no way this many people can fit in the stadium!”

“Huh? …Will fit? Into what? Sutadium?”

“…Ahhhh, stupid, stupid, stupid me. That’s right, the visitors at the Saitama Arena aren’t holding spears, aren’t riding horses, aren’t wearing armor, and they are all sitting on their seats… So even if the numbers are right, what’s the point of that standard in the first place?”

“Calm down, Yoshua!”

“Aaahh, that hurts, that hurts, that hurts, Myr-Myr-Myrril-chan, stop it, you will tear my ears off!”

“Eeii, what are you talking about anyway? I have no idea what you’re talking about with all those proper nouns in your story!”

…She was pissed off.

When I explained to her what I was talking about, she got angry again, saying that I shouldn’t be talking about something that doesn’t make sense when we’re so busy.

It’s even worse when the explanation is more incomprehensible afterward, isn’t it?

Anyway, the front line of the enemy was stopped in the middle of the plain, a little over a kilometer away from the entrance to the valley. They must have decided that they were out of range of our longbows. Behind them, the troops are being deployed and lined up one after another. It may be natural, given the theories of this world, but we’ve been taken for a fool.

Let’s just shoot them all, shall we? Is that a bad idea? Probably not. If they’re wary of us, it’ll ruin the early stages of the game. Our stockpile of thirty-ought-six ammunition, our main ammunition, was a little over 60,000 rounds (plus 12,000 additional rounds of belt ammunition for heavy machine guns), not enough to reliably kill 30,000 people.

If it were a normal war, they would surrender after killing half of them, but it is hard to imagine that they, who call themselves the strongest army in the world, would make the same kind of calm decision.

Well, that’s that…

“…Hey, Myrril. Why are these armies so colorful?”

“Karafuru, what is that?”

“The colors. All the armies are red, blue and yellow. I don’t think it does any good to stand out on the battlefield.”

“What are you saying? Forming several tens of thousands of troops means borrowing several nobleman’s armies, hiring mercenaries, and buying up warriors to consolidate their forces. You can’t even tell at a glance where they are from, so how can you command and control them?”

“Oh, I see. Does that indicate affiliation?”

“…That’s the point. Rather, what kind of war happened in the area you were in?”

Even if you say so…

Although advanced information technology and mechanization have been developed, the disparity between the haves and have-nots in that world has caused more distortions than in this world, and asymmetric warfare and irregular warfare have become a dilemma.

“There are flags in the camp. But once the battle starts, you can’t look for them all the time. Identify the camp by the color of its cloak. Yellow is some kind of Count’s army, blue is some kind of Duke’s army, green is some kind of Margrave’s army, and silver armor and red cloak are the Royal Guard. I don’t know about the other colors.”

“…Eh? What is that, isn’t it stupid?”

“What do you mean?”

“If it’s the royal guard, that means there’s royalty at the end of that stupidly conspicuous red crowd, right? That means we can shoot at them all we want.”

Myrril looked puzzled for a moment and then shook his head in disgust. She hadn’t thought of it that way, maybe in a different way from what I was thinking.

“In the kingdom’s army… or any army for that matter, we don’t expect to shoot more than a longbow. They set up camp at a distance where the enemy’s arrowheads can’t reach, protecting their lord and commander. The very idea that you can shoot at them from anywhere is crazy.”

“Is that so?”

“If it were to use the mechanical bow that I made, it would be a different story, but there are only a few of them, and they are so big that they can be recognized from a distance if they get close. The kingdom’s army’s formation and tactics are generally not wrong. As far as common sense is concerned, the wrong one is you.”

What is that? That’s terrible.