Industrial Cthulhu: Starting as an Island Lord

Gwen gripped the longsword, flicking off the blood on it, panting heavily.

She lifted her head, trying hard to distinguish the direction where Isaac was.

The Gatling’s gunfire still had not sounded.

The bullets for the heavy machine gun were extremely precious. Here, it was almost impossible for them to receive any resupply. Once all of them were used, that Gatling would become scrap iron. Isaac had not brought many bullets himself, and they had to use them at the most critical moment.

Before the battle, Isaac had agreed with her that if the Grand Duke Dragonfang’s main forces arrived, or if the Resistance Army was beaten into complete collapse—if the situation reached the moment when they had no choice but to intervene—Isaac would open fire.

Now that the gunfire had not sounded, it meant the situation was not that terrible yet.

Gwen shook her head, flinging away the mud mixed with blood and sweat, forcing her eyes wide open to look at the enemy before her.

Her vision darkened again and again. She felt she had already reached her limit; another second of fighting and she would die—this feeling had lasted for half an hour already.

Enduring exhaustion, dragging along her gradually stiffening body, she gritted her teeth and held on across the battlefield.

As long as the heavy machine gun did not fire, she could still persist.

Gwen lifted her head at the enemies before her.

These cavalrymen wore light armor, muskets hanging at their waists, and were now engaging the Resistance fighters in close combat.

Gwen had thought these cavalry would behave like Earl Bazel’s pistol cavalry, circling around using their mobility—but they did not.

They fired a single shot from afar and then charged forward recklessly to hack at them.

Two cavalrymen fixed their eyes on Gwen, spurred their horses forward, long swords raised, dripping blood.

Gwen drew in a deep breath, ignored her heart pounding as if it would explode, forced out the last trace of strength in her muscles, dashed—struck.

A shining white arc swept through the air. The cavalryman before her was cleaved cleanly in half along with his armor. Blood, driven by inertia, splashed across Gwen, coating her already dark red armor with another bright crimson layer.

The cavalryman behind him had no intention of stopping, his longsword already swinging down.

Gwen only glanced and knew she could not dodge.

She had no choice but to throw aside her weapon and raise her arm to block. The blade struck her gauntlet, spilling sparks, and then the cavalryman and his horse slammed into her.

Gwen braced her feet against the ground behind her. The impact drove her half a foot into the dirt. Veins bulged across her body as she gritted her teeth and shouted, resisting the collision. She reached out, yanked the knight down, grabbed the horse’s head with her other hand, and smashed the two together. Both went limp in her grip.

“Damn it, could I really be some kind of Transcendent?” Gwen panted, saying, “That shouldn’t be right. Why don’t I remember coming into contact with anything supernatural? Or maybe these enemies are just too weak?”

She braced herself on her knee and caught her breath a little. The fatigue seemed to pull back slightly. She picked up her sword, lifted her head, and searched for the next enemy.

There were no enemies.

Only the Resistance fighters remained standing around her—some holding spears and straight blades, others mechanically loading their muskets before raising them, unsure where to aim.

The ground was piled with corpses of the enemy, densely packed. Gwen had never felt that several hundred people were this many. A village sometimes had several hundred people, yet the bodies here were nearly forming a mountain.

These cavalrymen—none fled. None feared death. Though armed with muskets and longswords, after firing they chose to charge straight in.

Longswords had never been a primary weapon for cavalry. Lances and spears were. Longswords were merely for self-defense, like the blades carried by crossbowmen.

These cavalry were strange. Their eyes were so red it seemed blood might drip from them, as if they bore deep hatred toward the Resistance Army, determined to fight them to the death without regard for their lives.

But at least—at least they had won.

This sort of thing… she could ask Isaac later anyway. The cavalry had been wiped out; for now, regrouping came first.

A tired smile appeared on Gwen’s face. She lowered herself, preparing to find a random cloth to wipe the blood off her sword.

But the next moment, her smile froze.

The heavy machine gun’s gunfire erupted.

Like a sudden rainstorm, roaring in a continuous sheet.

She stiffly stood up, twisted her neck toward the distance.

A mass of soldiers stretched endlessly beyond sight, eyes blood-red, weapons raised as they pressed forward.

Another train rattled along the railway toward them.

The Expeditionary Army soldiers skillfully signaled with flags, guiding the train to gradually slow down and finally stop before a newly built fortress.

“Ho, it’s built pretty quickly. This fortress is starting to look decent.”

“It’s actually still just for show, Mr. Erwin. The concrete still needs more than twenty days to fully cure, but after a few days it’ll already have decent strength.” Kyle stepped forward, shaking Erwin’s hand.

Erwin baring his teeth quickly withdrew his pale hand from Kyle’s iron-grip handshake. Glancing at Kyle’s bear-like physique, he decided to forget the matter.

“This train is the last one. Lord Hughes determined that the supplies here should be sufficient for now. You can let the train return and bring back intelligence. If you have any requests, you can send them back as well.”

“In terms of supplies, everything is fine. We’re not short on anything. The biggest problem now is that we can’t find anyone. The Resistance Army, the Grand Duke Dragonfang, Earl Bazel—we’ve searched for many days and still haven’t found any trace of them.”

Talking as they walked, the two gradually left the train and headed toward the Expeditionary Army’s temporary camp.

The Expeditionary Army soldiers unloading the cargo deftly opened the train doors and carried crates of supplies out of the cars.

No one noticed that a little white-haired girl quietly poked her head out from beneath the train car.

Gwen looked around cautiously. The Expeditionary Army soldiers seemed busy with their own tasks. She lifted her gaze toward midair.

“Stop looking. Just come out, no one’s paying attention to you over here.” The unicorn impatiently stomped its hooves, pointing its horn toward a nearby fortification. “Just run over there. No one is there.”

Gwen nodded, gathered her strength, and with several leaps crossed the piles of supplies stacked on both sides of the tracks, rushing into the newly built, still-curing fortifications.

Once she hid herself, her friends appeared in midair one after another.

“What do we do next? Where do we find the Resistance Army? You all heard it— even the Expeditionary Army hasn’t found them.”

“Don’t know.”

“Don’t know.”

“Don’t know.”

Her friends immediately erupted into noisy shouting, yet none with anything useful.

Irritated, Gwen extended a finger and pointed at the girl leaning on a longsword, clad in bright silver armor: “Little Gwen, you haven’t said anything the whole time. You should have a way, right?”