Trench Bolts and Magic

Chapter 51 Welcome to the Meat Grinder

Daniel is a farmer from the northern mountains of Aragon.

He is unmarried, but has a girl he likes.

Three months ago, he was taken from the fields by the conscription team of the Kingdom Army, stuffed into an ill-fitting military uniform, and issued an old rifle with rifling worn down to almost nothing.

He didn't want to fight; he just wanted to go home, farm, and save money to marry Maria from the neighboring village.

But now, he lies prone on the cold cobblestones of Seville, the warm bodies of his comrades beside him, bullets flying in from all directions, hitting the ground and walls, sending up plumes of smoke and sparks.

Just minutes before, their superiors had told them that the Saxons and rebels had fled! It was just a lighthearted armed parade!

But when the first shot rang out, everyone was stunned.

Immediately afterwards, gunshots rang out like popping beans, from every window, every rooftop, and every corner they couldn't see on either side of the street.

Daniel didn't even know where the bullets came from; he only saw people around him fall one after another, screaming in agony.

He instinctively followed the crowd and lay down on the ground, burying his head low and trembling like a leaf.

"Take cover! Find a place to take cover!" the officer shouted hoarsely.

But where can we hide?
With no cover on the wide streets, they were like live targets, exposed to countless gun barrels.

"Go inside! Quickly, go into those houses!"

Driven by the instinct for survival, the soldiers scrambled and crawled toward the buildings on both sides of the street.

Daniel also got up, and he set his sights on the nearest two-story building, rushing towards it with all his might.

However, when he ran to the door, he was devastated to find that all the doors and windows on the first floor of the building were nailed shut from the inside with bricks and planks, making it impossible to get in!

He rammed the door and smashed the window with the butt of his gun, but the damn door wouldn't budge.

The street behind him had been completely transformed into a slaughterhouse.

The MG08 heavy machine gun, which had been lying in ambush at the end of the street, finally roared.

The heavy machine gun that Morin treasured was now demonstrating its true power as a 'battlefield reaper'.

The machine gunners didn't even need to aim, because the Kingdom's black-clad soldiers were crowded on both sides of the street.

He only needs to sweep the bullets towards the densest part of the crowd, and the scorching bullets can easily tear through human bodies, creating large plumes of blood mist.

The soldiers of the Kingdom Army fell in droves, like wheat that had been cut down.

Daniel was terrified. He gave up trying to break down the door and turned to look for another entrance.

Just then, he saw that the door of a building not far away was open.

As if grasping at a straw, Daniel rushed over without hesitation.

Many others shared his thoughts, and a dozen or even more Kingdom soldiers rushed into the building like madmen.

The small space was packed with people, who were pushing and shoving each other, all trying to get deeper inside.

No one noticed that the bottom of the chimney in the house had been completely emptied, and even the metal fence used as a barrier had been removed.

Daniel was squeezed in the middle, barely able to breathe.

Just then, he heard a strange noise from above, as if something had fallen from the chimney.

"What's that?" someone asked, looking up.

However, no one could answer him. Only a few soldiers who were close to the chimney saw a black thing roll out from the bottom of the chimney.

The next second, a violent explosion occurred.

A grenade thrown into the chimney by a Saxon soldier lying in ambush on the roof exploded in the crowded room.

Then came the second and third ones.
The roar nearly shattered Daniel's eardrums, and the scorching air currents and flying shrapnel instantly engulfed the entire room.

Daniel felt himself being pushed to the ground by a tremendous force, with countless people pressing down on him.

He smelled the strong odor of gunpowder and burnt flesh, and all he could hear were screams and groans.

He didn't know if he was injured; all he knew was that he had to leave.

Daniel struggled to climb out of the crowd and finally escaped that hell on earth.

He and the other blood-soaked Kingdom soldiers fled the deadly building, crying and screaming, and were once again exposed on the streets.

Then, what awaited them was a barrage of bullets coming from all directions, which had been waiting for them.

The farmer from the northern mountains of Aragon had just run out of his door when he felt a numbness in his thigh and collapsed to the ground. Looking down, he saw a bloody hole in his trousers, from which blood was gushing.

A sharp pain instantly swept through his entire body.

