Chapter 848: Thug Mine

Pabos still cannot put pen to paper. He turns to Ruchi, his deputy warband commander. "Did I make any mistakes in those two battles?"

Ruchi shakes his head. "Your command was flawless. There was nothing wrong with your timing or the movement of your troops."

"I could not have commanded them as well as you did."

"Your battlefield reactions, your decisiveness in giving orders... They were the best I have ever seen!"

Pabos smiles. "Enough. You don't need to flatter me. You came from the Seventh Legion."

"You were already a centurion at the Battle of Cellarwine City."

"Under my father's command, you used a single warband to shatter the entire Mountain Lion Legion in half an hour."

"It was your bravery in that battle that earned the Seventh Legion the title Formation Breaker!"

Ruchi smiles. The scar on his chin looks a little more fearsome, and his eyes shine with pride in that battle.

"Young master, you are still so young! No one else on the continent could command like that at your age!"

He adds, "In all fairness, young master, you kept casualties as low as possible in both battles."

"I know of only a few legion commanders who can direct a battle like that."

Pabos looks at the death notices covering his desk. "My orders sent some soldiers to their deaths so that we could gain a greater advantage," he murmurs.

"But is it really for me to decide who should die and who should live?"

Ruchi sees Pabos's uncertainty. It is a cruel burden to place on someone so young.

Pabos is exceptional, but he is still a young man who has only just turned eighteen.

More than a thousand people died because of him, people he had spent nearly a year with. Raised under Peace Haven's education system, he cannot take those deaths lightly.

Expecting Pabos to remain calm would clearly be asking too much.

Ruchi says softly, "Young master, let me do it."

Pabos pauses. His gaze gradually sharpens and steadies. "This is my responsibility. A commander has to shoulder it."

"I cannot choose who lives or dies, much less decide anyone's fate."

"All I can do is ensure that our fallen soldiers did not die in vain, that their sacrifices meant something."

Ruchi stands at attention and salutes. "Commander! I can promise you that every one of those sacrifices meant something!"

"We all know that more of us survived because you commanded so well!"

Pabos pauses, then signs his name on the death notice.

Ruchi watches Pabos grow through this ordeal, and his eyes fill with relief.

Peace Haven has a worthy successor!

On the fourth day after the skies clear, everyone feels more at ease.

The sun is drying and hardening the ground. Soon, the three warbands' warhorses will arrive.

More than ten thousand infantrymen and more than ten thousand cavalrymen are two entirely different forces.

These soldiers fight well on foot, but they can make far better use of their strength with horses.

Just as everyone begins to relax about the fighting ahead, news arrives from Palm Tree Lake: large numbers of elite calamity creatures have appeared there again.

At the same time, over the past two days, small groups of high-ranking calamity creatures have repeatedly slipped through the defensive line.

Their target is, of course, the waterworks on the upper reaches of the Leo River.

Both the dams and the diversion channels have already suffered several small-scale attacks.

A warband from Peace Haven's Southern District defends the site alongside elite squads from the various powers.

The empire's squad has fifteen members. An Iron Knight leads it, and everyone else is at Grand Knight Rank.

The church has sent an entire Paladin squad of fifty. Not all of them are Grand Knights, but an Iron Rank professional commands the squad.

Lumir also has an elite squad, led by a royal guardian at Iron Rank.

Peace Haven has sent two units. One is made up of the Military Intelligence Office's Wind Raider Cavalry, led by Alesha, a female knight at Iron Rank.

The other is the Southern District's Lord Iron Guards Third Combat Battalion. Lopang, its deputy battalion commander, leads it. He is a veteran Grand Knight who could break through at any time.

During this period, the squads have killed several groups of calamity creatures attempting to destroy the dams.

Tonight, another elite sabotage squad of Subterranean River Bandits arrives.

From a raised platform near the dam, the squad commanders watch the saboteurs climb out of the river.

These high-ranking Subterranean River Bandits want to sabotage the dam from underwater.

They simply cannot get close enough beneath the surface.

Numerous trigger mechanisms lie below, along with many warning and detection devices.

The devices are particularly effective at detecting extraordinary creatures.

Often, the creatures are spotted while still one or two kilometers from the dam.

Then the Southern District warband kills them in a particularly brutal way.

Its weapon is a metal sphere roughly thirty centimeters in diameter.

Once an alarm is triggered, these metal spheres are thrown into the river.

Any high-ranking calamity creature that comes within range triggers the sphere's extraordinary sensing device.

Huge plumes of water then erupt from the river, one after another.

Sometimes, severed limbs fly up with the water. More often, the calamity creatures are stunned by the blast and float to the surface.

The soldiers haul them ashore with nets woven from extraordinary alloy, then hand them over to the spellcasters to be restrained.

The spheres are filled with Thug explosive. Repeated improvements have made it more powerful, and it contains considerable amounts of extraordinary materials.

In effect, it is an extraordinary version of a smart mine.

The worlds may be different, but some basic physical laws are shared, such as water's incompressibility.

When a Thug Mine explodes, its shock can inflict enormous damage on underwater creatures.

Any creature that is too weak, too close, or too slow to escape is killed outright.

Of course, these weapons are expensive. Even after several improvements, they remain difficult to manufacture.

A single Thug Mine costs several thousand gold coins.

And that is with the Western Federation providing large quantities of extraordinary resources for free. Without them, the cost would be several times higher!

Still, killing a high-ranking Subterranean River Bandit equivalent to a Grand Knight is well worth the expense.

The Subterranean River Bandits eventually recognized the danger underwater and stopped trying to break through that way.

Otherwise, the squads from the church and the empire would be paying out of their own pockets for Peace Haven to keep deploying these lethal weapons.

These distinguished professionals have plenty of money. They are willing to spend it to stay safe and avoid dangerous close-quarters fighting.

With the underwater route ruled out, the enemy can only advance along the riverbank embankment.

But that route cannot evade the detection devices set up by the church and the empire.

The devices can spot a Subterranean River Bandit sabotage squad from far away.

The sabotage squad before them has only twenty members.

The strongest are just three Grand Knight Rank creatures. The rest are at Battle Knight Rank, with even a few Knight Rank creatures thrown in to make up the numbers.