Trenches, Guns, and Magic

Captain McClintock lowered his binoculars and turned back into the armored conning tower.

According to the pre-war organizational plan, his Lord Nelson had no business being here.

As the lead ship of the Royal Navy's final class of pre-dreadnoughts, the Lord Nelson was a transitional vessel from the start.

Its construction utilized numerous new technologies previously only in the experimental phase, most notably a new type of magitech core.

The performance of this new magitech core wasn't significantly different from the versions later equipped on battlecruisers, dreadnoughts, and super-dreadnoughts.

Or more accurately, one of the primary missions of the £1.62 million Lord Nelson was to serve as a maritime testbed for this new magitech core.

The mass-produced models equipped on subsequent capital ships were upgraded versions finalized only after a series of trials on her.

Therefore, strictly in terms of performance metrics—aside from not unifying the caliber of the main guns across the ship—the Lord Nelson-class was infinitely close to a standard dreadnought.

Of course, its main armor belt consisting of only a single 305mm strake at the waterline earned it the Navy's mocking nickname: "belt armor."

Nevertheless, in its "high-speed cruise" mode, its magitech core could push this steel monster—displacing over 17,000 tons fully loaded—to a top speed of 25.5 knots in perfectly calm seas.

25.5 knots.

While it couldn't match the 28 knots of a super-dreadnought like the Queen Elizabeth in high-speed cruise, this figure ranked third among all capital ships in the Mediterranean Fleet.

It was second only to the two Invincible-class battlecruisers and the flagship Queen Elizabeth.

Theoretically, the Lord Nelson should have been assigned to the fast strike squadron alongside its sister ship, the Agamemnon, operating with the flagship.

But the problem originated at Oran Port.

During the previous battle attacking the Gallic Navy's main force, the Gallic Republic battleship Jean Bart unleashed a final, desperate salvo before sinking, creating a "death rattle" effect.

One shell struck the Lord Nelson below the waterline.

Although damage control plugged the breach and saved the ship, the damage to the entire propulsion unit could only be repaired back in Malta.

This single hit slashed the Lord Nelson's top speed from 25.5 knots to just over 20 knots.

20 knots was far too slow for the fast strike squadron.

Vice Admiral Robeck consequently made a seemingly logical decision:

He relegated the Lord Nelson to the battleship squadron to act as the lead ship, guiding the other four slower pre-dreadnoughts as a second-echelon fighting force.

Captain McClintock had raised no objections at the time, because tactically speaking, he indeed couldn't keep up with the fast strike squadron.

But neither Vice Admiral Robeck nor Captain McClintock likely anticipated this damned patch of sea fog suddenly appearing on the calm Mediterranean.

"Executive Officer."

The first words out of Captain McClintock's mouth upon entering the conning tower were directed at the executive officer beside him.

"Recap the current situation."

The executive officer, clutching a hastily scribbled memo, replied rapidly: "Massive black smoke sighted to the north. Preliminary assessment: Saxon radiant crystal-powered warships. Distance: 12 to 15 nautical miles."

"Confirmed two... no, three armored airships approaching in the air."

"Flagship bearing south-southwest, distance approximately 8 nautical miles and increasing..."

Captain McClintock: "Have we established contact with the flagship?"

"Transmission complete. We are currently awaiting the flagship's reply."

Captain McClintock took two steps inside the armored conning tower, then turned to the battle chart beside the navigator. His finger landed on the marker representing their five pre-dreadnoughts.

To the north was the Saxons' black smoke.

To the southeast was Vice Admiral Robeck's flagship and the fast strike squadron, separated by at least 8 nautical miles—a distance impossible to close quickly.

"Navigator, calculating based on the standard top cruising speed of Saxon radiant crystal warships, how much time do we have from spotting the black smoke to both sides entering effective firing range?"

Hearing this, the navigator swiftly drew two lines on the battle chart with his tools.

"If the Saxons maintain a full-speed pursuit, approximately fifty minutes or more."

"Fifty minutes..."

Captain McClintock repeated the number, uttering a low curse.

Vice Admiral Robeck needed to react within fifty minutes: either turn the fleet around to support them, or... he didn't want to consider the alternatives. Moreover, he felt Robeck's command today would likely suffer from more than just this one blunder...

