Trenches, Guns, and Magic

Realizing his ship was the target of the super-dreadnought, the helmsman of the Goeben spun the wheel hard to starboard.

Under his control, the battlecruiser, displacing 25,000 tons fully loaded, began a sharp turn to starboard with surprising agility.

The hull carved a white arc across the sea surface. The wake churned by the propellers boiled and spread as the ship initiated a "Z-pattern" maneuver.

Admiral Spee's reasoning for this decision was very simple.

Ultimately, since its inception, the design philosophy behind the battlecruiser class had been clear:

It was a warship that sacrificed some armor protection for high speed and heavy guns, designed to hunt down enemy cruisers.

Admiral Fisher of Britannia was a fanatic proponent of this class, and it was he who pushed the Navy to invest resources in building the first battlecruisers.

Regarding this shipbuilding philosophy, the Saxon Empire Navy had actually debated it numerous times internally.

But operating on the principle of "If the Britannia Royal Navy has it, our High Seas Fleet must have it too," the Saxon Empire Navy soon launched its own battlecruisers.

However, unlike the Britannians' concept of pure high-speed "glass cannons," the Saxon Empire Navy's battlecruisers incorporated somewhat more armor protection in their design, though this didn't fundamentally alter the basic role of the class.

As battlecruisers entered service one after another, both sides independently assigned these high-speed warships to their scouting fleets.

Within the Saxon Empire Navy, the most representative viewpoint regarding this new class of warship came from a report by the Imperial Navy Tactical Research Department.

Its gist was: "A battlecruiser's armor is insufficient to withstand strikes from main guns of its own caliber or higher. If forced into a head-on artillery duel with a dreadnought or super-dreadnought, a battlecruiser's survival probability will plummet dramatically."

This report didn't garner much attention at the time, as peacetime naval officers generally believed a battlecruiser's high speed was enough to allow it to disengage from any unfavorable combat situation.

But now, Admiral Spee was using his personal experience to verify the viewpoints of those naval officers—including his past self...

And he quickly concluded that it was "utter nonsense."

The maximum range of the Queen Elizabeth's 381mm main guns was nearly 14.5 nautical miles (approx. 27 kilometers).

Whereas the Goeben's 28cm/50 SK L/50 main guns (actually 283mm), at a 30° angle of incidence, could only achieve 203mm of armor penetration at a range of 5.8 nautical miles (approx. 10.8 kilometers).

To pose a real threat to a super-dreadnought, they needed to close the distance even further to have a chance.

And this was assuming the super-dreadnought's mana shield unit wasn't factored in.

But the problem was, in actual combat, that thing clearly couldn't be ignored...

In other words, if the two battlecruisers, Goeben and Moltke, wanted to attack the Queen Elizabeth, they'd have to launch a suicide charge first to even have a chance.

Therefore, from the very beginning, Admiral Spee had no intention of letting the two battlecruisers trade fire with the super-dreadnought.

He assigned only one mission to the Goeben and Moltke: execute evasive maneuvers, draw fire, and buy time for the three Apostle-class dreadnoughts trailing behind to get into firing position.

Upon receiving the flagship's signal, the radiant crystal power plants on the three Apostle-class dreadnoughts were pushed to maximum output.

The Santissima Trinità, San Andrea, and San Paolo formed a line-ahead formation. Their bows sliced through white foam, thick black smoke billowed from their funnels, and they pressed toward the Queen Elizabeth's position at full speed.

Although these three dreadnoughts lacked the speed of battlecruisers, their 305mm main guns and thick armor belts were the proper tools for a head-on clash with a super-dreadnought.

Meanwhile, the battle in the air had also reached a fever pitch... or rather, it quickly turned into a one-sided slaughter.

The three armored airships formed a slightly curved line-ahead formation, their massive gray hulls pushing slowly beneath the low clouds. This formation left the three approaching Highland Mages unsure of how to attack.

In truth, the Holy Britannia Empire's Highland Mage Council had fallen on hard times.

Since intervening in the Kingdom of Aragon's civil war in February 1914, up to the outbreak of this world war, several mages of the 6th circle or higher had been killed across various fronts, including the fall of a 7th-circle mage.

