Wrong Delivery

[Author's Note: Sorry for taking more than half a month to update, I had to do some research for this one. Please enjoy and remember to leave a comment or review.]

Enjento Supai POV:

It was hell on earth.

What was once a large, peaceful grassy field had become utterly devoid of life.

Craters littered the barren ground, bodies laid everywhere in pieces and worst of all.

"HOW THE F*** ARE THOSE DAMN STRAW DUMMIES STILL STANDING!?!?!"

[Rewind to thirty minutes earlier.]

Enjento arrived at the training after dropping the cultist, Barny, off at the underground lair in his office, where Morrigan still sat reading her romance novel.

He paced back and forth, carefully inspecting the Undead soldiers lined before him.

Each of them stood ramrod straight and unflinching.

After careful inspection, Enjento was satisfied with what he saw and began to bark out orders.

"Listen up! Here's my first order! Divide yourselves into six groups of twenty each!"

The Undead quickly formed into six squads of twenty.

"Alright, now draw a number."

Enjento pulled out a small basket that contained closed slips of paper. Each piece of paper had the numbers one to six written on them.

After each squad sent a soldier to grab a slip of paper, Enjento began giving his next set of instructions.

"Squads one through five, stay where you are."

"Squad six, move to the side."

After squad six moved off to the side, Enjento used a storage artifact given to him by Sukeru to bring out six large metal container boxes.

Enjento reached into his jacket and took out a crowbar. After one or two minutes, all boxes had been pried open.

Five of the boxes held twenty single-shot 18th-century British-style muskets.

The other one contained rifle maintenance kits, gunpowder and the ammunition used for the rifles.

"Everyone in Squads one through five, line up in front of one of the five crates and take a rifle. After receiving a rifle, please line up before me. I'll hand out a maintenance kit, gunpowder, and bullets to each of you."

After the five Undead Squadrons equipped themselves with rifles, kits, gunpowder, and ammunition, Enjento turned his attention to the remaining Sixth Squadron that had stood off to the side.

He pulled out another storage artifact. This time instead of boxes, the artifact summoned five cannons and a crate of cannonballs.

"Squad Six. I want you to divide yourselves into five groups of four. Each group will go to one of the cannons I summoned."

After Squad Six split themselves into five groups to control the five cannons, Enejnto began instructing everyone how to use the weapons they received.

"I will now show everyone how to use a musket."

Enjento borrowed a musket from one of the armoured-Undead soldiers and held it before him for everyone to see.

"First, use your powder flask to pour roughly a hundred grains of gunpowder down the muzzle and into the bore, where it will settle at the breech."

[Author's Note:

Muzzle = Tip of the gun barrel

Bore = Inside of the gun barrel

Breech = Something akin to the bullet chamber in a musket]

He took out a powder flask and carefully poured a hundred grains into the musket. After making sure the powder sat at the breech, he resumed his instructions.

"After pouring the gunpowder, place a cloth wad at the muzzle. Then, place your bullet on the top of the cloth wad. Once set, use the ramrod attached to the bottom of the barrel to push it in."

"With that, the musket is successfully loaded. Now I want everyone to do what I did to load the muskets."

The Undead all loaded their muskets as Enjento had shown them. Once all the Undead loaded their muskets, Enjento showed Squad Six how to load their cannons.

With all the muskets and cannons loaded, he showed them how to aim and fire before ordering the Undead to light up the straw dummies he set a hundred meters away.

*BOOM!*

*BANG!*

After the smoke dispersed, Enjento had a clear view of the scene before him.

It was hell on earth.

What was once a large, peaceful grassy field had become utterly devoid of life.

Craters and metal shrapnel of the broken cannons littered the barren ground, and the bodies of the Undead soldiers and their broken muskets lay everywhere in pieces, and worst of all.

"HOW THE F*** ARE THOSE DAMN STRAW DUMMIES STILL STANDING!?!?!"

As Enjento was fuming in anger over the incompetence of the Undead Army, three figures stood off to the side, observing and evaluating the performance of the weapons Enjento wanted to introduce to the new army.

[In a meeting room.]

"Chosen One, as destructive as those weapons are, it is useless if it hurts us more than the enemy." (Andeddo)

"Even if the self-destruction problem got fixed, it is not a conventional weapon to use in an actual battle. Especially with its slow reload speed." (Aku)

"Plus, there is no honour dominating your enemies from afar." (Muteki)

Aku and Andeddo turned to look at Muteki with a glare and began berating him again about how honour means nothing in war and will only lead to certain doom.

After Andeddo and Aku forced Muteki to sit in a corner drawing imaginary circles on the ground with his hand, Andeddo and Aku resumed their conversation with Enjento about the usefulness and applications of the musket and cannons in war. Then they suddenly heard a loud ringing noise.

*RINGINGING! RINGINGING!*

"Sorry, that would be me."

Enjento took out a simple glass mirror adorned with a large ruby on its top frame. He pressed the ruby, revealing the face of Sukeru, the tattooed skeletal Lich. Who appeared to be very nervous.

"What is it, Sukeru?" (Enjento)

Sukeru whistled and twiddled his fingers nervously.

"You messed something up, didn't you?"

The Lich slowly nodded his head.

