Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 204, Act One

After twelve days of probing and harassment, the battle on the banks of the River Styx entered its most critical moment almost as soon as it began.

While it may seem that the white lion has driven the Paratul people into a corner, the Paratul people have actually also choked the white lion.

With a great river in front and pursuers behind, there was no way to escape to heaven or hell. By any measure, Plato's army was utterly doomed.

Without the Huds lifting a finger, hunger and despair were enough to crush them.

But who could have imagined that the Paratites would actually build a bridge across the River Styx?

The Hed people are not primitive creatures; they have seen bridges and have their own.

But the fact that a bridge could be built across such a vast and sacred river as Courvallea with unstoppable force completely overturned the Hud people's understanding.

Once the Paratus reach the other side in organized groups, nothing can stop them from returning home.

The price paid by the White Lions, the Red River people, and even the Hed tribes was reduced to ashes.

Therefore, the White Lion's determination to destroy the Paratul is just as firm as the Paratul's determination to return home.

The Paratites, desperate for survival, forced the White Lion to also take a desperate gamble.

Colonel Haugwitz said, "The barbarians have no boats; at most, they can make two rafts." He was only half right.

The barbarians certainly didn't have boats, but cats have their ways, dogs have theirs, and the Hed people also had their unique means of crossing rivers—leather rafts.

Peeling off whole cowhides and sheepskins, blowing in air, and tying the openings closed creates natural air bladders. Tying these air bladders to a wooden frame creates a raft.

The best hides are made from old cow or sheep hides; the older the cow or sheep's teeth, the thicker the hide. The most difficult part is skinning; even a tiny tear will ruin the entire hide.

The skin that has been peeled off must go through processes such as hair removal, oiling, and sun exposure before it can be made into a "skin body".

Preserving leather is more troublesome, as it requires preventing corrosion, preventing cracking, drying, and applying water and oil.

Because of its simple structure, it actually requires a higher level of craftsmanship.

The White Lion has been secretly preparing rafts for the past three years. To date, he has stockpiled more than three thousand sheepskin rafts.

Sackler was right; even if he thought he had overestimated the White Lion, he had actually underestimated his opponent.

Without a bridge, even if a small number of people could be brought to the east bank of the River Styx by boats alone, the white lion could continue its pursuit.

But with a bridge, the situation changed completely. The bridge's carrying capacity far surpassed that of a boat, and the Harts couldn't even "attack the enemy halfway across the river."

If Platu's army were allowed to cross the river intact, the Heds would be unable to subdue them even once they reached the east bank.

The white lion must destroy the bridge, or all its previous efforts will be in vain.

So the White Lion has also reached a dead end—although most of the Paratul officers are not yet aware of this, they will soon.

Haugwitz looked down on rafts; a raft made of twelve sheepskin husks could only carry three or four people.

But what if it were a hundred sheepskin fetuses? Or a thousand sheepskin fetuses?

The Paratul people's bridge is very imaginative, but imagination is something... the Hed barbarians also have it.

If anyone thinks the White Lion is hoping the driftwood will wash away the bridge piers, they are seriously underestimating him.

The driftwood was only used to remove the Dragon Slayer Sword. Now that the last barrier has been breached, it's time for the fire ships to make their appearance.

Two thousand sheepskin husks were bound together to form two giant rafts, carrying all the kindling the Heds could gather, and they rammed into the bridge with unstoppable momentum.

The giant rafts are like castles on the water, making even the pile-driving boats look tiny in comparison.

Either the Paratul die, or the Hed die in vain; the White Lion's move is a gamble with the fate of the world.

There was no need for Seckler to give the order; every drummer in Palatour was playing their drums with all their might.

The oarsmen on the small boat exerted all their strength to propel the boat rapidly toward the "fire raft".

The small boat cast out a grappling hook, attempting to tow the raft away.

However, there were also barbarian archers and oarsmen on the rafts, and the iron hooks were cut off by scimitars as soon as they were attached to the rafts.

A brave Platu soldier leaped onto the raft, and three gleaming scimitars swung at him, cutting him down in the blink of an eye.

But he also bought time for his comrades, and three other Paratu soldiers seized the opportunity to jump onto the raft.

Paratists wielding oars and barbarians brandishing scimitars fought on a swaying raft, with musketeers on the boat and archers on the raft exchanging fire head-on.

Both sides were already bloodthirsty; at this point, it was either you or me who would die, and there was no logic to it.

Only by risking our lives can we have a glimmer of hope.

The scimitars left horrible wounds on the unarmored Palatine soldiers. Meanwhile, the armored barbarians, once thrown into the water, sank instantly, without even a chance to struggle.

The musketeers on the shore finally arrived. They fired bullets indiscriminately at the people on the raft, and screams could be heard in the darkness.

"Stop fighting! You're hitting our own people!" the people on the small boat shouted hoarsely.

But the people on the shore ignored them and continued to fire deadly volleys of gunfire at the raft.