This dealt a blow to the Mage Council's high-circle forces that was exceedingly difficult to replace.

Therefore, after securing Queen Victoria's approval, the Mage Council quickly reduced the deployment of field mages to prevent any more precious high-circle mages from dying senselessly.

This decision directly impacted the Mediterranean Fleet.

Today, only five accompanying fleet mages remained in the entire Mediterranean Fleet. One had to stay behind at Malta Port, leaving only Randolph and his three peers actually sailing with the fleet.

And Randolph, the strongest of the four, was only a 6th-circle Transmutation mage.

After receiving Vice Admiral Robeck's order to launch, Randolph first visually confirmed the size of the combined fleet of the three nations and relayed the intelligence back to the flagship.

Then, accompanied by the other two 5th-circle mages, he braced himself and flew toward the three armored airships.

To Randolph, this was undoubtedly a suicide mission.

During the Battle of Amiens last year, facing two Saxon armored airships establishing aerial dominance, a mage squad led by two 7th-circle mages took to the skies to intercept.

Although they shot down one armored airship in that battle, the Mage Council suffered catastrophic casualties.

And now, there were only three of them, yet they had to deal with three armored airships...

What was this? Feeding themselves to the enemy?

So Randolph never expected to shoot down the airships from the start. His plan was to harass and pin them down from a safe distance.

If an opportunity presented itself, he would see if he could land a heavy blow on an airship using his prepared 【Disintegrate】 spell, or 【Dispel Magic】 and 【Delayed Blast Fireball】 scrolls.

But reality dealt him a harsh blow.

Just as Randolph was calculating the best angle of approach, a ball of black fire exploded without warning in the air a short distance ahead of him.

A violent shockwave hit him full in the face, nearly flipping him right out of the altitude maintained by his 【Fly】 spell.

The instant that ball of black fire exploded, Randolph's 【Mage Armor】 was shattered by the strike, and his robes, which possessed some defensive properties, were pierced in several places by flying shrapnel.

He tumbled twice in the air before barely stabilizing his flight, cold sweat instantly soaking his robes.

Only then did he realize the situation before him was far worse than he had anticipated.

The other two coordinating mages quickly discovered the same: they couldn't even fly within spellcasting range. They could only constantly evade the airships' artillery fire and machine gun/autocannon sweeps at extreme range.

Mage Randolph's assessment of the situation was spot on.

It was truly terrible...

The four armored airships deployed by the Saxon Empire Air Force to the Mediterranean had all been re-equipped with a new type of high-explosive shell featuring a special fuse.

This fuse could detect the magical fluctuations emitted by spellcasters and then detonate the shell prematurely at the optimal distance.

And the core technological origin of this fuse... interestingly enough, involved Morin.

Back when he was developing the shaped-charge armor-piercing weapon, he had discussed a "magitech spark synchronized detonation technology" with Patricia at the banquet where they first met Helga.

The principle, simply put, was to generate a synchronized magitech spark upon receiving a specific magical signal. Morin originally intended to use this to ensure the explosive filler in the shaped-charge weapon burned completely in an extremely short time.

Patricia, living up to her title of "Genius Magitech Girl," drew inspiration from this.

After the Air Force requested a more efficient weapon against flying mages, she eventually cobbled together this fuse specifically designed to deal with spellcasters.

For armored airships, the mages they faced all relied on the 【Fly】 spell to take to the skies.

Moreover, the high-altitude environment was much "cleaner" than the ground. The clarity of the magical fluctuations emitted by these spellcasters continuously maintaining 【Fly】 far exceeded that of ordinary mages on the ground.

After switching to the new high-explosive shells, the gunners didn't even need to aim precisely. As long as they fired in the direction where magical fluctuations were detected, the shells would automatically detonate upon entering lethal range.

Yes, a magical version of the proximity fuse... Thank you for the open source, Boss Morin.

Beyond the hardware upgrade, another change had been quietly occurring.

By this point in the war, the "magephobia" among ordinary Saxon Empire soldiers was practically "cured."

