Industrial Cthulhu, starting from the island lord

Chapter 460 First Support Army

Hughes thought about it and realized it made sense. Given the current state of the resistance, it would be good enough if they could hold out in the forest. Worrying that they would leave and be unable to find them was completely unnecessary.

Hughes's eyes hardened. Time was running out, so let's try this plan first.

"Ash, how many Banshees are currently available for battle?"

"Twenty battle groups are fine."

"Warband?" Hughes was taken aback, then, seeing Nini's eager expression, he remembered, "The war correspondent group, how's the selection going?"

Nini quickly said, "They've all been chosen, but the battle group's organizational structure is a banshee and a large number of Guardians of the Faith. Now, the Guardians of the Faith definitely can't go to sea, right?"

"So there are a total of twenty banshees?"

"That doesn't even include the medical team. In total, there are probably over eighty people." Nini pondered for a moment, and then spent a long time exchanging ideas with Ash via their mental link before replying.

“This number represents those willing to go to the battlefield—actually, everyone wants to go out and have some fun, but we need to keep some people in the Banshee duty room, and we also need to keep people at Castel’s shipyard. Tata desperately needs us to provide firsthand information about the shipwreck, and we also need to keep people at Richard’s firing range to cooperate.”

Hughes nodded: "Eighty people is more than enough. Let's split into groups and take turns going. There are only a few hundred Winter Wolves in total. I think a group of twenty Banshees can easily defeat them."

"No need!" Nini proudly raised her head and put her hands on her hips. "Each of us can be counted as six hands, and twenty banshees have a total of one hundred and twenty hands. Each banshee can be worth ten!"

Hughes was taken aback, almost impressed by her math skills: "But a person has two hands, you've doubled your calculations."

"I can reload with one hand, but Winter Wolf can't!"

"."

Hughes ultimately decided to send the banshees down the middle reaches of the coast to the north.

The reason why superhumans cannot go to the battlefield is because they are difficult to contend with an army, but if there are enough superhumans to form an army, then naturally it will be a different story.

"Take more ammunition and supplies. We don't need to rush the weapons. Dealing with pistol cavalry doesn't require such a high intensity of firepower. Sustained firepower is more important."

Hughes thought for a moment and added, "Try to make as much contact with the resistance as possible, and send back important intelligence as soon as possible. We desperately need battlefield intelligence right now."

"Intelligence..." Nini frowned slightly. She was fine with fighting or providing support, but intelligence gathering was not something the banshee was good at.

Banshees can indeed communicate through symbiotic contracts, but their size and the fact that they are of a different race mean that they can never carry out infiltration missions.

"I'll try to contact the Ash Alliance or the Resistance. If I get intelligence, timely smuggling shouldn't be a problem. Gathering information in towns? Spare me the time." Nini wagged her tail irritably, then suddenly remembered something:

"Won't our involvement in this conflict attract the Candlelight Society?"

“Let them come.” Hughes sneered. “Remember to tell them where Castel is, so they don’t get lost.”

The memory of being killed on the spot by the Candlelight Vigil was still vivid in Hughes' mind, and his favorability toward the Church was basically negative.

After thinking for a moment, Hughes looked at Richard and asked, "How many superhumans will the Candlelight Society send? How much of a threat will they pose to the Banshee?"

The Moths are old rivals of the Candlelight Society, and Richard answered without hesitation: "The Candlelight Society usually sends an investigator to deal with anomalies. They are lucky if they have one or two superhumans in a parish. During the disaster more than ten years ago, they urgently mobilized all the investigators they could, but only a few dozen people went. And most of them died there, and they may not be able to fill the gap even now."

Hughes was somewhat surprised: "You mean the Holy See only has a few dozen extraordinary individuals?"

“Not just, there must be over a hundred—and these are the overtly recognized superhumans.”

Hughes nodded. It seemed that the Banshee was indeed a rather powerful supernatural force.

"Moreover, the Banshee has a significant advantage in fighting investigators."

"When a banshee fights an investigator head-on, she basically crushes them in every aspect. However, she has no means of tracking. I estimate that it would take two or three investigators to fight one banshee."

Richard adjusted his monocle: "Moreover, Banshees have a unique characteristic: their combat power increases rapidly as their numbers grow. Mind link and life sharing may seem like auxiliary abilities, but they can be extremely helpful in actual combat."

Hughes was aware of this; he had long ago studied the advantages of banshees in battle. "So, it seems my hundred banshees are practically equivalent to the entire Candlelight Order?"

Richard was somewhat amused and exasperated: "It's not that bad. It's actually quite rare for superhumans to fight head-on. You rarely deploy superhumans in direct combat either, do you?"

Indeed, Hughes had long felt that the Banshee's mind link and the Nymph's self-binding were far more useful than their actual combat abilities.

"That is, for 'nymphs' like us who are difficult to track, the Candlelight Church will send investigators to surround and block us. If we encounter cultists like Mira, the Church will actually use mortal armies to deal with them."

"Superhumans are never the main characters on the battlefield."

Hughes nodded.

"So the Candlelight Society's infiltration can only stop lone superhumans. They don't have a good way to deal with organized Banshees. I'm relieved about that. Ash, organize a Banshee team to support the North."

“Okay.” Ash nodded simply.

"That's basically all for this meeting. The Expeditionary Force will also make corresponding adjustments. I will notify the relevant personnel one by one later. Let's adjourn the meeting."

After everyone left, Hughes rubbed his temples. To be honest, the situation in the North was quite unexpected.

The main problem actually stemmed from a lack of intelligence.

Castells's delayed intelligence is a real problem.

Castel had little influence outside the region, and most of the information about the expedition to the North came from the prince's side.

Although the prince offered Castel unreserved support in terms of intelligence, the limitations of this era were simply too great.

The prince has a well-established intelligence system, and the North regularly sends relevant intelligence, but the information received is always severely outdated.

For example, the news about the resistance was delivered directly from the North by Isaac's men on horseback. They were extremely lucky and had a smooth journey, avoiding all troubles.

Even so, this intelligence is already almost fifteen days behind schedule.

The prince usually receives relevant intelligence about a month late, even if his intelligence system is reliable and everything goes smoothly. In this era, that's already quite good.

There's nothing we can do about it. The distance is far, and intelligence can only be transmitted by people carrying it in person. It would be a miracle if it were fast.

This intelligence, delayed by a month, is still sufficient to revise the expeditionary force's advance plan, but it's problematic if an emergency request for assistance is needed, as is the case now.
Go ahead and ask for help; reinforcements will arrive in a month and a half.

These restrictions are a bit too much.
Having long been accustomed to the transmission of information via the internet and radio waves, and to the daily occurrence of plane crashes and videos of them flying around the world, Hughes naturally found this medieval speed of information transmission unbearable.

Moreover, relying on the prince for information always has some hidden dangers.

No, we need to get the radio station up and running as soon as possible.

A month's journey may seem long, but for a shortwave radio station, it's just a matter of a few reflections in the atmosphere. In this era, there's no radio interference, so the radio station's performance must be exceptionally good.

Radio stations aren't exactly high-tech, and with Castells' current level of industrialization, they've basically hit the mark and can give it a try.

Hughes is going to draw up a schematic diagram right now and ask a researcher to work on it.

However, Hughes suddenly had a thought, and he stopped writing.

Is this radio secure?

"If there's a sea god's corpse in the sea, could there be something else in the atmosphere?"

"What if my radio station picks up some weird stuff?"

(End of this chapter)