Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 199: The Skitarii's First Battle

"Tell me more in detail."

"Alright, lord, the enemies we encountered this time came from the southern part of the island. There aren't many shallows in the south, and there were two groups of enemies. One group was made up entirely of murlocs, and the other group contained several sea urchins, uh, arm monsters."

"How much?"

"They're still slowly landing. The murlocs have assembled, about thirty of them. The other side has more, fifty murlocs and five arm monsters."

"Have you gathered your men?"

"Almost. I have three patrol teams here, which is more than enough to deal with these monsters. I plan to kill the murlocs first and then go to the other side."

Hughes tapped his fingers on the table a few times and suddenly said, "Call Alexi over and sound the alarm for the Skitarii to assemble."

"Okay, Master."

Connor immediately led people there. Alexei was in the church now, so it was very convenient to find him.

"Ash, don't rush this battle. Let the Skitarii join in. Alexei and I have complained about this many times."

In the previous battles, Zeus did not send the Crusaders into battle. One reason was that they had just been recruited and had not adapted to the battlefield, and their rifles had only just been issued.

The second is that Zeus is still unsure about the changes in the sea. He doesn't know whether there will be any changes to those monsters. If he lets the new army go into battle at this time, he may not be able to handle the troubles he encounters.

But although we don’t know what happened to Castel, the enemy has indeed been weakened. So what are we waiting for if we don’t send out the new army?

The assembly of the Crusader Army was completed quickly. Alexi led the team personally and headed to the southern beach with them. Zeus and Chloe followed far behind. Two other banshees were with Zeus to protect their safety.

Theoretically, these two banshees are enough to kill that small group of murlocs, so Zeus is quite cautious in his preparations for this battle.

There are now more than 110 people in the Crusaders, and 80 of them came this time. Most of the rest have patrol and guard missions, and almost all of them who can be brought here have been brought here.

They had neatly arranged rifles in their hands. Although the production of brass bullets with fixed charge had begun, the production capacity was still a bit weak. Castel's main production capacity was still supplied to the ironworks. The construction of the central furnace and Castel Cathedral basically emptied Hughes's assets.

You have to know that his cathedral is a real steel-concrete structure, not a simple stone shell. The construction of just one church consumed all his inventory. Hughes planned to build fortresses all over the island.

Fortunately, the speed of increasing industrial production capacity is far beyond people's imagination. Now the two steel mills have begun to rotate in shifts, producing steel day and night. At the same time, Hughes has already determined the locations for the third and fourth iron and steel mills.

So the Skitarii had to make do with rifled rifles for now. Although this thing was already outdated after just being assembled, even so, this weapon that could be accurately aimed still shocked Alexi.

The northerner was directing the soldiers to line up, his eyes occasionally falling on the brand new rifles.

This thing had been made by Zeus in the laboratory a long time ago, but due to problems with smokeless gunpowder, it had never been put into service. Alexei secretly tried it with black gunpowder, but the effect was mediocre.

Black powder burns slowly, resulting in a low initial velocity and power. This prevents the rifle from achieving the precision advantage of a rifle and instead reduces its rate of fire. A few days ago, after Hughes gave him the new smokeless powder, he spent an entire day quietly test-firing at the range.

Alexei felt like his worldview was about to be turned upside down.

In Alexei's mind, the musket has always been a quasi-close combat weapon: theoretically, its range is not short, but as long as it is a little further away, its accuracy will be completely inaccurate.

If someone is aiming and shooting at you from two hundred meters away, you don't have to worry about it at all. Even if they shoot at you all day long, they may not be able to fool you.

The real use range of the musket is to fire in unison at a distance of several dozen meters. As long as there are enough people, the flying bullets can be interwoven into a firepower network to clear out the charging enemies.

Almost no armor could withstand musket bullets. The Empire suffered some losses from the heavy ice armor of the Northerners, but only the strongest warriors could barely wear such heavy iron armor. After wearing it, it was difficult to turn the head, and it would never appear in large numbers on the battlefield.

Therefore, Alexei always believed that the musket was a close combat weapon that was not easy to control.

This idea was completely overturned after he came into contact with a rifled rifle.

After he hit the coyote as a target from three hundred meters away for the first time, any explanation was unnecessary.

He stared at the weapon in his hand in amazement, his mind blank, and he didn't even remember how he walked back.

Extraordinary people like Chloe can use specially trained rifles to hit the enemy stably from 500 meters away. Ordinary people can also have considerable accuracy within 200 meters after training. If it is a volley and there is a dedicated person to observe and calibrate, this distance can be further improved.

This distance was beyond the range of all human weapons. No matter whether it was a huge crossbow or a catapult that required dozens of people to operate, none of them could reach this range. However, the small iron rod in his hand did it.

This is just the effective range. The maximum range of a rifle is about one thousand meters. At this distance, a person is no bigger than a mosquito, which is at least twice the range of any weapon of this era.

Alexey could not imagine what the future battle would be like.

The webway system south of Castel wasn't very developed, but there were still a few near the coastline. The soldiers rode their carriages very quickly to the webway exit, which wasn't far from the coast.

Soon, the soldiers arrived at the designated location, which was more than 600 meters away from the mermen. The mermen had already assembled on the beach, but the formation had not yet spread out and was crowded together.

Alexei looked at the distance and swallowed. In the past, this was an absolutely safe distance. Bows and arrows had almost no killing power in this range. As long as there were no charging cavalry, this distance was a good distance to slowly reorganize the formation.

Now this is the normal combat distance.

Under Alexi's command, the soldiers formed a thin formation, which was a classic formation of line infantry. In the era of line execution, soldiers marched in rows like this to the beat of drums.

The most important thing is the pace and rhythm. What's the point of aiming? Just don't hold the gun upside down.

But Alexei did not let the drummer beat the drum. He squinted at the fishmen in the distance, hesitated for a moment, and asked the soldiers to aim directly.

(End of this chapter)