I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

Ashadron could not imagine what it would feel like to command an army numbering in the tens of millions.

But he knew without even thinking that it would be a complete disaster.

Therefore, the Central Army Group accompanying him on this campaign consisted entirely of the elite legions that each nation had kept in reserve as its trump cards.

Each legion typically numbered between five thousand and twenty thousand soldiers, with a combined strength of roughly three hundred thousand troops.

They served as the vanguard of the Central Army.

Far behind Ashadron marched another million troops composed of regular border armies gathered from every nation, along with logistics corps equipped with enormous numbers of pack beasts.

The logistics forces slightly outnumbered the regular troops, bringing the total strength of the Central Army to approximately three million personnel.

The other two frontier armies were somewhat smaller.

Each numbered fewer than two million men, with around eight hundred thousand regular soldiers.

Combined, they fielded nearly three million regular troops alongside a similarly sized logistics force.

A military force of this magnitude...

So long as it didn't encounter multiple Half-Gods fighting together...

could easily sweep across half a continent.

"Woooo..."

"Hm?"

"What's that sound?"

Ashadron looked up toward the distant horizon in confusion.

The midday sun shone brilliantly, and the blinding light made it extremely uncomfortable even with his long-range vision spell activated.

More and more soldiers raised their heads toward the sky.

Hundreds of black dots, each trailing white smoke, gradually became visible.

"It's an attack!!!"

"Raise the Magic Shields! Hurry!!!"

Amid the long blasts of war horns, every legion activated its own defensive Magic Shield.

Large numbers of magicians also took to the air from every corner of the army, joining their power together to create a massive barrier of light directly in front of the incoming barrage.

Floating Magic Towers and Flying Fortresses likewise projected protective shields over the surrounding forces.

Multicolored magical radiance bloomed throughout the enormous army.

By the time they had reacted with astonishing speed and completed their defensive preparations...

The black dots had already dived to extremely close range.

Soldiers on the ground could clearly distinguish the long launch tubes and the flames blazing from their tails.

Just as everyone stood ready...

An even louder series of explosions echoed from the distant horizon.

The thunderous roar far surpassed the previous sounds.

Like volleys of arrows launched by ancient archers,

Behind the smoke trails left by the first several hundred rockets, an even larger wave of projectiles screamed toward them at incredible speed.

The first barrage exploded against the shields.

Yet the explosions were surprisingly weak.

In fact...

They barely damaged the defensive barriers at all.

Because none of those rockets contained conventional explosives.

Instead...

They were filled with Elemental Suppression Dust.

When the fuse detonated, the casing burst apart.

The explosion's airflow was redirected through specially designed reverse-flow channels inside the warhead, blasting the contents forward.

Hundreds of rockets simultaneously dispersed enormous clouds of crystalline suppression powder across the brilliantly glowing shield formations.

Magic Shields constructed entirely from mana resembled a grassy field set ablaze.

Before the horrified eyes of everyone below,

Every portion of the shields touched by the powder rapidly dissolved away.

And then...

The second wave arrived.

Large numbers of rockets burst open in midair.

Streams of napalm poured downward like torrential rain upon the densely packed military formations below.

Instantly, the battlefield resembled a panicked flock of chickens.

Countless magical beasts, their fur engulfed in flames, went mad with agony, charging wildly through the army's own formations.

One Cyclops standing eight or nine meters tall became completely drenched in burning napalm.

Driven beyond reason by unbearable pain and overwhelming terror of death,

The dim-witted giant—normally too stupid to even understand Beast Speech properly—

actually managed to bellow several words of the Continental Common Language while desperately crying for help.

No matter how elite a soldier might be, no one could withstand the agony of flesh being burned alive by the highly toxic napalm.

Especially the horrifying sensation of the flames slowly burning through skin...

Then muscle...

Until reaching the bone.

The victims themselves were naturally driven insane by pain that penetrated their very marrow.

But for those fortunate enough not to be struck by the burning fuel,

The scene unfolding before them became a vision of hell they would never forget for the rest of their lives.

Elite soldiers?

Forget elite soldiers.

Even a Saint-level powerhouse who failed to shake off the burning substance with magic would scream in agony if even a little adhered to their body.

The only difference was that ordinary people ended up roasted until they were well done,

Whereas Saint-level powerhouses merely ended up medium or medium-rare.

The pain...

remained exactly the same.

"Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!"

Six-tube disposable rocket launchers coated in magical camouflage paint—

The Smokespewer—

furiously emptied every rocket within their launch tubes toward the sky.

Surrounding them,

Another three hundred launchers fired in carefully timed remote-controlled salvos,

Launching every rocket in the shortest time possible.

An overwhelming rain of napalm rockets blanketed the entire region occupied by the Allied vanguard.

Several Saint-level powerhouses maintained small protective barriers around themselves,

Their expressions dark as they stared at the inferno unfolding before them.

The crimson flames burned even brighter than the midday sun.

Columns of black smoke rising into the sky remained visible from several kilometers away.

Traditional methods of extinguishing fire with water proved completely useless.

Freezing the flames accomplished nothing either.

Moreover, because Elemental Suppression Dust still permeated the surrounding area,

The mana consumed maintaining their protective shields received almost no natural replenishment from the environment.

Left with no alternative, they could only endure the mounting consumption while gradually shrinking the size of their protective barriers.

As for the countless soldiers left outside...

All they could do was silently apologize in their hearts.

Wearing hearing protection,

Alliance soldiers boarded the waiting transport airships immediately after the final wave of Smokespewer launchers completed their mission.

Once airborne, they pressed the remote detonation switches.

The three rocket launcher positions instantly erupted into massive explosions,

Completely obliterating every trace of their existence.

This...

was Mitia's first grand gift to the Allied army.

Even if they were beaten to death, the Allied Nations would never have imagined that deep within the heartland of the Kingdom of Ixia—

territory entirely under Allied control—

the Seris Alliance had secretly constructed a heavy fire support position composed of three hundred multiple rocket launchers.

Yet...

They had truly pulled it off.

Three hundred Smokespewer rocket launchers—far from being small weapons—

had been transported into position, fully assembled, loaded, and successfully fired, without anyone discovering them.

Even though the royal capital lay only a few hundred kilometers away.

This was the classic tactic of hiding in plain sight.

The most dangerous place...

was often the safest.

It wasn't as though the Allied commanders had never considered the possibility of an ambush.

The several Saint-level powerhouses accompanying the army existed precisely for that purpose.

But no one had imagined that the Alliance would strike with such ruthless decisiveness.

During the early wars fought by Tsar Roshek, the Alliance had once supplied a similar weapon as military aid.

After proving that it possessed genuine battlefield value, the weapon had simply been placed into storage.

Although it had achieved respectable results back then the truly decisive force had been the Mechanical Corps soldiers charging forward afterward while carrying the "Big Pineapple."

Moreover, the officers had naturally exaggerated their own achievements in the official reports.

As a result,

This weapon—which had flashed briefly across history like a shooting star—

failed to attract the Tsar's attention.

After all, The Tsar had purchased enormous quantities of Alliance weaponry at the time.

The Alliance had also thrown in countless strange experimental weapons as complimentary additions.

The Tsar himself had probably forgotten this weapon even existed.

Although this wasn't technically its first appearance on a battlefield...

It would undoubtedly become the moment that first made its name famous across the continent.

When the Magic Shields and magical abilities upon which magicians relied for survival could be neutralized...

How much combat power remained to magicians...

apart from magic itself?

It was a question that countless people now desperately wanted answered.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!