Chapter 116 (2/2)

The red signal meant that the enemy was approaching the five hundred meters line, at this distance, the artillery hit rate would reach more than eighty percent.

Van’er shouted: “The shooting angle is correct! Quick, light the fuse, light the fuse!”

When the deafening roar could be heard once more, he didn’t even look to see if they had hit anything, instead, he immediately turned toward the ammunition distribution staff and shouted: “canister, send in the canister shelling!”

During the artillery training, His Royal Highness has repeatedly stressed the point, that when the red signal was hissed, even if the barrel was already loaded with solid shells, they should immediately shot and then reload with canister shells. In case that the barrel wasn’t loaded, they should immediately fill it with canister shells, and then wait until the point where the enemy reached the three hundred mark.

The canister shells looked like a tin filled with thumb-sized balls and sawdust. To produce the canister shells, they first bore a hole into the tin, then they filled it with balls and sawdust, and then they stopped it with a thin piece of wood.

When Lighting finally showed the purple ribbon, the four artillery groups fired almost simultaneously.

This was also Van’er’s first time using the canister shells – according to His Royal Highness, the wounds induced by canister shells were very difficult to heal, so they only practiced the loading procedure. So today it was also his first time seeing the amazing killing potential of these special shells.

Because of the huge pressure difference, the tin fractured into many pieces after it left the muzzle. The small iron balls inside of the tin fell like raindrops on the enemy, placing the knights three hundred meters away into the middle of a deadly metal storm, and turning the people and the horses into a bloody mist resembling the falling wheat as it was cut down. Some iron pellets after penetrating the knight’s bodies still had so much kinetic energy left that even the knights standing behind them weren’t able to escape either.

The knights lucky enough to survive the storm finally entered into sprinting distance, while only having one thought in their mind – that was to break through this thin line of defense, and massacre those cowards who were only able to hide behind those cruel weapons. Only a short amount of time was needed to cover the last hundred and fifty meters, the knights were already lowering their bodies, pushing the horses to reach their highest speed.

However, this seemingly short distance of one hundred and fifty meters, turned into an uncrossable distance, the last round of firing of canister shells completely destroyed the last bit of their fighting will. In the range of one hundred meters, the solid iron balls were able to penetrate through as many as two to three people, turning the area in front of the cannon fire into a field of death. From the twenty knights riding at the forefront, almost none had been able to survive, the only difference between them lied in the amount of iron balls by which they had been hit.

The knight’s assault had completely collapsed.

Because the fear created by the collapse of the knight’s assault was so huge, the knights following attempted to turn around their horses wanting to flee the battlefield.

When they saw the knights scatter the mercenaries weren’t willing to take another step forward. They had always only been working for the money, but they immediately turned around when they saw how much they would have to pay. Now, at the moment of their retreat, they ran even much faster than they had during their attack.

When the wave of their crushing defeat swept over the dukedom’s allied forces, the situation soon became impossible to control. The crowd had only one thought left, they had to flee. There were people who fell and were trampled to death, no one took the time to care for others, they only hated themselves for not being able to grow another pair of legs.

At this moment the melody of the Guerrilla warfare song resounded through the battlefield, and the lines of the infantry began to march in step, sweeping across the battlefield.