Chapter 33: The New Royal Army Regiments
Lord Marshal Varrus stood on the edge of the training grounds, the wind whipping his grey-streaked hair across his scarred face. Below, three thousand men moved with a mechanical precision that was both magnificent and deeply unsettling. This was the First Rifle Regiment, the heart of the new Legion. They drilled, not with the familiar clash of shield and spear, but with the sharp, metallic clicks of their reloading drills. Varrus, a man who had lived his entire life by the rhythm of the sword, felt like a stranger in his own army.
He recognized the necessity of it all. He had seen the shattered breastplate after the first rifle test and had witnessed the prototype cannon pulverize a stone wall. He knew, with the certainty of a lifelong soldier, that these weapons would give Leo a power that no other kingdom could match. Yet, a profound sense of melancholy settled in his soul. War, for him, had always been an intimate and terrible art. It was about the courage in a man's eyes as he held the line, the strength in his arm as he swung his sword, and the honor of meeting a worthy foe shield-to-shield.
He looked at the riflemen. They were being trained to kill from a distance, to become cogs in a great machine of smoke and thunder. Their individual valor was being replaced by collective, mechanical discipline. He saw the future, and it was a future of impersonal, industrial slaughter. He was a general tasked with building an army for an age he was beginning to despise, and the irony was a weight as heavy as any armor.
For Laeron, a young elven warrior standing in the front rank of that regiment, the feeling was more strange. His hands, long and graceful, were accustomed to the feel of a longbow, the silken whisper of a bowstring, and the almost symbiotic connection with an arrow as he guided it with breath and instinct. The rifle was an insult to everything he knew.
It was heavy, ugly, and brutally loud. The first time his company had fired in a volley, the deafening, rolling crash had sent a spike of pure pain through his sensitive ears, and the acrid, sulfurous smoke had blinded his sharp eyes and made him choke. It was a brutish, human invention, devoid of any grace or connection to the natural world.
He hated it. He hated the clumsy, seventeen-step loading drill, a mechanical dance that felt like a mockery of the fluid, instinctive motion of nocking an arrow. He hated the violent, bruising kick that slammed into his shoulder with every shot. He felt that he was being turned into a lesser version of himself—a machine designed to dispense thunder and death.
But then he remembered why he was here. He remembered the Grand Prince's Edict of Emancipation. He remembered the look on his cousin's face when she was freed from tortured, disgusted, dirty slavery in a southern lord's household. He remembered Lady Lillia, his kinswoman, working to heal the very earth of this realm. Alexius was building a Leo that, for the first time, felt like a true home, a place worth defending.
So, he crushed his own feelings and forced himself to master the ugly new weapon. And he discovered that he and his elven kin were uniquely suited for it. Their legendary discipline made them masters of the repetitive drill. Their unique eyesight, unlike other races, allowed them to pick out targets at five hundred yards that human soldiers could barely see, aiming for the weak points in armor with deadly precision. They learned to endure the noise, to steady their hands amidst the chaos, and to become the calm, lethal core of the new regiment.
One afternoon, after a grueling day of drills, Cilia approached him. "You are dissatisfied with the new weapon," she stated, her eyes seeming to see right through him.
"It has no soul, Commander," Laeron replied quietly, cleaning the barrel of his rifle with meticulous care. "A bow is alive. This… this is just a tube of ugly metal."
"A tube that can kill a deathly knight before it gets within swinging distance," Cilia countered. "The world is changing, Laeron. The coming war will not be won with beautiful things. It will be won with effective things. Your skill makes this ugly tube the most effective weapon on the continent. That is its own kind of beauty. It is the beauty of survival."
Laeron looked down at the rifle in his hands, then back at his comrades, and nodded slowly. He still hated the weapon, but he was beginning to understand its terrible, necessary purpose.
Across the valley, on the heavily reinforced artillery range, a completely different kind of purpose was being forged. Here, the first Artillery Brigade of 2000 men was learning to tame the "Griffin" 12-pounder cannons. The crews were made up of the strongest men in the army, brawny humans, and several squads of orcs who had eagerly enlisted after their emancipation.
For an orc named Grak, who had spent the first thirty years of his life as a slave in the darkness of the Ironpeak Mines, the Royal Army was the first true home he had ever known. Here, his immense strength was not a reason for him to be chained to a rock face; it was a source of pride and respect. He was part of the ten-man crew of "Old Grumbly," the name they had affectionately given their two-ton bronze cannon.
The work was grueling, back-breaking labor. Hauling the cannon into position, swabbing the hot barrel with buckets of water, ramming home the heavy powder charge and the solid iron ball—it was all a dance of sweat, straining muscles, and absolute teamwork. One man's mistake could mean death for the entire crew, so they learned to move as one, to trust each other's work. For Grak, working shoulder-to-shoulder with humans who treated him not as a worthless beast but as a brother-in-arms was a revelation.
When they fired the cannon, he felt a surge of pure, chaotic power. The ground-shaking roar of Old Grumbly was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard. It was the sound of ultimate strength, the sound of walls coming down. It was the sound of vengeance for a lifetime spent in chains. Every time the cannon fired, he imagined it was blasting apart the walls of the fortress where he had been enslaved, and he would grin, his tusks flashing in the sun.
At the final demonstration, Alexius watched this new, complex machine of an army perform its symphony of annihilation. He saw the conflict in Varrus's eyes as the old general watched the age of chivalry be rendered obsolete by gunpowder. He saw the grim resignation on Duke Thorne's face as he witnessed the ultimate tool for enforcing a king's absolute will.
But most of all, Alexius saw the individuals. He saw the pain and acceptance in the eyes of elven riflemen like Laeron, sacrificing their ancient art for the sake of the realm. He saw the fierce pride in the eyes of orcish cannoneers like Grak, finding their purpose and their freedom in these new engines of war. He saw the terrified awe on the faces of young human soldiers like Tomas, who now wielded a power they were still struggling to comprehend.
He, Alexius, who was once Michael Sano from a world that had perfected industrial warfare and learned to rule the day, had brought this terrible catalyst to his new home. It was necessary. The system's cold logic and the looming threat of the Demon Lord confirmed it every day. It was the only path to survival. (Continue….)