Why did the lord rebel

Chapter 516: The Final Battle of Thorn City (I)

In siege battles like the Siege of Thorn City, the siege camps built outside the city by the besiegers can actually reflect a country's industrial level and military style.

Take the Empire as an example. In order to cooperate with this unprecedented national siege, the craftsmen of the Imperial Army began to build a siege camp outside the west gate of Thorn City at the beginning of this year. Although the craftsmen of the Eastern Army had already been exhausted in the defense line of the Burning Crystal Canyon, the Imperial Army still urgently transferred a large number of craftsmen from several other fronts, plus the temporary conscription of civilians and labor provided by various territories. Finally, they worked overtime and withstood the harassment firepower of the Federation Orcs, and barely completed the construction of the camp before the siege began.

Siege and siege are laborious and arduous tasks. All the people on the Empire side are mentally prepared to be delayed outside the Thorn City for ten days or half a month, so the condition of the siege camp is particularly important:

  During the Battle of Thorn City, the siege camps of the imperial armies will play the role of front-line camps, logistics warehouses, equipment maintenance centers, front-line command posts and field hospitals. If you look down at the imperial army camp from the sky above the Thorn City Plain, you will find that this long snake-like building complex extending north and south to the west of Thorn City is actually divided into several distinct levels:

At the easternmost point, there are chevaux de frise, arrow towers, sentry towers, and magic towers to resist the counterattack of Thorn City. The height of Thorn City is so high that the slightly backward orc siege equipment on the top of the city can project firepower to an incredible long distance by virtue of the potential energy advantage brought by the altitude. The current location of the Empire siege camp is beyond the range of the Federation's defense firepower calculated by engineers, but from time to time, one or two crossbow arrows and artillery shells will be shot into the sky above the camp. These defensive firepower deployed on the easternmost line of the camp have the task of shooting down the orcs' projectiles and preventing the orcs in the city from suddenly opening the door and taking the initiative to attack.

To the west of the defense line is an open area for the army to train and assemble. When the climax of the siege really comes, the imperial army will gather here and charge towards the gate of Thorn City in the east. Before this glorious moment, this place will be used as a training ground for the imperial army and a wide passage for the various armies to transmit information and personnel and materials.

To the west of this open area is the location of the giant trebuchets that General Siegfried saw from the top of the Thorn City: in order to deal with the towering walls of the Thorn City, the craftsmen of the Empire's Molten Valley specially made these giant trebuchets with a throwing arm length of 50 to 60 meters, and loaded them onto trucks and transported them to the Blood Front at the end of last year. Compared with the complex modern crossbows and artillery, the imperial people finally chose the trebuchet, a simple and reliable ancient siege weapon - even so, these trebuchets are too huge, and the assembly of each trebuchet requires dozens of ox carts to transport the parts, and the overly heavy arm means that these trebuchets cannot be simply driven by gravity and lever principles, but are also equipped with expensive engraved magic arrays as auxiliary power sources.

At this moment, nearly twenty giant trebuchets that had emptied the Molten Valley were lined up in the Imperial Army's siege camp, aiming at the pure white walls of Thorn City. The height of these trebuchets was enough to make mortals feel dizzy, and also attracted the attention of the federal defenders in Thorn City. The reason why the federal army sent two-legged flying dragons to bomb these trebuchets regardless of casualties was because their super-sized size was enough to threaten the arrogant Thorn City.

Further west of the catapult line is the Imperial Army's camp - the scale of the Empire's mobilization this time can be seen just from the mixed colors of the tents in these camps: in addition to the standard white tents of the Empire's regular army, there are also colorful tents representing the territories of the major princes who have sent troops to participate in the holy war, scattered in various areas of the siege position, like pieces of colorful paint dotted on a white canvas.

After the military camp, at the westernmost end of the entire siege camp line, is the unprecedentedly large Imperial baggage warehouse: in order to prevent bombing and sneak attacks from the Federation, countless simple sentry towers and arrow towers also stand among the wooden warehouses and storage tents that are dotted like wild mushrooms. From time to time, several patrolling teams of water magicians appear on the small paths between the warehouses to prevent sudden fires from burning all the food and grass in the warehouses.

This layered structure of several lines arranged in sequence is the most traditional and most commonly used siege camp model of the Imperial Army, and has appeared in all the famous battles in the history of continental wars.

