Steel, gunpowder, and spellcasters

Chapter 76 Ending
The sea has returned to calm, the waves have swept away planks and limbs, and there is almost no trace of the fierce battle that took place last night outside the lighthouse harbor.

Only on the sandy beach along the harbor, the charred keels of the two fire ships were still smoking.

"...In the name of God, His Son, and the Holy Spirit, we entrust their remains to the sea, awaiting the sea to bring them back to life, so that they may enjoy eternal peace and tranquility in heaven."

On the deck of HMS Glorious, Admiral Naresha is giving his final address.

After a brief mourning ceremony, the sailors' bodies were lowered into the sea from the gangplank draped with the military flag.

This is life on a ship; everything is frugal and simple, and the etiquette and moral concepts of land do not apply here.

There were no coffins or burial grounds; the fallen sailors were sealed in sacks filled with stones and then "sent" into the sea. The survivors, on the other hand, had to keep living and continue to struggle on the arduous and dangerous sea.

Meanwhile, Winters was leading the remaining soldiers of the Hundredth Company in digging graves outside Lighthouse Harbor.

Despite his usual accommodating nature, Antonio refused to compromise on the funeral arrangements, insisting on burying the remains of the fallen soldiers of the Third Army on land, rather than accepting the more time-saving and labor-saving sea burial.

Army soldiers are not sailors. Sailors are used to all this and can accept the sea as their final resting place. But António could not and would not tolerate anyone throwing his soldiers into the sea to feed the fish.

After Captain Wilson was killed in action, Winters temporarily took over as centurion of the 100th Regiment.

Centurion is a position that can only be held by a regular officer, so Winters was only acting temporarily until Army Headquarters sent a new regular officer to replace him.

Although Winters, as a beneficiary of the existing system, found it difficult to voice criticism, he did identify a serious flaw in the Army’s current officer system—insufficient redundancy.

A hundred-man squad has only one officer. If that officer is killed in action, the entire squad will lose its organization. Meanwhile, the replacement officer has to wait to be sent from Army Headquarters. This makes the entire command system a delicate and fragile eggshell.

However, given that he was just a lowly warrant officer, Winters thought it best to let his superiors worry about these things; all he wanted to do now was get the pits dug as quickly as possible.

In the naval battle just over ten hours ago, the Venetia Navy emerged victorious.

After the Glorious and the Revenge boarded each other, the other naval warships following behind the Glorious did not come to support the flagship.

The captains calmly made a judgment: there were other places on the battlefield where they were needed more, and they could only trust that the Glorious would win the duel against the Vengeance.

When Venetta's main fleet broke through the fire ships, the oar-powered warships were engaged in a fierce battle.

Because of their numerical disadvantage, when a Venetta galley boards its gangplank onto a Tanilian warship, another or even several Tanilian warships will fire cannons at it.

This meant that galleys not only had to engage in hand-to-hand combat with the Tanilian warships head-on, but also suffered artillery fire from behind.

The arrival of Venetia's main warships completely changed this situation. The oarsmen no longer had to fight two against one, and the two sides began to engage in one-on-one combat.

When naval battles become a back-and-forth struggle on crowded decks, the side with thicker nerves and less sensitivity to pain is the one that wins.

Finally, the Tanilians could no longer tolerate such bloody battles; they were not a navy, but a fleet of pirates, adventurers, and speculators.

Driven by greed for spoils and bounties, they set sail, and when they realized the battle was unwinnable, all the Tanirian warships began to flee in panic.

Before the Vengeance could give up its resistance, the Taniri fleet had already completely collapsed.

The pirates who still had a chance to escape disregarded everything and lowered their sails to full speed, taking advantage of the strong winds and waves to reach their maximum speed, fleeing in a panic towards the dangerous waters to the east.

However, Spier did not get his wish, because Drake escaped.

Let's go back a dozen hours.

On the Vengeance, where fierce fighting was taking place, the first floor of the sterncastle had been captured by the sailors of the Golden Lion, but the only way to the second floor was by a narrow ladder, and the sailors could not advance for a while, thus their momentum was thwarted.

At the top of the stairs on the second floor, Drake swung his scimitar and slashed at the neck of a Veneta sailor, then kicked the limp corpse downstairs, laughing maniacally, "Don't send your poor little minions up here to die, Spyder! If you have the guts, come up here and fight me one-on-one!"

Downstairs, Spyr certainly didn't believe Drake's nonsense. Because his advantage was increasing infinitely, Spyr was even more unhurried: "I'm not in a hurry. In fact, I'm hoping time will slow down so I can enjoy your despair a little longer! Hahahaha! Just don't jump down on your own initiative, or I won't fight you one-on-one!"

