Chapter 154: Scout Warfare, Information Warfare, and Psychological Warfare

Sir Pascal felt his temples throbbing.

Something was wrong.

The allied force under his command might have been a patchwork army assembled from the private troops of several northern knight territories, but they should not have been this fragile. Scouts—the eyes and ears of an army—had somehow become its greatest expendable resource.

“My lord, we can’t keep going like this!” The bearded commander finally broke the silence when Pascal remained quiet for too long. “At this rate, the scout corps will mutiny before we even catch sight of Coldsteel City’s walls! The camp is already in panic. The men are saying the rebels are demons from the Sulfur Abyss, monsters that can’t be killed!”

“What are you panicking for?” Pascal suddenly turned, his sharp gaze sweeping across everyone inside the tent. “A bunch of rabble has frightened you into this state? Where is your pride as soldiers of the kingdom?”

His authority instantly silenced the room, but the fear and unease hanging in the air did not lessen in the slightest.

He recalled the report from the camp guards several hours earlier. Far off on a hillside, they had spotted a mounted squad observing the camp from a distance. The riders had been too far away to make out clearly, but one thing stood out vividly: a black-and-red banner snapping violently in the wind.

Black as its base, blood-red as its sword.

It was a flag he had never seen before, yet the emblem filled him with an inexplicable sense of dread.

At that moment, the tent flap was suddenly thrown open and a tall figure strode inside. It was Frost Wolf Fenrir.

He glanced around at the gloomy crowd and let out a disdainful sneer. “What, scared by a bunch of peasants? Pascal, this is the army you’re so proud of?”

“Lord Fenrir!” one of the officers tried to explain.

But Fenrir gave him no chance. He walked directly to the sand table and looked down at Pascal from above. “Old man, I don’t care what methods you use or how many men die. The march schedule can only move forward, never backward. The Archduke’s patience is limited, and we’re running out of time.”

Reconnaissance was essential, yet they had gone a full two days without receiving a single firsthand report from the southern bank of the Somme River. That entire region had become a pitch-black unknown.

The enemy commander was certainly no mindless brute. Judging from the airtight scout suppression campaign over the past few days, he was meticulous, ruthless, and always one step ahead.

An information blockade.

This was part of his plan. He was hiding something, and through these methods he was sowing fear while disrupting Pascal’s judgment.

Pascal drew a deep breath and forced himself to calm down.

He could not afford to lose control. If he did, this army of nearly ten thousand men would truly be finished.

“Pass down my orders!” His voice was hoarse. “From this moment onward, suspend all scout missions!”

“What?” Everyone froze.

“Recall all light cavalry back to camp. Strengthen perimeter patrols and defensive watch.” He paused briefly, as though making up his mind about something difficult. “And one more thing. Draw men from every infantry regiment. Increase the size of each reconnaissance unit to twenty-five men, and equip them with shields.”

Assign infantry to reconnaissance teams? And in groups of twenty-five? With shields?

This completely violated the most basic principles of scouting: speed and mobility. Such units would be sluggish, conspicuous, and drastically less efficient.

But Pascal no longer cared.

His scouts had already become terrified birds startled by the mere twang of a bowstring. Sending them out again would be no different from ordering them to die. The only thing he could do now was exchange manpower for a pitiful sense of security.

“Just endure for two more days,” he told himself silently. “We still have the advantage in numbers. No matter how strong their scouts are, they can’t assault the camp itself. The advantage is still mine.”

Yet no matter what they tried, they could not break through Coldsteel City’s scouting blockade.

The next two days became pure torment for Pascal’s allied army.

The twenty-five-man reconnaissance teams looked intimidating on paper, but in practice they achieved almost nothing. These hastily assembled units moved slowly, and the coordination between infantry and cavalry was riddled with problems. They were like targets carrying torches through the darkness. Before they could even approach the Somme River, the elusive rebel scouts would already have detected them.

Then came battle after battle.

The scouts of Coldsteel City were like veteran hunters. They never engaged the allied reconnaissance teams head-on. Instead, they exploited their superior mobility, constantly circling the perimeter, harassing them, and firing cold arrows from afar. They always attacked from the most impossible angles with lethal precision, then vanished immediately after striking without lingering for even a second.

The allied reconnaissance teams were battered into confusion, exhausted and disoriented. Most of the time, they could not even catch sight of the enemy before men on their own side had already begun falling in droves.

The casualty numbers kept climbing.

In just two days, the losses suffered by the allied scout forces had reached a horrifying seventy percent.

Inside the camp, priests and alchemists treating the wounded worked without rest. Every tent was filled with agonized groans and despairing screams.

By the dawn of the fourth day, when Pascal once again ordered the scouts to deploy, an unprecedented silence settled over the scouting camp.

Not a single soldier was willing to leave his tent.

Their morale had completely collapsed.

Pascal stood before the scout camp, staring at the tightly shut tents while muffled sobbing drifted from within. His old face was ashen.

“My lord, you can’t force them anymore.” A scout officer knelt before him, pleading desperately. “If this continues, they’ll truly go mad!”

Pascal clenched his fists tightly.

What else could he do?

There was nothing he could do.

At that moment, he felt like a beast trapped inside a cage, possessing immense strength yet unable to unleash it anywhere.

In the end, he could only wave his hand wearily and silently permit the scout corps’ “strike.”

And so the army continued advancing toward the Somme River beneath a strange, oppressive atmosphere.

Without scouts to clear the path ahead, the marching speed of the entire force slowed to less than half its previous pace. The soldiers moved like frightened birds, every step cautious, terrified that deadly arrows might suddenly fly from the roadside grass or that demons of the Somme River might drop from the trees overhead.

Yet strangely enough, they encountered no ambushes along the way.

The terrifying rebel scouts seemed to have vanished overnight. There were no guerrilla attacks, no harassment, no traps.

But that very silence only deepened Pascal’s unease.

He felt like a traveler walking through a pitch-black night without a torch. Every step landed on the unknown, praying that no venomous snakes, savage beasts, or hidden swamps waited ahead. Though it caused no immediate physical harm, the fear of the unknown was far more torturous than open battle.

He was clearly the side with overwhelming numbers and superior equipment, yet somehow he felt trapped in passivity everywhere he turned, frustrated to the extreme.

“My lord, we’ve reached the designated position. We’re now less than twenty-five miles from the northern bank of the Somme River,” a guard reported.

“I understand.” Pascal nodded expressionlessly.

He lifted his gaze southward, as though trying to pierce the mist and see Coldsteel City beyond it.

Once they crossed the Somme River, endless plains awaited them. On open ground, every scheme and trick the enemy possessed would be stripped bare. Against absolute superiority in numbers, he was confident he could crush those arrogant rebels in a decisive conventional battle.

“As long as we cross the Somme River the morning after tomorrow, everything ahead will be open plains. Once we reach there, our numerical advantage can fully unfold. Everything will get better.”

Pascal silently comforted himself with those thoughts.

Suppressing the unease in his heart by force, he began mentally planning the battle that would come after the crossing.

What he did not know was that on the unseen southern bank of the Somme River, a massive “engineering project” was proceeding methodically under Nolan’s command.

And step by step, he was leading his army of nearly ten thousand men directly toward the carefully prepared slaughterhouse known as the Somme River.