Command Ability and Learning Spells / Miscellaneous Matters and Signs of the Honkai's Arrival

Moros had many complaints about the Undead Legion's current long-range war machine—the ballista.

After practical testing in a series of battles to clear the Demiplane, he had gained a thorough understanding of the true performance of Ashan World's Rune Ballistae.

These war machines, which sold for exorbitant prices in Graveyard City—even more than a Spectral Dragon—performed only as well as a 12-pound M1857 Napoleon Cannon.

Although they excelled in mobility and accuracy, their performance was extremely outdated compared to the artillery equipped by Mu Continent's regular army, or even the modern artillery fielded by other nations of the Pre-Collapse Civilization.

There simply had been no alternative. Otherwise, Moros would not have wanted to keep Rune Ballistae in the Undead Legion's order of battle.

Even with Moros's attack stat as high as 20 and his knowledge stat at 21, allowing the Rune Ballista's damage to reach a respectable 82–123, its obvious disadvantage in range compared with modern artillery still greatly reduced its practicality.

More importantly, only one Rune Ballista could benefit from Moros's personal attributes, while the rest had damage that remained at the basic level of merely 2–3.

So when the opportunity arose to obtain modern artillery—moreover, the mainstream 155MM heavy artillery of the Mu Continent—Moros naturally accepted Fuyuan City's powerful figures' "friendship" without hesitation.

After clearly expressing his satisfaction with the gift, Moros stepped into the slowly rotating deep-blue Demiplane passage.

As Moros's figure vanished, the deep-blue vortex slowly closed as well, and the Demiplane passage shut once more.

If not for the six 155MM Howitzers having vanished without a trace, everything that had just happened might have seemed like an illusion.

Without caring how those personnel handling the transfer would report back to Fuyuan City's powerful figures, Moros cleared his mind and ordered the Skeleton Archers to board the tractors, hauling the six newly acquired 155MM Howitzers outside Graveyard City.

His goal was to try having undead soldiers operate these heavy guns.

Since necromancers of the past had been able to use necromancy to create Skeleton Archers capable of driving trucks, Moros, whose research in necromancy now ran even deeper, could naturally implant the memories required to operate these standard heavy guns into the Skeleton Archers' Soul Fire.

Yes, Skeleton Archers rather than Plague Zombies.

When Moros first tried to have Plague Zombies operate the artillery tractors, he quickly realized that this was not a wise choice.

The Plague Zombies' stiff fingers and dull minds made them ill-suited for the task, unable to properly drive the tractors and tow the artillery.

No wonder that after countless years of development in Ashan World, Skeleton Soldiers remained necromancers' favorite undead unit despite their many weaknesses—fragile bodies, low health, and little growth potential. Their nimble limbs and ability to carry out orders truly could not be matched by other Undead Creatures.

With that thought, Moros dismissed the blankly staring Plague Zombies, gathered an equal number of Skeleton Archers instead, and imparted the relevant knowledge to them.

Soon, thirty-six Skeleton Archers and six 155MM Howitzers appeared on a vast plain far from Graveyard City.

Apart from the six Skeleton Archers serving as tractor drivers, the remaining thirty quickly deployed the towed 155MM Howitzers into combat position.

Each skeleton artillery crew consisted of five Skeleton Archers, serving respectively as gun commander, sight operator, emergency repairman, gun operator, and ammunition handler, ensuring the artillery operated efficiently.

Once all six heavy howitzers were ready, Moros began training the first artillery unit in the Graveyard territory.

With the characteristics of the undead, once the initial training was complete, Moros could use necromancy to extract the Skeleton Archers' memories and mass-produce his own skeleton artillery troops.

As for the source of the 155MM Howitzers for the skeleton artillery, Moros was not worried.

Moros, who possessed a Blacksmith, would not allow Fuyuan City's powerful figures to hold him by the throat.

Reality was not a game. As a Magical Building, the Blacksmith naturally was not limited to manufacturing only the four standard war machines from the game.

In fact, besides Rune Ballistae, the Blacksmith also sold many war machines such as small catapults and siege towers.

It was simply that compared with Rune Ballistae, these war machines were even less practical.

The reason for this was not difficult to understand.

At its core, Ashan World was a world of magic. Long-range attacks relied primarily on spells, and no war machine could compare to the power of a mage corps.

Only minor forces that lacked the means to build mage corps regarded war machines such as Rune Ballistae as substitutes.

Under such circumstances, Ashan World's war machines naturally could not

be mentioned in the same breath as the Pre-Collapse Civilization where Moros lived.

After all, in Ashan World, intelligent people all went to study magic, while those who researched war machines naturally could not compare with them.

