Chương 141: Post-War Council 2

With the arrangements for the return journey settled, the meeting transitioned into the battle debriefing phase. Li Qinwu opened the floor for everyone to speak freely. Goblin-Spear was the first to speak up: "Boss, our bayonets are too short! They're hardly useful when it comes to close-quarters melee combat with the enemy." Goblin-Spear was complaining about the bayonets being too short.

Indeed, when they were originally made, they had been kept intentionally short to ensure durability—the blades were a mere 15 centimeters long. In addition to killing enemies, weapons were also meant to serve as a psychological deterrent. If the end of a gun barrel sported a gleaming bayonet over 30 centimeters in length, the mere sight of it would strike fear into an enemy's heart—a hesitation that could prove fatal in a life-or-death battle. Furthermore, longer bayonets could effectively spook horses.

Earlier, when the enemy cavalry charged their musket formation, a few horses had managed to slip through, trampling several soldiers to death. If they had been equipped with long bayonets at that time, they might have scared the horses away.

"Once we get back, we can have the factories manufacture a new type of bayonet. What else do you guys have to say?" This time, Goblin-Bow stepped forward and said: "Boss, I noticed that every time I use the big gun to kill an enemy commander, the enemy army collapses into a rout. I think we should equip every company with a big gun and have dedicated marksmen specifically pick off the enemy commanders!"

"Hmm, snipers." Li Qinwu nodded in agreement. Ever since Goblin-Bow got his hands on the heavy rifle, he had been honing his marksmanship daily. Reloading the heavy rifle took a full three minutes, resulting in low combat efficiency. Thus, every time he fired, he had to pick high-value targets; wasting a shot on a regular grunt simply wasn't worth it.

Through repeated kills, he noticed a clear pattern: whenever those figures wearing the finest armor and fancy, colorful cloaks died, the enemy troops in that sector would instantly fall into chaos. He believed this had immense tactical value and should be expanded across the entire army. Li Qinwu readily approved.

"When we return, we'll redesign a dedicated sniper weapon. Going forward, every company will be assigned a sniper, and we will also pool our snipers together to form a sniper company—or even a sniper battalion!" This time, they had captured Earl Fisher. When they caught him, the man was missing a leg. Upon interrogation, they learned that the bastard's leg had been blown off by a single shot from Goblin-Bow.

That single strike directly deprived the human coalition of its top commander, causing their morale and cohesion to collapse. The battlefield had already proven that sniping was a highly effective tactic, so it had to be implemented on a large scale! Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon. After Goblin-Bow finished, another goblin stepped up to speak." Cough... cough... Boss, we have to find a way to increase the number of healing mages in our ranks.

Those human brats are way too weak... cough... casting a single healing spell makes them faint... cough... So many brothers died simply because they couldn't receive timely medical aid. If every squad had a healing mage, those 200-plus brothers wouldn't have died!" The goblin speaking while coughing up blood was Goblin-Mon, the commander of the 3rd Guard Company. Half of his soldiers had perished while engaging the enemy hand-to-hand, while the other half died from a lack of timely medical treatment.

The entire 3rd Guard Company was wiped out, leaving him as a lonely commander with no men left under his command. With his entire company dead and only him remaining, a sharp pang of pain pierced his heart. Most of that pain stemmed from the loss of his power, though there was also a sliver of genuine sorrow mixed in. Goblin-Mon's words plunged Li Qinwu into deep thought. He was now barely at an introductory level in magic himself, having learned Fireball and Waterball.

He knew all too well that learning magic was by no means an easy feat. To learn magic, an individual first needed natural talent. Second, they had to learn the written languages of various races along with a mess of theoretical concepts. Finally, they had to master magical runes to actually apply spells. The difficulty was equivalent to educating an ordinary person into a university graduate. How much family and state resources did it take to cultivate a single university graduate?

Not to mention this was an alternate world with low productivity. Li Qinwu pulled his hand out of the dirt and scratched his itchy scalp.

"Hmm, let's see if we can establish our own magic academy once we get back." Li Qinwu reasoned that if the young apprentices in the Mage Tower could master the Healing Spell, couldn't he train a batch of practical, application-oriented magical talents? Specifically, the kind of application-oriented talents who skipped all the theory and focused purely on learning the Healing Spell and nothing else.

For instance, casting required learning magical runes, and learning magical runes required learning the languages of other races—a long, tedious chain of study. In that case, why bother learning all magical runes? They would only need to learn the specific sequence of magical runes required to cast the Healing Spell, enabling the mages to cast it and nothing more. If members of the Mage Guild ever learned of Li Qinwu's idea, they would undoubtedly hang him up and beat him to a pulp!

Noble magic was profound and vast. If a mage wished to go far, they had to build a solid foundation—a strictly academic approach. Li Qinwu's idea was putting the cart before the horse: ignoring principles, skipping foundations, and rushing straight into learning a specific spell. It was downright corrupting the youth. Mages trained this way would end up just like Doggy-Warlock—able to cast a few spells, but completely clueless as to the principles behind them.

They would likely be stuck with those same few spells for the rest of their lives, with zero prospect for future growth. Afterward, everyone spoke freely, voicing the areas they felt could be improved, while Li Qinwu conducted his own self-reflection. He felt that explosive barrels were extremely useful, but not every soldier possessed his physical strength to hurl a 13-kilogram explosive barrel over 100 meters away.

To enable ordinary soldiers to use explosive barrels, they needed to downsize them into hand grenades. Considering that this world possessed plenty of supernatural creatures, black powder had limited power. If made too small, its explosive yield would certainly fall short, so they had to carefully balance the weight of the grenades. Li Qinwu also wanted to upgrade their firearms.

Considering that the Alliance currently possessed virtually no chemical industry, manufacturing percussion caps was out of the question for now, making fixed ammunition nothing more than a pipe dream. Thus, producing modern rifles was an impossibility. Since chemical advancements were currently off the table, they could only make structural improvements. Rifling needed to be put on the agenda. Combined with conical bullets, they could max out the power of their muskets without even upgrading the propellant.

To mass-produce rifled gun barrels, they needed a power source, which meant they needed steam engines! In the coming period, the Alliance could rapidly boom its population, clear more land for agriculture, and enter a development phase. Developing steam engines would drastically accelerate this growth process, kicking off industrialization—allowing them to crush all enemies using a production capacity hundreds of times greater than any rival faction!