Chapter 144: The Rifle Age

Chapter 144: The Rifle Age

The senior instructor’s warning remained over Noah’s vision while artillery continued falling on the Viridian city below.

Smoke drifted between shattered districts, and another column of civilians moved through the western roads while soldiers prepared positions deeper inside the city.

Noah looked across the four empires before answering. Fifteen years of war had reduced cities to ruins, consumed millions of soldiers, and filled entire regions with refugees, but the civilization below him was still moving, building, researching, and fighting.

"Continue the assessment," Noah said. He kept his attention on the world beneath him rather than waiting for approval from the faculty.

The instructor remained silent for several seconds before speaking again. His tone had become firmer rather than angry, as though he wanted to make certain Noah was not answering simply because he refused to admit defeat.

"You understand that surrendering now preserves everything you have already achieved in this assessment. Your civilization has suffered damage that may require generations to repair, and there is no guarantee that continuing will produce a better result."

Noah’s attention remained on the planet as Draeven formations consolidated around several occupied cities. Goblin armies were already moving toward new defensive positions farther inland while refugees continued leaving threatened regions.

"I understand," Noah answered. The instructor gave him another moment before asking the question again.

"Then I will ask you one final time. Will you surrender Round Six?"

Noah answered without hesitation. "No. Continue the assessment."

The connection remained open for another moment before disappearing from his interface. Noah received no congratulations and expected none, because the decision did not become less dangerous simply because he had made it confidently.

He returned his full attention to his world and began searching for something that had changed during the final years of the war.

For more than a decade, goblin researchers had dismantled captured weapons, created measuring standards, improved metallurgy, experimented with propellants, and built machine tools that seemed almost irrelevant compared with the destruction occurring outside their workshops.

Those efforts were finally beginning to converge into something useful. Noah first noticed it inside a Viridian arsenal several hundred kilometers from the nearest active front.

Rows of unfinished wooden stocks lay beside metal barrels while workers moved between machines whose shapes would have been unfamiliar to the craftsmen who had produced weapons before Round Six.

A finished rifle rested on one inspection table as several military officials examined every part of it.

It did not resemble the Draeven weapons closely enough to be mistaken for a direct copy.

The weapon was longer, heavier, and mechanically simpler, with a manually operated action that sacrificed speed. In exchange, it could be manufactured in large numbers. That distinction separated it from almost every firearm prototype the goblins had produced during the first years of research.

A weaponsmith took the rifle apart in front of the inspectors and placed the pieces across the table. None of the components required the same degree of precision found inside Draeven assault rifles, and most could be produced using machinery already installed in several Viridian arsenals.

The inspectors cared less about elegance than repetition. One rifle made by an exceptional craftsman meant almost nothing, while ten thousand rifles made by ordinary factories could alter the composition of an entire army.

Viridian had spent years simplifying the design until the weapon could survive that test. The barrel could be produced using standardized equipment, while the bolt and firing mechanism required careful machining but could be checked with gauges distributed to different factories.

Even the screws had been standardized. Noah understood the importance of that detail because the weapon no longer depended on every workshop producing parts according to its own habits.

He moved his attention toward the ammunition hall beside the arsenal and found the greater challenge. Thousands of brass-colored casings moved between workers who inspected their dimensions before filling stations measured propellant into each cartridge.

Other teams fitted primers and bullets before completed rounds were packed into wooden crates. The process remained imperfect, and every production batch still produced cartridges that failed inspection.

Some primers were unreliable, while some casings split under pressure or contained slight differences in propellant. The important change was that the failures no longer destroyed the usefulness of the entire production process.

The factories could now produce enough reliable ammunition for an army to train and fight with the weapons it received. Viridian was no longer manufacturing experimental firearms for specialists.

Varkesh had reached a similar point using a different design. Its rifle had been shaped less by battlefield experience than by the empire’s obsession with administration and standardization.

Varkesh officials divided production into stages performed across multiple state arsenals. One factory produced barrels, another manufactured actions, and a third assembled completed weapons from parts delivered by several provinces.