However, the siege camp structure unique to the humans in the Empire is completely invisible to the demons in the south: thanks to the amazing arcane construction skills of the "Dark Moon Priests" and the industrialization level of the demon realm that is ahead of its time, the demon army does not need to mobilize a large number of troops and build siege camps like humans. The demon priests can simply use arcane rituals and factory-made arcane prefabricated products to make countless arcane towers rise from the ground in a blink of an eye, thus forming a reliable siege line. Moreover, considering that the demon's unique giant arcane structure "Hal Mobile Fortress" is itself a movable arsenal, turrets and barracks, there is really no need for these southerners to honestly build siege camps.

The southern demons, with their sparse population and limited military strength, were able to compete with humans and orcs on the Haven continent precisely because of their advanced industrial level and arcane skills. "Industrial victory" was not just an empty phrase for the demons.

The appearance of the Frost Maple Ridge siege camp is completely different from those of the Empire and the Demon Clan.

This wasteland territory that has risen rapidly in a short period of time, like their lord, has shown an unstoppable nouveau riche temperament - the style of the people of Frost Maple Ridge, in a nutshell, is "Why spend more time on something that can be solved by throwing money?"

  Before the siege began, Grand Duke Rosario had specifically asked the Lord of Frost Maple Ridge whether it was necessary to borrow some craftsmen from the Imperial Army to help the people of Frost Maple Ridge build a siege camp outside the Aurelian Gate?

As a result, this friendly proposal was rejected outright by the Lord of Frost Maple Ridge.

  Mr. Xiahou’s philosophy is very simple: what craftsmen, what camp building, they are all low-grade and rough jobs!

At this moment, the "unique" engineering techniques used in the Frost Maple Ridge siege camp spread out behind Xiahou Yan were indeed enough to make any imperial craftsman's eyes pop out:

  For example, the people of Frost Maple Ridge did not build any barricades or other fortifications to defend against the federal army's counterattack. What they did was to drive six "Apocalypse" chariots directly, connected head to tail, and lined them up in front of the position, forming an insurmountable iron line of defense!

For another example, Frost Maple Ridge did not build a barracks for soldiers to rest opposite the Aurelian Gate, but directly turned it into an open-air parking lot full of "Igor" armored personnel carriers! The "Wagner" special forces had long abandoned tents, a product of the old society. The armored personnel carriers with built-in beds, water supply systems and ice magic cooling beads were front-line hotels that could provide soldiers with rest anytime and anywhere!

For example, Frost Maple Ridge did not have any air defense facilities in the camp at all: the iron dragon Sindragosa hovering in the air at all times, and the Undead Griffin Squadron forming an "S" or "B" in the air, were enough to ensure the Igor family's absolute air supremacy in the airspace north of Aurelian's Gate.

The exterior walls made of the steel body of the "Apocalypse" chariot, the airspace secured by the massive air force, and the Frost Maple Ridge thugs' superior firepower tactics that they have always used at all costs, all of this has resulted in the Igor family camp here being more like an unbreakable fortress than the Thorn City opposite!

Because of this, from the moment the siege officially began, the Imperial Army and the Federal Army in the West had been testing each other with long-range bombings and even sending in air forces to engage in a firefight, but the dawn on the Aurelian Gate side was still silent. The Federal defenders in the city had no desire to test or conduct fire reconnaissance on the Frost Maple Ridge troops outside the city, apparently fearing that they might accidentally offend Lord Duke Igor.

The same city, the same city gates. The three western gates were already filled with smoke, but the Aurelian Gate in the north seemed to be a sit-in war: the Frost Maple Ridge camp below the city and the federal officers and soldiers on the city wall were confronting each other in an extremely civilized and restrained manner, and no one acted rashly.

However, this situation really made Mr. Xiahou feel a little embarrassed:

According to the agreement reached with the Imperial Army, the Frost Maple Ridge troops should have launched a feint attack outside the Aurelian Gate to attract the attention of the Federation Army. However, if the two sides just continued to confront each other peacefully without any exchange of fire, Frost Maple Ridge would be happy and at ease, but it would seem a bit sorry for the friendly Imperial forces in the west who were about to get into a fierce battle...

Don’t you see, even though it was 108,000 miles away, Xiahou Yan could vaguely see thick black smoke rising from the direction of the imperial army camp...

The plan to fire a shot at the Aurelian Gate seemed to be urgent.

"Boss, what do you say?" Sean Mountbatten had obviously noticed the movement in the west, and asked the lord while holding the brim of his staff officer's wide-brimmed hat, "Should we take action?" "Let's do it." Xiahou Yan looked at the strange gate of Aurelian Gate covered with thorns through his sunglasses, and finally ordered with a cigar in his mouth, "Let's have a shot first to test the quality."

