*Baron Jean deVon Antoine*

“What… Did you just say?” Jean must have misheard, that was simply too absurd to be an actual report.

“The vanguard has… Returned, Baron.” A nervous messenger kept his eyes to the ground as he relayed the message, not keen to be the one delivering it, “Your son is not with them.”

“And where did you say he was?”

“Dead, Baron.” The messenger replied quietly, “My deepest sorrow for your loss.”

He did not know whether to rage in anger or cry out in sorrow, Jean had sent his son with the vanguard to bring honor to their family, but he was never actually supposed to be in danger! Far enough out from the wall that they would be unable to hit them, on horseback, in a situation where the other side could do naught but surrender and hope for the best. Were they looking for war? Did they want the forces gathered here to break down the wall and carve out a path to that fools throne and take his head?

Jean couldn’t think clearly, he didn’t remember dismissing the servant, but he had gone. The Baron had been standing a moment ago and now was seated in a chair painstakingly transported along with the army itself, a goblet of wine in his hand. By the three, how was he going to explain this to his wife? No, he couldn’t think of that now- Jean set the goblet aside without taking a drink. He would not sink into grief, but he would burn with anger. If they wanted a war, they would get one. He swore an oath to the three that he would take revenge on them for this.

Another messenger entered the tent, hesitant- likely from Baron Antoine’s fierce demeanor.

“Speak,” Jean’s voice was gruff, if it were not for decades of habits and mannerisms instilled into him by noble society he would hardly have been able to function at all. As it was, he would allow etiquette and formality to help contain himself until he vented his rage.

“Prince Treslux has called a meeting, Lord Baron,” the messenger paused, then continued. “He asked that you attend.”

“Tell him I shall be along presently,” Jean gave a terse reply. Did that bastard seek to use his son’s death as a rallying cry? No, Treslux probably did not even know, and if he did he certainly wouldn’t care.

Prince Treslux was an ass, but a smart and cunning ass. The Baron hated dealing with him on the best of days, but now… Right now, he would only put up with the Prince as a means to killing every single person in that rotten city!

He left his tent and made his way to the Prince’s pavilion, or rather, to the pavilion that would be used as a meeting place. The prince, even a fourth prince, could do little else but travel in style, so he had multiple pavilions set up for his use, including one for meetings. Dukes and barons, as well as some of the more notable lords and most notable knights were present as well, representing the most powerful and influential group of people in Francinea baring the Church and the rest of the Royals.

He was not late for the meeting, but it seemed the discussion had commenced early.

“-quasi-magical attack?” The Prince spoke in disbelief, “the only thing I remember my tutors discussing about them was how useless they were.”

“As you say my Prince,” one of the knights was saying. As a knight, his presence indicated an incredible level of acheivment, as he had been invited when many lower lords had not, but still Jean did not know his name. So he was not invited based on heroic acheivments at any rate. “However, this was not the case in the attack. The magic user was injurred in the ‘blast’ but managed to relay that the exsplosion was non-magical, however the ignition- and likely the launch, was.”

The Prince noticed Baron Antoine enter and raised a hand to halt the knight. “My condolences on the loss of you son, Baron.” The Prince spoke, but Jean knew he did not mean it, irregardless he relayed his thanks to the royal.

“Thank you for your consideration, your Highness.” Jean deVon Antoine bowed smoothly, “I promise you that I, and my troops, will fight hard and show you our worth so as to avenge him in the field.”

The Prince nodded and continued, “be wary not to let your anger blind you, the weapons they used are like nothing we have seen before.”

“With respect, your Highness,” Duke Casil from the south commented snidely, with the bare minimum ettiquette to ensure he was not punished for his impudence in front of the royal family. “An exsplosion like that, albeit rare from all but the most powerful of mages, is hardly unique. More polished, perhaps- the inclusion of the metal was particularly inspired, but hardly worth this meeting.”

