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What met his eyes was a scene of beauty and death intertwined. Several gorgeous streams of light flashed through the dense array. The terrifying speed and high temperature instantly penetrated the bodies of dozens of silver-armored soldiers. Half of the bodies of several people in the front row disappeared without a trace, and several people in the back row were also beaten into a pile of rotten meat...
Waves of shrill screams resounded on the battlefield, blood splattered everywhere, corpses flew everywhere, and blood foam, broken flesh and a strong smell of blood continued to spread in all directions.
"Form a shield formation and retreat!" The adjutant shouted in fear. He no longer had the desire to attack and hurriedly gave Edelweir's order.
The power of the electromagnetic gun is undoubtedly terrifying!
You have to know that every member of the God's Punishment Army is selected from witch hunters or knights, but the strength and physical fitness that they are proud of are completely useless in front of projectiles that travel at three times the speed of sound. Their armor and bodies are easily penetrated like paper.
Fortunately, they were, after all, elite soldiers who had experienced hundreds of battles and possessed firm beliefs, so even in the face of such a horrific scene, there was no chaos or retreat. The front row of God's Punishment Army raised the sturdy giant shields that emitted divine fluorescent light in their hands, with no fear on their faces.
The second round of electromagnetic cannons soon came over. Although the giant shield blessed with divine power did not successfully block it, it did reduce the power of the projectiles by half. After piercing through the bodies of two or three people, it lost power and exploded.
Then came the third round, the fourth round... The roar of the electromagnetic cannon resounded throughout the battlefield. The frequency of firing was even faster than that of artillery. A projectile was loaded in just twenty seconds.
"These bastards, after we capture the capital, I will hang them all on the city walls!" Seeing the brilliant rays of light flying into the dense array, bringing up streaks of blood, a cardinal's eyes suddenly turned red, his facial muscles twisted, he gritted his teeth in anger, but there was nothing he could do.
At such a long distance, they could only passively take the attack, and had no means to hit the enemy on the city wall...
Devi, who had the good fortune to escape the thunder net in the sky, immediately wanted to lead the team down to provide cover for the evacuation of the legion, but the frightened griffins did not think so. After seeing the flashing lightning, they immediately had a stress reaction, screaming and not daring to lower their altitude.
The expression on Edwill's face beneath the iron mask turned extremely ugly. Within the realm of heaven, the radiance of divine magic surged, and a golden divine light shot up into the sky, carrying terrifying power, and crossed the battlefield at an extremely fast speed with Edwill as the center.
The noble legions that had regained their sanity and were fleeing in panic were soon caught up in it. The golden divine light obscured everyone's vision and headed straight towards the royal capital.
Lin En and others did not dare to be careless at all. They used their strongest protective magic to resist this powerful attack.
However, nothing happened. The golden divine light quickly dissipated when it came into contact with the magic barrier.
"Turns out it's just something to fool people." Raphael sneered disdainfully. Just now he thought it was some powerful legendary magic that could launch an attack across such a long distance.
"If they had this ability, they would have used it to attack the city long ago. Why would they wait until now?" Sanchez said with a smile, then shook his head. "We were fooled. They run really fast!"
Taking advantage of the time when the divine magic obscured the vision, the elite army of the Holy See had already evacuated to two kilometers away.
After several rounds of shelling, the seven electromagnetic railguns stopped one after another.
Firstly, the distance is too far and the projectile will dissolve completely in the air. Secondly, such high-intensity bombardment can easily cause the electromagnetic railgun to enter an overload state.
"What a pity! It would be better if there were more of these things!" Dennis said with regret.
Both the electromagnetic cannon itself and the projectile are special, and only wizards who are proficient in lightning magic and alchemy can manufacture them. They are not suitable for mass production for the time being. Otherwise, if there were two hundred electromagnetic cannons, the main force of the Holy See would have been defeated directly, and the war would be over!
Watching the enemies surrounding the city retreat like a tide, Lin En did not order a pursuit. It seemed that they had won a great victory, but the formation of the God's Punishment Army did not even disband when they retreated, and they still retained strong combat effectiveness.
In addition, the group of griffin knights had set fire to the city, causing many casualties. The musketeers, who had been fighting for nearly two hours, also needed a good rest.
At the same time, in the royal capital, Glenn and others were leading people to capture the griffin knights that fell from the sky.
Falling from a height of hundreds of meters, even a clergyman would be smashed into meat paste. However, there are lucky people everywhere. With the help of the griffins as cushions, they still found five survivors.
