Steel, Explosives, and Spellcasters

Chapter 8: Chapter 2 What Are Spellcasters?_4

In the war for national independence won by the militia, a large number of officers and soldiers died at the hands of court wizards raised by Richard IV. The mad Richard would cause a bloodbath every time he deployed the court wizards to the battlefield. Moreover, until the Emperor withdrew his troops, the Allied militiamen were never able to capture or kill any court wizard.

Magic combat power in the Gulf Alliance was born after the war ended. After the Emperor withdrew his forces and the Gulf Alliance was established, "Mage without magical talent," army general, and eminent scholar Antoine-Laurent summarized his experiences of facing court wizards in the war and finally discovered how to identify humans with the talent for spellcasting.

General Antoine-Laurent immediately invented a corresponding detection tool, and from that moment on, the Allied Army began to screen for children and adolescents with magical talents within the Alliance territories every year, then using reason, bribery, intimidation, and other means to "convince" the parents of these children to enroll them in the various levels of schools operated by the army.

The seedlings were found, but new problems quickly followed. How to train a child with magical talents into a mage like the court wizards? Everyone in the army was in the dark.

The training system for mages was one of the ruling group's core competencies and a closely guarded secret. There were no external experiences to draw from. It was still General Antoine-Laurent who took the lead in establishing the Army's Magic Warfare Bureau to start groping in the dark. Starting from scratch, they struggled to explore ways to train spellcasters and methods to realize spells.

Today, after 25 years since the establishment of the Magical Warfare Bureau, they have just begun to achieve a little. The Mage Warfare Bureau divided magic into two major disciplines: the School of Spellcraft and the School of Alchemy, and categorized spells into fire-type, acceleration-type, and sound-type, identifying the methods for twelve spells and forming a preliminary "proprietary intellectual property" training system for spellcasters.

Because mages were traditionally synonymous with court wizards, to distinguish them, the military did not use the term mage but referred to their magic wielders as "spellcasters."

In fact, even the Magic Warfare Bureau didn't know if the path they were taking was right or wrong. The military's higher-ups generally believed that although the Magic Warfare Bureau claimed to be training mages, the level of the spellcasters was far inferior to the court wizards they had seen. The intuitive feeling was also a bit different—perhaps standing too close had robbed them of their mystery.

But the Alliance's spellcasters could indeed replicate some of the magical effects they had seen on the battlefield.

As the saying goes, "If you haven't eaten pork, haven't you seen a pig run?"

But now the situation is quite special, as the Allied Army had only been injured by the metaphorical pig; not only had they not eaten the pork, they also hadn't clearly seen how the pig ran.

Although the military didn't know if the path opened by General Antoine-Laurent was right or wrong, based on the simple idea that "having something is better than nothing," they firmly supported the Magic Warfare Bureau to continue moving forward reluctantly.

Winters was one of the spellcasters, identified as having magical talent only after entering the army's junior school. Out of 171 cadets in his cohort, 21 were spellcasters.

This was a quite astonishing ratio; nearly half of the spellcasters in the Gulf Alliance of the same age as Winters were here, while the other half were mainly female and a few males whose physical conditions didn't suit them for officer roles.

All these spellcasters were enrolled in either the infantry or cavalry branches, with no one in the artillery branch (the military academy only offered these three disciplines). This was because one of the design goals of the army's spellcaster training system was to train front-line officers with magical abilities as much as possible.

The late General Antoine-Laurent believed that for a long time to come, the Alliance Country would not be able to train mages of the level of court wizards. Since they could not take the elitist route like feudal countries, they had to win by numbers.

Compared to the cautious approach of Richard IV using mages in war, the Allied military's strategy was to deploy magical combat power to the front lines of the battlefield, training as many officers with magical abilities as possible. However, there were some deviations in the execution of this strategy, which we will not mention here for now.

Winters had assumed that his fellow military academy students would at least have a basic understanding of spellcasters, but even Aike thought he could kill someone with a single spell.

He shook his head and waved his hands to quickly deny, "I'm not, I haven't, don't talk nonsense. I don't like practicing swordsmanship because I'm lazy, don't attribute it to being a spellcaster. And so what if I am? Didn't you just beat me up?"

"But if you used magic, I couldn't beat you," Aike said matter-of-factly.

"How am I supposed to explain this!" Winters covered his face and let out a long sigh.