Overwhelming Firepower

It didn’t take long for the chiefs to make a decision. All of them decided to fight alongside Lucen in this war of his.

With the matter settled, the gathering dispersed just as quickly as it had formed. Messengers were sent back to their respective tribes, carrying word of the coming war and the call to prepare.

Lucen did not linger. With the agreement secured, there was little reason for him to remain among the Stone Hawk Tribe. The path ahead no longer required persuasion; it required preparation.

The return journey to Ironhold was swift. A few barbarian warriors came with him back to Ironhold.

The warriors who accompanied him did not speak much. They watched the road, the sky, and the terrain with equal attention.

It didn’t take too long for the people of Norvaegard to learn that Lucen had allied with the barbarian tribes.

If this had been done before he released the play Honor beyond one’s words, many would not have accepted the barbarians.

Yet now, after watching the play, the people became less prejudiced about barbarians and were now interested in their culture.

People had seen barbarians portrayed not as mindless destroyers, but as warriors bound by tradition, pride, and a code different from their own.

That understanding did not erase centuries of mistrust, but it dulled its edge. Curiosity replaced outright hostility in many places.

Even though there were still barbarian tribes trying to raid their places, the animosity was not as intense as before.

Desperation bred bandits among them as well; hunger and fear were not unique to barbarians. They came to realize that they had painted an entire people with one brush.

A few nobles who saw the change in perception among the commoners felt a shiver down their spines.

Did Lucen Thornehart see this far ahead? Did he plan this from the very beginning, knowing what was to come?

There have been a few people who had the ability to see into the future; those were called seers.

But most of those turn out to be fake, and if Lucen was a true seer, the temple of Oleus, the God of knowledge and foresight, would have come to take him.

That meant he had simply anticipated the outcome through careful planning. The idea unsettled them more than prophecy ever could.

Once doubt took root, it spread quietly through the halls of power. Lucen’s recent actions, when viewed individually, were impressive.

When viewed together, they became unsettling. Each step aligned too neatly with the next, as though resistance, outrage, and chaos had already been accounted for before they ever appeared.

***

While the people continued to talk and speculate, Lucen continued to prepare for the upcoming Styrhord.

One of the things he and the dwarves were developing right now was a way for aura knights to carry the crank Gattling gun and attack while moving.

As they were testing out a few things, they learned that with the enhancement of one’s aura mantle on the Gatling gun, it was able to withstand prolonged use even as it overheated.

Once it was confirmed that an aura mantle could reinforce the Gatling gun itself, Lucen and the dwarves shifted their focus toward mobility.

Several failed adjustments came first. Some mounts cracked under stress, others interfered with movement enough to be discarded outright.

One frame transferred recoil too efficiently, numbing the wearer’s arms within seconds. Another restricted the flow of aura enough to destabilize the mantle under stress.

Each failure was cataloged, adjusted, and discarded without much thought as they simply continued working forward.

The original crank Gatling had been designed as a support weapon, mounted, braced, and operated from a fixed position.

Even with aura reinforcement, its weight and recoil made movement impractical for ordinary soldiers. But Aura knights were not ordinary.

The solution was not to make the weapon lighter, but to redesign it so its weight could be carried correctly.

The dwarves shortened the barrel cluster, reducing unnecessary length while keeping enough rotation to maintain firing stability.

The receiver was widened and reinforced, not to resist damage, but to distribute stress evenly once aura flowed into it.

The hand-crank was repositioned closer to the grip, allowing the knight to operate it with minimal arm movement.

Most importantly, the Gatling gun was given a frame that locked directly into the armor.

Rather than being held like a conventional weapon, the gun was partially mounted onto a heavy harness built into the chest and shoulder plates.

Thick bracers and reinforced gauntlets formed multiple points of contact, allowing the aura mantle to flow continuously from the knight’s body into the weapon without interruption.

Recoil that would have shattered bone was absorbed through the armor and into the ground. Heat that should have warped metal was endured as long as the aura mantle remained stable.

Even sustained fire became possible, limited not by the weapon itself, but by the endurance of the aura knight wielding it.

With the weapon solved, the armor followed. The dwarves abandoned traditional layered plate designs and instead created segmented heavy armor that prioritized full-body coverage and structural integrity.

Large pauldrons protected the shoulders and housed the mounting points for the Gatling frame.

The chest plate was thick and rigid, capable of bearing both the weapon’s weight and the recoil load.

The armor was not elegant. It was massive, angular, and unmistakably oppressive.