The unlucky Arno was also among them. He himself was not seriously injured. When he sensed the danger, he immediately used his magic to block the lightning net that appeared in the sky. However, the griffin under him was paralyzed and carried him down into the royal capital, not far from the city wall.
After assessing the possibility of breaking out of the capital under the siege of the great wizards, Arno decisively gave up the idea of breaking out, pretended to be unconscious, and was captured by the wizards and musketeers who rushed over...
Chapter 347: A new type of musket that can change the course of the war!
"Lord Glenn, there is another one here, and he looks alive!" Ham, who was in charge of the search, shouted in surprise after discovering Arno lying unconscious on the street.
Many Griffin Knights were shot down by the Thunder Net, but only a few survived. Every survivor was a rare achievement.
After all, if we could extract some crucial information from these people, it might change the situation of the war.
Glenn, who received the notification, rushed over immediately. After taking a look at the collapsed roof and the griffin that was smashed into a pulp next to it, he immediately guessed how the other party survived. He then took a bottle of potion, opened Arno's mouth and drank it directly.
Drink or not drink, that is a choice...
Arno hesitated for a moment, but in the end did nothing and let the medicine pour into his body.
If the other party wanted to kill him, they could just do it directly. There was no need to resort to unnecessary actions. Arno guessed that these people probably wanted to capture them for interrogation.
This is undoubtedly a good opportunity.
Arno was thinking of a countermeasure in his mind, but his thoughts immediately became groggy and he lost all strength in his body.
This special magic potion can relax a person's muscles all over the body, causing the person to fall into a long coma and completely lose the ability to resist.
However, Glenn obviously did not expect that a cardinal would be mixed in with the Griffin Knights and be captured by them so easily, so he only used a normal dose. Arno still maintained a certain degree of consciousness and did not completely fall into a coma.
Several musketeers came forward with special ropes and tied him up tightly.
Having been provoked by the Griffin Knights before but unable to fight back, everyone was very angry. Now that they had the opportunity to retaliate, they naturally made some ruthless moves. One of them even kicked him hard several times.
Arno endured the humiliation and felt extremely angry. A few lowly poor people actually dared to treat him like this. He secretly remembered the voices of the crowd in his heart. When they captured this capital, he would make sure to let these people experience the tortures of the Inquisition.
"Okay, stop it, don't kill anyone!" Glenn saw what everyone was doing and quickly stopped them, and asked Ham to send the man to the interrogation room.
……
As the Vatican army retreated, the news of the victory in the first battle quickly spread throughout the capital!
The cheers spread from the top of the city to the end of the alley.
This was undoubtedly a resounding victory. They only consumed some ammunition to repel the aggressive invading army, and the corpses piled under the city wall exceeded 20,000!
It would have been perfect if those damn griffin knights hadn't relied on their flying skills to burn down dozens of houses and cause over a hundred casualties!
Faced with such a great victory, Lin En would certainly not be stingy with rewards. All the musketeers who participated in the battle received a magic gold coin as a reward. Their military exploits would be recorded, and additional rewards would be given after the war was over.
Of course, the money was paid by Parliament and the royal family.
The griffins that were killed in the fall were not wasted. Some were used for magic research, and the rest were distributed as meat to people like Old York who had made considerable military achievements.
For commoners like Old York, tasting the meat of a high-level magical beast might not be an opportunity in their lifetime, not to mention that it was roasted using lightning magic.
The musketeers who were lucky enough to get the meat felt that they had never eaten anything so chewy in their lives.
After appeasing these war heroes, Lin En once again increased the intensity of patrols and guards. Everyone knew that this war was far from over.
Today's battle looks brutal, but it is ultimately mainly an exploratory attack.
Because the people who can truly decide the outcome of the war - the bishops and priests of the Holy See - have not really taken action yet, and the other side has not invested many elite forces.
So after Lin En arranged these trivial matters, he rushed to the Alchemy Research Institute established in the royal capital as soon as possible.
As soon as they entered the door, a loud explosion was heard from inside, but neither Lin En nor the guards here were surprised.
Sure enough, just two or three minutes later, several wizards from the Alchemy Research Institute walked out of a laboratory full of flames, each looking dusty and dusty.
Lydia, who had already joined the institute and became a glorious alchemist, asked immediately after seeing Lin En. "Dean Lin En? How was the war this time? Did we win?"
Lydia was very interested in this first battle with the Holy See, but she was busy improving her muskets, so she did not join the battle on the front line.
"We killed at least 20,000 people with less than 200 casualties. This should be considered a great victory!" Lin En said with a smile. Only in a city defense battle, relying on the range of muskets and artillery, could such exaggerated casualties be inflicted.