Noah watched crates arrive at one final assembly center from six different regions.

Workers opened them, selected components made by craftsmen who had never met one another, and fitted them into complete rifles without extensive hand adjustment.

That simple fact represented years of work. Before the war, two skilled craftsmen could produce similar weapons and still create parts that could not be exchanged between them.

Varkesh had built an entire measurement system around preventing that problem.

Inspectors carried standardized gauges between factories while workshops received official dimensions, acceptable tolerances, approved metal compositions, and procedures for rejecting defective parts before assembly.

The rifle emerging from those arsenals was not beautiful, and nobody designing it cared. Its value came from the fact that hundreds of workshops could contribute to the same weapon without requiring one master craftsman to control the entire process.

Skargrim’s firearm was even less refined. Northern engineers had taken ideas from captured Draeven rifles and deliberately removed mechanisms considered too delicate for mountain warfare.

Their weapon possessed a reinforced action, fewer small components, and wider tolerances wherever precision was unnecessary.

The designers wanted something that could survive dirt, rain, cold, poor maintenance, and rough handling by soldiers operating far from proper arsenals.

The first military tests were deliberately abusive. Soldiers dragged the rifles through snow, left them overnight in damp shelters, and fired them after only minimal cleaning.

Several weapons failed during the early trials, and the design was altered before another batch entered testing.

That cycle continued until Skargrim commanders accepted a weapon their factories could build and their soldiers could mistreat without immediately destroying it.

Luminous approached the same problem through the precision methods created during years of airship research. Better lathes, improved gauges, and increasingly consistent machining allowed its workshops to manufacture smaller components with less variation than before.

Its rifle was lighter than the early Viridian weapon and more expensive to manufacture. Luminous accepted the cost because many of its surviving factories had already been reorganized around the tools required to produce it.

Four empires had created four different answers to the same problem. None possessed the capacity to arm every soldier yet, but each had crossed the line separating experimental firearms from weapons that could enter ordinary military supply systems.

Noah watched governments respond the moment officials understood that change. Manufacturing manuals left the original arsenals under armed guard while copies were sent toward provincial workshops, military factories, guild centers, mining towns, and industrial districts far from the front.

Master machinists traveled with those manuals and carried inspection gauges alongside examples of finished components.

Their task was not merely to deliver blueprints but to teach other factories how to reproduce the processes that made the designs practical.

Viridian ordered old siege workshops converted into rifle plants while Varkesh expanded state arsenals that had once produced crossbows, armor, and polearms.

Skargrim redirected mining workshops toward barrels and cartridge casings, while Luminous constructed smaller precision facilities inland where bombing had not yet reached.

Knowledge still moved slowly between the four empires. A Viridian manufacturing method could take months to reach Varkesh through surviving diplomatic routes, while technical documents intended for Luminous needed ships capable of crossing waters already affected by wartime shortages and enemy activity.

Fifteen years of war had changed the meaning of those delays. The conflict continued long enough for improvements carried over months to arrive while they are still useful.

A Varkesh engineer eventually received drawings of Viridian’s simplified firing mechanism and removed two manufacturing steps from his own design.

Copies of that modification later reached Skargrim, where engineers changed it again to tolerate dirt and poor maintenance more effectively.

Luminous contributed improved gauge designs that allowed distant workshops to check critical dimensions without relying entirely on highly trained inspectors.

The exchanges remained slow and incomplete, but each successful transfer added another improvement to weapons that had begun as separate national designs.

Noah soon saw rifles that no longer belonged cleanly to one empire’s original pattern. Features crossed borders even when entire factories and armies could not.

The first mass deployments remained cautious because ammunition and replacement parts were still limited.

A Viridian regiment received three thousand rifles while the rest of its formation retained crossbows and older weapons.

Officers drilled the riflemen separately and punished soldiers who wasted ammunition during training. Cleaning became part of daily discipline, cartridges were counted carefully, and damaged weapons were returned to specialist armorers rather than repaired casually by whoever happened to carry them.

The army had to learn an entirely new relationship with its weapons. Firearms demanded supply systems, maintenance, training, and ammunition production on a scale crossbows had never required.

