Chapter 379: Chapter 376: The First International Telegram
Even if the Guild hadn’t taken the initiative, Rorschach would have developed the communication system himself. Now was the perfect opportunity to piggyback on their efforts and find a sucker... or rather, a generous backer to foot the construction bill.
Business was business. Providing the technology and handling the manufacturing was one transaction; when a new company was formed to manage it, Rorschach would definitely invest his own money to get a piece of the action. Ideally, he would build a few of his own private lines alongside the public network.
Although the company hadn’t even been founded yet, the Guild was already impatiently laying a trial line. It started from the Steel City of Kempson, near the border, and ran diagonally southward.
That’s right—they were laying the trial line into a foreign country: the Holy Kingdom.
The connectivity of every node in the Communication Array Network could be monitored by the main Guild in the Imperial Capital. For the Bayern branch to contact the Holy Kingdom privately, they had to rely on Portable Communication Scrolls, which had a low connection rate and were unstable, energy-intensive devices. The branch—and the Tower of Secret Techniques backing it—was desperate to change this.
On a dark and windy night, a series of faint popping noises echoed from a dirt road along the Holy Kingdom’s border.
A patrol organized by a nearby town walked along the road, holding torches high. This wasn’t a battlefield, so they weren’t on the lookout for the Empire Army, but for roving bandits.
"Halt! What was that sound?" The squad leader, a former Hunter, was highly alert to any disturbance. "It sounded like it came from... underground?"
"Could it be an animal burrowing?"
But before they could react, their torches were extinguished one after another, and everyone suddenly lost consciousness.
Three Mages from the Tower of Secret Techniques appeared out of thin air, their faces grim. ’We ran into people even out here?’ This was the team tasked with laying the underground line. The Bayern and Valois branches had agreed to lay a cross-border line, and the squad’s destination was precisely where the patrol had been standing.
One of the Mages confirmed the patrolmen were all ordinary people, then gave an order. "Mark the endpoint. Let the Valois side handle the connection. As for these people..."
The patrol vanished. They remained unconscious until the end, feeling no pain.
In the latter half of the night, several more Mages appeared. These were from Valois, and using Dark Vision, they saw a large X drawn with charcoal powder in the middle of the road.
"This is the place."
A Mage released ceramic conduits from a Storage Bag while another hauled out a large spool of cable. They began Casting. The earth cracked open, revealing the line buried by their predecessors. The conduits sank into the ground, and the cable seemed to come alive, slithering like a great serpent as it threaded itself through the piping.
"The specifications from Bayern are the same as ours!"
"Of course they are. The technical data for the Bayern branch came straight from the Royal Capital."
Finally, a dark red glow flared at the interface, signaling that the two lines had been fused. Once they confirmed a clear connection, a current surged through the cable, racing north toward Kempson.
The newly-appointed receiver was still inexperienced, and her decoding was a little slow. When the plaintext was finally written out, the director, who had been observing the whole time, took the paper and read the message aloud to the others present.
The world’s first telegraph message was famously absurd, but its first cross-border counterpart brought news of war: "Empire Army vanguard has reached Kongdi, approximately 140 kilometers from the Royal Capital."
...
Richard was one of the commanders of the Empire Army’s vanguard.
After the battle of annihilation at Andorrella, he had, as expected, received commendations and a promotion. His appointment to the rank of Major had been issued during the army’s advance.
He had since detached from the main force led by Major General Carl, now leading his own infantry regiment to escort the supply train from the rear. Even farther back was a group of Exiles who had managed to survive the turmoil. They rode in luxurious carriages, eagerly awaiting the chance to "purge the common rabble" alongside the Empire Army and restore the old order.
The war was going too smoothly—so smoothly it was almost boring. Early in the month, Carl’s forces had engaged the Holy Kingdom’s First Legion. The Empire Army’s superior strength won out, routing the enemy. The remnants of the First Legion fled toward the coast, essentially throwing the left-hand gate to the Valois Royal Capital wide open for the Empire.
The First Legion had hoped to regroup and link up with the Third Legion to strike the Empire Army’s salient. However, they ran into the Empire’s follow-on forces in the coastal region of the Galle Strait. The First Legion’s commander, not anticipating the Empire Army could punch through the Low Countries so rapidly, was forced into battle.
As for the Royal Capital’s right-hand gate, the Third Legion and the routed remnants of the Second Legion were scattered along the Kingdom’s eastern front, holed up in various forts and strongholds. With the exception of the Bayern Legion, which showed little offensive zeal, the rest of the Empire Army began to mass its forces to smash these key positions.
This "right-hand gate" was already springing leaks all over and was about to be smashed wide open. Any notion of linking up with the First Legion for a counterattack was now impossible.
In just half a month, Richard’s regiment, as part of the vanguard, had pushed into the region bordering Valuva. Victory seemed imminent, the continent’s most prosperous capital almost within their grasp.
The only thing slowing the Empire Army’s advance now was the speed of their resupply. Fortunately, it was winter, so they didn’t have to contend with muddy roads.
Carl’s main force hardly engaged in any real battles afterward. When caught in the open field, the enemy forces couldn’t withstand a single artillery barrage before retreating, showing no Spirit whatsoever for defending their Kingdom. It was only at the cities and fortresses that they put up a semblance of a proper fight.
Because the advance was so easy, the soldiers had grown lax. They marched listlessly, and the luxurious carriages trailing at the rear of the column lent the procession the air of a holiday excursion. Some soldiers would even harass the women in the carriages, and in response, the exiled Nobility would push their unfortunate servants forward to bear the brunt of it.
For this, Richard had to reprimand and court-martial a few of the ruffians, taking time to restore order to his ranks. His quiet, reserved nature had been seen as a sign of dependability—a virtue—when he was Carl’s second-in-command. But now that he was leading on his own, he had to transform that silence into ferocity and authority to maintain discipline and combat readiness.
Whenever the main army ahead captured a city or town, Richard’s infantry regiment was responsible for gathering their own wounded, requisitioning supplies from the captured settlement, and then unleashing the exiled Nobility to "restore order" and stabilize the rear.
This cushy assignment was clearly Carl’s way of looking out for Richard, but the Major was far from satisfied.
"We should be able to enter the city soon, right? It might not be the Royal Capital, but a regional capital isn’t half bad." Richard’s adjutant mused, riding alongside him and fantasizing about the fine food and soft beds they hadn’t enjoyed in ages.
Some godforsaken bastard had invented a strange bean Sausage that had replaced the officers’ rations of jam and spices. This was great for the common soldiers, since the supplementary rations had been for officers only anyway. But for the officers, three straight days of thick bean soup was the absolute limit. After half a month of eating mush boiled from the stuff, the gas they passed—from either end—stank of beans.
Richard was not as optimistic as his adjutant. "The capital of the Kongdi Region has its own formidable fortress. The General will likely assess its defenses before deciding whether to attack. We’ll have to wait for his orders to know if we make camp and wait for reinforcements or assault the city directly."
They kept their horses to a slow walk to match the pace of the infantry and the supply train. During a brief halt, a small carriage broke away from the group of Exiles at the rear and made its way toward the command group. Given the troops’ relaxed mood, the other soldiers merely ate and drank, watching idly as the carriage entered the edge of their makeshift camp.
"What do you want!" the adjutant snapped, drawing his sword. The Guards also raised their rifles, aiming them at the approaching carriage.
An old servant was at the reins. From inside the carriage stepped a plump-cheeked girl of about sixteen. Though a bit dizzy from the bumpy ride, she did as her father had instructed, holding out a flower basket toward Richard.
