The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 61

Perfitt's proposed adjustment was so simple that the Romulus officers present looked at each other in bewilderment.

The trenches were widened and deepened—not as tall as a person, but one and a half; not five paces wide, but at least eight paces wide.

A wooden fence was erected on the inner side of the trench, close to the city wall. The top of the fence was sharpened and tilted outward, forming a blind spot that could not be covered by the firing holes on the top of the city wall. This forced the infected to go around the fence after climbing out of the trench in order to approach the city wall.

The firing ports on the city wall are retained, but spearmen are added between the firing ports, thrusting spears at the infected climbing down from the city wall. One spearman is assigned between every two firing ports, and the spear shafts are lengthened to three meters, with the spear tips hardened by quenching.

All gaps in the brickwork at the base of the city wall that could be gripped and climbed by infected individuals were filled and smoothed with gravel and mortar.

Finally, the infantry guns were moved to the top of the city wall, muzzle down, and loaded with iron shot, specifically for bombarding the dense hordes of corpses rushing to the foot of the city wall.

"Are any of these measures mentioned in your standards and regulations?" Perfit asked.

"No," the officer replied truthfully.

"Because your regulations were written for fighting living people." Perfit closed his binoculars and turned to Ludwig. "Have your father send all the available men to dig trenches."

As for the spears and fences, the fortress's carpenters and blacksmiths should still be able to finish them.

If there aren't enough people, even lightly wounded soldiers can be put to work; it's better than lying in the wounded soldiers' camp and getting moldy.

These aren't just icing on the cake; they're crucial to whether this fortress can survive the next wave of zombies.

The Romulus officers remained silent for a long while.

Some people looked down at the gun ports left on the city wall, while others glanced at the trench below the city wall that had already been dug but needed to be dug again according to Perfitt's standards.

Finally, a young second lieutenant engineer broke the silence, speaking in a low voice to his colleague beside him: "This setup is somewhat like an old defensive design I've seen in family castles, specifically used to defend against the charges of heretical mobs hunted by the Church."

There were no flintlock muskets or artillery back then, but the blueprints for those walls and moats are still kept in the castle archives.

Perfit didn't respond to the comment, but after taking a few steps, she paused, turned her head slightly, and said something that sounded more like a soliloquy: "Indeed, it reminds me of those plague eras that ravaged the Old World, turning thousands of villages into deserted quarantine zones, leaving white-robed monks and bird-beaked doctors helpless, burying entire streets of the dead. Just think of it as the Black Death returning."

On her way back to the officers' quarters from the city wall, she had already reorganized the items that needed to be inspected in the next few days into a new order based on the north-south route.

The instruction on the black bread transformation array took place the day after the defense meeting, without any delay, and proceeded immediately afterwards.

After receiving instructions from Perfit, Allen and Morris took out special chalk from their alchemy toolbox, chose a flat stone slab on the fortress playground, and squatted down to begin drawing a magic circle.

This is a large organic matter conversion array, with a structure completely different from the amplification array they drew during their march—the array base is a huge circle with three concentric rings nested inside. Each ring has a different number of nodes, which are connected by arcs to form a complex geometric network.

Allen was responsible for outlining the outer base and concentric rings, while Morris focused on fine-tuning the inner transformation nodes.

Fine beads of sweat quickly appeared on their foreheads, not from exhaustion, but because the scale of this magic circle far exceeded any magic circle they had drawn before—the entire magic circle, when unfolded, had a diameter of nearly several meters, requiring extremely high precision to ensure that the energy transmission at each node was not deviated.

Perfit stood to the side, wrapped in a thick woolen coat, leaning on a cane, occasionally pointing to a certain spot with his finger or gently tracing an arc on the stone pavement with the tip of his cane to indicate that they should adjust their angle.

She didn't do it herself—in her words, "My legs still tremble after standing for a long time, and bending over to draw the array might cause me to fall directly into the eye of the array"—but her eyes never left the array.

The alchemical resources stored in Fort Rose are extremely limited. Allen and Morris don't have much special chalk left in their chalk boxes, so every time they waste a node, it means a loss, and it also means the difficulty of purchasing and replenishing it later.

Fortunately, their hands were steady enough.

When the last stroke was completed, Allen stood up, took two steps back, wiped the chalk dust off his forehead with his sleeve, and checked the magic circle from beginning to end with Morris.

Perfit also walked around the magic circle, using his all-seeing eye to check the energy transmission path of each array pattern segment by segment, and finally stopped at the array eye and nodded.

The Elector ordered all the firewood stored in the fortress warehouses to be moved out—not just a small pile, but all the firewood the fortress had stored for winter heating, piled up like a small mountain on the parade ground.

Instead of activating the magic circle herself, Perfit had an alchemist from Romulus's army stand at the center of the circle while she stood beside him and gave instructions.

The alchemist appeared to be in his early forties, with rough hands and rust marks on his knuckles—he was probably a practical alchemist with a background in armory maintenance. He wasn't very skilled at operating large magic arrays, but his basic skills were solid. Under Perfit's step-by-step guidance, he steadily channeled his mental energy into the array's core.

The red light spread along the array patterns, and the wood piled in the center of the array disintegrated and reassembled in the light. Pieces of gray-skinned black bread took shape from the red light and piled up on the ground at the output end of the array, emitting the smell of burnt flour and wood chips.

The entire transformation process lasted a moment, and when the red light faded, a small mountain of bread had been piled up on the playground.

The soldiers surrounding the parade ground were initially silent, then some pushed forward one step, then another, until the sergeant shouted and they lined up again.

This time, they didn't stare intently at the bread like they had when they camped in the snow before, but the relief on their thin faces was unmistakable—just a few days ago they were counting the remaining paper-packaged ammunition in the ammunition boxes, and now at least they knew they would have something to eat for dinner tonight.

The magic circle was activated several more times, consuming most of the firewood reserves stored in the fortress warehouse.

Perfit supervised the entire process until he was certain that the Romulus alchemist was able to operate the entire conversion process independently. Then he put his cane back on the ground and said to Allen, "Make three copies of the magic circle's blueprints. Leave one for the alchemist at the fortress, give one to the Northern Legion's quartermaster for filing, and keep the other in the Elector's archives."

In case this magic circle is damaged, I won't need to get out of bed and redraw it.

Allen nodded, took out paper and pen from his toolbox, and squatted down next to the magic circle to begin copying it section by section.

The reorganization of the defense line was also carried out simultaneously afterward.

Perfit had Ludwig select two skilled draftsmen from the Grey Knights to draw up the defensive line adjustment plan she dictated into construction drawings, which were then handed over to the Elector's engineering battalion.

The engineers began digging trenches again that very day, sparks flying from their pickaxes hitting the frozen ground in the night.

The blacksmith's furnace was burning red-hot as the craftsmen dismantled spare carriage hoops and broken cannon axles to forge spearheads on the anvil.

The last batch of logs intended for winter heating were taken from the fortress warehouse for the fencing. The carpenters sawed them to the required length and sharpened the tips with an axe.

Some lightly wounded soldiers who were still able to walk were also mobilized. Some were responsible for carrying timber, some for filling the gaps at the base of the city wall with gravel and mortar, and some for distributing newly sharpened spears to the infantrymen who had just been incorporated into the gun formation on the city wall.

As Perfit inspected the city walls, she stood before a newly filled gap in the brickwork, tapping the repaired mortar with her cane to confirm its proper hardness. As she looked up, the midday sun shone on her face, bringing her a long-lost sense of warmth.

She removed her cane from the wall and continued walking.