When the Saint comes, she does not collect food

More than thirty shield carts advanced slowly, a volley of lead bullets striking the rawhide-covered hardwood, causing the guards' hands to tingle with numbness.

The tearing sound of lead hitting the rivets made them tremble with each impact.

Occasionally, they would peer through the small gaps of light in the shield carts.

Not far ahead, spears, glaives, and poleaxes rose like a dense forest.

The charcoal-black half-armor formed a continuous wall, and dark blue banners fluttered uniformly from their kettle helms.

Armor plates scraped against each other, clanging rhythmically with each step.

Their strides were uniform, their pace consistent, with drummers on either side beating a cadence, each step of the soldiers falling precisely on the drumbeat.

Most importantly, their advance was rapid, barely needing to halt to reform their lines, covering nearly 50 meters in a minute.

In contrast, the Gravel Plains army had advanced less than 40 meters.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid, the shield carts are protecting us," the sergeant encouraged, though his words lacked conviction as he clutched a bullet wound in his shoulder.

However, their overwhelming momentum was like a collapsing mountain, and the cart-pushing guards swallowed hard, suddenly feeling as if there wasn't enough air to breathe.

"Order the musketeers forward," Andrei commanded as the distance between the two forces closed to 150 meters.

Whistle blasts sounded, and the centurions used their halberds to press the musketeers forward.

"First five-hundred-man unit, two steps apart, advance at a quick pace! First five-hundred-man unit, one-five!"

"Third five-hundred-man unit..."

At the centurions' commands, two hundred musketeers, armed with light repeating rifles, accelerated forward from the front corners of the large formation.

They wore black-gray padded jackets, simple breastplates and helmets, and red armbands to signify their status.

Urged on by more urgent whistles and commands, they gradually broke away from the main formation, advancing almost at a run towards the shield carts.

In the current Moliaty military system, a full Galar line formation reform had not been implemented.

The main reason was a lack of Holy Musketeers, so Moliaty's battle groups were a combination of the Dunghill Square and the Galar Line.

Simply put, it consisted of 50 men in a horizontal row and 40 men in a vertical column, with a 10x10 musketeer square at each of the four corners.

Currently, a five-hundred-man infantry regiment in the Moliaty army consisted of one hundred musketeers and four hundred melee soldiers.

Five infantry regiments formed a complete Galar Square, leaving 100 musketeers free.

These 100 musketeers were known as the Detached Musketeers, operating independently of the square formation.

Either Moliaty would take them to cover the cavalry, or they would act as skirmishers firing freely, or they would serve as corner musketeers for mercenary formations.

Many of the Holy Musketeers were non-Holy-Blessed musketeers from Black Serpent Bay, and the repeating rifles they used also differed from the Cannity rifles.

These repeating rifles were designed and modified by the gunsmith Thomp, incorporating alchemical reaction vessel technology to reduce mana leakage.

This allowed non-Holy-Blessed mages to use them.

To commemorate the gunsmith's invention and innovation, Moliaty directly named the light repeating rifle the Thomp Rifle.

It required fewer twists to prime, had a shorter barrel, and a lighter body.

Correspondingly, its power and range were not as good as the Ampere Rifle or the Cannity Rifle, which were heavy repeating rifles.

The latter could penetrate armor at 90 or even 120 meters, while the Thomp Rifle could only penetrate armor at 70 meters and could only fire a maximum of two volleys.

Currently, the main firearms of the Thousand River Valley musketeers were the light repeating Thomp Rifle, the heavy repeating Cannity Rifle, and the heavy spiral rifle Ampere Rifle.

About 40 meters was the range at which the Thomp Rifle could penetrate the shield carts.

Stepping on the invisible distance line, a total of eight small musketeer squares halted.

There were 22 shooting breakdown actions in the drill manual, but on the battlefield, the officer would not shout 22 commands; that was something to be done in recruit training.

"Prepare!"

"Aim!"

"Holy Wind!"

The first row of 10 Holy Musketeers pulled the triggers, and flying lead bullets pierced the rawhide shields, blood flowing from under the wheels.