Returning to the point, although the existing war machine templates in the Blacksmith were more or less lacking in practicality, as long as it had a physical sample, the Blacksmith could consume resources to analyze and replicate those war machine templates.

This meant that once Moros obtained the template for the 155MM Howitzer, he could spend Ashan Gold Coins to directly purchase the real thing from the Blacksmith.

However, unlike Rune Ballistae, which could receive Moros's attribute bonuses, these howitzers purchased from the Blacksmith would possess only their base damage.

Of course, war machines could still normally enhance these war machines purchased from the Blacksmith.

Thanks to his experience using Rune Ballistae, Moros's training of the skeleton artillery proceeded somewhat haltingly, but overall, it advanced steadily.

After more than half a day of effort, the skeleton gun crews operating the howitzers finally fired their first shell.

Although the shell landed several hundred meters away from its intended target, this was undoubtedly a milestone of progress.

There was no need to elaborate on the training that followed. After firing more than a hundred shells, the skeleton artillerymen finally possessed genuine combat capability.

After copying the skeleton artillerymen's memories through necromancy, Moros ordered them to haul the howitzers back into the Graveyard territory for analysis.

Just as Moros had anticipated, after spending 180,000 Ashan Gold Coins, the Blacksmith successfully analyzed the war machine template for the 155MM Howitzer.

Mu Continent Standard 155MM Howitzer

Health: 1500

Base Damage: 100–150

Range: 75KM

Ammunition: 60

Price: 18000

As he browsed the description of the Blacksmith's latest product, Moros placed an order for three artillery companies—eighteen guns—without hesitation.

After instilling the necessary memories into the Skeleton Archers assigned to operate these howitzers, Moros possessed a well-equipped 155MM Howitzer battalion.

Command Ability and Spell Learning

Compared with the Mu Continent military, which could drown the First Herrscher - Herrscher of Reason in the firepower of conventional forces, the firepower of a single 155MM Howitzer battalion was insignificant.

However, without combat testing, Moros remained cautious about equipping such expensive war machines on a large scale.

In Moros's eyes, although the standard 155MM Howitzers used by Mu Continent's regular army far surpassed artillery of the same class from nations in his previous life, these old heavy guns still lacked combat power compared with the new artillery modified by Collapse Energy.

As a necromancer, Moros knew well that investing in war machines already behind the times was not a wise decision.

Besides, the Undead Legion's current lack of powerful long-range attack methods mainly stemmed from his insufficient exploration of magic.

If he were a true Legendary Rank spellcaster now, then Legendary Spells would be the strongest long-range attack method.

Since the 155MM Howitzers served only as a transitional force in the Undead Legion's order of battle, Moros naturally would not equip them on a massive scale.

After ordering the newly formed skeleton artillerymen to haul the 155MM Howitzer battalion outside Graveyard City for training, Moros began considering how this new war machine added to the Blacksmith's product list should coordinate with the Undead Troops.

Although Moros had never crossed the threshold of a military academy in either this life or his previous one, that absolutely did not mean he knew nothing about commanding Undead Troops.

As the iconic force of the Graveyard faction, the Undead Legion's combat command had been studied extremely deeply within the Graveyard faction.

Although necromancers were slightly inferior to Death Knights in the practical command and enhancement of legions, on a theoretical level, necromancers were certainly no worse than the servants they had created.

For this reason, the Mage Guild had accumulated a vast amount of knowledge and techniques on how to precisely command the Undead Legion.

Through intensive study of this command knowledge, Moros was already considered competent at commanding the Undead Legion.

Of course, that was by necromancer standards.

In the eyes of proper Graveyard faction Death Knights, Moros's current command level could only be called that of an ordinary student.

He could arrange troops in an orderly fashion according to textbook guidance and avoid letting the Undead Troops swarm forward like a rabble, but that was all.

Without the help of Battle Spells, this level of command ability was only equivalent to that of an ordinary noble officer from the Greyhound Duchy.

As the weakest military power among Ashan World's eight duchies, the command level of ordinary noble officers from the Greyhound Duchy was, as they said, self-explanatory.

They could suppress bandits or clear monster troops in the wilderness, but expecting armies under their command to accomplish anything on the brutal battlefields between factions was simply wishful thinking.

But reality had no "if." With the power of magic, even though Moros's command ability went no further than this, it was enough for him to serve as a competent commander in the Graveyard faction.

Still, this level of command ability was clearly insufficient to support the design of complex tactics.

Therefore, after careful consideration, Moros decided to abandon his initial idea of fully integrating the 155MM Howitzer battalion into the Undead Legion.