Captain McClintock wasted no more time.

"Boatswain, general quarters for the entire ship."

"Aye, aye, Sir!"

The alarm bell pierced through every deck and corridor of the Lord Nelson the next second.

On the foredeck, a burly, veteran sailor was leading a dozen men in clearing debris, ensuring no loose objects turned into lethal shrapnel during combat.

An unsecured iron chain, a loose plank, or even an iron bucket left on the deck could become high-speed murder weapons under the shockwave of an impacting shell.

This hulking man in his thirties had served in the Royal Navy for over fourteen years, joining the service at age sixteen.

His long service gave him a level of confidence the eighteen or nineteen-year-old pups on deck lacked.

The moment the alarm rang, the burly sailor immediately shoved the others toward the rear, shouting: "Hear that? Action stations! Everyone back to your posts!"

"Move it! Just like in training, get to where you're supposed to be!"

Once the young sailors scattered, the burly sailor led four other veterans in a sweep from the foredeck backward, checking for any missed debris on the run.

The boatswain's mates on watch also sprang into action, blowing their pipes and roaring the command they had repeated hundreds of times in training at the top of their lungs.

"Action stations! Action stations!"

Below decks, the situation inside the hull was even more chaotic.

The narrow passageways were packed with running sailors. Some were still buttoning their shirts; others charged toward their battle stations without even tucking in their trouser legs.

Damage control teams immediately converged on critical locations along the central corridor.

Comprised of the fittest sailors on the ship, their job was to plug leaks, fight fires, and perform emergency repairs after the ship took damage.

During peacetime training, other departments always jokingly referred to the damage control teams as "the most idle men on the ship."

This was, of course, just banter.

Because when the real action alarm sounded, these sailors standing ready in the corridors would be the final safeguard on this warship.

"Rangefinders! Are the rangefinders ready?!"

Inside the main gun turret, the gunnery officer shouted downward.

"Ready and standing by!"

The Lord Nelson's main gun configuration followed the tradition of pre-dreadnoughts: four 305mm main guns housed in two twin-mount turrets, located fore and aft.

In addition, ten 234mm secondary main guns were mounted in casemates along both sides of the hull.

The presence of these 234mm guns was the primary reason the Lord Nelson wasn't classified as a standard dreadnought... One of the core definitions of a dreadnought was a uniform, large-caliber main battery across the entire ship.

However, these ten secondary main guns were still terrifying damage dealers in close-range engagements, especially against targets lacking dreadnought-level armor protection.

Inside the turret, loaders followed procedure, hoisting shells up from the ammunition hoists.

The young loaders were reasonably proficient—at least their training hadn't been entirely wasted—but the slight trembling of their hands betrayed their true state.

When drills turned into actual naval combat, everyone's mindset shifted.

It didn't take long for the Lord Nelson and the other pre-dreadnoughts behind it to begin rotating their turrets toward the port side.

Inside the conning tower, Captain McClintock raised his binoculars again.

The black smoke on the northern horizon had grown thicker, and the number of smoke plumes was noticeably increasing.

He adjusted the focus for a sharper image. Then, in the direction of the black smoke, he first spotted what looked like the tops of warship masts, followed shortly by the silhouettes of smaller vessels.

Captain McClintock knew this must be the screen fleet of cruisers and destroyers forming the perimeter of the enemy's main fleet.

Normally, the enemy's capital ships would be some distance behind this screen fleet, which was the only good news right now.

Captain McClintock could only hope that upon receiving the radio message, Vice Admiral Robeck would adjust quickly and provide reinforcements before they engaged the enemy capital ships.

Meanwhile, Admiral Spee on the Goeben and Vice Admiral Robeck on the Queen Elizabeth received the report of "Enemy ships sighted!" almost simultaneously.

Admiral Spee, who had been standing calmly before the battle chart, couldn't help but clench his fists slightly upon hearing the news. He immediately ordered seaplanes to attempt a more detailed close-range reconnaissance.

Soon, the Goeben's aft deck bustled with activity.

A massive crane slowly rotated, lifting a seaplane painted with a black eagle crest off the deck and carefully lowering it into the sea.

