Reborn as a Hated Noble Family, We Start an Industrial Revolution-Chapter 118: Echoes of Doomsday on the Coast

Chapter 118: Chapter 118: Echoes of Doomsday on the Coast

​The world along the Northveil coastline suddenly lost its voice. In the midst of the raging blizzard, an oppressive, deathly silence enveloped the surface of the sea for a few seconds that felt like an eternity. Far in the distance, atop the massive deck of the super-dreadnought The Emperor, two gargantuan barrels known as the Dual-Railguns had reached their energy saturation point. A fierce, electric-blue luminescence thrummed along their electromagnetic rails, creating a visible distortion in the air that caused the surrounding snowflakes to evaporate into glowing plasma in an instant.

​This was not a conventional steam cannon. It was the absolute pinnacle of non-magical kinetic destruction—a testament to the Iron Empire’s cold, industrial perfection.

​"Everyone... GET DOWN!" Lucian’s roar tore through the frontline, but his voice was instantly swallowed by the sharp, terrifying "crack" of an electromagnetic discharge that seemed to split the very atmosphere.

​The shots did not explode in the air; they sliced through it. Two massive tungsten projectiles, each weighing over a ton, lanced forth at Mach 7, creating a sonic boom so powerful it ripped the storm clouds above into tatters. In mere milliseconds, the projectiles struck the primary concrete barricades and the meticulously dug Sudrath trenches in the central sector.

​BOOM—!!!!!!

​The explosion was not a burst of red fire, but a blinding, monochromatic white flash followed by a dome of pure kinetic energy. It didn’t just burn; it disintegrated the molecular structure of the concrete into fine dust. The ground buckled and groaned as if a massive tectonic earthquake had been triggered. The Sudrath soldiers within a hundred-meter radius of the impact points didn’t even have the chance to scream—they were vaporized, transformed into subatomic particles amidst the extreme kinetic heat. The surrounding snow melted in a heartbeat, turning into scalding steam that seared anyone lucky—or unlucky—enough to survive the primary blast.

​The shockwave hurled Lucian’s body backward like a ragdoll. His ears rang with a deafening, high-pitched screech, and fresh blood trickled from his nose as the sudden atmospheric pressure shift threatened to collapse his lungs. As he struggled to open his eyes, the sight that greeted him was a frozen hell. The pride of the Sudrath defense—the "Immovable Trench"—had been transformed into a gargantuan, smoldering crater venting thick, black smoke.

​Lucian rose with agonizing effort, using his longsword as a crutch to steady his trembling frame. All around him, total chaos had taken hold. The surviving Sudrath infantrymen were trying to crawl out of the heaps of snow and debris, their faces caked in soot and frozen blood. But from the sea, the Iron Empire’s landing craft were already vomiting thousands of fresh Junk-Cyborgs and "Breaker" Units back onto the shore.

​"RETREAT! EVERYONE! FALL BACK TO THE NORTH BASTION!" Lucian screamed. His voice was a raspy, jagged sliver of its former self, filled with a suppressed, burning rage.

​He stood there, refusing to budge an inch. Before his very eyes, a young soldier—barely eighteen years old—struggled to reach for his shattered Magitech spear. Before his fingers could touch the shaft, a hydraulic arm of a Breaker Unit descended, pulverizing the boy’s head like a ripe melon. Lucian watched his soldiers being butchered one by one with industrial brutality. Some were skewered by steam-bayonets; others had their torsos cleaved open by the mechanical saw-blades of the tireless machines.

​"Lord Duke! We have to leave now! The line has collapsed!" Thorne ran through the blizzard, his spear slick with a mixture of machine oil and human gore.

​"Let go of me, Thorne! They’re my children! I cannot leave them here to be slaughtered!" Lucian roared, his eyes bloodshot and wide with fury. He fired his Magitech pistol blindly toward the encroaching wall of iron, his bullets sparking harmlessly against the heavy armor of the Breaker Units.

​Riven arrived from the other flank, dragging his mangled shoulder. "Father! Look ahead! If you die here, Northreach falls in a single night! RETREAT!"

​Thorne and Riven acted in unison, forcibly grabbing Lucian’s arms. The old Duke struggled against them, a primal, raw anger radiating from a leader who felt he had failed the very people he swore to protect. But the combined physical strength of Riven and Thorne finally forced Lucian to move backward toward the final evacuation line.

​Behind them, the critically wounded soldiers—those whose legs had been pulverized or whose abdomens had been torn open—screamed out to their able-bodied comrades.

​"GO! LEAVE US HERE!" a veteran sergeant cried out, his arm severed at the elbow. He propped himself up with his remaining hand, clutching a live Magitech core. "DIE WITH SUDRATH HONOR! GO!"

​There was no time for tears, only the cold, hard logic of survival. The soldiers still capable of running offered a brief, final salute before vanishing behind the curtain of steam and snow. Seconds later, the sounds of desperate, final explosions echoed from their positions. It was a bitter sacrifice, but a necessary one to buy seconds for the rest.

