Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

It was a moonless night, and for the Federation soldier Zeke Delbrook standing night watch at the triangular fort, it was just another common night of the siege.

Zeke Delbrook was the youngest son in his family, and his father loved this youngest child so much that he beseeched the priest to give his son a saint's name as a baptismal name.

However, the name was overly long and cumbersome, with hardly a few people able to pronounce it smoothly. Because his face was full of freckles, the other Federation soldiers simply called him "Freckles."

As the son of a subsistence farmer, Freckles' reason for choosing to become a soldier was simple—his father's land was little, yet his father had many children.

Freckles had four older brothers and three older sisters, and his parents had only lost two children. This was an unusual stroke of luck, but also an unusual misfortune.

So until Freckles turned sixteen, his eldest sister Zhuoya had still been unable to marry.

Not only was Zhuoya skilled in her chores, she was also beautiful and gentle in disposition, and the number of young men her father chased off with a stick was beyond count.

However, the few marriage discussions for her all fell through because Freckles and Zhuoya's father could not afford a dowry for his daughter.

Freckles' father had only a dozen or so acres of land, scattered in bits and corners, not even contiguous.

Because of this, Freckles' parents worked from dawn to dusk, turning to odd jobs for extra money when the grain was scarce. Even with such toil, they barely raised eight children, and his father truly had no extra means to save for a dowry for his daughter.

Eldest sister Zhuoya became an old maid, always secretly wiping her tears in the yard; the parents were distressed all day long, sighing and blaming each other.

All of these things, Zeke Delbrook saw with his own eyes.

So, two weeks before turning sixteen, Zeke Delbrook handed over his nesting fee to his sister for her dowry, then left home with a Federation recruiting officer, becoming "Freckles."

Although the direct purpose of enlisting was to provide for his sister's dowry, it was also because Freckles did not want to eke out a living in the soil all his life like his father, whose land was not enough to be divided between Freckles and his brothers; Freckles also wanted to see the world beyond.

But now, on the triangular fort just outside the walls of Tachi, amidst the Venetian army's siege, Freckles found himself missing home especially.

"What are my parents doing now? They should be sleeping, right?" Freckles tried hard not to doze off as he thought hazily, "I wonder who Zhuoya married, and my eldest brother is probably getting a wife soon too..."

As Freckles struggled to remember his family's house and roads, suddenly "whoosh," "whoosh" several sounds came from the front. He startled awake, but before he could react, three short, thick crossbow bolts had already flown toward him.

Two bolts clanged off Freckles' breastplate with "ding", "ding" as the arrowheads penetrated the armor but did not go all the way through.

The third bolt struck Freckles squarely in the face, piercing through his eye and bone, the arrowhead lodged in the soft brain, causing a fatal wound.

Freckles slumped to the ground limply, his consciousness quickly snuffed out, his memories along with everything in them vanished completely.

"Good shot!" Field, lurking not far in front of the triangular fort, excitedly punched his own knee, but before he could issue an order to attack, the night was pierced by the shrill sound of whistles and alarm bells.

The other sentry at the triangular fort first heard the unusual sound, then saw Freckles fall straight back, and immediately sounded the alarm.

"[Furious expletives]!" Seeing success slip away, Field cursed angrily and then barked, "Anyway, we never expected to sneak attack! Blow the whistle! Assault!"

Inside the triangular fort, the Federation soldiers awoke from their sleep and fumbled for their weapons in the pitch dark, rushing to the fort upon grabbing them.

The defending army inside Tachi also heard the alarm bells, with watchfires being lit one after another on the city walls, and the guard troops resting all over the city hurried to the walls.

As the low-intensity siege standoff lengthened, the defenders inside the city developed a certain complacency and disdain for the Venetian outsiders.

The initial panic and fear when surrounded by the large army gradually dissipated, and quite a few Federation soldiers began to feel that "what's the big deal? Venetians are nothing special, all they can do is build walls."

The Venetians stopped advancing the tunnel when it was about two hundred meters from the city walls, rather, they started extending it parallel to the walls, seemingly content to erect a closer siege barricade.

Some experienced Tanilian veterans claimed profundity to the recruits, "The Venetians' fervent wall-building is good for us soldiers."

The clueless recruits would ask, "What's good about that?"

The old soldiers would smugly answer, "The more they busily build that wall, the less they want to assault; they just want to starve us out. With the current situation, if the grain runs out and the higher-ups don't want to surrender, they'll have to anyway. Isn't not having to fight a good thing?"

Yet the complacent Federation defenders never anticipated that the Venetians would choose this night for a sudden, thunderous offense.

In the darkness in front of the city walls, there was first one sharp whistle, followed by hundreds of whistles blowing simultaneously.

Upon hearing the attack signal, Venetian officers in the tunnels and barricades started blowing their whistles and ordering torches to be lit.