This also proves that his previous decision to give up the active attack and choose to defend the city was extremely correct!
After all, they knew nothing about the enemy before, so it was better to be cautious!
No one present was surprised at this exaggerated casualty ratio. The muskets, cannons and electromagnetic weapons they made according to the drawings given by Lin En were undoubtedly killing weapons on the battlefield!
"It seems that the punitive army sent by the Holy See is just so-so!" a witch said with a sneer.
After the news of the war spread throughout the wizarding land, many people were not optimistic that they would be able to defend the kingdom against the massive invasion of the Holy See, so much so that some people believed that the end of wizards was approaching.
Even the parliament was facing a powerful enemy and had even prepared to withdraw to the wizarding land to defend it.
However, it now seems that the Vatican's massive attack was completely vulnerable, and was no different from the mob of the kingdom. They were beaten and fled in panic under their new weapons.
"No, this time the main force of the Holy See was just a tentative attack. The losses are limited, and those who died were basically cannon fodder. The next battle will not be that easy!" Lin En shook his head. This time they exposed too many weapons and intelligence. The next time the Holy See attacks again, they will definitely be prepared to deal with it.
Thinking of this, Lin En looked at Wilson, the alchemist in charge of gunpowder research and development, and asked expectantly, "By the way, what about the smokeless gunpowder and fixed ammunition I asked you to research? Do you have any clues?"
"This has already been completed!" The wizard named Wilson straightened his face, and then asked someone to bring a special musket. "In addition, we have also made the sample of the percussion gun you asked for!"
Chapter 348 Gatling was a doctor who saved the dying, until he invented the machine gun...
Lynn took the long-barreled musket, and after checking and verifying it, he spoke with joy.
"Very good, very good, your progress is faster than we thought."
This first battle with the Holy See made Lin En realize the powerlessness of the flintlock rifle when facing the extraordinary army. Just a large-scale auxiliary divine spell was enough to greatly reduce the power of the musket.
If it is impossible to rely on armor-piercing to instantly kill approaching enemies, the poor firing rate of the flintlock rifle becomes a big problem.
You can't expect them to use bayonets to fight hand-to-hand with the God's Punishment Army, whose members are all ferocious beasts, right?
The percussion rifle was a great improvement over the flintlock rifle. Unlike the latter which used flint to ignite gunpowder, the structure of the percussion rifle was very close to that of modern firearms. It also used a hammer to strike the firing pin to ignite the primer, which then ignited the propellant to fire the projectile.
The most important thing is that this thing is a breech-loading gun, which means that the bullets are loaded from the back of the barrel. There is no need to clean the rifling frequently. It only takes a minute to stuff the lead bullet into the barrel, which greatly improves the firing rate and accuracy.
If the firing rate of a flintlock (muzzle-loading rifle) is one round per minute, then even the first generation of percussion rifles (breech-loading rifles) can fire more than ten rounds per minute and are less likely to misfire or be affected by moisture.
The emergence of fixed ammunition also means that the development of another powerful weapon can be put on the agenda - that is the machine gun!
This is what truly dominates the battlefield!
In the 19th century, machine guns demonstrated extremely amazing power when they were brought to the battlefield.
For example, in a war at the end of the 5th century, fifty British soldiers relied on five Maxim machine guns to defeat dozens of charges by five thousand Metabili people, killing more than three thousand people on the spot. It can be said that this completely changed the status quo of future wars, ended the history of relying on human wave tactics and cavalry to dominate the battlefield, and pushed the war into a more tragic abyss.
Before, Lin En didn't want to take out this powerful weapon so quickly, but judging from the current situation, the flintlock and percussion rifle alone are not enough for them to gain enough advantage in a battlefield filled with divine arts and magic.
"I need a piece of paper and a pen!" Lynn suddenly said.
The alchemists present were suddenly startled and without any delay, they immediately fetched out their papers and pens.
Because this magic star was also here a few days ago, and he casually drew the drawings of the percussion rifle and fixed ammunition.
Lin En pondered for a moment, then took a feather pen and started drawing on the paper based on the information in the intelligent computer.
Lydia and others stared intently, afraid of missing any details.
They soon discovered that the musket drawn by Lin En this time looked a little strange. The main body was a thick round barrel with a long chain-like thing in the middle. The bottom was not a buttstock but a triangular bracket, which looked somewhat similar to a cannon.
"Dean Lin, what is this? Is it another new type of musket? Or an improved cannon?" Lydia asked curiously.
"I call it a machine gun. It is a special type of automatic musket. Its characteristic is that it can fire automatically and continuously at a very fast rate of fire." Lin En explained.
Automatic rifle?