“Lord Duke,” to Jean’s, and many others, surprise it was the knight who responded, speaking well above his station. “It is less the exsplosion itself, than the range at which it occured. The scouting vanguard was well out of range when struck, and even though it is the lesser note when compared to the range, the damage was nothing to scoff at.”

“You dare-” The Duke was silenced by the Prince, who stunningly, bade the knight to continue.

“As I am sure this esteemed group is aware,” the knight spoke with ease, despite the daggers being thrown by the eyes of many surrounding him. A Duke being silenced for a mere knight? Unthinkable. “Quasi-magical attacks are where magic is only a single part of a weapon or strike. I think the most notable of those were the magic crossbows that recently debuted in the east to great effect.”

“What you may not be aware of, however, is that they are incredibly difficult for mages to interfere with. Mages are almost completely incapable of stopping the magical component of a quasi-magical attack, though as to why you would have to ask them. The point is that we will have to advance under sheilds from that distance out, all the way to the wall. Sheilds designed to halt the projectile itself.”

Jean frowned at this, magical sheilds against projectiles were nothing new, but they were rarely kept up for long periods of time. Espcially over a large area under bombardment, it was next to impossible for the barrier to be maintained for a long time. If the range was as far as the knight seemed to be implying…

“Any advance on the walls will likely have many casualties, and considering this is a northern duchy, they will likely simply retreat to the next set and make us do it again.” The knight finished the thought.

But Jean would be damned if he let his vengence be stalled by this.

“Well then, the answer is simple.” He spoke firmly, holding his anger on a tight leash. “Have our mages set the weapons off before they strike us. If we can not stop them from setting them off, they likewise can not do so either.”

This was met with mutters of approval from around the tent, and relaxed faces. No one wanted to have heavy casualties after all, their forces were part of their power. If they could negate this new weapon, then this attack would sink back to the level they had intially expected- one that was not very dangerous for any of them.

Jean had a grim smile, so long as his idea worked there was no way the enemy could be prepared for them.

*Lucas Jaeger*

“And so, rather than detonate it remotely, the ‘shells-’ as I have decided to call them, will have tips of compressed magic.” Lucas was explaining, to an increasingly pale Julian. Between the ridiculous hours Lucas was forcing the mage to work, and the shocks to his mind the result of that work was producing, Lucas was surprised the man had not fallen sick yet. Though the current situation might push the man to it!

“You want to place unstable, compressed, magic on the top of those things?” Julian was incredulous. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Julian,” Lucas laughed, though he had to admit it was rather forced. There was nothing funny about an arms race. “The nature of war is such that when a weapon is made, someone makes something to render it obsolete. One man hits another with a rock, so to beat the rock another man ties a rock to a stick to make a club- and so on, and so forth. However, I have the advantage in this game, because I got a good look at what is ahead. Undoubtly, someone will figure out how I am doing this- though hopefully not now- and figure out a way to counter it. Their method will likely be to either stop me from detonating it by interfering with my magic, or to detonate it before me and prevent it from hitting.”

He supposed anyways, he was a biologist not a military engineer! He knew that things like electronic countermeasures (ECM) existed, but had no knowledge beyond that. Knowing that the sun exists, and how the sun works and what effects it has are vastly different things. Fortunately, magic in this world had not progressed to a level comparable to his world’s technology- so no one else had any fucking idea either.

In the land of the blind, the one eyed man could be king.

“So with a small tweak to the composition of the explosive material, and the addition of this part of the shell, they will be unable to detonate it prematurely and it will explode on impact without need for a mage to have actually fired the shot!”

And woe to anyone who accidentally drops a hammer on the thing. Lucas had no idea how to add safety measures to what amounted to an oversize slingshot lobbing a barrel turned into a half-assed fertilizer bomb. Well, he supposed at the very least it would speed the process of natural selection along. If you were dumb enough to fuck around with an explosive Lucas was not going to be too sad about removing you from the breeding population.