He wanted to climb, to leave this terrible place, but his body was starting to disobey him.

Daniel's vision began to blur. He saw the golden wheat fields of his hometown, and Maria standing in the wheat fields, smiling at him.

Maria

He muttered to himself, then his head lolled to the side and he lost consciousness completely.

Such scenes are playing out simultaneously on every street in Seville.

The first wave of attacks by the Kingdom's army and the Britannians did not even advance more than a hundred meters before being smashed to pieces by this vast net of crossfire, barricades, and indoor death traps.

They abandoned the corpses and groaning wounded, and retreated in disarray.

In the temporary command post at the rear, General José Sanhurjo, commander of the 24th Division of the Royal Army, listened with a grim face to the battle report brought back by the messenger from the front.

"What did you say? The first wave of attack was repelled?"

"Yes, General."

The messenger who came to report kept his head down, not daring to look him in the eye.

"Our soldiers couldn't break through at all; the casualties were extremely heavy."

"Useless! All of you are useless!" Sanghurho kicked over the chair next to him, and the atmosphere in the tent became extremely oppressive.

He couldn't understand why, despite having the superior numbers and receiving reinforcements from the Brittany, the first wave of attack had turned out so badly.

"What kind of magic did those Saxons use? Have they started sending army mages too?!"

He clutched his hair like a wild beast in a frenzy.

"General, the enemy's tactics are very strange. They abandoned the streets and deployed all their forces in the buildings. Our soldiers were attacked from all sides as soon as they entered the city and were unable to organize an effective counterattack."

"Inside the building?" Sanhurho was taken aback.

Although he was not a particularly skilled general, he had spent half his life on the battlefield in the Kingdom of Aragon and had fought quite a few battles, but he had never heard of this kind of fighting method before.

In his view, warfare should involve deploying troops on open ground, with artillery, cavalry, and infantry working together, and the core objective being to locate and annihilate the enemy's main force in open battle.
A glorious victory like that of Austerlitz is the only truly civilized form of warfare that doesn't harm civilians.
But what does it mean for the Saxons to hide in their houses now?
Can that be called fighting a war?

"What about the Brittanyans? Aren't their Northumberland flintlock regiments following behind? What did they say?"

At this moment, Sanhurho also remembered his 'ally'.

The officer's face darkened further: "The Britannians... when they saw our troops suffer a setback, they simply withdrew without even engaging in battle."

"What?!" Sanhurho felt his blood pressure spike instantly.

He had long known that those arrogant Britannians looked down on their royal army and treated them as cannon fodder, but he never expected that they would go to such extremes!

A tremendous sense of humiliation and anger welled up in his heart.

Are they really incapable of doing anything without the help of the Britannians?!
"Send my order!"

Sanhurjo's eyes were bloodshot as he pointed at Seville on the map and roared:
"Launch another offensive! All troops, move forward!"

"General, but..."

"No buts!" Sanhurho interrupted him rudely. "Get the surviving magic crystal cannon position to open fire! Bombard the city! Flatten all those turtle shells!"

An aide quickly stepped forward to dissuade him:
"General, please reconsider! Firing now will expose the location of our last magic crystal cannon position! Enemy cavalry are still patrolling outside; this is too dangerous!"

"I can't control that much anymore!"

Sanhurho had lost his mind; all he wanted now was to wash away the humiliation he had just suffered with the most intense artillery fire.

"Execute the order! Immediately! Right now!"

Seeing the general's frenzied state, everyone fell silent.

They knew that the second round of attacks would be even bloodier and more brutal than the first.

But military orders are absolute.

Soon, the muffled sound of cannons rang out again, this time, the shells were aimed at the city of Seville.

　I'll post another chapter, so people won't keep saying I'm skipping chapters~
　　P.S.: Readers who have read the previous book should know that I tend to get carried away when writing battle chapters.
　　Well, and this time I made the same old mistake again. I just checked and the later chapters, the knight battle and the alleyway battle, are over 3 words long. I want to delete some, but I don't know where to start (thankfully they're free chapters).
　　However, after finishing this part, you'll need to go to Saxony to progress through the main storyline, so it'll probably be a while before you can really engage in any combat.
　　Then you can raise any opinions you have.
　　
　
(End of this chapter)