​On the other side of the battlefield, Prince Caelus and Ramirez were struggling to push through the thickening wall of snow. Their unit of exile knights had been decimated. The enemy Breaker Units had gone into a frenzy after the Railgun strike obliterated the central command structure.

​"Ramirez! How many do we have left?!" Caelus shouted, his sword cleaving through the optical sensor of a cyborg.

​"Fewer than forty, Prince! We’re being pinched! If we don’t reach the North Bastion in ten minutes, we’ll be buried on this beach!" Ramirez replied, his breathing heavy and labored, hot steam escaping from the gaps in his iron helm.

​Caelus looked toward the sky. There was no violet glow from Raveena—only darkness and the occasional flash of a Railgun strike. "Follow me! Do not let the formation break! We retreat to the North Bastion! The Duke must be there!"

​They ran in a state of near-total blindness. The blizzard had become both their protector and their prison.

​Inside the North Bastion Control Room

​The entire room vibrated violently, dust raining from the cracked ceiling. Operator Ben stood before the coordinate console, his face the color of bleached parchment. Cold sweat soaked through his technical uniform. The telegraph machine beside him continued to emit short, sharp clicks—a grim signal that the communication lines to the shoreline had gone DEAD. The only functioning lines left were to Lucian’s SUV, Sector B Bunker, the Observation Tower, and Ben’s current post.

​"Master Ben! The enemy has entered Slaughter Zone Sector 3! Our forces are still there, retreating through the center!" a technician reported, his voice trembling with terror.

​Ben stared at the tactical map. If he didn’t fire the Grimm’s Roar batteries now, the enemy Breaker Units would overtake Lucian’s retreating forces and slaughter them from behind before they could reach the safety of the fortress gates. But firing now meant he risked hitting his own people in the chaos of the storm.

​"Coordinates... Sector 3... Grid 12 through 15..." Ben’s voice choked. His hands shook violently as he gripped the firing lever for the 400mm artillery.

​"Sir? We need the command!" the technician pressed.

​"FIRE!" Ben screamed, the word coming out as an emotional, hysterical sob. "FIRE NOW! AIM FOR THE REAR POSITIONS OF OUR OWN RETREATING LINES! DO IT NOW!"

​In his heart, Ben was breaking. He knew this command might very well be the death warrant for his own friends. If I survive this night, let them execute me. Let me be punished for this sin, Ben thought, squeezing his eyes shut as the gargantuan cannons shook the entire bastion with their thunderous report.

​BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

​A rain of air-compression shells fell from the sky, creating vacuum vortices and localized air blasts that shattered the ranks of Junk-Cyborgs chasing the Sudrath forces. Ben was essentially firing "blindly," relying on a mad intuition to separate friend from foe in the middle of the whiteout.

​Borch and the Ghost Squad were in an impossible position. They stood on a slick, narrow cliff ledge, with visibility reduced to zero due to the steam from the Railgun blasts and the blizzard.

​"Borch! I can’t see a thing! Our thermal sensors are being fried by the Railgun’s residual heat!" his squad member shouted via the Vibro-Comm.

​Borch took a deep breath, closed his eyes for a second, and then opened them partially. He wasn’t looking with his eyes anymore, but with a honed instinct for the flow of the battlefield. He watched the movement of the steam. The steam produced by the Iron Empire’s engines had a slightly darker gray tint and a distinct sulfuric odor, different from the pure white fog of the blizzard.

​"Target Grid 4. Focus on the darker steam plumes. Fire beneath them," Borch commanded, his voice unnervingly calm.

​Pfft! Pfft! Pfft!

​The Gauss Rifles of the Ghost Squad spat out magnetic slugs silently. Every shot Borch took was a massive speculation, yet one by one, the Breaker Units below collapsed with precision holes in their chest sensors. Borch was concentrating with every fiber of his being, firing into the narrow gap between the lives of his soldiers and the iron of the enemy.

​The Gates of the North Bastion

​Lucian’s forces finally reached the gargantuan steel gates of the North Bastion. Riven and Thorne dragged Lucian inside just as the heavy doors began to groan shut. A few seconds later, Caelus and Ramirez’s group emerged from the darkness, crawling through the closing gap with the last of their strength.

​"Duke!" Caelus collapsed onto his knees, gasping for air.

​Lucian didn’t answer. He stood with his back to them, staring out at the closing gates. In the distance, he could still see the flashes of fire from the rearguard that had stayed behind. His eyes were hollow, devoid of their usual fire. The Duke who had always won, who had always outsmarted his competition, had to swallow the bitter pill of a strategic defeat tonight.

​Offshore, the flagship The Emperor still stood tall and menacing. Rudigor remained on his bridge, watching the destruction from his iron throne. He hadn’t even landed yet; he was simply letting his machines do the dirty work while he waited for the perfect moment to finish off the remnants of the Sudrath klan.

​"Prepare the second-layer defenses," Lucian’s voice was cold, colder than the blizzard outside.

​That night, Northveil burned in the freezing cold. Sudrath had retreated, but they were not finished. They were merely gathering their broken pieces behind the walls of the North Bastion—a fortress that now stood as a silent witness to the failure of their coastal defense.