I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

Chapter 116: Mobile Tactical Squad

Bratt Surya’s letter had crossed the sea and reached the Kingdom of Suria. The king still doted on his unwilling-to-be-king youngest son, especially after Bratt had discovered this so-called ‘industrial’.

The Kingdom of Suria itself was an exporting nation; their acceptance of industrial machines had been astonishingly high. Then again, it made sense — they were merchants at heart: the more they sold, the more they profited, and costs were driven down. They had no reason to resist.

And merchant thinking was sometimes more flexible than the haughty nobles.

Faced with the productivity leap that industrial machines brought and the chain reactions that followed, the great noble merchant families of Suria each delineated the fields they would focus on.

They competed and allied within reasonable boundaries, cooperating to reap foreign profits.

With the top families keeping order, the lower tiers of merchants could not muddy the waters, and the whole system remained stable.

Having earned greater profits, they quickly turned money into arms and equipment to expand their strength, and thus made even more money.

So for this useful youngest son, the king naturally changed his view — he no longer treated him like a child, and what he said carried more weight.

When he finished reading Bratt’s letter, he sucked in a breath.

Compared to Bratt’s attention to small details that sounded like thunder, the king of Suria looked more at the national, big-picture perspective.

He seriously examined the Seris Federation: rising from remote lands, annihilating the original kingdoms in an audacious upward overthrow, quickly wiping out neighboring vassal states — from the moment they proclaimed independence they had never lost an external war!

Well, not quite; if they had lost, there probably wouldn’t have been so much trouble afterwards...

But even so, the terror of this federation was apparent.

Their territory was no smaller than theirs, and constant campaigns and repeated victories also indicated military reliability. Coupled with the country’s rapid domestic development and its alluring slogans, this nation was either worth befriending or had to be wiped out in one go.

Wipe out...

The thought flashed through the king’s mind and passed.

They were far apart, and there was no direct antagonism. Suria was flexible — that noble skin was worn for convenience; it could be shed when necessary. The ultimate goal was to make coin.

From exchanges with the Seris Federation they had learned much that was good; there was a basis of mutual interest, so befriending them fit the Kingdom of Suria’s interests better.

But Suria’s neighbor, the Kingdom of Pue Lent, did not see it that way.

After the Seris Federation’s navy was reorganized, they had converted that iron leviathan back into a merchant vessel. How much cargo could a ten-thousand-ton freighter carry?

Just imagining it sparked all sorts of greedy thoughts; the cargo itself carried profits that made many envious, especially when the ship first docked at Pue Lent’s port — unloading the goods took nearly two weeks, and loading them back was the same.

This attracted the envy of the Grand Lord of Mosseradel City. Mosseradel Harbor was his enterprise, and he had detailed records of how much cargo the freighter had handled.

He therefore sent trusted men, leading a fleet disguised as pirates from the harbor fleet into the open sea to rob it, hoping for a zero-cost haul.

Instead, the fleet was annihilated by the Seris Federation fleet that had been waiting in the open sea for the giant ship — the Count of Mosseradel’s pants had been taken off in one go.

He was now rushing to the royal capital, intending to pressure the Federation through the kingdom to make up for his heavy losses.

The sea battle had been dramatic. When the federation fleet discovered the other side’s ill intent toward the leviathan, they struck first with warning cannon fire to drive them off.

The distance between the two sides had actually been very far; the ship cannons were inaccurate and the firing was merely a warning. But Mosseradel’s fleet stubbornly returned fire, and one shot hit the giant ship that was near them.

That changed everything.

Five cruisers quickly formed a battle line and returned angled fire. Though the distance was great, the federation ships had mature equipment to constantly correct ballistics and could make curved shots.

Mosseradel’s fleet’s magic crystal cannon fire had a straight trajectory and needed to close in to be effective; as distance closed, the federation navy’s fire grew ever more accurate.

Armor-piercing shells had a strange effect on magic shields, inflicting heavy losses on Mosseradel’s fleet.

Only after they closed range did the magic crystal cannons show their worth; one shot hit a cruiser’s magic shield, but their side was pounded by rapid-fire guns in return.

The mech soldiers who had expected to board and fight had no chance: the closer they came the more accurate the rapid-fire guns, and before they could reach it they were feeding the fish along with their ships, their morale shattered.

In the end Mosseradel’s fleet lost more than half its ships; the rest were captured, while the federation navy’s three cruisers suffered only light damage.

Magitech cannons were energy weapons and had no physical projectiles; before they could shatter an enemy magic shield their damage was limited. This was a direct factor in the federation navy’s decisive result.

The merchant convoy then forced the enemy to scuttle their ships; all crew became prisoners and were taken back by the merchants to the federation mines.

After receiving the battle report, Mitia examined the engagement process between the two fleets in detail and fully confirmed her previous thoughts.

Every federation warship that could mount a magitech engine did so — this device was a multiplier for technological constructs.

With a magitech pack generating a magic shield and an additional power and fire system, a tech warship could create a generational gap and crush opponents.

Even if the shield were shattered, a pure-steel hull’s structural strength was several grades higher than wooden sail ships.

Magic-native peoples did not think like the federation, who assigned specialists to specialist tasks; they had applied their old slave theories to alchemical constructs.

The opponent’s magical power sources had to both generate shields and provide energy for weapons — a blacker-than-black approach, with consumption far higher than the federation ships’.

Applying the same thinking to other weapons produced similar results: with magic shields protecting them, technological constructs could maximize all their advantages. It was hard to say who benefited more from magic. Content orıginally comes from novel※fire.net

As things stood, in large-scale combat technology still held obvious firepower advantages, while it lagged in single-soldier infiltration and other special operations.

This had delayed Mitia’s special forces plan from large-scale implementation. No matter how good the soldiers’ combat quality, if they could not endure a direct hit while the enemy could take many, they would look like a joke.

But small-scale experimental tactical squads could still be formed. Using technical documents, the Seris Federation had also cobbled together its own mech squads.

They followed the same design idea: fusion of technology and alchemy.

They were still three meters tall, but the original steel skeletons were replaced by silver-plated lightweight alloys, smoothing magic circuits while significantly reducing their own weight.

Weaponry was upgraded from a handheld enlarged caliber to the 12.7 mm silver-plated magic rounds LB-11MFP — the enhanced plus version of the magic gun that Miwei wielded.

They hung an external five-barrel Gatling gun, using universal 12.7 mm ammunition fed from a rear-mounted ammo box, but it could still be handheld.

The heavy-fire specialist carried a single vehicle-mounted heavy recoilless cannon on his back for close-range fire support; its other payloads were dedicated to attached ammo boxes — nothing else was considered.

All functions of the magic power source beyond mobility and shield generation were cut away, maximizing shield strength and the mech’s endurance to twice that of the original model.

As for the squad’s name, she had not thought of one yet.