Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

Chapter 1 The Last Swordsmanship Competition

Empire Year 557 [26 years after Richard IV withdrew his troops]

The Federated Provinces Republic [formerly known as the Republic before the Mountains]

Guidao City

It was a midsummer afternoon, with not a cloud in the sky. The scorching sun turned the entire city into a steaming cage, draining all living beings of their vitality. Even the annoying cicadas had ceased their chatter.

"Just a bit longer and victory will be ours," Winters told himself. He was in the third year at the Army Officers' Academy, biting his lips and desperately trying to resist the urge to breathe through his mouth.

[Winters Montagne]

He tried his best to maintain abdominal breathing, consciously controlling the rhythm, ensuring each breath was as prolonged as possible. Air, heated by his body temperature, streamed out from his nostrils and hit the inner wall of the full-coverage helmet, bringing back a fetid whiff of sweat when it bounced back.

In the current temperature, it should be time for a bath and some relaxation under the shade. Yet, in this oppressive heat that could make one sweat just by sitting still, Winters was completely wrapped up.

He was wearing an entire set of cotton martial attire close to his body, over which he donned a set of training armor. The armor he was using was cavalry armor stripped from the bodies of nobility over thirty years ago during the Sovereign War.

The Army Department hoped to save as much as possible on teaching expenses, so the cadets had no choice but to use these second-hand goods.

The armor Winters was using, of course, wasn't the high-ranking nobles' armors — the ornate, luxurious pieces were taken home by generals as decorations. Instead, the cadets used the armor of knights who had actually fought on the frontlines,

These lower-ranking nobles had sold their ancestral properties for warhorses and armor, carrying the lances and treasured swords passed down in their families and following their liege lords to Forthland in the hope of fortune, believing their enemies to be nothing more than traders, farmers, and craftsmen.

But in the end, it was the traders, farmers, and craftsmen who had the last laugh, leaving the knights buried in foreign lands. Nobody remembered who they were, leaving only suit after suit of armor, pocked with bullet holes and scratches, as evidence that they once existed.

These armors were modest in appearance, without much adornment, but were constructed of sturdy materials, for they were a matter of life and death for their wearers. The Army Ordnance Department removed all the components below the armor skirt and repurposed them as brand new leg armors, which were then redistributed to the Cavalry Division.

They then took a batch of left shoulder armors from other captured armors and replaced the original right shoulder armors of these ones — because these armors had a gap under the right armpit to facilitate handling the lance, and the Ordnance Department did not want to go to the trouble of forging a new set of right shoulder armors. "After all, shoulder armors don't differentiate between front and back, right?"

Later on, the Ordnance Department registered this batch of second-hand assembled goods as "new premium three-quarter armors" and sent them to the Army Officers' Academy for the cadets' use, and many armors with bullet hole damage were not even repaired.

However, a few bullet holes weren't a significant issue, as the cadets wouldn't be wearing this armor on the battlefield. What tormented the cadets wasn't these bullet holes, nor the weight of the armors, but the excellent heat conductivity of the iron armor.

In the winter, it rapidly stole away your body heat, while in the summer, it efficiently transferred the external heat to the inside of the armor.

Right now, Winters was soaked as if he had just taken a bath, the cotton martial garments beneath his iron armor drenched in sweat and clinging to his back. Sweat trickled down his forehead, occasionally getting into his eyes, stinging them painfully. With his helmet on, he could not rub his eyes and had to endure the discomfort.

Every time he donned the training armor, older than himself, during summer, Winters sincerely thanked the Ordnance Department for not patching up the holes, as at least that allowed for slightly better ventilation.

In fact, during swordsmanship lessons, armors with more holes were always in high demand among the cadets. The officer responsible for handling these armors twenty years ago probably never imagined that his laziness could turn out to be a blessing in disguise.

These armors had been continuously used from the day the Army Officers' Academy was established till today, over twenty years, and they would continue to torment Winters' juniors far into the foreseeable future.

But at the moment, Winters had no spare concern to pity his juniors. What he yearned for was to strip off this encumbrance and sit on a stone bench at the side of the field, drinking cool water.

After more than thirty rounds of sparring, all he felt was that the muscles around his shoulders were blazing hot, like red-hot iron, and as rigid as a rusty door hinge that hadn't been oiled for decades.

Winters' upper arm muscles were involuntarily causing his entire arm to tremble, and his hands were almost unable to hold onto the hilt of his sword — that's right, this sword in his hands was exactly the reason why he had to wear a full set of iron armor in the blazing summer heat.

Just as dogs all originated from wolves and are classified in biology as a subspecies of domestic dogs, with such morphological variations that one might question, "Are they really capable of interbreeding?" so too has the sword seen a similarly vast divergence.

Over the millennia, in conjunction with changes in tactics, techniques, and metallurgy, the category of swords has branched out into hundreds of thousands of distinct subspecies, all varied in shape. The sword that Winters held was one of the younger breeds, mentioned in the last few pages of the family tree, so to speak.

This sword had a total length of 1.3 meters, which can be described another way: for an adult human male standing 1.8 meters tall, when he rests the sword tip on the ground, the pommel at the balance end of the sword is about four fingers below his armpit.