Each piece was designed to remain in constant contact with the body, ensuring the aura mantle enveloped the entire suit.

Once active, the armor moved as if it weighed nothing at all, yet when the aura faltered, its true weight became immediately apparent.

This was the demerit since they used a lot of rune engravings on the armor to be able to withstand a lot of pressure.

With this, Lucen and the dwarves were able to create a knight unit that could rain down bullets while moving like tanks.

Seeing Sir Garrett wearing the new armor while carrying the customized Gatling gun, and at his back was the new Crimson Lord Mk V, reminded Lucen of an old tabletop game he used to play in his past life.

Encased in heavy segmented armor, the aura mantle turning cold metal into an extension of flesh, Sir Garrett no longer looked like a knight of Norvaegard. He looked like a walking fortress.

The Gatling gun rested against the reinforced frame as if it belonged there, its weight meaningless under the pressure of his aura.

Each step he took left shallow impressions in the stone floor of the testing hall. When he moved, the weapon moved with him, stable, aligned, ready.

Lucen, alongside Durik and a few other dwarves, got Sir Garrett to an open field for testing the new equipment.

Sir Garrett was made to move forward, backward, sideways, and jump. He did so first without using his aura mantle, and the next was while using his aura mantle.

Moving without his aura mantle proved to be quite difficult. The weight of the armor while holding the Customized Gatling Gun, and with the Crimson Lord Mk V on his back, were incredibly heavy. He could barely jump with all the weight on him.

It was completely different when he used his aura mantle. With his aura mantle, he was able to move with ease, like he was just wearing normal armor. His jumping was the same, as he could jump several meters up in the air.

This was something they had expected: the armor and the Gatling gun, the sword, everything was made with the knight’s ability to use aura mantles in mind.

Lucen then told Sir Garrett to start shooting. Sir Garrett planted his feet into the open field, letting his stance settle before turning the crank.

Inside the Gatling Gun were special bullets that had rune engravings that helped the aura mantle stay for a few seconds after losing contact with the aura user. This made each bullet stronger than any other.

The first shots tore through the air like a sudden storm. The rotating barrels blurred, and a continuous stream of rounds ripped forward, chewing through earth and stone alike.

The ground ahead of him erupted as dirt and rock were pulverized, the impact carving a shallow trench in seconds.

Loose stones were shattered outright, fragments flung outward with enough force to embed themselves several paces away.

There were no prepared targets, no reinforced walls, only open land. Even so, the effect was unmistakable. Anything caught in that line of fire would cease to exist as a threat almost instantly.

As the firing continued, heat built rapidly along the barrel cluster. Under normal circumstances, the metal would have warped, seized, or cracked.

Instead, the aura mantle flowed seamlessly from Sir Garrett into the weapon, reinforcing its structure and bleeding off stress through sheer pressure rather than material resistance.

The test continued for several minutes.

The rate of fire remained steady, the rotation smooth, the weapon never stuttering even as the barrels glowed faintly beneath the aura reinforcement.

Each burst reshaped the terrain further, the trench deepening, widening, becoming something closer to a scar torn into the land. Only when Sir Garrett deliberately eased his aura mantle did the change become apparent.

The glow along the Gatling gun dimmed, heat surged back into the metal, and the vibration traveling through the frame intensified sharply.

The armor responded instantly, locking his stance and redistributing the recoil, but the strain was unmistakable. This confirmed what Lucen had already suspected.

As long as the aura mantle was maintained, the Gatling gun functioned as they had intended. But the second the aura mantle disappears, that’s when the problem arises.

The overheating of the weapon became apparent. If it were a normal person near the overheating Gatling gun, they would have burned themselves by touching it, but with the armor Sir Garrett was wearing and his superhuman endurance, the heat was nothing much.

It would have been better if the armor had a spatial storage function like the mining cart Durik had.

Unfortunately, rune engraving was not omnipotent, and the number of runes that could be placed on an object was limited. There was also a problem with compatibility; not all functions can be mixed together.

’Still, this is good enough. We have essentially created highly maneuverable tanks. I wonder if the dwarves can make those naval guns something a knight can carry around. Even if it can only fire a few shots, that would still be awesome.’

Lucen could already imagine the battlefield were the knights equipped with the new armor and Gatling Guns charge forward, unleashing heavy firepower upon the enemy.

That would be a sight no one will ever forget. It would be the day this world would understand the power of hot weapons. Lucen will show everyone what it means to have overwhelming firepower.