Black Iron’s Glory

Bait and Massacre

On the 7th of the 10th month of Year 586, Claude finally received orders from Miselk. There was only one word in the eagle message, ‘act’, as well as Miselk’s signature and official stamp.

“Myjack, send out orders to have the four tribes start the plan. As for the others in the line, have them follow along with me,” Claude instructed.

“Yes, Sir.” Myjack saluted. He was now a captain and had been promoted one rank after his half-year break. He was still Claude’s adjutant.

“By the way, get Gum to keep the box of treasures well. Don’t let it get leaked. It’s our secret weapon, understood?” Claude told Myjack.

The man nodded and left the office.

He was referring to the fruits of the research project between Angelina and Myjack during his break. It was a box with grenades with a long wooden handle. This was one of the two things he tasked his sister to design. The development of the grenades went rather well and they could make it according to the design after figuring the fuze and the delay element out.

The box of grenades were all made using Angelina’s array, all 24 of them. The only downside was that it didn’t pack that much of a punch. It was not due to a manufacturing flaw, but rather, the gunpowder. However, it was enough to send more than 20 pieces of shrapnel flying and cause sufficient damage in a three-metre radius according to the experiments Angelina had Myjack carry out.

There was also a production diagram inside the box that detailed the steps to mass produce the needed parts and quality checking procedures. Angelina had translated the steps from the array into normal processes. With the diagram, Claude only needed to buy the materials to produce grenades on a large scale.

He instructed Myjack to keep it well protected as he wasn’t intent on making grenades any time soon. It wasn’t too difficult to make, so he didn’t want to add more trouble for himself before he had enough power to ensure he had control over their production. The samples he had his sister make were only for his personal use, such as saving him from a dangerous situation or helping him ground a huge achievement.

Angelina was still working on the revolver. According to Myjack when he came back, Angelina believed that most parts required for the revolver could be made using an array, save for the primer in the bullets. The lead core and jacket was no trouble to do so, but what to use for the primer became a huge problem. Angelina and Myjack had tried many methods but the rate of misfire was far too high.

Claude didn’t find it all that surprising. His sister was a herbalist, not a chemist, after all. There were no fields of physics and chemistry in this world and all tangential topics from those fields were usually attributed to mysterious alchemy that wasn’t taught to the masses. Only the magi and the royal family controlled such information and that was one of the many reasons matchlocks were used six centuries since their introduction.

He decided to take it slowly. Claude himself wasn’t that well informed in the subject either. He had majored in applied computer science in university and largely worked in the technical sector after graduation. After deciding to work for his ‘boss’, he worked in logistical technical support. It was only after his transmigration that not learning proper chemistry and physics was a grave mistake.

When news came from the frontlines, Claude soon got a hold of the latest combat situation. Two days ago, the two standing corps Shiks stationed at the border, Tanya and Wicklan, crossed the border and began their assault on Cromwell. Following behind the two corps 50 kilometres away were three other standing corps, Cybok, Kujoa and Faybort.

Shiks might have learned their lesson from having two of their corps completely eliminated. This time around, they fought at a steady pace and made sure their units were kept in close proximity so that they could come to one another’s aid. The five standing corps were sent on the attack together and any Aueran resistance would be surrounded and attacked from all directions. Only then could they avenge their two lost corps.

What disappointed the Shiksan forces, however, was that the Aueran forces had no intention to defend Cromwell at all. They made an immediate retreat and gave up on Cromwell’s capital, Wickhamsburg, and the four towns. Only after the five corps occupied the colony did they find that not a single Aueran citizen remained in the settlements. They only found the nikancha people wandering in the towns.

Soon, bloody conflict surfaced. The Shiksan soldiers had been ordered to chase the dirty nikancha out of the towns back into their ghettos. As expected, the nikancha who had occupied the abandoned homes of the Aueran citizens resisted. They believed that the property the Auerans gave up on had become theirs and surrounded the Shiksan soldiers to loudly beg and complain, not willing to leave the place.

Annoyed, the officers ordered for a few of the nikancha to be killed as a warning. But the moment the first gunshot rang out, many other soldiers thought that they could open fire at any nikancha that didn’t want to leave. A whole massacre took place as a result. Almost all the nikancha had become targets for the new aggressors and only young women were spared. However, they became the spoils of the beastly Shiksan forces and ravaged them in camp.

The massacre in Wiskhamsburg soon spread all over thanks to some of the nikancha who escaped. In actual fact, not that many of them were killed. There were around a thousand casualties and 200 plus female captives in camp. The aggressors weren’t also weren’t aware that the massacre would cut off another source of information for their scouts. The nikancha in all colonies were no longer willing to help the Shiksan forces and relay information to them.

