The Steam Age: Gears and Bones

Chapter 66

After the envoy left, Perfit spent an entire day re-inspecting every section of the Wild Boar Ridge Fortress's defenses, not as a routine patrol, but with his all-knowing eye and notebook, reassessing the defensive line's carrying capacity section by section.

Standing on the outer wall, she used her binoculars to assess the size and direction of the horde of corpses in the wilderness, inquired about the ammunition depot's inventory, and asked Belfast to help calculate the daily production and depletion rate of the black bread within the fortress.

She even looked through the magic circle diagrams that Allen had already copied down again to confirm the efficiency of the magic circle conversion and the daily consumption of firewood required.

Once all the figures were in her possession, she instructed Belfast to inform Ludwig that she wished to see the Elector.

This was the first time she had proactively requested a private meeting with the Elector since she regained consciousness.

The Elector's command post was located in a stone room at the deepest part of the second floor of the main building of the fortress. A large military map was hanging on the wall, and the edges of the map were riddled with holes from being repeatedly nailed with thumbtacks.

The fireplace in the room was burning brightly, but the Elector was still wearing an old military overcoat, sitting behind the oak table piled with battle reports and supply lists, his gray hair gleaming a dull bronze in the firelight.

His adjutant was gestured to leave after Perfit entered, and closed the door behind him. Only the Elector, Perfit, and Belfast, who stood half a step behind Perfit, remained in the room.

The head maid changed back into her neat maid's gown, but her very presence tipped the safety scales in the room completely toward Perfit.

The Elector had seen her in her steam knight armor during the breakout and knew that this seemingly quiet maid could snap a grown man's neck with her bare hands at any time.

Perfit sat down in the chair opposite the Elector and, without exchanging pleasantries, began to speak.

Her voice still carried a hint of weakness from recovering from a serious illness, but her tone and coherence had fully returned to the level she displayed when chairing the pandemic response meeting in Langton.

Every word she uttered was pre-analyzed, and each inference was accompanied by a corresponding data source, resembling an oral survey report.

"I have reassessed your outer perimeter positions from the outer wall at the northernmost end of the defensive line. In the past week, the frequency of zombie horde attacks has increased from two to three times a day to four to five times a day, and the duration has also been lengthening."

The widening and deepening of the trenches beneath the walls did indeed have the intended effect—I counted hundreds of infected corpses trapped and pierced by spearmen in the western trench, a number that proved the defensive line adjustment was effective.

But at the same time, the impact of those infected is also increasing.

They no longer just surged in sporadically, but began to attack in regular clusters, with each attack concentrating on the same point on the defensive line.

During yesterday evening's assault, three sections of the fence beneath the eastern tower were knocked askew, and engineers worked through the night to barely restore them. This is not a good sign—they are probing, searching for weaknesses in the defenses.

She paused for a moment, took out her notebook from her coat pocket, opened it, and pushed a page toward the Elector.

The page didn't contain text, but rather a series of line graphs hand-drawn in pencil—the horizontal axis represented the dates, and the vertical axis represented the scale of the infected population's impact, with the curve rising sharply in the final days.

Next to the line graph are several sets of numbers, indicating the rate of decline in the fortress's ammunition stockpile and the daily consumption ratio of black bread production.

"If this drags on any longer, both ammunition and fuel will run out before the defenses. The black bread produced by the alchemy array can fill the soldiers' stomachs, but the firewood stored in the fortress warehouse is not unlimited."

And the most critical issue isn't fuel and ammunition—it's that your soldiers have been fighting under high alert for far too long.

Prevention measures can reduce infection rates, but they cannot reduce fatigue.

This morning I saw the soldiers in the wounded soldiers' camp who had just been rotated off the city walls—their fighting spirit was fine, but their physical strength was almost exhausted from the continuous defense of the city.

If another large-scale zombie horde were to occur under these conditions, the casualty rate would skyrocket.

She placed her cane on the ground, adjusted her posture slightly, and leaned her back against the chair.

Her physical strength still couldn't sustain her in one position for long, but she didn't let fatigue affect her speaking speed.

"What I just mentioned is not what worries me the most. Military difficulties can be alleviated with supplies and rotations, and gaps in the defenses can be repaired with engineers and alchemy. What really worries me is the rear." She raised her eyes to look at the Elector. "The epidemic prevention policy has been implemented, and reinforcements have been sent, but the council has yet to make a decision on the wartime system."

You know better than anyone that if Romulus doesn't go into full mobilization and bring industrial capacity, transportation, material distribution, and conscription under military control, the Northern Legion alone can hold off the zombie horde, but it can't withstand the endless wrangling in the rear over the distribution of supplies.

Once the wrangling and stalling of supply lines crumble, it's only a matter of time before the zombie horde breaks through the defenses. At that point, nothing will be of any use.

The Elector listened to her words in silence.

He stared at the line graph on the table for a long time, then slowly drew a line on the curve representing the scale of the zombie horde with his right index finger. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse and low, each word like a rough stone that had been repeatedly polished in his throat: "It's not that the emperor and the council didn't receive our report, but they were unwilling to offend those powerful nobles who had a voice in the rear for a crisis that hadn't even reached their eyebrows yet."

Everything we've done here—reorganizing the remnants, adjusting defenses, implementing epidemic prevention procedures—has indeed brought the messy war we've been fighting under control. But the price of this control is that there will always be an excuse for inaction in the rear.

He stated this conclusion in a completely flat tone, as if he were stating a fact that he had chewed over so many times that he no longer found it bitter.

Just as Perfit was about to respond, the Elector suddenly removed his hands from the table, picked up the military cap lying beside him, and stroked the worn-out eagle emblem on the brim with his fingers.

His fingers were thick, with frostbite scars still visible on his knuckles. He stroked the eagle emblem slowly, as if touching something that had long since vanished.

Then he spoke. His voice was still hoarse but steady, as if he were describing a tactical plan that he had rehearsed many times.

The phrase he used was "let some of the infected people go."

"What did you say?" Perfit's eyes widened in disbelief.