More and more soldiers realized that those once high-and-mighty mages were just flesh and blood in the face of heavy artillery, and could be blown to pieces just the same.

And in this regard, Morin—dubbed the "Mage Killer" by both the Holy Britannia Empire and the Saxon Empire—was absolutely the prime contributor.

Thanks to the Saxon Empire's deliberate propaganda, soldiers across the army, navy, and air force knew their country's military possessed such a "super soldier" who slaughtered mages like it was child's play.

Added to the fact that Morin's combat record was genuinely verifiable, and the combat units that had coordinated with him or the instruction unit were full of praise for them, Morin had now become an icon and symbol within the military.

If someone were to step into the turrets of these armored airships right now, they would find a newspaper clipping of a photo pasted near every gun port.

It was a half-body portrait of Morin—specifically, the "handsome photo" snapped by a reporter during his appearance at the Semperoper.

Therefore, for the gunners on these armored airships, pasting Morin's photo next to their gun ports provided some sort of mystical, morale-boosting effect in "anti-mage combat."

And it cleverly bypassed the risk of setting a "death flag" by pasting a photo of a family member.

Inside the C turret of the L30 armored airship, the gunners swiftly glanced at the photo pasted next to the gun port after working together to load a shell.

"May the Colonel bless us..."

"Boom!"

The 203mm gun barrel kicked back violently, and another high-explosive shell trailing fire hurtled toward the mages in the sky.

After the two armored airships responsible for anti-air attacks completed another salvo, the two 5th-circle mages were caught in the bombardment almost simultaneously.

The new high-explosive shells accurately locked onto the continuous magical fluctuations emitted by the two mages.

A series of near-simultaneous explosions blossomed in the air, creating numerous spheres of mixed fire and black smoke.

Autocannon tracer rounds followed closely, punching through the smoke and shredding whatever remained.

From about a hundred meters below and to the left, Randolph watched with his own eyes as two mangled figures plummeted from the smoke.

One figure was still struggling, trying to reactivate 【Fly】, but the faint glow of magic only flickered twice on the broken body before extinguishing completely.

Randolph was completely stunned.

From launching their attack to the deaths of his two fellow mages, barely ten minutes had passed. It was too fast.

And his own condition was far from ideal. His defensive spells were depleted, and his robes, which offered some protection, were like a candle in the wind.

If he was careless and caught in the blast radius of another 203mm high-explosive shell, he would follow in the footsteps of those two 5th-circle mages.

It wasn't that Randolph hadn't considered risking his life for the Empire and the Queen.

But a more realistic problem stood before him...

He risked his life flying into combat merely to fulfill his duty as a field mage; it didn't mean he truly intended to throw his life away here.

From awakening his spellcasting talent to clawing his way up step by step to his current position, only he knew the hardships he had endured.

During his apprenticeship, he trekked through every valley in the Scottish Highlands with his mentor. It took him a full seventeen years to reach the 6th circle... He couldn't just throw his life away in the skies over the Mediterranean.

Furthermore, if he died here today, it would be another unbearable loss for the already depleted Highland Mage Council.

"Enough..."

Randolph gritted his teeth and finally abandoned the idea of trying to break through.

He had done everything he could... launched for reconnaissance, relayed intelligence, led the attack on the armored airships.

Two comrades were dead, and he was wounded. No one could say he hadn't done his duty.

It's enough. There's no need to fight anymore...

His mind made up, Mage Randolph banked sharply, diving into a low-hanging cloud bank before another salvo of shells could catch up.

Then, within the remaining time limit of his 【Fly】 spell, he headed back toward the Queen Elizabeth at full speed.

After a token barrage, the armored airships didn't accelerate to pursue him. They had more important targets waiting to be dealt with.

Returning their focus to attacking the surface ships, the two armored airships readjusted their gun elevations, pouring all their firepower into suppressing the two battlecruisers below.

Compared to the long reload times of the battlecruisers' 280mm and 305mm main guns, the 203mm guns mounted on the armored airships delivered a far greater volume of shells per unit of time.

While they lacked the sheer destructive power of surface warship artillery, the sheer volume was overwhelming. Worse still, all these shells rained down from directly above.