For seaplane pilot Captain Hans Ratland, even though the Goeben battlecruiser had decelerated for deployment, he still felt like he was being thrown into the sea like "garbage."

The plane bobbed in the waves, like a helpless leaf.

Without catapults, these new "iron birds" equipped by the navy had to rely on their own power to taxi and take off from the water, which required immense skill and... a bit of luck.

Fortunately, Captain Ratland's luck was good today.

The scene of piloting a seaplane taking off near a formation of steel behemoths also filled him with exhilaration.

He took a deep breath and pushed the throttle to maximum.

The roar of the radiant crystal engine drowned out everything else. The plane carved a long white wake on the sea surface as it accelerated.

The bouncing grew increasingly violent. Ratland gripped the control stick tightly, feeling as if his bones were about to be shaken apart.

Finally, after bouncing off the sea surface several times, the plane suddenly felt light, breaking free from the water and soaring into the sky.

As the plane ascended, he operated a small mechanical winch in the cockpit, folding the pontoons beneath the fuselage forward and retracting them.

This design significantly reduced the aerodynamic drag of this new seaplane, even granting it a decent streamlined fuselage, pushing its top airspeed straight to 200 kilometers per hour.

After a smooth takeoff, Captain Ratland also noticed that today's cloud ceiling wasn't ideal. In most places, it was only about 360 meters, and some patches even pressed down to around 240 meters.

This meant he couldn't fly too high, but it also allowed him a clearer view of the warships below.

About ten minutes after takeoff, Captain Ratland spotted figures on the sea through gaps in the clouds.

At first, they were just blurry silhouettes, but as he lowered his altitude and broke through the clouds, the image cleared.

Five warships...

Formed in a single column, spaced about 500 yards apart, sailing southeast at a moderate speed.

Captain Ratland's heart rate spiked. He piloted the plane closer, wanting to more accurately identify the models and designations of these warships.

Judging from their hull outlines, these were definitely capital ships.

But crucially, there was... absolutely nothing around them!

No cruisers, no destroyers... nothing at all!

"My God..." Ratland muttered to himself. "A lone capital ship formation?"

This defied all logic. At least according to what Ratland had learned during maritime reconnaissance training, any capital ship fleet on the move would be surrounded by auxiliary vessels forming a screen.

Just as he debated whether to fly closer to confirm specific models, or fly further out in other directions to search for other warships, the situation changed abruptly.

He saw several flashes of fire erupt from the lead warship below.

Immediately after, puffs of black smoke exploded without warning in the air around him.

"Flak!"

Ratland instinctively shoved the control stick hard, dropping the plane's nose, followed by a barrel roll, narrowly passing between two bursting black clouds.

On the Lord Nelson, the 76mm quick-firing guns originally intended for engaging torpedoes and small fast attack craft had all elevated their barrels, pouring ammunition at the presumptuous reconnaissance plane in the sky.

The Canopus, the pre-dreadnought behind it, also opened fire.

Under these circumstances, Captain Ratland forced himself to circle three more times, gambling his life against those 76mm shells with every pass.

He used the cloud cover to evade as much as possible—diving in to hide for a few seconds, popping out from another angle to observe, and then diving back into the clouds before the shells caught up.

After three passes, he confirmed one thing.

Around these five pre-dreadnoughts... at least within the visual range he could manage in this emergency state, there truly were no other warships.

As the anti-aircraft fire grew increasingly dense, Captain Ratland finally opted to disengage, adjusting his nose to return north at full speed.

Yet, despite this, the pilot's heroic action spread among the crews of both sides after the naval battle.

Saxon sailors called him "Brave Ratland," while Britannian sailors dubbed him "Jerry over the Mediterranian" ('Jerry' being the British slang for Germans at the time).

Flying back toward the Goeben, Captain Ratland descended to an altitude where the flagship's mast could see him clearly, then rapidly transmitted his reconnaissance report via signal lamp.

Five pre-dreadnoughts. Isolated formation. No screen ships. No other capital ships sighted yet.

The signalman on the Goeben's signal station received the entire message and delivered it to the bridge immediately.

"That damn fly!"