Although they couldn't see it, the cries of agony and the halted shield carts were visible to the naked eye.

"Second row forward!"

Since they were facing infantry, the centurions did not use the kneeling-and-standing firing formation according to the drill manual, but a simple retreating firing formation.

The commands were sharp, and the military boots hit the ground.

The first row turned left in unison, the horizontal line transformed into a vertical line, and one side of the small musketeer square moved to the rear.

At the moment when they turned their backs to the enemy, the second row of musketeers raised their repeating rifles in unison.

The eight small musketeer squares writhed like intertwined snake coils, and each time they spat out their tongues, there was a chorus of wails in the Gravel Plains army.

Seeming to feel that it wasn't enough, Andrei pondered for a moment and simply ordered, "Let the artillery fire two more rounds, leaving one winding mechanism."

"Yes."

The messenger was about to run when Andrei grabbed his arm, "Go urge those engineers again, why hasn't the winding machine been installed yet!"

The dark muzzles of the cannons turned, and the artillery officer pulled out the interpolation table, "Direct fire, inclination 1, take aim."

Almost 10 seconds later, water vapor rose from the astrologer's head, and blood flowed from his nose.

"Astrologer, take aim!"

"Inclination, twist the inclination again."

"Are you sure?"

"Accurate, brother, accurate."

Meeting the astrologer's firm gaze, the artillery officer paused for a moment, then turned and roared, "Twist the inclination a little bit more, don't twist it too much."

In the blink of an eye, 4 Sand Sculpture Cannons and 12 Falcon Cannons roared again in succession at a distance of a hundred meters,

The whistling sound of the air being torn apart made many guards immediately hug their heads and squat down, not even daring to look up.

The sound of wood splintering, the sound of rawhide bursting, the sound of rivets being knocked out and hitting the rocks.

Unfortunately, four grapefruit-sized projectiles streaked through the air, two flew off course, and one fell into the pool, splashing a pillar of water.

Only one, however, accurately hit a shield cart.

The wheel hub burst out with thousands of fragments, and the shield cart tilted backward and overturned amidst the loud noise.

It was a pity that this shield cart was originally abandoned, and there were no casualties.

The sergeant who had been encouraging morale earlier quickly laughed deliberately, "Hahaha, see, the Holy Father is all..."

The soldiers didn't hear what the Holy Father was doing, but they saw the sergeant freeze in place.

The only cannonball that hit did not die down like other cannonballs.

Due to the peculiar angle of incidence and wind resistance, the shield cart overturned and tilted, but it aimed the inclined plane at the formation behind it.

Like a handstand relay, it precisely shot the 9-centimeter-diameter cast iron cannonball into the formation behind it.

The soldiers in the formation looked up, watching the meteor-like black shadow fly over, and the blankness on their faces turned into horror as if in slow motion.

"Ah, I—" The unlucky guy in the front row didn't even finish his sentence and became the first lucky one to catch a cannonball with his face.

The helmet shattered, and brain matter dripped, wrapped in purplish-red blood vessels and hot skull fragments, onto the faces of the soldiers behind him.

The cannonball spun and jumped in the crowd, and severed limbs and internal organs were scattered all over the ground.

Splashes of mud and grass leaves slammed onto the soldiers' faces, but they didn't dare to turn their heads to look.

They couldn't even tell whether what was on their faces was mud or minced meat.

Only the corner of their eyes could see red blood smeared on the green ground, and the bodies with their spines twisted backward staring blankly.

Due to the musketeers' advance and the artillery's thunderous strikes, the cart-pushing guards finally couldn't take it anymore.

Regardless of the sergeants' threats and whips, the guards refused to move forward.

Seeing this, the sergeants had no choice but to order a retreat to prevent the shield carts from blocking the road.

The remaining thirty shield carts moved to the flanks, giving way to the two rows of eight staggered large squares behind them.

The Gravel Plains' large squares, six in front and two in the rear, finally began to face the Thousand River Valley's large squares, which were arranged in a single row at an angle.