After the failure of the Albion raid, few people had seen Sharl Reimonds.
The doors to his study in the ducal residence remained firmly shut. Since Sharl Reimonds had returned in a wretched state, no one knew what was happening inside.
The only rumors circulating among the nobility were that strange screams occasionally echoed from within, along with the sound of things being smashed.
That said, they couldn't simply allow the Southern army to set foot on Western soil.
The one who seized full authority in Sharl Reimonds's place was the notoriously ruthless officer Erik Smith—the man who had earned the greatest distinction in the wars against the Western indigenous tribes.
Perhaps that was for the better.
There weren't many nobles left willing to follow the orders of a man who had made the wrong call three times over.
And so, the single demand Erik Smith made upon taking full command was this:
"Transfer complete command of all forces to me. The conscript units in particular."
The nobles accepted Erik Smith's proposal without hesitation. Corrupt and incompetent as they were, they had no experience of actual warfare.
The low-born centurions and chiliarchs who oversaw the conscripts, however, pushed back hard.
Because of Erik Smith's reputation.
His victories had always come at a staggering cost in common conscript lives.
"You're planning to use our conscripts as shields again! We've put up with this for far too long!"
During the border conflicts, they had been able to stomach it. The long years of border raids had inflicted tremendous suffering on the common people.
Quite a few commoners along the Western frontier had lost family, friends, and loved ones to those raiders who spoke no language they understood.
If it meant fighting back against those plunderers, they could accept dying for it.
But a war against the South was different.
"Why should we die for your quarrel?"
A nobles' war.
That was how the common people saw this conflict.
Their perception of the South was, on the whole, favorable.
Over a thousand years, the people of the South and the West had maintained countless ties. It wasn't uncommon for Westerners to travel south for work, drawn by the South's booming industrial revolution.
As a result, a considerable number of people had family and friends in the South.
From the perspective of the Western establishment, the South was a monster that had gutted their manufacturing sector. But the common people saw things rather differently.
These were the people who had broken the monopoly production systems held by the entrenched nobility and supplied quality goods at affordable prices.
That was precisely why the ones most resentful of the tolls extorted at Sarcen Fortress had been the Western commoners.
The Sarcen Fortress tolls had driven up the price of Southern goods.
With that accumulated grievance as the backdrop, no one had any desire to fight the Southerners directly.
Conscripts with no will to fight.
Shattered public sentiment.
Junior officers with no intention of following orders.
In this situation, the solution put forward by the man they called the Devil of the West, Erik Smith, was straightforward.
"Purge every officer who resists and fill their positions with sons of noble houses."
Junior officers are the backbone of an army?
From the outset, Erik Smith had no expectations whatsoever of the conscript infantry.
It didn't matter who was put in command of them. The conscripts only needed to march forward.
In his mind, conscript infantry were nothing more than backdrop—scenery to make the nobles' battlefield glory shine brighter.
"They say their weapons can pierce a knight's aura from a distance. So send the infantry forward in a charge."
Erik Smith's conception of conscript infantry was that of a meat shield, nothing more and nothing less.
"No matter how formidable their weapons are, they won't be able to strike our main force through 30,000 men."
While all attention was drawn to the conscripts, the knights—cavalry, Wyvern units, and aura-wielders—would launch their assault.
Any enemy magical attacks would be intercepted by their own mages.
After all, once they closed the distance, victory was as good as guaranteed.
"It will be a glorious death for the lowborn. Serving as a shield is the most noble sacrifice they can offer for the West."
And so the Western army's formation took on a grotesquely lopsided shape.
Thirty thousand infantry at the front, with the main force arrayed behind them.
The infantry weren't ignorant of the fact that they were being used as meat shields.
But they had no way to resist.
The knights behind them watched with cold, unblinking eyes.
In that state, the Western army marched toward what would become the killing ground.
Along the rugged coastal terrain of the West, with its jagged mountain ranges, there was only one place where 50,000 men could meet in open battle.
The Arkal Plain.
The only flat coastal ground in the vicinity.
***
The distance from Assyria County to Porvin was roughly 180 kilometers.
Given that the average maximum marching speed of a World War I infantry unit was 4 kilometers per hour—about 24 to 32 kilometers per day—that translated to approximately a week's march.
But I had deliberately built in extra time.
There was no force in existence that wouldn't resist an army marching into its own backyard.
A cavalry reconnaissance unit returned at a gallop with its report.
"A large enemy force is moving toward the Arkal Plain! Estimated strength: approximately 40,000!"
