The new weapon exposed just how fragile and soft the human body really was, once hit by a passing iron ball, could cause injuries which were unable to get ever be healed. But when the rider was directly hit by it, in addition to him losing several limbs, it would also splash blood everywhere. Only when they were hit by the second round of artillery shells, were they finally able to make out a vaguely black shape, while it was taking the lives of their companions.
After the second round of shooting, the Duke was finally able to connect the fire and roaring sound in the enemy’s camp with the indescribable strike against his unit. It seemed the other side had gotten its hands on an incredible weapon, with a range much farther than a crossbow, almost like one of the strongholds’ trebuchets. Realizing this, the Duke immediately gave the order to sound the horns – thinking that as long as they were able to come into close range, these long-distance weapons would also become useless.
The knights, however, when hearing the horns, showed several kinds of reactions. Some of them really rushed into the direction of Border Town, but others were still fighting with their own horses, while a small part of the knights was retreating toward the rear of the battlefield. Together with the mercenaries swarming around, the whole scene quickly turned into chaos.
When the attacking knights returned to the road, the artillery group suddenly became frantic, in addition, to clean up the barrel and reloading its ammunition, they also had to adjust their cannon. At this time, Lighting flew once more in the direction of the defense line, holding a red ribbon in her hands.
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 a