This world’s magic was truly fascinating, Lucas had decided. He would not compare it to cheating in a game, it was far more like exploiting one. Any idiot could look up a cheat code, to actually understand a game well enough to just bend a few rules to get a result took understanding. Similarly, magic here was heavily connected to understanding. The more you understood the mechanics of what you wanted to do, the easier it was. It was not that magic replicated those mechanics so much as that it allowed someone to put their thumb on the scale and bend them.

If anything, the biggest issue was that it had too much potential- beyond what Lucas had the intellectual capacity to understand. Or rather, more than he had the capacity to understand at once.

Understanding the whole of a system is an incredibly difficult thing. Something like a lever can be reduced to an equation that shows the whole of its function, but a even a blade of grass is infinitely more complex than that. The individual parts of the blade can be understood, but to then step back and clearly understand the whole is far more difficult. Possible for grass, but difficult.

To do so with a human is impossible. We hardly even understand the individual parts, much less what those all add up to. We can see the whole, but struggle- and fail- to understand it. Not necessarily for lack of intelligence, but the sheer magnitude of things that demand a person's attention at once when looking at it.

If Lucas could reach that level of understanding… Well, by most standards he would basically become a god.

Which is as good a reason as any to drop his fantasizing and return to the present. Lucas sighed, having to acknowledge to himself that he had let his mind run wild there for a bit. It was an attractive concept admittedly. Still, he would not let that unlimited potential out of his hands, he just needed a little more time.

*Baron Jean deVon Antoine*

“A messenger from that Are brat?” The baron frowned, “unless he is surrendering, there is no reason to pay it any heed.”

Gods send that he was not- surrendering was the right thing to do, but Jean wanted to avenge his son with his own hands. A surrender would only leave him the option of striking from the shadows sometime later, and that was not nearly as satisfying.

“I cannot say for certain Baron,” the scout he had watching the Prince for such messages replied. “However, the impression I gained was that it was more of a threat.”

Jean scoffed, “We already have seen through their weapons. Undoubtedly, he means to try and make us think that the victory is too costly with the weapons he has, I cannot wait to show him how wrong he is.”

Soon after, a messenger again called Jean to the Prince’s tent, though it seemed this time he was only one of a few invited. On the table was an open letter, addressed to the Prince, who bade Jean to read it.

“What is this drivel?” Jean spat, caught between sheer rage and disbelief as he read the document. “And who the hell is this ‘Lucas’ fellow, I do not believe for a momment he is the hero!”

“According to my sources, he is indeed.” Prince Treslux spoke, “and according to those same sources, this letter fits his personality perfectly.”

“Look here it says, ‘I had the previous Duke replaced because he was both incompetent and an obstruction, Archi had nothing to do with it- though she didn’t like the man either, I suppose.’ What the hell is that?”

Jean could appreciate frank and matter-of-fact speech, but this letter went so far beyond that it was insulting on more levels that Jean had ever even thought of before. However, the real issue was-

“He must have eyes inside our camp,” Prince Treslux confirmed what the nobles who had read the letter must be thinking. “He claims to have already countered your plan to detonate them prematurely, and adds an aside that can be summarized as saying that outhinking him is impossible, and trying is a waste of time.”

“That arrogant bastard!” Jean roared, slamming his fist into the table. It was good fortune that he had set the message down or he would have undoubtedly shredded it. “Who the hell does he think he is? He is no hero, just a piece of shit that needs to be tossed into the gutter!”

The letter was especially disgusting to Jean, because in it the ‘Hero’ admitted to developing, firing, and detonating the shot that had killed his son. The one person Jean could absolutely not kill was the one person he wanted to kill beyond anything else. He was trembling- nearly blinded by rage, and barely able to hear his Prince’s next words.

“At the very least,” the Prince was saying. “I know that none of the people I have called have been slipping the other side information, so the question falls to you all and I to decide what to do about this ‘meeting’ the Hero proposes.”