"What is it this time? Has one of your lab rats escaped? Did you cause another epidemic? Or did your lab blow up, and you want me to help fix it?"

Sukeru became annoyed by Enjento's assumptions.

"What do you take me for!?! I am not one of those third-rate alchemists who would fail to take proper safety and security measures and let my valuable specimens escape!"

"Right."

He could still remember that time he had to burn a village to the ground to prevent the spread of zombie infection and neutralize the rampaging Zombie Tyrant that was the cause of it.

[Author's note: I plan to do a few chapters in the future that features how Enjento got summoned, what he did in the first few weeks or months in another world and how he met Morrigan and her Undead army, this zombie infection story will be part of it.]

"So, what exactly are you calling me for?"

"Well. Remember the batch of muskets and weapons I sent you?"

"Yeah."

"I may or may not have accidentally sent the defective ones instead of the completed ones."

(Sukeru chuckling sheepishly)

Enjento took a deep breath and-

(A few minutes of cursing later.)

Enjento stood on the training field once more alongside Andeddo, Aku and Muteki as they watched the Undead soldiers (who fixed themselves up after the defective weapons they used exploded) use their muskets to shoot accurately at the targets a hundred meters away.

Meanwhile, the Undead on the cannons blew up anything within a two hundred meters radius.

Enjento wanted to have the Undead cannon crews hit targets placed a mile away, but he didn't want to have to deal with reports about loud explosions happening on the outskirts of the capital.

[Author's Note: Training fields are located outside the capital.]

Observing their performance for twenty minutes or so, Andeddo and Aku gave their thoughts on the muskets and cannons.

"Chosen One, I do not understand how these long wands you call "muskets" and metal tubes you call "cannons" can turn the tide in a war." (Andeddo)

"Neither do I. Wouldn't it be a waste of resources to train a group of soldiers just to fire off two shots before disengaging from the battlefield? Even if these muskets and cannons are usable by anyone and don't require mana to activate or use, their firing speed is simply too slow."

Enjento gave a wry smile at their response.

"Gentleman, please tell me, how far can those muskets and cannons hit?"

"A hundred meters for muskets, and two hundred meters for cannons, a mile for the cannons if it's true that they can hit targets that far away." (Aku)

"Then tell me, how far can an archer or mage shoot on average?"

"Thirty to forty meters average for most archers, ninety meters if it's those bastards using their longbows from the Enlandian Empire and roughly fifty to seventy meters for a mage on average." (Aku)

Both generals suddenly have a look of realization wash over their faces.

"Wait a minute! Are you planning these weapons to take out the enemies' ranged units from a greater distance than they can retaliate!?!" (Aku)

"If so, our enemies would be stripped of their ranged support, leaving them with only cavalry and the infantry, forcing them to withdraw or have a close confrontation battle with us where we will have the advantage in ranged support!" (Andeddo)

"Even if they attempt to withdraw, the cannons will be able to reduce what remains the disciplined and organized enemy forces into a completely disorganized rout! Causing the war to be as good as over in the initial confrontations!" (Aku)

"That is absolute genius!" (x2)

"Why, thank you!"

Muteki looked at the conversation silently and raised his hand to ask a question.

"Yeah, Muteki?"

"I'm no engineer, but after centuries of maintaining all sorts of weapons and armour in my arsenal, aren't these muskets and cannons quite hard to produce because of all the complicated and delicate parts they are up of?" (Muteki)

"Even if all soldiers switched to using muskets, wouldn't they be quite vulnerable to enemy counterattacks when reloading?"

Enjento and the two other Undead generals looked at Muteki in shock. They never thought this honour-crazed musclehead would be able to bring up such these kinds of topics that require such deep thinking.

"What's with those looks!? I get that I'm not well-versed in academics, but I am an Undead general for a reason!"

After making a mental note to himself to re-evaluate the black knight in the future, Enjento replied.

"Initially, they were indeed quite hard to create due to the fact we had to make the parts from scratch, but after the first muskets and cannons were produced, I had Sukeru create casts for several of the more complicated parts like the breech, so their production is not an issue."

"In fact, at the rate we're making these, we might see mass production of these weapons in less than a month."

"As for their vulnerability, yes, they take quite some time to reload and can be susceptible to group-wipe spells. That's why I plan on having you guys come up with some good tactics and strategies on how we can effectively use them."

"I see."

"Anything else anyone has questions about?"

All the generals shook their heads in response.

"Great, let's begin the strategy meeting, I also wanted the other generals to be present, but that can't be helped since they are away on various assignments."

"Wasn't Scathach with you, Chosen One?" (Andeddo)

"She was, but after apprehending the cultists, she left to go somewhere, probably drinking at a tavern or something. Besides, given her personality, I doubt the battle maniac would join us in a strategy meeting. She would much rather be hunting the Demon King than sit quietly in a meeting to discuss strategy."

The three Undead generals silently agreed with his opinion. They spent centuries fighting together under their mistress' banner and know her antics far too well.

"Now then, let's get on with the strategy meeting. For the most part, the structure of the Undead army will be the same, except for the introduction of the musket and cannon units. For the cannon units, I feel like we should put them under the supervision of-"

*RINGINGING! RINGINGING!*

"Damn it! Who's calling this time!?"