On the Lord Nelson's bridge, Captain McClintock watched the Saxon plane nimbly dodge through the anti-aircraft fire and finally disappear over the distant horizon, cursing bitterly.

His instinctive order to "drive away that annoying thing" inadvertently raised the curtain on maritime anti-aircraft combat in this world.

But at least this time, the outcome was less than ideal; they failed to shoot down the plane.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Vice Admiral Robeck, Commander of the Britannian Mediterranean Fleet, finally received the telegram from the Lord Nelson.

"Battleship squadron encountered enemy main force! Requesting immediate support!"

"How could this happen?!" Vice Admiral Robeck's face turned extremely grim.

The Chief of Staff beside him was equally shocked. "How could McClintock's squadron bump into the enemy's main force? Shouldn't they be off our rear flank?"

Just then, the lookout on the Queen Elizabeth sent an urgent report.

"Report! Signs of aerial combat sighted to the southwest! Suspected friendly warships firing anti-aircraft guns!"

Vice Admiral Robeck and the Chief of Staff immediately rushed to the other side of the bridge and raised their binoculars.

Sure enough, in the distant sky, they could see puffs of black smoke from exploding anti-aircraft fire.

"The only thing that could be there at this time is a Saxon reconnaissance plane..."

The Fleet Chief of Staff said in a deep voice, "They must have discovered McClintock and his ships fell behind."

Hearing his Chief of Staff's words, Vice Admiral Robeck's mind raced.

He knew it was highly likely the Saxon warships had caught up to them, and McClintock's unfortunate, slow-moving squadron just happened to become the first target.

Now he had to make his next decision immediately.

Abandoning friendly forces was an unforgivable disgrace in the traditions of the Royal Navy.

But if they turned back, they might fall into a meticulously laid enemy trap, or even face total annihilation.

"Commander?" The Chief of Staff looked at him, awaiting his decision.

Vice Admiral Robeck pressed his lips together tightly, staring at the tiny marker on the battle chart representing the Lord Nelson squadron's position.

A few seconds later, he snapped his head up.

"Order the fleet to decelerate immediately! Prepare to alter course and close in on the battleship squadron!"

"Detach the light cruisers Chatham and Dublin, along with 8 destroyers, to turn immediately and maneuver to the fleet's rear for screening and reconnaissance!"

"Have Mage Randolph launch! We need to know exactly how many ships the enemy has!"

A flurry of orders was swiftly issued.

The entire fast strike squadron began to drop speed. Massive hulls carved graceful arcs across the sea, preparing to turn around.

On the Queen Elizabeth's aft deck, a middle-aged man wearing Highland Mage robes ascended into the air amidst a surge of magical fluctuation, flying northward.

On the combined fleet flagship Goeben, Admiral Spee also received the final reconnaissance report.

"Report, General! The pilot confirms the enemy consists of only five pre-dreadnoughts, with no escort vessels!"

This result still surprised Admiral Spee somewhat.

Did this capital ship squadron fall behind?

But he quickly dismissed this possibility.

Because their opponent was the Britannia Royal Navy, he truly found it hard to believe the enemy would make such an amateur mistake.

"General, what do we do now? Should we try to devour this capital ship squadron first..." the Chief of Staff suggested.

"You read my mind!"

Admiral Spee looked up, a hunter's gleam in his eyes. "Since we've already caught a capital ship squadron like this, there's no reason to let our prey escape!"

"Goeben and Moltke, accelerate! Clear the central battle line!"

"Have the Papal and Austro-Hungarian dreadnoughts push forward and deploy the line of battle!"

After issuing this order, Admiral Spee stepped out of the bridge and onto the open compass platform at the edge of the conning tower armor.

He leaned into a large optical device set up there and saw mast poles poking over the horizon, followed by five rising silhouettes of warships.

Even at this extreme distance, they looked imposing.

On the sea, warships of both sides began training their massive guns on their targets. Fire control personnel systematically calculated ranges, target bearings, and firing elevations.

For the dreadnoughts of the Papal State and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this was also their first major naval battle.

The atmosphere aboard the Papal State's Apostle-class dreadnoughts was rather peculiar.

Sailors stood rigidly at their stations, muttering to themselves, constantly reciting prayers silently to ease their nerves.