"No problem!" Sean had been waiting for this moment for a long time, and immediately answered excitedly, "Do you want to follow the old rules and use the Bofors magic cannon of the Apocalypse chariot to fire a round, or -"

"Just pull over that giant 'Dora' cannon you prepared!" Xiahou Yan rolled his eyes at his chief of staff. "Why don't you use the good stuff instead of being gentle, kind, respectful, frugal and modest? Fighting a war is not like treating people to a meal!"

  Hearing the name "Dora", Sean shuddered with a chill:

This towed cannon is one of the few new equipment developed by the Manhattan Laboratory this winter: it is basically a copy of the famous "Armstrong" heavy artillery of the demons made by the Frost Maple Ridge craftsmen, but while maintaining the appearance of the "Armstrong" heavy artillery, it has cancelled the original gunpowder loading mechanism and instead uses a "Universal Type I" magic engine driven by the devil to power the artillery.

This small modification completely changed the working principle of the "Dora" cannon: it will become the first heavy cannon in the history of Haven Continent that uses pure magic power rather than the impact force generated by the combustion of gunpowder to launch projectiles.

Since the engineers in Manhattan Laboratory were watching the paper figures singing and slacking off every day, this new cannon was also named after Miss Dora, a member of the "Dark-Souls" project team, by an unknown jerk. However, if someone underestimates its lethality because of this cute name, he will undoubtedly pay the price for his stupidity.

——Taking into account that various technologies are still immature, the current "Dora" cannon has only produced a single unit, which was transported to the front line of Thorn City as a trial product.

  Xiahou Yan’s idea is actually very simple: in the Battle of Thorn City, Frost Maple Ridge’s first shot must be loud and brilliant!

So, what could be more suitable to make a shining debut at this glorious moment than the "Dora" cannon that has never appeared on the mainland?

Under the orders of the Lord and Chief of Staff Sean Mountbatten, several Frost Maple Ridge artillerymen ran quickly to the rear of the position, and then worked together to tear down a huge "Meursault Invisible Satin" from mid-air.

Then, a huge, black, thick and extremely deadly weapon suddenly appeared in the air.

Xiahou Yan looked up at the majestic barrel of the "Dora" cannon and murmured, "It looks like it, very much like it."

The federal defenders on the top of Thorn City in the distance were also obviously startled by the sudden appearance of the cannon barrel. Sean Mountbatten clearly saw through the Dark Moon Glass Telescope that when the "Dora" cannon appeared, the orc messengers on the top of the city ran like crazy, and the shamans also hurriedly began to chant all the protective war songs they could think of.

"The 'Dora' cannon has been fully charged!" The dwarf master craftsman Heinkel will serve as the chief engineer in this battle. He saluted the lord awkwardly and reported, "What kind of ammunition do you want to load? Is it 'Flame Bonbon', 'Nail Needle Smoke Bomb', or..."

"First courtesy, then force, first courtesy, then force!" The lord waved his hands loudly, "First, let's launch a 'cultural bomb' to whet the appetite of those ignorant green-skinned people!"

As soon as these words were spoken, the expressions of several senior family leaders around them all changed.

"My Lord, I don't think it's appropriate..." Sean Mountbatten looked a little embarrassed, "Isn't 'cultural bomb' a bit too..."

"Whatever I say is what it is!" Xiahou Yan glared at him, "In half a minute, you will see a 'cultural bomb' flying over the top of Thorn City!"

Master Heinkel saluted and ran happily to reload.

Only Eldridge was confused as he listened to the conversation between the people. He had only heard that Frost Maple Ridge had newly developed a Dora cannon, but he had never heard of what the "cultural bomb" mentioned by the Lord was.

He took advantage of the lord's inattention and quietly poked Sean's shoulder:

"Hey! That 'cultural bomb', ah, so mysterious... what exactly is it, ah, what is it? Look how scared you are, ah, a bunch of cowards... How shameful..."

"E-Man, you'll know in a minute..." Sean said with a sad face, "Once this 'cultural bomb' is dropped, we'll all be recorded in the history books of Haiwen and criticized..."

Eldridge opened his mouth.

He wanted to say, "It's just a cannonball thrown during a siege. What's the big deal? With our boss's moral level, could he really do something that would anger the heavens and the people?"

Later, he recalled the Lord's historical achievements, but ultimately remained silent.

(End of this chapter)