The OP Lich is a Returnee, Chapter 205

Chapter 205 – Lessons Learned

To absolutely no one’s surprise, my forces won the first round of the exercise. From start to finish, the attack lasted about three hours. Most of that was my troops marching in formation across the field, with mages primarily shielding the troops and countering enemy magic that tried to turn the approach into hazardous terrain. During that period, the mixed mortal forces managed an exchange rate of just under one hundred of their soldiers for every one of mine that was brought down.

Once my troops actually got to the walls, however, that changed quickly. The disparity in ability between my forces and the mortals they were competing against was simply too great, and the mortal ‘casualties’ skyrocketed. When my troops overwhelmed the command center and raised my flag on the citadel, it was over. Even if there were still a couple thousand ‘enemies’ still alive, in the underground portion of the citadel.

Naturally, the next part of the exercise did not begin immediately. Damage needed to be repaired, ammunition needed to be replaced, and so on. Also, while my troops were perfectly fine, and ready to go on, once they had their supplies topped off, the mortals were, well, mortal, and would need some time to rest and recover. So, the second stage happened the next day.

Once again, to no one’s surprise, my troops won the day. With siege weapons in position, and the line troops helping to funnel mana into the citadel’s shields while the mages focused on area attacks and other assaults, the battle was brutal. The mortals suffered 35% casualties by the time they got to the citadel walls, but the killing grounds inside meant that only about 1% of their starting number managed to retreat. My forces had taken just under one hundred casualties. In other words, I lost fewer soldiers than the mortals were able to save from the slaughter.

Still, the only reason they were able to really storm the walls at all was because the constant rain of mortars and artillery had forced my people to concentrate more on shields, and less on returning fire, especially as the troops got closer. Compared to my own troops’ performance the day before, where they won despite the siege weapons not performing, and it was clear both sides had room for improvement. Which is part of why I had agreed to the exercise in the first place. My troops were battle hardened, but I had been in enough battles to know that what had once worked might not work if conditions change radically enough. And this exercise proved that beyond all doubts.

For the mortals, they were going to have to develop better weapons and tactics for a siege. Siege warfare had fallen by the wayside in this world, for the most part. Well, the castle or fort style of siege warfare, at any rate. Modern sieges were about encircling a city, cutting off supplies, and so on. Urban warfare was some of the bloodiest and nastiest fighting a modern army could do.

However, with the change in logistics making air power less effective and slowing the speed of maneuver warfare, static fortifications had a major role to play once again, beyond hidden bunker complexes dug into a mountain where bombers couldn’t reach them, and they needed to prepare for that. A fort, properly manned and defended, could cut off the flow of supplies through certain corridors, making it necessary for any attacking force to commit to taking the fort before they could press forward into enemy territory, or their supply lines would be under constant threat.

Of course, my troops were more used to that style of warfare, since restricting the flow of troops and supplies was a key part of how war worked on Onearth. However, the two fights had definitely shown that my forces were not invincible. Yes, we won, but the legion had taken ‘losses’ each time, against foes who were nowhere near the legion’s strength. Which meant we had areas we could improve in.

Honestly, I was glad for it. A bit of a wake-up call, in an exercise, where things were still a friendly match, rather than an actual war, was a good thing. It meant we could find what didn’t work, what worked, but not in the way we wanted, and all that, and then fix them before there was a real fight on our hands.

The first thing to address was the ‘casualties’. It wasn’t like my troops hadn’t taken losses during the Long War. At my strongest, I had a million troops under arms, between the Legions and garrison troops. I still had half a million troops, plus another three million ‘civilian’ undead, and I had been raising the dead from each battle as replacement troops for my forces. Of course, during the twenty years of war I had been responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, as I wiped out lands that had once been under the Demon King’s rule. If needed, I could replace any losses to my legions with the dead in this world. In theory.

The problem with that theory was that the mortals of this world were so very, very weak. Sure, they were starting to learn, and to train, but they were still weak, by the standards of the other world. Part of this was because the level someone started at depended, in part, from how strong their parents were. The progeny of parents who had at least achieved the Journeyman stage of their training would have a slightly higher base point than their parents did before they began training. Over generations, that base point could rise significantly, compared to the commoners, which is why things like ‘old magic families’ were around. The child of two Master-level mages, who, themselves, were the children of Master-level mages, and so on? Their base strength would be far beyond a normal person, even before they became an Apprentice.

The quality of the corpse affected the quality of the undead created from it. This was just common sense. While undead I created personally would get a massive boost in power because of my own power, using corpses of a suitable power level before my own power got added to things made everything better. Or at least easier to handle.