These two giant rafts were so large that throwing lead at them was completely pointless, and even puncturing one or two sheepskin hulls wouldn't sink them at all.

On the raft, half of the Hed and Parat people were desperately killing each other, while the other half were paddling in different directions.

The shouts, roars, and screams in two languages ​​mingled into one sound, like the mournful howl of a tormented beast in the darkness.

If you draw a circle with the bridge as the center and a radius of one kilometer, there are at least tens of thousands of Hed and Parat people within this area.

However, the actual battlefield was only the size of two giant rafts and twelve small boats.

The outcome—if there really is such a thing as victory or defeat—depends entirely on the battle on the water.

Water, a seemingly harmless substance, has now become an insurmountable barrier.

Whether it was the Parat people or the Hed people on the other side of the river, as long as they stood on the shore, they could only watch helplessly as everything happened.

Two armies that have never valued naval warfare are now deciding the outcome of a naval battle. There is nothing more absurd, ridiculous, and utterly powerless than this.

Both sides have lost control of the giant raft, but that's exactly what the White Lion wants.

The Hudd people didn't need to control the giant rafts at all; they could simply let them drift downstream.

As the Paratians watched in despair, the two water castles sailed unstoppably toward the bridge.

"boom!"

Because of the desperate obstruction of the Paratul soldiers, the barbarians on the first raft didn't even have time to light a fire before crashing solidly into the bridge pier.

The bridge, like an old man carrying a heavy load, stood shakily and managed to withstand the impact.

Meanwhile, Paratul's engineers were racing against time to dismantle the bridge, desperately hacking away at the lifeline they had painstakingly built.

A viper stings the hand, a brave man cuts off his wrist; only by sacrificing a part of the bridge can the rest be saved.

The second giant raft, which was burning fiercely, crashed into the first giant raft, and several bridge piers were instantly uprooted.

Those who remained on the bridge staggered, and one sapper was even thrown off the bridge.

The bridge held up once again; the piers that faced the impact directly had detached from the riverbed, and the other piers also tilted.

It's like pulling a plant's roots out of the soil; half the roots have been broken, but the other half are still stubbornly clinging to the soil.

Both giant rafts were engulfed in flames, which were spreading toward the bridge, and the engineers who were demolishing the bridge fled in panic.

Ignoring the objections of others, Colonel László leaped onto the already tilted bridge.

Everyone was running towards the shore, but László went against the flow of people and walked towards the bridge.

He picked up the axe from the fallen engineer and began hacking at the bridge again and again.

One by one, the escaped engineers returned, picked up axes, and followed László in destroying the bridge.

The engineers would shout after each strike, as if trying to drive all their fear away from their chests.

When the final rigid connection was severed, approximately forty meters of the bridge structure—the part that was struck and burned—detached from the bridge and was propelled downstream by the burning raft.

The scene was like a child leaving its mother; many people present swore oaths, and they heard the bridge sigh.

While the Paratul were desperately trying to save their bridge, the White Lion launched an attack on the camps in the South Highlands and North Highlands.

Arpad's cavalry also encountered an unspecified number of enemy troops, and a chaotic battle ensued in the darkness. Lance against lance, sword against sword.

The white lion has already stirred up a storm, and the quietest place is surprisingly the Bridge Forest camp where Winters is located.

[Thank you to all the readers for reading, subscribing, recommending, voting, donating, and commenting. I'm too tired; I'll type out the detailed list of thanks after I wake up. Sorry.]
During the War of Resistance against Japan, Wang Xinchen, a raftsman from Lanzhou, transported fuel oil to Chongqing using sheepskin rafts. He used 2000 sheepskin hulls to build five giant rafts, carrying 300 tons of gasoline. Later generations referred to this as "rafts racing warships."
[I calculated that, excluding the weight of people and the rafts, if 300 tons of gasoline were distributed across 2000 sheepskin tires, each tire would displace an average of 150 kg of water. I don't know the volume of a sheepskin tire, but it looks like it should exceed 150 liters, so theoretically, displacing 300 tons should be achievable.]
The White Lion's predicament was not the weight-bearing capacity of the sheepskin raft, but the inability to find 300 tons of tinder.

The nearby woods, large and small, were burned to the ground by Alpad. With nothing left to load onto the raft, White Lion had no choice but to pile a lot of earth and stones onto it to increase its impact force (inertia).

And it was mostly rocks, not much soil. Because White Lion didn't have a shovel... Yes, dear readers, you read that right, White Lion isn't part of the "shovel-wielding class".

Do not underestimate the shovel. Compared to the Plattite army, which was equipped with a large number of shovels, the Heds lacked this type of engineering equipment.

Compared to other tribes, the Chihe tribe actually had a considerable stockpile of tools like shovels. However, they were all stored in Bianli and burned to the ground. As a result, the White Lion still had a few axes, but not a single shovel (exaggeration).
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(End of this chapter)