Blood Holy Scripture: True Ancestor Charlotte de Castel
Chapter 386: -135- Bombardment

Chapter 386: -135- Bombardment

As the horn sounded, Castel’s Allied Forces began to slowly mobilize.

From the hill, the monstrous Allied Forces, divided into five military formations by Baron Angus, advanced in a "2+3" formation towards the rebel camp.

The formation of the Allied Forces wasn’t as formidable as Charlotte had imagined—in fact, from a distance, it looked like five huge, constantly shifting grey-black rectangles, barely recognizable as military formations.

If not for the nobles at the forefront maintaining a relatively neat formation, Charlotte would have indeed wondered whether such a large formation could end up disordering itself while on the move.

But there was no helping it, as Castel’s Allied Forces were not a trained standing army; ultimately, they were just a collection of nobility from various regions, their private soldiers, and conscripted peasants.

Perhaps many of these conscripted soldiers were still tilling the fields or hunting in the forests three months ago, their training barely over a month long. The discipline and execution they displayed now were commendable, a testament to the efficiency of the Northern nobility and Baron Angus’s capabilities.

Nevertheless, the oppressive sense of a looming massive army enveloped the entire rebel camp. With her Bloodline’s excellent vision, Charlotte could clearly see that as soon as the horns of Castel sounded, the soldiers in the rebel camp also quickly sprang into action.

Archers surged onto the wooden stockades and towers, and the ballistae and stone-shooting cannons on the watchtowers moved slowly under the soldiers’ operation, aiming their bolts and muzzles at the distant army, while even more soldiers poured out from the tents, assembling in formations under the command of mounted nobles.

Having been stationed there for two or three months, this camp had been transformed by the rebels into a sizable fortress, and even Charlotte had to praise the rebels’ efficiency.

In this otherworldly realm where transcendent powers existed, the work efficiency of many things couldn’t possibly be compared with similar eras on Blue Star.

Not to mention, after communicating and interacting with the local villagers, Charlotte had learned that the camp was originally a small town with walls. It had only been further modified by the rebels.

The Allied Forces moved slowly, like an approaching tidal wave.

The vanguard stopped when they were about five hundred meters away from the rebel camp.

A somewhat somber horn sounded on the battlefield, and Charlotte saw the leading nobles at the forefront of the two formations take action. They raised their swords to command, and soldiers in the formations moved to the sides, pushing out a series of dark cannons.

Those were stone-shooting cannons, also a powerful siege weapon in the world of Mireya. Even though they were facing only a temporarily reinforced wooden fortress, the Allied Forces still brought these firearms along—twenty of them in total.

The main providers of the stone-shooting cannons were Charlotte’s directly administered domain and the Lien Castel family, as smaller noble families couldn’t afford such siege weaponry.

As early forms of cannons, their barrels were short, typically cast in bronze or iron, and sometimes even in purple copper or brass. The caliber of Castel’s stone-shooting cannons was 120mm, firing stone bullets weighing 300 pounds.

These stone-shooting cannons were not known for their precision, and their initial velocity was very low. To enhance the effectiveness of the cannons, their bodies and inscriptions were engraved with magic. After adjustments, their effective range generally reached up to five hundred meters, far surpassing the range of bows and hand crossbows, and certainly well beyond the range of a low-tier mage, which was less than a hundred meters.

The projectiles they fired were not merely stone bullets—they were also engraved with inscriptions depending on the situation, particularly in the first few rounds of firing. They generally used costly enchanted stone bullets with an added "Anti-Magic" effect designed to destroy transcendent powers.

Seeing the cannons being rolled out, the soldiers among the rebels visibly stirred, but they were quickly suppressed by the officers.

Another low horn blow resounded across the battlefield, and twenty muzzles of the stone-shooting cannons burst out plumes of white smoke. A few seconds later, Charlotte heard the booming cannon fire.

Accompanied by a series of explosions, the stone bullets hit the rebel camp, and the surroundings of the camp emanated waves of semi-transparent ripples, like flowing water.

Those were the mages’ shields.

The flowing shield caught all the stone bullets fired, which then seemed to hit a viscous, corrosive liquid, their speed rapidly decreased, and soon, the bullets emitted a fiery red glow, melting away like snowflakes.

However, a single round of cannon fire was clearly not the end.

Three minutes after the first round of stone bullets was blocked, the second round of cannon fire began.

The shield of the low-tier mages clearly wasn’t strong enough to contend with the stone bullets imbued with anti-magic properties, and after weakening a dozen bullets, the translucent shield nearly reached its limit and then shattered with a loud crash.

The remaining stone bullets crashed into the camp like meteors, most missed their target, but two hit their mark—one shattered a tent while the other struck a watchtower and pierced right through its tower.

But that was all.

Mireya’s current era cannons were still too weak.

The stone bullets engraved with the "anti-magic" effect could severely damage the protections of the spellcasters but could only inflict damage through kinetic energy, lacking the explosive effect of Blue Star’s future cannons.

But the sheer kinetic force combined with the "anti-magic" effect was already the strongest force against spellcasters on the battlefield at present.

Six minutes later, the third round of cannon fire began.

This time, the rebel spellcasters clearly couldn’t reconstruct their large spell shields in time, and the meteor-like stone bullets struck the camp almost unopposed.

Charlotte saw that after this round of cannon fire, another two tents in the rebel camp were destroyed.

Moreover, several stone bullets fell into the assembled rebel forces, the soldiers hit were obliterated so completely that not even their armor could be found, and the bullets that reached the ground ricocheted several times, causing further casualties and sparking panic and turmoil.

However, this was not the most significant victory—the greatest victory came when one stone bullet finally struck the stockade wall, which, having lost its magical protection, clearly couldn’t withstand the artillery and was directly torn open.

This caused even more chaos among the rebels.

However, the rebels reacted faster than Charlotte had expected—soon after the stockade was breached, soldiers bearing large shields rushed over to reinforce the defenses.

A few minutes passed, and the fourth round of cannon fire began.

After three rounds of adjustments, the accuracy of the stone bullets had improved significantly, and precisely five stone bullets hit the stockade wall.

Although two were blocked by the magic of a suspected tier-entering man, three hit their target, creating three new breaches after the first.

The stockade walls of the rebel camp on the front lines were now truly on the verge of collapse.

"Whoo—!"

A much louder horn sounded.

This was the command for soldiers to attack.

The allied forces of Castel advanced once more, with the nobles and elite private soldiers at the front raising their shields, while the peasant soldiers held up ladders and charged toward the rebel encampment...