The reason the Shiksan forces wanted to chase the nikancha away from Wickhamsburg was to make the capital the main supply base for the five corps. The other four towns could be turned into important supply points along the supply route. The nikancha on the other hand had wanted to get some resources in exchange for leaving the place, so they stubbornly stayed. Little did they know that the Shiksans would actually open fire on them.

The nikancha had always been seen as mix-blood abominations who were greedy, thought themselves to be smart, pathological liars, lazy, stingy… Almost all negative traits were attributed to them. But one undeniable strength of theirs was their unity. They treated all outsiders the same and cared very well for their own.

In some sense, the Auerans had treated the nikancha rather fairly relative to the other nations. Even though they didn’t consider them as Aueran citizens, so long as they lived within the colonies and made an honest living, they would be able to earn enough to feed their families well. So long as they paid a set tax, they could move about freely within the colonies and receive protection.

Many of the Aueran settlers, though commonners, would start their own mining ventures, farms, orchards, inns or taverns and they would hire the nikancha as workers with their own family members to supervise them. In most cases, they got along with the nikancha well and made a good living for themselves through their businesses. That was one of the reasons the Aueran colonies became rather well developed.

The Shiksan colonies on the other hand are mostly inland. The nikancha who liked to live in coastal areas seldom went to the landlocked areas. Additionally, most of the Shiksan settlers came to the continent for mining related businesses and seldom started smaller businesses like farms or orchards. They were called gold diggers and only targeted the mines for big profits.

Unlike the development in Aueran colonies, the development in Shiksan colonies was mostly spearheaded by nobles and people in power. They scoured their colonies for mines to make huge profits. The nobles would only begin development after locating mining deposits to ensure a constant revenue stream.

Since the development efforts required large numbers of labourers, the nobles turned to the native tribes. They formed mercenary bands to attack the tribes and capture labourers to throw into the dark mining caves. It was practically slave labour and they didn’t have to pay the labourers anything. That was also the reason revolts occurred nonstop in the Shiksan colonies. In the eyes of the gold diggers, the native tribes and mineable resources were goods to them all the same.

Had Nasri not given over Port Vebator, Shiks might not have had that much interaction with the nikancha. Unlike the pure-blood eitat, nikancha people were more civilised and were willing to exchange their labour and time for food and also let young nikancha women provide sexual services.

The first batch of Shiksan soldiers to arrive in Nubissia, those from Pancry and Krado, had learned how to interact with the nikancha people and would offer food or money to them in exchange for information of the enemy when their scouts weren’t able to find anything out. That was how they were informed of the fire at Mordo and the extermination of the two lines stationed there.

However, none of the officers from the latter five standing corps of Shiks knew how to interact with the nikancha and didn’t really mind the massacre. The noble officers even believed that they could let the slave-owning miners turn their sights on them, since they were relatively more docile than the stubborn eitaf.

Shiks’ five corps spent a whole month’s time to occupy Cromwell and split up into four towards Balingana. They had no choice but to do so as Balingana was far too large. If they continued with their stable pace, they might have to take double the amount of time to conquer the whole colony.

Since the enemy had abandoned their towns, there wasn’t a point in carefully marching to conquer them since they would be undefended. The strategists suggested that the five corps split up in four directions as they headed to Balingana with the intent of shortening the time to conquer the whole colony. They would leave one corps behind to prevent their supply lines from being sabotaged by the enemy.

Unlike Cromwell, Balingana wasn’t completely undefended. In certain strategic points with difficult terrains, there would be an Aueran tribe or line stationed there. They upheld a stubborn resistance against the enemy and only retreated at the most crucial moments when the enemy was about to break through. While the four Shiksan forces suffered substantial casualties, their victories were still undebatable.

A high-ranking Shiksan officer who just conquered another enemy stronghold gleefully ordered his men to report to their corps command that his force was unstoppable and the enemy didn’t even last one attack.

The four decades of peace made it easy for the Shiksan officers to be clouded by their victories. They had forgotten to check the disparity between the casualties they suffered and those of their enemy. The enemy corpses at the strongholds they captured were far and few in between whereas the attackers suffered casualty counts amounting to tribes at a time.

While they won and took over the enemy strongholds, causing their enemy to flee haggardly, they lost one tribe after another as they progressed. The high-ranking Shiksan officers mistakenly took that as normal losses and didn’t really mind it. Each corps had a total of twenty combat tribes and so long as they were able to continuously win and take over the enemy bases, it didn’t matter if they lost a tribe or so of troops.

Little did the Shiksans know that they had fallen for Ranger’s plans. The small defensive strongholds Ranger erected were mistakenly identified by the Shiksan corps as fully fortified bases defended by the enemy’s main force. So, they bravely charged forward and neglected to look after one another. Gradually, the corps eventually split up towards their complete separate paths.