Inside the turrets, gunners who also served as part-time military chaplains were even using holy water to perform a final "blessing" on the shells about to be fired.

Aboard the Austro-Hungarian warship Viribus Unitis, the atmosphere was significantly more tense.

The plotting room was the brain of the ship, responsible for calculating firing solutions.

When the captain's combat orders arrived, this was already the tensest place on the ship. Several young officers huddled around the Dreyer fire control table, their foreheads slick with sweat.

"Enemy ship speed corrected to 18 knots, bearing corrected by 0.3 degrees. Sending to director and turrets."

The young officer's voice trembled slightly. When he was assigned this post, his seniors told him it was supposed to be one of the safest places on the ship, encased in thick armor.

But now, realizing they had a magazine holding 305mm shells on either side, a 102mm quick-firing shell magazine directly below, and the radiant crystal power plant right in front, these officers felt the plotting room had absolutely nothing to do with "safe."

"Nagy, your hands are shaking." A more senior officer patted the shoulder of the young man beside him.

"Sorry, sir... I... I'm a little nervous." The young officer named Nagy looked pale.

"It's right to be nervous, kid."

The older officer grinned, appearing completely unbothered, as if he had experienced many naval battles.

However, everyone else knew this veteran was actually a first-timer too.

"It's good enough you haven't pissed your pants your first time in battle... Remember, do your job well, and leave the rest to God! If we get hit, we won't feel any pain anyway~"

This crude joke lightened the mood slightly, but everyone knew in their hearts that the impending trial was truly a matter of life and death.

Aboard the Lord Nelson, Captain McClintock, also ready for battle, suddenly realized their situation was even worse than anticipated.

"This damn weather!" he cursed under his breath.

The somewhat overcast sky had cracked open at some point.

A shaft of sunlight pierced the clouds, shining squarely on the patch of sea where their five pre-dreadnoughts sailed, making their dark hulls incredibly conspicuous on the water—crystal clear to the enemy's optical rangefinders.

And their "clean" magitech cores now actually made them easier targets.

Without black smoke to obscure the enemy's vision, their silhouettes in the sunlight were basically deliberately placed targets.

Conversely, on the Saxon side, almost all the warships were shrouded in the faint smoke billowing from their funnels.

The black smoke resulting from incomplete combustion in those radiant crystal-powered warships now served as their best cover, making it very difficult for Britannian optical rangefinders to get an accurate reading.

"Captain, their destroyers seem to be moving up!" the executive officer suddenly pointed forward.

McClintock raised his binoculars and saw agile destroyers and torpedo boats from the enemy screen fleet accelerating forward.

As they advanced, thick smoke poured from their funnels, as if drawing a black smokescreen across the sea, further interfering with the Britannian warships' rangefinding.

Not only that...

"They're preparing for a torpedo attack!"

McClintock's heart sank. He instantly understood the enemy's intent.

"Those bastards!"

First, use a smokescreen to blind them and disrupt rangefinding, then send in small boats for a torpedo attack to break their formation.

While they scrambled to evade torpedoes, the capital ships behind would blanket them with heavy artillery fire.

A simple, brutal, yet very standard "Saxon-style" tactic.

"All secondary batteries, attention! Targets: enemy small craft, fire at will!" McClintock roared.

The secondary battery turrets and small quick-firing guns on both sides of the warship immediately began traversing, aiming at the fast-moving targets flickering in and out of the smokescreen.

Seventeen minutes later, the fastest Saxon fleet torpedo boats had closed to a distance of only 4,600 meters.

McClintock saw splashes erupt from the sides of those small boats, followed rapidly by them turning away.

This was the standard breakaway maneuver after launching torpedoes.

Immediately after, several Papal State destroyers and over a dozen torpedo boats completed the same maneuver.

Those smaller, faster MAS motor torpedo boats were utterly fearless. Braving the intense fire from the pre-dreadnoughts' secondary batteries and weaving through the geysers of water, they forcefully pushed their torpedo launch distance down to 3,000 meters.

"Boom!"

A Saxon fleet torpedo boat that entered its breakaway sequence a moment too late was directly hit by a 234mm secondary main gun shell.