For battlecruisers, whose deck armor wasn't particularly thick, these shells dropping at near-vertical angles were equally lethal.

Thus, maintaining decent accuracy, 203mm shells continuously rained down on the two battlecruisers, beginning to "scrub their decks."

Rear Admiral Hood on the Invincible also realized that if they maintained their current engagement posture, his two battlecruisers would eventually be ground down by the combined assault from the air and sea.

They had to open up the distance...

Just as the battlecruisers of both sides were preparing for new maneuvers, the three Apostle-class dreadnoughts finally brought the Queen Elizabeth into range and completed their second salvo.

The shells fired from the Santissima Trinità's 305mm main guns shrieked toward the lone super-dreadnought in the distance. The impact points of several shells almost perfectly bracketed the hull of the Queen Elizabeth.

But the next second, a pale blue halo rippled through the air surrounding the Queen Elizabeth. Two 305mm armor-piercing shells detonated the instant they touched this halo.

The explosion's fire and smoke were completely blocked by the blue halo, and even the shockwave was largely dissipated.

Only a slight tremor was felt inside the bridge, but that was it. The entire warship remained completely undamaged.

The addition of the mana shield unit transformed this super-dreadnought, which already boasted a 330mm main armor belt, into a mobile maritime fortress.

Until the shield was breached, the Queen Elizabeth could practically ignore attacks from most directions.

And her 381mm main guns had never stopped firing throughout this entire time.

The Queen Elizabeth's gunnery officer calmly reviewed the latest calculations uploaded from the plotting room, then loudly called out the new firing parameters.

"Range: seventeen thousand three hundred yards! Bearing correction complete!" (Approx. 15.8 kilometers. Compared to other posts, gunnery officers generally used the more precise "yards" as a unit.)

"All main batteries, salvo... fire!"

The firing bell rang in the bridge. The next second...

"BOOM——!"

Four turrets spat flames simultaneously. The air over the deck, compressed by the shockwave, rebounded violently. Eight 871-kilogram armor-piercing shells tore through the air at over Mach 2, trailing heat waves nearly invisible to the naked eye toward their target.

Admiral Spee heard the low rumble from the distance just as the Goeben initiated a new "Z" turn.

"Here it comes!"

He gripped the handrail in front of him tightly with both hands.

The Goeben was actually in the middle of a hard rudder turn when the "Super Granny" (Queen Elizabeth) fired, which meant the enemy's firing solution was likely somewhat inaccurate.

But the sheer power of 381mm shells was immense. Even an underwater explosion from a near miss could cause severe damage to the hull.

One such underwater shell accurately struck the Goeben about 1.5 meters below the waterline.

Although it ultimately failed to penetrate due to the angle of incidence, the kinetic energy of the 872-kilogram projectile was too terrifying. The 270mm main armor belt simply couldn't completely block it.

The hull's steel plates buckled inward visibly. The double rows of rivets arrayed near the waterline popped out from the vibration, and cracks appeared at the riveted joints. Seawater immediately surged in through these fissures.

"Flooding amidships on the starboard side! About two meters below the waterline!"

"Damage control team to the breach immediately!"

The executive officer, responsible for coordinating internal ship affairs once combat began, roared into the brass speaking tube.

And the highly trained damage control personnel on this battlecruiser, carrying patching equipment, rushed to the damaged area within a minute of the first wave of seawater pouring in. They stemmed the flooding in time, allowing the battlecruiser to continue fighting.

Time ticked forward to 4:45 PM.

On the battlefield along the combined fleet's main battle line, the situation for the five Britannia Royal Navy pre-dreadnoughts had deteriorated to the verge of total collapse.

The Majestic, hit in its magitech core compartment by a torpedo, had completely lost propulsion ten minutes ago and was currently listing at an angle exceeding 12 degrees as it drifted on the water.

The sailors onboard began abandoning ship in an orderly fashion, lowering lifeboats one after another.

After Admiral Spee detached three dreadnoughts, the combined fleet's battle line still retained twelve capital ships to continue besieging this remnant squadron.

Twelve against four—still a 3:1 ratio.

The situation for the lead ship, Lord Nelson, was also growing increasingly dire.

