Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

"Cannon fire! Where is the firing coming from?!" Winters suddenly realized, standing up in the rocking boat and looking back.

But the situation deteriorated too rapidly for him to think. Shouts rose from the shore, deafening. The chains being dragged clanked loudly, and a red and black line slowly rose from the seabed, forming a natural arc blocking the waist of the gourd-shaped bay.

Winters couldn't help but curse under his breath. The soldiers sitting in the small boat had also noticed the anomaly behind them, stirring a commotion.

The blocking chain had divided the Venetians into two groups. Red Sulfur Island was feigning surrender!

Turn the boat around? Attack the second bastion? Speed up towards the dock? What to do?

Everyone in the hundred-man squad distributed across the small boats looked to Winters, even Bard and Andre awaited his command, looking forward to the Centurion's orders.

Winters' forehead broke out in a cold sweat. Most of his life he had followed orders, but now he suddenly had to take responsibility for hundreds of lives, which made him panic. Each option had its pros and cons, he really didn't know which was the best.

However, the panic lasted only as long as a breath. Winters regained his composure, his sense of duty overwhelming all unease. Better to have foolish commands than none at all! He gritted his teeth and decided to abandon the mission, bellowing, "Turn around..."

"Charge forward!" The voice of Kongtai'er came from a small boat nearby. The lieutenant colonel waved his arms frantically, repeating loudly over and over, "Charge forward! Charge forward..."

With the superior officer assuming command, Winters felt some relief that he no longer needed to ponder. He activated the amplification spell, projecting Lieutenant Colonel Kongtai'er's order across the sea: "Charge forward!"

The waiting soldiers seemed to have had their spirits rekindled. Andre lifted the battle flag high above his head and waved it desperately, while Bard grabbed an extra oar, joining the rowing soldiers.

The disconcerted sailors instinctively obeyed Winters' magically amplified voice. The leading naval officer shouted in anger, but he was not a spellcaster, and his voice was drowned out by the gunfire.

The larger the caliber of the cannon, the more cumbersome it was to load, yet after eight roars of heavy artillery, the concealed bastion did not fall silent. The sound of more light cannons began to ring out. The ambushed Vineta Fleet also began to retaliate.

Now Winters couldn't concern himself with the intense battle behind him. A squad equipped with muskets and crossbows rushed to the shore and began firing at the Venetians in the small boats.

The boat carrying three warrant officers was at the forefront, flying the military flag, with three others aboard donning polished armor, making them the most exposed and conspicuous.

Most of the musketeers and crossbowmen on the shore noticed this boat, and projectiles came flying incessantly. The others on board crouched down with all their might.

But Andre, far from being intimidated, provocatively raised the flag even higher and vehemently cursed the Tanilians on the shore.

Merely shouting profanities was not enough for him, and as if worried the Tanilians couldn't hear his greetings from so far away, an enraged Andre even started to undo his trousers to urinate towards the shore.

Winters pulled him down roughly: "Are you insane? Don't court death!"

"Hahaha..." Andre laughed wildly at Winters, "The Tanilians' aim is terrible, they can't hit me."

"You're mad!"

"I'm telling you, you aren't scared, and neither am I! The soldiers sure aren't!"

Winters looked to the other five soldiers on the boat. Andre's boldness and disdain for the Tanilians had infected them. They stopped trying to hide beneath the gunwales and leaned out to row vigorously.

"Cannons!" shouted a sailor from another boat.

A large group of Tanilian soldiers was seen laboring to bring two light cannons closer to the shore. The Vinetan boats were less than seventy meters from the coast, and grapeshot could turn the surface of the water into hell.
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"Now we're sitting ducks!" Andre shouted fiercely, punching his thigh, "Row, for God's sake, row!"

Winters also saw the two cannons, but his breathing rate decreased instead, and his thoughts became clearer.

Instinctively, he entered into spell-casting mode, his concentration at its peak. Yet he did not use magic; instead, he pulled out the spellcasting materials pouch.

The standard-issue spellcaster officer's pouch was designed uniformly, so Winters immediately found what he was looking for.

A few small containers with metal shells and glass inners.

Now was not the time to be thrifty with spellcasting materials. Winters took out all four containers.

All spells of the Alliance spellcasters were, at their core, reverse-engineered from the magic of the Muruo Empire's court magicians.

The "Poisonous Smoke Spell" had caused militia in the Sovereign Wars much suffering. The Empire's army had often used this tactic of employing poisonous smoke to kill the bastion defenders and non-toxic smoke to obscure the vision of the cannons before launching assaults to capture the bastions.

While the Department of Magic Warfare had yet to decipher the poisonous smoke spell, the non-toxic smoke spell had already been successfully replicated.

Removing the stopper from a metal container, Winters entered his spell-casting state and fully unleashed the fire spell on the container's contents, a spell he hadn't practiced in a long time.

First, a wisp of blue smoke, then, increasingly dense white smoke billowed from the container. The white smoke wasn't deadly but still caused incessant coughing among those on the boat.

Winters, the closest to the smoke, should have been the most affected, yet he seemed to not feel it at all, repeating the same process three times.