38 The War Meeting Continues

"Excellent. I want you to tell your diplomats to make that offer immediately. Now, let's talk about gunpowder..." Said the King.

Immediately after that, the King took out the copies of Ethan's diagrams that Mia had given him.

"Mia, If you would care to explain these." Said the King.

"Yes your majesty. These are new weapons using a substance called 'gunpowder' to propel small metal projectiles forward very fast and at a long range. They are capable of killing at a distance without necessarily having years of training. Gunpowder can create an explosion without magic when it is ignited. Additionally, with these bayonets, the muskets double as spears. It is my belief that Gerhard could equip the regular soldiers who don't use magic with these muskets, and equip our fortifications on the Grenze river with cannons. I believe that this could give us an advantage in the upcoming war." Said Mia.

"How do we even know if this 'gunpowder' substance works? I mean no offense, but look at this recipe 'six parts saltpeter, one part sulfur, one part charcoal', how is this supposed to create an explosion without magic? It looks like another pathetic attempt by some alchemist to create a philosopher's stone." Said the Captain of the Moon Knights Emma Von Grausam.

The 'philosopher's stone' was an object which, even in this world, was considered to be mythical. One of the supposed properties of it was that it could allow the user to use magic without mana. Ancient alchemists theorized about it, but were not able to create it. In these days, most mainstream alchemists rejected the notion that such an object could exist, while only a few fringe alchemists who were called 'crackpot' still tried to create one. All of the claimed creations of philosopher's stones thus far were proven to be hoaxes, and the people who believed in them were called the Vorbei equivalent of 'conspiracy theorists'. What Emma meant when she said that this substance which was claimed to cause an explosion without magic was an attempt to create a philosopher's stone was that she didn't believe that this substance could really do what it was claimed it could do. In other words, she was subtly accusing Mia of lying, and Mia did not miss the subtle jibe.

"I've led my knights to use this substance in battle myself when we were low on mana. It works. Even the ever sceptical Josef Von Buch now believes that this substance works after I showed it to him." Said Mia firmly.

"Even if you claim that-" Emma started to say.

"Emma, I have no doubt in Mia's words." Said the King.

"Well, even if it works, attack magic would still be far superior." Said Emma.

"No one's disputing that. I think that what Mia is suggesting is that the soldiers who can not use magic use these, and I concur." Said the Captain of the Constellation Knights, Andreas Von Gestirn.

"I'm all on board with equipping non-magic using soldiers with these weapons, but just how many of these could we make in the short amount of time until the war starts? Would it be enough to cause a significant amount of damage to the Western Empire's forces?" Said the Minister of War Gerhard Von Heer.

"I was just talking with the leaderships of the Blacksmiths' Guild and the Craftsmen Guild just before this meeting started. They agreed that they could make 150,000 muskets and 300 cannons in great secrecy in a month and a half if they focus almost exclusively on these weapons. That would still leave over a fortnight to train the soldiers on the use of these weapons before the war starts. It is not as many as I was hoping for, but I believe that this could potentially turn the war in our favor, especially considering our intelligence network has only gotten better since the last war, and we will be better prepared this time, and with our neighbor to the north fighting on our side." Said the King.

"You might be right about that. The Western Empire does have vastly superior numbers compared to us, but with a geographical barrier like the Grenze River combined with the fact that we would then have a significant number of soldiers who can kill at a great distance, the tides of war might be in our favor this time. The Western Empire's military leadership is very bold and aggressive, so they will likely start the war by sending many ships tightly packed with their soldiers to attempt to cross the river and try to lay siege to our fortifications and raid our smaller villages. With these weapons, we could sink their ships as they attempt to cross the river, and then shoot their soldiers as they attempt to swim, preventing the enemy from landing on the east bank of the river at all. Meanwhile our cannons could constantly barrage their fortifications, destroying any cover that they have, and destroying any defensible positions on their side of the river. Once their defenses on the west bank are annihilated, and their soldiers that are there are mostly wiped out, we could send thousands of musket soldiers across the river to some points of high elevation, as well as some military engineers, lumber, and cannons. We could then build makeshift fortified positions out of wood in these areas of high elevation, and mount the cannons there. We could then rain fire upon the remainder of the enemy in range. Once the enemy soldiers close by are completely destroyed, we could then begin building more permanent fortifications, meanwhile, we would send the Royal Knights who can use magic more inland to harass any escaping enemy and prevent them from regrouping or forming a counterattack. The Western Empire could, of course, send a much stronger force of many legions several weeks later, after they learn about their humiliating defeat, but by the time their reinforcements get there, we could have created even more gunpowder weapons, trained more soldiers, and built strong fortifications defended by muskets and cannons on the elevated points on the west side of the Grenze River. It would take the Western Empire a prohibitively high cost of many of their legions worth of casualties in order to storm our then newly built fortifications on the west bank of the Grenze River, and that would just be to take back the land that they lost. For the Western Empire to actually claim any territory east of the river would be virtually impossible." Said the Minister of War Gerhard Von Heer.

Those at the meeting continued talking along the lines of the plan that Gerhard had just laid out while looking at maps and diagrams, and soon they had a specific strategy built around that plan with specific points laid out on where to make a counterattack, and where to build the new fortifications on the west side of the Grenze River by the time the meeting ended.