The massive explosion tore the small boat to shreds instantly, the erupting fireball exceptionally conspicuous on the sea.

Next, a Holy See torpedo boat followed suit.

These two explosions marked the first and second casualties of this naval battle.

But their sacrifices bought a net of death composed of nearly thirty torpedoes, rushing toward the battleship squadron where the Lord Nelson sailed.

When Captain McClintock saw those destroyers and torpedo boats complete their turns one by one, he knew the most dangerous moment had arrived.

"It's too late..."

He muttered to himself. It was too late to deploy anti-torpedo nets.

"Order all ships! Activate 'High-Speed Cruise' status! Increase spacing immediately and prepare for evasive maneuvers!"

He roared orders at the communications officer, hoping the steam vented from activating high-speed cruise mode would provide some cover for their ships.

With that, he shoved past the sailors blocking him and stepped outside the conning tower himself, constantly sweeping the sea surface with his binoculars, searching for those lethal white wakes.

"Robeck... you fool..."

He cursed incessantly, complaining about Vice Admiral Robeck's command error that left these pre-dreadnoughts disconnected and without destroyer escort.

Soon, clear white lines appeared on the sea surface—the wakes of torpedoes.

The 76mm quick-firing guns on the five pre-dreadnoughts began firing madly at the "white lines" spotted on the water, trying to detonate them before they got close.

A dense cacophony of gunfire and bursting water columns erupted across the sea.

Just as everyone's attention was drawn to the torpedoes, the combined fleet's line of battle also locked onto these five Britannian pre-dreadnoughts, which were currently in disarray and clumsily evading.

Confirming the enemy ships had entered range, at 4:02 PM, the lead ship of the Papal State Navy's Apostle-class dreadnoughts, the Santissima Trinità, opened fire first.

The gunnery officer of the Santissima Trinità recorded this moment in the gunnery log: "Estimated speed: 18 knots, heading 110. This creates a closing rate of 400 meters per minute. When our calculations showed the range was 16,700 meters, Turrets A and B fired the first salvo at 4:02 PM. Estimated time of flight: 22 seconds..."

Multiple 305mm main guns unleashed deafening roars in continuous succession. The immense shockwave shook the entire warship, and sailors on deck felt as if their feet were violently shoved upward.

Searing orange-red flames spewed from the muzzles. Armor-piercing shells weighing four hundred kilograms sliced through the air with shrieks at 460 meters per second, flying toward distant targets.

Aboard the Lord Nelson, Captain McClintock wanted to wait for more precise rangefinding and hadn't yet issued the order to fire.

But his patience clearly hadn't transferred to his subordinate captains.

Seeing the enemy open fire, the captains of the Canopus and Albion trailing the Lord Nelson almost simultaneously issued firing orders on their own and hoisted the "Engaging the Enemy" flag.

The main turrets of the two warships also spat flames. Soon after, the remaining two warships in the squadron joined in.

But right now, the combined fleet's battle line contained a full fifteen pre-dreadnoughts and dreadnoughts, while the unfortunate Britannian battleship squadron had a pitiful five.

An absolute three-to-one numerical advantage meant the Lord Nelson and her consorts were thoroughly suppressed from the very beginning.

With the combined fleet having completed target distribution, every pre-dreadnought faced the bombardment of three enemy ships simultaneously.

However, multiple warships attacking a single target simultaneously meant the capital ships of the combined fleet actually struggled to distinguish which splashes around the target ship belonged to their own shells and which belonged to friendly ships, creating some difficulty in fire correction.

Twenty-two seconds later, the combined fleet's first salvo landed mostly about 160 meters ahead of the Britannian warships.

In the eyes of the Britannian sailors, heavy shells plunged into the water and exploded beneath the surface, kicking up massive water columns over sixty meters high.

Those water columns seemed to hover in the air for several seconds before crashing down, striking the sea surface with a muffled boom.

Sailors in the Lord Nelson's forward-most turret, peering through narrow gun ports, saw a blinding flash, followed by a hail of shrapnel clattering against the warship's side armor.

Just as Captain McClintock feared, their position was terrible.

The distant combined fleet warships remained shielded by thin black smoke, while their own ships, having just activated "high-speed cruise" and the resulting white steam having mostly dissipated, were exposed to the enemy's vision once more.

