Chapter 276 — Shortcomings and Inspiration
Blade of Dawn · Page 1 of 3
To many, the development of Cecil Territory was already a miracle—even the administrators of Cecil Territory themselves could not help but think so. True, compared with most noble domains of this era, Cecil Territory had surpassed common sense in every respect, whether in the construction of its people's livelihood or in the transformation of its military strength. But Gao Yang had never seen it that way.
The imaginary enemy in Gao Yang's mind had never been those mediocre frontier nobles, nor even the long-entrenched old powers of the royal capital. From the day he inherited Gao Yang Cecil's memories, from the day he learned of the existence of the magic tide, his imaginary enemy had already been something beyond the present power of humanity—and against such enemies, the strength currently in his hands was far from enough.
"Those monsters have intelligence," Hetty said the moment Gao Yang's voice fell. "Their thinking doesn't seem very strong, but they clearly possess some capacity for thought. On the battlefield they judge the situation, they judge the attack range of the catapults and gather their strength to strike from safe zones—they can even command an 'army.' If their command ability grows any stronger, we won't win so easily."
Amber, seated on Gao Yang's other side, could not help saying, "I didn't find any intelligence in them when I was scouting."
"That means their intelligence is incomplete, or their behavioral patterns differ from humans'," Gao Yang said, unsurprised. "Mutants are creatures with a clear objective—that much won't change. So before they encounter an attack target, even intelligent mutants won't do anything superfluous, which makes them look no different from other monsters before they launch an assault. Still, after this incident, we've gained a measure of experience."
"Beyond that, this battle also exposed a problem," Gao Yang continued. "When dealing with those big fellows, ordinary soldiers clearly lack attack capability, and the catapults... their accuracy is far too low."
In the latter half of the battle, three giant monsters had crossed the middle of the battlefield—already within range of the thermal ray guns. But the scorching rays, so effective against ordinary mutants, revealed their shortfall in firepower when facing those enormous creatures: they could barely penetrate the enemy's bodies, and even when they did, the tiny wound area could hardly harm monsters the size of small houses. The mutated creatures seemed to have quickly figured this out, which was why they dared to stop brazenly before the city gate and gather their strength to attack. Frankly, without Rebecca's final super-gigantic-gigantic-gigantic fireball, if those three large "mutants" had actually unleashed their black lightning, things could truly have turned dangerous.
As for the crystal grenades that served as individual secondary weapons... their power posed a certain threat to the giants, but insufficient attack range was one issue, and the stamina drain on soldiers was another. Moreover, crystal grenades had delayed detonation and slow flight speed—against giants that already possessed some intelligence, the effect was truly far from promising.
Facts had proven that only the crystal bombs hurled by catapults could easily destroy those giants, but the catapult's drawbacks were all too obvious: poor accuracy, narrow range, slow loading, and heavy stamina consumption for the soldiers (though this could be solved with mechanical power). Before crystal bombs were used as ammunition, it had not even possessed decent power. One could say that letting such a wildly incongruous thing appear on Cecil's southern wall was purely a forced compromise born of inadequate technical conditions.