Drake's voice grew increasingly furious: "Coward! Wimp! [Incoherent and vulgar language]!"

The more vulgar the insults from upstairs, the louder Spier laughed, as if he were enjoying Drake's final moments of madness.

However, he silently urged his crew with gestures, and the sailors of the Golden Lion removed the two rotary cannons from the ship's side and carried them into the cabin.

While Spier was hurling insults at Drake, his hands never stopped working as he quickly loaded ammunition into the two rotary cannons.

"Wait here, I'm coming up!" Spier shouted, pointing the spinning cannon at the stairwell.

“I’m waiting for you! [vulgar language]!” Drake cursed as he lit the fuse on the iron kettle filled with gunpowder. He was stalling Spyder for time to make the improvised bomb.

As the hissing, burning iron kettle was thrown down the stairs, the two rotary cannons that Spyder had brought over, loaded with shotgun shells, opened fire. Dozens of shells the size of fruit pits flew into the second-floor ship's deck, and screams erupted from upstairs.

The moment the rotary cannon fired, Spyder saw what was being thrown down from upstairs. He immediately ran down to the lower deck. As Spyder shouted, "Run!" the kettle exploded, and the power of the explosion could be clearly felt on the nearby Glory.

“You…you are so despicable!” Smoke filled the sterncastle, and Spyder swore for the first time in this conversation.

"Hmph, aren't you the same?" Drake replied with a sneer.

"It's a pity that your iron thunderbolt splits in two when it explodes, so it's not very powerful, it's just a loud noise."

"Your cannons all hit the wood; you didn't hurt many people."

Deep down, these two rivals knew very well that they were essentially the same kind of people: Drake was the Spier of Tanilla, and Spier was the Drake of Veneta.

Silence fell over the stern deck, with only the sounds of fighting coming from other parts of the ship.

“Surrender, Drake. You’ve reached a dead end; you’re definitely not going to survive. But I promise I’ll give you a quick death and won’t let you be captured and humiliated.” This time, Spier was completely sincere.

Upstairs, Drake pressed the wound on his arm inflicted by the spinning cannon, instinctively wanting to utter a few harsh words in rebuttal, but suddenly felt utterly disheartened. Spyder was right; the Venetians on the Vengeance were unstoppable, and the Tanirian fleet on the sea was crumbling. He had lost everything, and for the first time in his life, he truly understood what it meant to be at the end of his rope.

Drake gripped his scimitar again, gritting his teeth as he said, word by word, "You'll never capture me alive!"

The moment the scimitar touched his neck, Drake heard his men shout, "A ship! It's coming!"

In the deep darkness of night, a large, jet-black sailing ship silently entered the battlefield from the northwest. It did not participate in the melee, but instead approached the starboard side of the Vengeance and rammed the Golden Lion at full speed.

With a loud crash, the large sailing ship slammed into the middle of the Golden Lion. The immense inertia caused the large ship to ride directly on top of the Golden Lion, its bow raised high. The weight of the entire ship was transferred to the keel and finally to the hull of the Golden Lion.

With a painful groan, the Golden Lion was crushed in half, breaking into two pieces.

A group of boarding soldiers swung ropes from the large sailing ships onto the deck of the Vengeance. The leader, carrying four spring-loaded guns and wielding two curved swords, swept away the Venetians on the deck like a storm.

Drake recognized the uniquely shaped sailing ship and, more importantly, the berserker-like dual-wielding swordsman. He roared with a desperate laugh, "It's the Firebird! Captain Kenway is here! Hahahaha! You'll all die!"

Upon hearing the name Firebird, Drake's last remaining men were rekindled in their fighting spirit and followed him downstairs.

However, Speyer and the crew of the Golden Lion had been forced back into the cabins by the Firebird's boarding fleet.

Drake, gripping the shoulder of the leader of the boarding fleet, said in a frenzied manner, "You finally came to my aid! Nareshaw is on that ship over there, let's go and kill them all! We haven't lost this battle!"

The newcomer removed his hood; it was Edward James Kenway, another legendary captain of the Federation and a master of ziplines, who had tried to stop the war until the very last moment.

“I’m not here to add to your bets.” Edward didn’t waste any words and punched Drake unconscious.

With Drake in tow, the Firebird's boarding fleet quickly returned to its own ship and then sailed away.

The entire raid was as swift as lightning. Before the officers on the Glorious could even react, the Firebird had already rescued Drake.

The warships pursuing the fleeing enemy reported seeing a large black ship enter the reef area. No ship dared to follow the Firebird into the reef area. In the eyes of Veneta's sailors, any ship that entered the reef area was destined to sink, and there was no need to chase after it.