Q turret and X turret had almost entirely lost their combat effectiveness during earlier bombardments. Furthermore, all the 234mm secondary main guns on the engaged port side had sequentially ceased functioning due to various reasons.

Captain McClintock paced back and forth inside the armored conning tower, cursing incessantly.

But despite the cursing, his commands remained methodical.

Unable to secure sufficient firepower superiority, McClintock opted to concentrate all remaining firepower on the closest enemy ship in the combined fleet's battle line, attempting to bite off at least one more piece of the enemy before going down.

Opposite the Lord Nelson, positioned in the center of the combined fleet's battle line, the Austro-Hungarian Navy flagship Viribus Unitis was about to unleash its most accurate salvo of the battle thus far.

Inside the plotting room, the trembling in the hands of the young officer named Nagy had stopped at some point.

It had been replaced by a kind of instinctual, mechanical rhythm: receiving rangefinding data, correcting bearing, calculating lead, transmitting to the turrets.

The veteran officer beside him stole a glance at him, said nothing, and the corners of his mouth curled up slightly.

At 4:51 PM, the twelve 305mm main guns of the Viribus Unitis fired a full broadside salvo.

All the shells landed around the Lord Nelson's position. At least two 305mm armor-piercing shells scored direct hits on the area near A turret.

Inside the armored conning tower, Captain McClintock felt an abnormal vibration travel up through the deck.

And in the handling room beneath A turret, propellant charges stored in the magazine below were currently being passed up through the hoist.

When the armor-piercing shells detonated in this confined space, the chain reaction of the secondary explosions instantly traveled down to the magazine itself. The entire ammunition reserve was ignited in a split second.

Immediately following, a magazine detonation occurred in the forward section of the Lord Nelson.

In this patch of contested sea, under the gaze of every sailor and naval officer present, the entire bow of the Lord Nelson suddenly bulged. Then, A turret, along with the entire section of hull beneath it, was swallowed by a fireball of intertwining crimson and orange-yellow.

The flames from the deflagration shot over sixty meters into the air, surpassing even the top of the foremast.

A massive amount of debris launched by the explosion—including twisted steel plates, turret components, and unrecognizable objects—rained down over a radius of several hundred meters, peppering the sea surface with splashes.

The Lord Nelson's hull broke apart at the point of explosion. A massive gap appeared between the forward and aft sections, and seawater poured in at an unstoppable rate.

The entire warship began to list rapidly to port. Countless figures slid off the tilting deck, plunging into the churning sea.

A mushroom-shaped cloud of black smoke hung over the fragmented wreckage, refusing to dissipate.

From the moment it was hit to its sinking, the entire process took little more than 90 seconds.

Aboard the Viribus Unitis, the Austro-Hungarian sailors erupted in deafening cheers. The loaders in the turrets pumped their fists, their roars seeming to drown out the surrounding artillery fire.

Because this was the first time in the history of the Austro-Hungarian Navy that they had sunk an enemy capital ship in a naval battle, and it was a capital ship of the "invincible" Britannia Royal Navy to boot.

But soon, the cheers gradually died down.

Because both the sailors and officers realized what the fatal blow they had just delivered actually meant.

In an instant, over a thousand crewmen, just like themselves, were either killed outright or swallowed by the sea.

The Canopus, trailing the Lord Nelson, threw her rudder hard over in an emergency maneuver to avoid colliding with the vortex and wreckage field created by the sinking lead ship.

As she sailed past the area, the sailors on the side decks witnessed a hellish scene firsthand.

Sailors dragged into the sinking vortex struggled desperately on the surface. Some clung to splinters of wood; others grasped at nothing. The suction of the vortex dragged them down into the depths, one by one.

And the Canopus could do nothing.

Because she herself was under continuous bombardment. Decelerating to stop meant becoming a sitting duck.

The captain could only order her to keep sailing, while having the navigator record the coordinates of the location...

An officer on the Viribus Unitis, which secured this victory, luckily survived the naval battle. He left a single sentence in his diary: "A massive black tree rose from the battlefield, and its nourishment was over a thousand sailors sleeping eternally in the sea."