Seeing their own warships' shells landing quite a distance from the enemy, the combined fleet's second salvo was already on its way.

This time, Captain McClintock and his men weren't so lucky.

Multiple combined fleet warships achieved straddles in their second salvo.

"Starboard! Splash! Short!"

"Port! Splash! Over!"

The lookouts' shouts rang out continuously.

Shells cleanly bracketed the Lord Nelson. Massive water columns erupted on both sides of the warship, nearly swallowing the entire vessel.

"Captain! Get inside!"

The executive officer and two guards forcibly dragged Captain McClintock, who was still observing outside the conning tower, back inside the armored conning tower without explanation.

Almost simultaneously, a torpedo grazed past the tail rudder of this pre-dreadnought.

Another torpedo, amidst the horrified gasps of the sailors on deck, rushed straight toward the ship's midsection!

"It's over!"

Everyone who saw this felt their hearts sink.

The next second, the torpedo accurately struck the ship's midsection below the waterline.

But thankfully, and confusingly, nothing happened.

The expected violent explosion and towering water column never materialized. The sailors didn't even feel the impact of the torpedo.

The sailors on the side deck looked at each other, none of them realizing what had just happened.

"What's going on?"

"A dud?"

"No..."

Finally, an experienced officer who had rushed to this deck shook his head, a trace of survivor's relief on his face: "It must be that the idiot who launched the torpedo set the wrong attack depth... causing that torpedo to slide right under our keel."

"God bless us..."

But not all warships shared the Lord Nelson's good luck.

The Majestic, positioned at the rear of the battle line, failed to dodge a lethal torpedo during its evasive maneuvers.

While attempting to accelerate and dodge one torpedo after activating its "high-speed cruise" status, this unfortunate warship plowed right into another torpedo originally aimed at a friendly ship ahead of it.

And as luck would have it, this torpedo struck the mid-aft section of its hull right where the magitech core compartments were located.

"BOOM——!!"

A roar far more muffled and violent than a shell explosion echoed out.

A massive column of water, mixed with black smoke, steam, and fire, erupted violently from the midsection of the Majestic.

The fierce explosion nearly capsized the warship, which displaced over 16,000 tons fully loaded.

As the spray cleared, sailors on the stern of the Ocean ahead of it noticed with terror that the hull of the Majestic was listing visibly, rapidly losing speed, and falling out of formation.

A capital ship lost its combat effectiveness in less than ten minutes of fighting.

Blessings never come in pairs, but misfortunes never come singly.

Captain McClintock barely had time to order the communications officer to send another urgent telegram to the fleet flagship, reporting that the battleship squadron was engaged with enemy ships, when the combined fleet's third salvo came howling in.

This time, two shells accurately struck the Lord Nelson.

"Boom!"

The first shell hit the roof of the Q turret located amidships.

The 305mm armor-piercing shell easily pierced the relatively thin roof plate, drilling inside with residual momentum.

Sparks flew instantly inside the turret, and the blast wave knocked several operating gunners to the floor.

Fortunately, the steel anti-splinter bulkheads inside the turret did their job, protecting most of the sailors inside and resulting in only three deaths on the spot.

"Damage control! Damage control! Q turret hit! Need support!"

The turret commander clutched his bleeding forehead, roaring into the wired communicator. But he soon realized the communication equipment was completely fried in a shower of electrical sparks.

This hit completely destroyed all observation, aiming, and communication equipment in Q turret, turning it deaf and blind.

And the second shell struck an even more lethal location.

It landed squarely on the fixed barbette of X turret—that is, the thick ring of armor between the turret and the lower deck magazine.

Perhaps the prayers of the Holy See Navy gunners before firing really worked. This shell hit at an extremely tricky angle, landing exactly on the sliver of exposed barbette between the deck and the rotating part of the turret.

"Clang!"

After a metallic crash loud enough to shatter eardrums, the shell penetrated the thick armor plate, drilling directly into the gunhouse below.

The violent tremor made the entire turret seem to jump. The terrified gunners stared dumbfounded at a massive, still-smoking shell just lying there on the floor of the gunhouse.

Time seemed to freeze in this moment.