The battle was already a great victory, and no sailor was willing to take the risk at the last moment.

In this battle, the Venetta fleet lost seven galleys and three sailing ships, but captured four warships, including the Taniri fleet's flagship, the Vengeance, and five armed merchant ships. It also sank and burned one warship and three armed merchant ships. The remaining Taniri ships fled into the Dead Sea east of Lighthouse Harbor, and their whereabouts are unknown.

The Tanirians have recaptured or sunk all the warships they seized from the port of Haidong.

The Tanirians were no longer able to muster a fleet capable of directly confronting the Venetian navy.

It was a truly resounding victory.

The three large sailing ships that were lost were all set ablaze when they broke through the arsonist ship. The fires became uncontrollable, and the ships had to be abandoned.

Fortunately, the Glorious was not burned. The gunners of the Revenge bombarded the Glorious's waterline with heavy artillery, causing the Glorious to flood its cabins and sink.

As the ship sank, the plank nailed to its bow also sank into the water, extinguishing the fire on the arsonist. Meanwhile, the sailors of the Glorious desperately plugged the hole below the waterline, saving the fleet flagship from the brink of sinking.

And so, by a twist of fate, the Glorious survived, a truly poignant story.

As Naresha had said, the twenty-one troop transport ships remained at a distance throughout the entire naval battle, serving no purpose whatsoever.

The day after the Battle of Lighthouse Harbor at dusk.

“There’s really nothing we can do about it.” Cage lay casually on the bed and said nonchalantly, “We weren’t really counting on them anyway. When those troop transport ships were requisitioned, the original captains and sailors were also requisitioned. Of course, they would prefer to keep their own ships.”

Cage now has a completely shaved head, and there's a shocking wound on his scalp that required more than a dozen stitches.

Barring any unforeseen circumstances, based on his experience in this battle, he will be able to smoothly be promoted from officer candidate to adjutant—the navy has lost a large number of officers and needs people to fill the vacancies.

“I don’t think it’s that simple,” Bard said thoughtfully. “I think for your navy, the captain’s initiative is very important. Army officers are used to following orders, while naval captains make their own decisions most of the time. Last night, when the Glorious boarded the enemy ship, not a single warship came to its aid; they all headed straight for the main battlefield. This shows that the captains on each ship have already made their judgments and believe that the main battlefield is more important than rescuing the flagship.”

Cage grinned: "Your idea is novel... but upon closer inspection, it makes sense. A lone ship on the ocean, surrounded by water, a ship is a kingdom, and the captain is the king."

"I think the problem lies in the lack of unified command. The merchant ship captains want to fight, but the army officers on board may be waiting for orders. The army officers want to fight, but the merchant ship captains may want to save their ships. If we could assign a commander with full authority to each ship, we might be able to fight this battle more easily."

Andrei's upper bunkmate began snoring at an inopportune moment; he always felt sleepy listening to these theoretical military discussions. He was a pragmatist; he could only understand things through hands-on experience.

"How could that be? What army officer would listen to a navy officer? And the navy wouldn't want to take orders from an army officer either." Cage yawned as well.

“But aren’t we now all under the command of the Joint Command? The Joint Command should have the authority to appoint officers who can command both the Army and the Navy,” Winters said, resting his head on his arm as he pondered.

"Alright, alright, let's not talk about this anymore. If that's really the case, you army officers shouldn't be here; you should be on the galleys. And the sailors on the galleys should be transferred to the requisitioned merchant ships. That would be the most reasonable arrangement, allowing the entire fleet to exert its full combat power. But in the end, didn't we still put you on the big ships to accommodate your army's wishes?"

Cage's honest words left Winters and Bud speechless.

"Let's not talk about that. I heard something." Cage realized the atmosphere was getting a little awkward, so he quickly changed the subject, sat up, patted Winters' bunk, and said with a wicked grin, "I heard you scared the sailors on the Golden Lion so much they peed their pants."

"That's way too exaggerated, it can't possibly go that far," Bud immediately defended his friend. "Who told you that?"

Cage slapped his thigh: "Do I need anyone to tell me? The whole fleet's talking about it. I reckon you'll have a nickname soon. If you're worried about people giving you a mean one, just think of one yourself and I'll spread it around for you. Sigh, I've always wanted a nickname too..."

After Cage was stabbed in the head, he seemed to have developed a talkative personality.

Winters sighed, curled up on his side with his back to Cage, and felt a sudden stomachache.

Thank you to all the readers who voted for my book before, especially Yuan Hongjian, Ami, 161120205936216, writersblock, and 20181013204343295. Thank you everyone.

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(End of this chapter)