Aside from engaging in artillery duels with the Pre-Collapse Civilization's regular forces, he would simply use them as oversized Rune Ballistae!

As the saying went, The moment you decide to stop trying, the world suddenly feels much wider. Having made this decision, Moros immediately felt the burden on his shoulders lighten considerably.

After all, his foundation lay in the Graveyard territory and the magical knowledge stored in the Mage Guild.

Technological creations such as the howitzer battalion would undoubtedly strengthen the Undead Legion, but they were not indispensable.

Moros could embrace that carefree mindset and use the 155MM Howitzer battalion as enlarged Rune Ballistae, but when it came to magic—the foundation of his existence—the necromancer would never be perfunctory.

Moros knew very well how desperate the future of his era was.

If he wanted to protect the people he cared about from the apocalyptic catastrophe that would end the world, Quasi-Legendary Tier strength was nowhere near enough.

Moreover, with Moros's intelligence, he naturally understood that dragons did not dwell among snakes.

To be worthy of people as exceptional as Elysia, Eden, and Vill-V, Moros knew that he needed sufficiently profound magical cultivation.

Mage Guild, library.

Moros sat quietly at a table, his left hand lightly bracing the tabletop while his right hand focused on turning through a spell manuscript that recorded the third-tier Dark Magic spell Mind Control.

Mind Control: Causes the target troops to forget what they should do on the battlefield. Some of them will forget how to make ranged attacks and counterattacks.

This spell was fairly useful in war, but the Battle Spells granted by the Mage Guild were completely random.

So unfortunately, Moros had not acquired this spell while upgrading the Mage Guild.

If Moros wanted to formally add Mind Control to his Spellbook, he had to follow the normal spell-learning process and invest time and energy into thoroughly studying and mastering this third-tier Dark Magic spell.

This was not an easy task.

Take Mind Control, the spell Moros was currently learning, for example.

The spell manuscript recording this Battle Spell was barely any thinner than the famous massive tome, the "Encyclopedia Britannica."

According to the spell manuscript, the spell model for Mind Control contained more than three hundred major spell circuits, and every circuit contained no fewer than five spell nodes.

Beyond that, Moros also needed to learn and master the corresponding methods for constructing spell nodes, drawing magical runes, and variations in linking formulas.

Even for Moros at the Quasi-Legendary Tier, merely memorizing this related knowledge would take several days.

However, memorizing knowledge was only the first step. Understanding that knowledge and turning it into an actual Battle Spell required even more time.

Even if Moros's life level had already risen to the Legendary Rank, he would still need at least one or two months to truly master this third-tier Dark Magic spell.

That was still under the circumstances that he had reached a cooperative agreement with Fuyuan City's powerful figures and possessed ample resources.

Before that cooperation had been established, without resources he could freely use for spell experiments, the time Moros needed to learn a Battle Spell of this level would likely have doubled.

But there was no helping it. Moros knew that if he wanted to become a qualified spellcaster, this kind of spell-learning process was indispensable.

If he relied only on the Hero Panel to raise his hero level, leaving aside where he would find the increasingly terrifying amount of experience required later on, even the Hero Panel itself had its limits.

The Hero Panel provided by Graveyard City only went up to level 40. If Moros wanted to break through that restriction, he could only rely on himself.

Therefore, even with his head spinning from study, Moros could only sit at his desk and gnaw through the spell manuscript spread before him bit by bit.

Trivial Matters and Signs of the Coming Collapse

While Moros was stubbornly grinding away at the third-tier Dark Magic spell Mind Control, Eden also set foot upon her path to becoming a legendary superstar.

With XX Entertainment Company, the dazzling stage Moros had given her, in hand, Eden's starting point already far surpassed that of her original self, who had only escaped her ban through a charity performance.

Even while trapped under a ban, she had been able to resiliently carve out an artistic path of her own. Now that she had a better beginning, Eden's road would undoubtedly become even more brilliant.

In only a few months, Eden had begun to make a name for herself in the field of classical music, earning widespread praise.

Even with XX Entertainment Company's full support, this achievement had been far from easy.

After all, in this internet age, keyboard warriors always had impossibly lofty tastes.

The talent capable of winning their admiration was enough to prove Eden's extraordinary achievements in classical music.

It was worth mentioning that compared with her artistic journey in the original history, the troubles Eden encountered now had actually been greatly reduced.

This was easy to understand.

With Eden's breathtaking beauty, she would naturally attract the covetous attention of countless powerful figures.

To that end, they would deliberately create obstacles, attempting to force Eden into submission.

Although those powerful figures' schemes would ultimately fail due to Eden's talent and ability, it was undeniable that these disturbances would indeed slow her progress toward becoming a superstar.