Chapter 199: The Skitarii's First Battle

"Tell me more about it."

"Okay, Lord, the enemies we encountered this time came from the southern part of the island. There are not many shallows in the south. There were two groups of enemies in total. One group was full of fishmen, and the other group found several sea urchins and arm monsters."

"What is the quantity?"

"They are still landing slowly. 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 enough to deal with these monsters. I plan to kill those fishmen 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 to assemble the Skitarii."

"Yes, Master."

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

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

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

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

But even though we don’t know what happened to Castel, the enemy has indeed been weakened, so what are we waiting for before sending out the new army?

The Crusader Army was assembled quickly. Alexi led the team personally and headed to the southern beach with them. Zeus and Chloe followed far behind. There were also two banshees 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 preparing for this battle.

There are now more than 110 Crusaders, 80 of whom have come this time. Most of the rest have patrolling and guarding missions, and almost all of them who could 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 weak. Castel's main production capacity was currently 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 capacity is far beyond people's imagination. Now the two steel mills have begun to work 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.

Therefore, the Crusaders could only make do with rifled rifles. Although this thing was already outdated after just being assembled, even so, this weapon that could be accurately aimed still shocked Alexei.

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

This thing had been made by Seuss 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 results were mediocre.

Black powder burns slowly, and the initial velocity and power of the bullet are low, which fails to bring out the accuracy advantage of rifled rifles and instead causes a loss of some firing rate.

A few days ago, after Hughes gave him new smokeless gunpowder, he spent the whole day silently testing shooting at the shooting range.

Alexei felt that his worldview was about to be overturned.

In Alexei's mind, the musket has always been a quasi-close combat weapon: theoretically its range is not short, but if 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 the other party shoots 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 that kind of heavy iron armor. After putting it on, 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 rifle.

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

He stared at the weapon in his hand in amazement, his mind went 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 fire and there is a dedicated person to observe and calibrate, this distance can be further improved.

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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 use, 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 human is no bigger than a mosquito, which is at least twice as far as any weapon of this era.

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

The webway system south of Castel was not very developed, but there were still a few near the coastline, and the soldiers rode in carriages and quickly reached the exit of the webway. It was not far from the coast.

Soon, the soldiers arrived at the designated location, which was more than 600 meters away from the fishmen. The fishmen had already assembled on the beach, but the formation had not yet spread out and they were all 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 at this range. As long as there were no charging cavalry, they could slowly organize the formation at this distance.

Now this is the normal combat distance.

Under Alexei's command, the soldiers formed a thin formation, which was a classic formation of line infantry. In the era of line execution, soldiers lined up in rows and marched to the beat of drums.

The most important thing is the pace and rhythm. What's the use 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)