"They really scraped the barrel clean."
It goes without saying, but consecutive defeats erode public support for a war.
When public support drops, the nobles stop sending soldiers.
And yet they'd managed to muster 40,000 men under those conditions?
That meant they'd been running conscription at full throttle.
I'd already received word through the Intelligence Bureau that public sentiment in the West was collapsing.
They must have been desperate.
Attempting civilian conscription with morale already in the gutter—that told me everything.
"Composition of the force?"
"Well... there was no cavalry or Wyvern knights visible. Only infantry. It seems the main force is being held in the rear."
"Hmm."
That was the exact opposite of Western military doctrine.
Their doctrine was to devastate with Wyverns, sweep clean with cavalry, then have infantry confirm the occupation. There was no reason for them to lead with infantry.
Then, a possibility surfaced.
"Oh. These bastards wouldn't."
They'd had a front-row seat to the firepower of our weapons at the Battle of Sarcen Harbor. Repeating the same attack pattern would only produce the same result as last time.
If they'd learned from that, they would never cling to the same method of assault.
They'd be looking for a way to charge into the face of our guns.
And the solution they'd found was...
"They're planning to use the conscripts as a shield?"
If that was truly the case, there was no other word for it but madness.
The people are the foundation of a nation. Without them, a nation cannot grow—and adult men in particular are the central pillar of economic development.
They were going to use that precious human resource as a meat shield?
With public opinion already this far gone?
"Completely unhinged. Well, it works out nicely for me."
Western nobility using their own people as shields versus the gentlemanly Southern army.
From where I stood—needing to annex the West while crafting exactly that kind of image—this was practically a gift.
On top of that, the enemy still didn't seem to fully grasp how we fight.
Modern warfare isn't the kind where you can only hit what you can see.
"All units, halt here. Convene the staff!"
I stopped the march and called the staff together.
While the officers gathered inside the temporary command tent, I continued working through the problem.
Would we lose if we met them head-on in open terrain?
Absolutely not.
Light machine guns and autocannons capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute were more than enough to chew through 40,000 men in short order.
The fate of infantry charging with swords against a machine gun emplacement had already been demonstrated by the Japanese on the Pacific front.
But choosing a frontal engagement here would be the move of an amateur.
"That's not how you win a war."
Winning a battle and winning a war are entirely different things.
Winning a battle just means fighting and coming out on top. But winning the war means achieving the objective of the Western campaign.
And killing 30,000 forcibly conscripted Western soldiers would become an obstacle to achieving that objective—the annexation of the West.
"So today, in this place, only the nobles and their private troops die."
"What method do you intend to use to separate the conscripts from their main force?"
In response to the staff officer's question, I pointed to the map spread across the table.
The narrow gorge leading from Porvin into the Arkal Plain.
"The moment the enemy's conscript units have fully passed through here, I'm going to bring this gorge down. That traps the main force inside."
"However... the Arbel Mountains are granite. Our army's 76mm field guns alone won't be sufficient to destroy them."
"Not with 76mm field guns alone, no."
It was an operation that couldn't be executed with ground forces alone.
But our expeditionary force wasn't a ground-only army.
"That said—no matter how hard granite is, do you think it can withstand the Dreadnought's 305mm main battery?"
"Ah—!"
We had the most powerful firepower of this age—capable of reducing a fortress to rubble in a single salvo.
With the Dreadnought's range extending well past 10 kilometers, it could easily destroy a gorge close enough to the coast.
"Deploy a forward artillery observation team and one platoon to the hills nearby."
The plan was simple.
The Dreadnought receives coordinates from the forward observation team and collapses the gorge entrance.
Then the 305mm naval guns sweep clean whatever is trapped inside.
Aura is undeniably formidable.
Letting a human withstand 20mm autocannon fire, deflecting a few rounds from an anti-aircraft gun—those are genuinely extraordinary capabilities.
But could it hold up against a 305mm naval gun barrage?
"Only the 1st Division goes to the Arkal Plain. The conscripts didn't come here because they wanted to fight, so have them open with a surrender offer."
The remaining division had one task.
Annihilate whatever came fleeing out of the gorge after the naval bombardment turned it to rubble.
"The 2nd Division, Imperial Guard included, follows me. We're going around the Arkal Plain to seal off the rear of the gorge."
The enemy was closing in by the minute, so there wasn't much time.
I looked around at the assembled staff and spoke.
"Right. Let's move. Time to give the Western nobility a taste of naval gunfire."