CH 271

Along with [The Ride of the Valkyrie] music, the helicopter turned on the searchlight.

Well, the enemy doesn’t have anti-aircraft weapons, so it would be effective in driving out the enemy soldiers and causing them to panic.

Okay, it’s about time for this one, too……

[Mortars, start firing!] Mitsuha

Kyin kyin kyin kyin……

A mortar is a very handy weapon, in which a mortar shell is dropped by hand from the tip of a cylinder that is about 1 meter thick and does not look very sturdy and is fired by the impact of the fall.

The launching sound is very quiet.

It depends on the diameter and type, but if it’s not too big, it just makes a slight high-pitched <kyin> sound.

There are also some that make a <pashun> or <pan> sound, but compared to regular howitzers, the firing sound is so low that you would think they were toys.

Even so, it flies for up to 4 to 5 kilometers and has good continuous shooting performance since you just drop it by hand from the tip of the tube anyway.

Also, the gun and its ammunition are small and lightweight.

In such cases, it is very easy to use.

……However, it may not be very good for precision bombardment. It has a fairly large elevation angle because its trajectory makes an arch when firing……

Mortars are not intended to kill, but to advocate panic and chaos.

That being said, we can’t shoot in the completely wrong target, since, of course, there will be casualties with each shot.

……It’s a war, so we have no choice. Moreover, we are the <invaded> side.

If we don’t attack here and crush them all at once, there will be dozens or even hundreds of times more casualties… On both sides.

The enemy forces seem to be in a complete mess.

It wasn’t quite dark yet, they simply ended the day’s march, and they were about to eat dinner then sleep afterwards.

When they heard a roaring thunderous sound and what they can only see was a hellish image of their friends screaming and weeping.

They were not in formation, and there were no orders from their superiors, just a one-sided rain of deadly light pouring down on them.

Since the attack took place after dark, the machine gun rounds were mixed with tracer rounds at a rate of one in several rounds.

Tracer ammunition is a bullet that has ignitable substances such as yellow phosphorus, red phosphorus, and magnesium charged in the bottom of the bullet, and when you shoot, those substances burn and fly while emitting light, which is convenient because you can correct your aim while shooting...

Although, there are some disadvantages to it, such as the enemy being able to see the shooter’s position, and the ballistic trajectory being slightly different from normal bullets, but these disadvantages are not a big problem this time. On the contrary, the advantages are greater because the effect is more intimidating.

In addition, at close range, it can pass as an incendiary round because it will reach the target before the ignitable material burns up.

While it is not as effective as an incendiary round or incendiary armor-piercing ammunition, which were originally intended to burn rather than tracing, tracer rounds can be expected to be effective enough to burn down wagons and carts.

Well, I don’t think they mixed those in for that purpose…

The enemy soldiers, who had simply been running around in the dark for a while, began to disperse toward the outer edge of the camp as if they had noticed that the rain of light-sprinkling death seemed to be concentrated near the center of the camp.

It wasn’t like they had been ordered to do so, but rather that each of them had a <soldier’s intuition> to survive.

Do~o n!

Then, as soon as the soldiers began to spread out in all directions…… as if they were spiders, albeit quite slowly, there was a sudden roar…….

Yes, of course, it was the mines that Wolf Fang had planted beforehand.

Land mines are a very economical weapon that can kill an enemy for a few hundred to a few thousand yen per unit.

Anti-personnel mines are especially cheap and effective. If we can seriously injure them without killing them, we can increase the burden on the enemy, which is a good thing…

……For the person who sets it up, at least.

Moreover, if the location is in the base of the invading enemy, and your troops won’t be marching there later, plus, if you don’t care about anything postwar affairs, don’t have moral obligations, or any responsibilities, then…….

Of course, there is a treaty that prohibits such nasty traps on Earth today, but there are countries that are not members of the aforementioned treaty, it is also available through back channels, and its structure is so simple that it is easy to make it yourself.

……Besides, this isn’t Earth.

The effects of Earth’s treaties would not extend here.

Well, in order to avoid the worst features of anti-personnel mines, such as <remaining buried even after the war is over> and <causing damage to non-combatant civilians>, the number of mines laid is very small, and the locations of the mines are accurately recorded and the number of explosions is checked to ensure that all mines are disposed of after they have been used.

There are also mines that self-destruct after a certain amount of time on a timer, or that detonate by radio waves, but I heard those are expensive and take a long time to get, so I went with the cheapest one I could find.

So I didn’t use the ones that <jump up in the air when you step on them and then explode> for a high killing effect, or the ones that <explode after being stepped on a certain number of times> to crush the knights and high-ranking officers near the center instead of the lowly ones at the front of the line. Just a really cheap and simple <step on it and it explodes> kind of thing.

Anyway, it is unacceptable to cause damage to civilians after the war or to lay waste in an area and make a place where no one can enter. No matter how much I disregard Earth’s treaties, I will not break the <rules that I have set>. That is the least I can do.

……Well, I’m not worried about the mines, because I’ll be able to say <mines, follow me!>. Because I won’t miss a single mine if I teleport it above an active volcano, I don’t have to worry about a thing.

The reason I had them record the location of the mines was to show the Wolf Fang people that I did not intend to use mines indiscriminately, and that I would follow the rules when laying mines.

I don’t want those people to think about using mines easily in their future operations in this world either……

The mines are only buried in the front, that is, on the side leading to the royal capital where Princess Gegege is.

I didn’t bury it in the direction where they came from. Not on the highway, nor in the grasslands, and not even on the wasteland areas on either side of the road.

Well, if they were buried on the road, they would have exploded when they came. We’re only using the cheap ones after all.

The mortars were first fired near the center of the camp, but now they are being fired halfway between the minefield and where the enemy forces were running at night.

That area is sparsely populated with enemy soldiers, but that’s okay because the goal is not to kill a lot of soldiers, but to avalanche them towards this country and defeat them.

Anyway, that’s why there are still explosions on the front, but not so many mortar shells are flying.

……I heard that mortar shells were expensive.

That is, compared to a few hundred yen land mine. I guess they are normally cheaper than howitzer shells and guided missiles……

Well, the enemy soldiers won’t be able to tell the difference between a mortar explosion and a mine explosion.

But still, if you run forward, it will explode, and if you run backward, it will not. That’s all you need to know.

There were no more lights in the enemy camp. Apparently, all the fires and lamps had been extinguished to avoid being targeted by the attackers.

But since we have searchlights, infrared scopes, and starlight scopes, we have little to no trouble seeing in situations where it’s not totally pitch black.

On the contrary, the other side seems to be adding more to the confusion by not being able to find the weapons and armor they had removed, or by not knowing their current location or the location of their superiors.

And even the superiors can no longer give orders to their own men who are scattered all over the place.

They were at the moment when they were about to eat and after taking off their weapon armor to relax.

With no time to put on their gear, the soldiers fled in the dark, completely separated from their unit, superiors, and commanders.

Gears have scattered all over the place and rolled somewhere.

Such things have no value anymore.

The firing speed has been reduced, but the mortar shells are gradually moving closer to the center of the target area.

And the two general-purpose helicopters that blatantly drive the enemy soldiers away, almost to the point where it’s pointless.

Of course, we had to play <Ride of the Valkyries> at max volume, intimidate them with searchlights, and blast them with machine guns……

Alright, routing is almost complete.