It was the same problem you had with elite mortal military units. You couldn’t just take a veteran special forces operator, and replace them with a fresh-faced recruit just out of boot camp, no matter how impressive their pedigree. They would not be strong enough to work at the same level as their team, and would become a weak link. And weak links were vulnerabilities that a military force could ill afford.

This meant that any individuals I lost from the legions I brought from Onearth would be literally irreplaceable until a few generations went by. Until then, any new undead I created from the enemies I killed would need to be put in new legions, to keep them from dragging down the existing ones. So far, I hadn’t encountered anyone who could even lay a scratch on my soldiers, so it wasn’t too much of a worry, but this exercise had proven that the mortals were catching up, at least enough that I needed to start concerning myself with the costs of my actions.

Next to me in the Legion command tent, Legate Tybost was going over weapon designs. One of the other lessons we learned was that our current man-portable siege weapons were ill-suited to taking on forts like the citadel we’d been besieging.  To put it simply, the scorpions were too powerful. They punched through the gate and walls like a charm, but because they were focused on penetration, rather than striking, the projectiles went straight through obstacles, hitting anyone and anything behind the barriers. Good for killing enemies through a barrier, but less good for dealing with the obstacle itself.

This had not been a problem in the other world. Higher-quality materials, wards, mana barriers… there were plenty of defenses on fortifications in the other world that helped keep projectiles from harming those inside. So, the projectiles that would normally shatter the gates instead pierced through so completely that it barely damaged the gate itself, to say nothing of the walls.

The Legate was loathe to decrease the power of the weapons at his disposal, and I was inclined to agree with him. This was not a situation for getting a weaker version of the same weapon, but finding an alternative that would complement, not replace, their current loadout. Replacing a good system with a weaker version would just breed bad habits, but trading a slashing weapon for a bludgeoning one when you went from attacking fleshy humans to stone golems was just common sense.

“My Queen, I think there are three options we should consider for mobile bombardments against fortifications, besides giving the mages free reign. The first would be to have a store of alternative ammunition for the scorpions. Instead of projectiles imbued with ‘piercing’, have some with a blunt head that are imbued with ‘striking’ or ‘explosion’. This would be ineffective against peer-level fortifications, but for less powerful opposition? They should be effective.”

“I understand your reasoning, but I am uncomfortable with the base assumption that we would be facing foes who are categorically less powerful than we will. It breeds bad habits in a force that is slow to change by nature. And it encourages arrogance, which can blind you to threats. The humans have already proven that they can inflict losses upon us. Not at parity to their own losses, but it is still worth mentioning. Until the current stock of mortals rises higher, we cannot easily replace any of our troops who fall with new undead of a similar quality.”

“A fair point, your Majesty,” Tybost nodded. “And one I had not considered, as I was thinking primarily of my own Legion, not the Legions as a whole. In that case, I would suggest we adopt some of the humans’ weapons, modified to fit our needs. I believe that the mortars, rocket-propelled grenades, and artillery would all make excellent additions to our forces. Especially if we used dimensional storage for ammunition, and undead beasts to haul the siege weapons around.”

“Yes, but you remember how the experiment with the undead trebuchet platforms went, when we were crossing the Hilothron River in Greyflood. You can’t have the platforms be too heavy, or they start sinking in mud, and if they are too tall, the center of gravity threatens to throw them over, especially when firing.”

“Naturally. But I was thinking more along the line of what the mortals call ‘howitzers’. They are capable of firing at low angles for devastating strikes, and at high angles, for indirect fire. Properly enchanted, the weapons would be devastatingly effective, especially if the platforms we mounted on them were capable of rotating, like the emplacements for siege weapons at our forts do.”

“Yes, I can see that. We would need time to train the crews on their function, and drill until they got to acceptable levels of accuracy and speed, but this is definitely something that we could use. Especially if we incorporated the spellgun technology that we have developed, to give the weapon extra options.”

“I had the same thought, your Majesty. Also, if we incorporated the spellguns into the ‘bazooka’ or ‘rocket-propelled grenade’ launchers, that would give us man-portable options, for use on ground where artillery’s size and weight would be a weakness, rather than a benefit. Or for times when a team needs to move with stealth, and destroy a protected target before the main assault begins.”

“I am always glad to have more arrows in my quiver. Very well. We’ll talk with Phantomline and see what contractors are creating howitzers and bazookas so that we can adapt them to our forces. Then, we’ll just need to find someplace to train until the crews can reliably perform as the Lich Queen expects them to.”