Noah watched the first important battle involving those riflemen near the ruins of a provincial town that had changed hands twice during the previous decade.

A Draeven infantry force entered the eastern outskirts expecting the same pattern it had faced many times before.

Goblin defenders usually fired from cover and waited until the range became favorable for crossbows or heavy weapons. This time, rifle fire answered from windows several hundred meters away.

The first volley was uneven, with many shots going high or striking rubble. Several Draeven soldiers still fell, and the results mattered more than the accuracy.

The Draeven infantry immediately took cover. For the first time, a large goblin formation could force enemy riflemen to respect open ground without relying on siege weapons, extreme numerical superiority, or close-range ambushes.

Draeven automatic fire quickly exposed the gap that still remained. Machine guns pinned several goblin positions, while the faster rate of fire and superior optics of Draeven rifles punished any unit that remained exposed too long.

Viridian suffered heavily during the engagement, and the new rifles did not win the battle by themselves.

Noah watched that difference spread across other fronts. A Skargrim patrol ambushed a Draeven convoy using rifles instead of waiting for the vehicles to approach crossbow range.

Varkesh infantry defended a ruined industrial district with alternating rifle volleys from several buildings. Luminous resistance fighters carried crude firearms into occupied territory hidden beneath grain sacks, tool crates, and civilian cargo.

Production increased with every passing year. Hundreds of rifles became thousands, while thousands became tens of thousands as new arsenals appeared farther inland and existing factories expanded their shifts.

Ammunition plants grew even faster because rifles could remain in service for years while cartridges disappeared every time soldiers fired.

Varkesh created entire administrative departments devoted to cartridge production and distribution, while Viridian built protected ammunition depots along interior roads.

Skargrim moved propellant production closer to the mining regions supplying its raw materials.

Luminous factories increasingly produced machine tools for other factories instead of manufacturing weapons directly.

That development interested Noah almost as much as the rifles themselves. A civilization capable of manufacturing machines that manufactured rifle components could expand production far faster than one relying on master craftsmen to build every important tool individually.

The transformation remained uneven across the planet. Some armies received new firearms quickly, while remote formations still carried bows and crossbows years after newspapers in the capitals announced the arrival of a new military age.

Noah did not mistake progress for equality. Draeven still controlled much of the sky, possessed superior artillery, coordinated units more quickly, and fielded infantry weapons with higher rates of fire.

The goblins had not erased the technological gap. They had broken Draeven’s monopoly on modern small arms, and that alone changed what ordinary goblin infantry could do.

Noah watched the difference become undeniable several years after his refusal to surrender.

A major Varkesh army assembled behind one of the central fronts, stretching beyond the roads surrounding its camps as ammunition wagons lined up behind the infantry.

The formation would once have looked ordinary except for what almost every soldier carried.

Rifles rested against shoulders throughout the ranks, and nearly all of them had been manufactured inside goblin factories.

They were not captured Draeven weapons or handmade prototypes issued to elite troops.

They were standardized weapons produced by arsenals scattered across Varkesh territory and supplied with cartridges manufactured in quantities unimaginable fifteen years earlier.

Officers walked between formations inspecting actions, ammunition pouches, and cleaning kits.

Supply clerks counted cartridge crates while armorers checked replacement parts stored in wagons behind the infantry.

Across Viridian, Skargrim, and Luminous, similar formations were beginning to appear.

Different rifle patterns remained common, but the presence of firearms across ordinary infantry units was becoming increasingly normal.

Noah focused on one young Varkesh soldier standing among thousands of others as an officer ordered the regiment to inspect its weapons.

The goblin pulled back the bolt, checked the chamber, and returned the mechanism forward.

Thousands around him repeated the same motion, and the sound passed through the formation like machinery beginning to move.

Fifteen years of survival had not made the goblins equal to Draeven, but it had given them something they long to possess.

They could now manufacture the weapon that had once made ten foreign soldiers terrifying. More importantly, they had learned how to manufacture enough of those weapons to begin changing the tide of war.