Range is Having the Freedom to Do Whatever You Want

Utter exhaustion had sent Morin into a sleep so deep he lost all sense of time. Only the protests from his stomach finally dragged him awake.

He opened his eyes. The tent was pitch-black, with only the faint glow of an oil lamp hanging outside stubbornly filtering in.

"Platoon leader, you're awake?"

A hushed voice came from the tent entrance. It was Hans, his orderly.

"I feel like I slept forever... What time is it?"

"Just past midnight. You should have something to eat."

"How did it get so late? I really slept..."

Seeing that he was awake, Hans immediately passed in a mess tin kept warm over the embers of the fire, along with a piece of black bread.

Morin took the still-warm mess tin. When he opened it, the rich aroma of meat broth hit him like a punch.

It looked like the field kitchen had served something extra for dinner today. There was even canned beef in the Bovril...

Aside from the meal before his reconnaissance mission, Morin had eaten nothing substantial all day, so he no longer cared how he looked.

With the black bread to go with it, he polished off the food in no time, sweeping through it like a whirlwind.

Watching his platoon leader eat, Hans found his impression of the "Company Rice King" reinforced yet again.

"Oh, platoon leader, a messenger from company headquarters came an hour ago. We're to break camp at four thirty sharp."

"What?"

Morin looked up in surprise, wiped his mouth, and asked:

"Why didn't you wake me when the messenger came?"

Hans scratched his head, looking a little embarrassed.

"The platoon sergeant said you were exhausted and needed rest... The messenger also said Captain Hauser had specifically told him that if you were still asleep, we should let you rest and not disturb you."

Morin's hand paused around the empty mess tin. He realized that in this army, which still felt unfamiliar to him, something other than discipline and orders seemed to be quietly taking root.

"Thank you. But since I'm the commanding officer of the 3rd Platoon, you must wake me the next time a messenger comes. Understood?"

"Yes, platoon leader!"

After eating, Morin did not go straight back to sleep. Instead, he got up and left the tent.

First, he made a circuit of the 3rd Platoon's temporary campsite and checked the sentry posts.

Then he confirmed that the soldiers who had accompanied him during the day, including Corporal Baumann, were all resting properly in their tents. Only then did he return to his own tent, reassured, to get some more rest.

At three fifty in the morning, Platoon Sergeant Klaus appeared outside his tent right on time, just as Morin was climbing off his camp bed.

The two exchanged a few words. At four ten, they sounded their assembly whistles together, waking the sleeping soldiers to pack their belongings and take down the tents.

At four thirty, the 3rd Platoon finished assembling at the company's designated location, right on schedule.

Soon, the entire company joined the First Battalion's massive marching column. Under cover of darkness, it flowed silently toward the designated assault positions like a long, ink-black river.

It was also then that Morin noticed a new piece of intelligence in the system's "Intelligence" tab.

"Wait, armored airships??? What kind of unit is that? Are we bringing war behemoths into the fight too?"

A pale light began to spread along the horizon.

On a stretch of high ground outside Seville, the Royal Army's reveille shattered the silence of dawn.

The soldiers at the Magic Crystal Cannon Position crawled out of their makeshift shelters, cursing as they began another day's maintenance.

"Damn it, this thing's harder to please than my wife."

A grizzled veteran grumbled as he carefully wiped the intricate runes on the cannon's body with a soft cloth soaked in a special liquid.

Another man inspected and cleaned the magic crystal at its core, making sure it had not been contaminated.

The soldiers had no idea that a Saxon field artillery battery had already set its sights on them from behind a slightly elevated patch of woodland roughly four kilometers away.

At a hastily built earthwork, the captain commanding the Saxon field artillery battery stood on a two-meter-high observation wagon, taking his final range measurements through scissor-type artillery binoculars.

Once he had obtained an approximate range and position, he had the messenger beside him relay the information to the howitzer firing position over a hastily laid short-distance telephone line.

Four leFH 98/09 105mm Howitzers stood in a row at the firing position, along with an artillery NCO responsible for directly commanding their fire and another messenger tasked with receiving information from the observation post.

As soon as the artillery NCO called out the bearing and range supplied by the battery commander, the gunner of the leftmost howitzer turned to the dial sight used for indirect fire and began cranking the elevation and traversing mechanisms.

The seconds ticked by. When the appointed moment arrived, the artillery NCO swept the red flag in his hand downward.

"Number one gun, ranging shot, fire!"

Boom!

The leftmost howitzer roared, the thunder of its shell leaving the barrel tearing through the morning stillness.

A dozen or so seconds later, a small cloud of dust rose from the distant hilltop.

The Royal Army's Magic Crystal Cannon Position immediately descended into confusion. Through the observation binoculars, it looked like a swarm of ants suddenly stirring.

"Over! Bearing unchanged, reduce range by one hundred!" the battery commander shouted without lifting his head from the binoculars.

The correction was quickly relayed. The gunners adjusted the elevation and reloaded, and a second report followed.

This time, the shell landed in front of the Magic Crystal Cannon Position.

"Bracketed!"

The artillery battery commander grinned atop his observation wagon. After two ranging shots, he had established that the target's exact range lay within that hundred-meter bracket.

"Bearing unchanged, increase range by fifty! One salvo, full battery!"

Moments after the order went out, all four 105mm Howitzers fired at once.

The shells screamed like death itself through the still-damp morning air and landed squarely on the Royal Army's Magic Crystal Cannon Position, where the men had been grumbling only moments before.

Amid the violent explosions, earth, shattered stone, and severed limbs were hurled into the sky together.

One meticulously maintained Magic Crystal Cannon at the front of the position was blasted into twisted scrap by the first salvo.

Through his binoculars, the battery commander saw that the mean point of impact was slightly short and made his final adjustment.

"Full battery, increase range by another twenty-five! Three rounds, rapid fire!"

Boom, boom, boom, boom—!

This time, flames and thick smoke swallowed the entire hilltop.

The surviving Royal Army magic crystal artillerymen broke completely. They abandoned their weapons and stopped caring about the precious Magic Crystal Cannons, fleeing toward the rear of the position in tears and screams, all order lost.

And this was merely the prelude to the battle's prelude.

Around Seville, every Magic Crystal Cannon Position marked by Morin and the other reconnaissance teams came under devastating attack, one after another, from two 77mm Field Cannon Battalions and three 105mm Howitzer Batteries.

The Saxon artillery had demonstrated a simple truth: truth lay only within artillery range.

Britannia's Magic Crystal Cannons might indeed have been powerful, but in range and the development of artillery tactics, they still lagged behind the Saxon Empire.

So much so that during the first wave of attacks specifically targeting the Magic Crystal Cannon Positions, the Britannia-trained Royal Army artillerymen failed to mount any effective response...

On the Saxon Empire's side, positions with clear views, like this 105mm Howitzer emplacement, could use observation wagons to direct their fire,

while several enormous observation balloons rose near artillery positions where visibility was limited.

These behemoths hovered nearly three hundred meters above the ground, not only guiding the Saxon artillery precisely onto its targets but also allowing the observers in their baskets to survey the entire battlefield.

At that moment, the Royal Army troops outside Seville looked to them like ants on a hot pan, scurrying about in panic and disorder.

One observer turned his binoculars farther outward.

Among the fields, woods, and winding country lanes, a vast gray arc had appeared, formed by soldiers in field grey and assorted other uniforms.

Now, like a tightening noose, that arc was closing slowly but inexorably around Seville.