Building a Viking Empire with Modern Industry-Chapter 263: Wessex Fire

Ragnar stood on the rain-slicked battlements of the Wessex keep, letting the cold drizzle wash over his broad, armored shoulders. He was deeply tired. In his past life back on Earth, he was just a regular, hardworking mechanical engineer. He was a man who loved the predictable safety of blueprints, the hum of factory machinery, and the simple joy of building model trains in his basement on the weekends.

He had lived a quiet, unremarkable life.

His personal goal in this new life was incredibly simple, almost laughably so. Ragnar just wanted a peaceful, quiet life where he could build his steam engines, lay down miles of railroad tracks, and construct his automated factories without getting stabbed by swords or shot by arrows. He wanted to create an industrial utopia where his people never had to starve or freeze during the harsh winters. Unfortunately, the universe had entirely different plans for him.

The Tang Dynasty, whose massive army was currently camped just outside Ragnar’s walls, had mysteriously spawned right next to the vast Arabian deserts. Being highly organized and fiercely expansionist, the Tang had conquered the desert quickly, seizing all their rich, historical grain reserves.

Then, looking for more resources to fuel their massive empire, they had marched north to claim Ragnar’s iron-rich mountains and deep-water coastal docks.

Right now, his loyal men were out in the dark, risking their lives to execute the craziest, most ambitious plan Ragnar had ever come up with.

Ragnar had outlined a completely absurd flawless strategy. The Tang army, led by the famously arrogant General Zhao Feng, had completely surrounded the Wessex keep.

They had occupied the mud plains, cut off the maritime trade routes, and believed they had trapped Ragnar in a slow war of attrition. Their plan was simple: sit back and wait for the Vikings to starve to death. But General Zhao Feng did not know about the heavy industrial assets hidden in the territory.

He was completely oblivious to the narrow-gauge railway Ragnar had built on the northern ridge overlooking the valley.

Ragnar paced the battlements slowly, waiting for the signal. He kept his face completely expressionless, projecting an aura of absolute calm. He knew from experience that leadership was mostly about pretending you were not terrified, which helped keep the local Saxon militia and the Viking warriors from panicking.

Inside his mind, however, he was doing rapid calculations. The entire plan relied entirely on his two closest subordinates: Captain Ulf and Chief Engineer Hakon.

They had to secretly load the heavy field cannons onto the flatbed railcars and drive the massive steam locomotives up to the ridge in the dead of night, all without alerting the Tang sentries. 𝒻𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘸ℯ𝒷𝘯𝘰𝑣ℯ𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝘮

Ragnar thought about his two friends, feeling a deep swell of pride. Hakon was a brilliant, nervous young man who absorbed knowledge like a sponge.

When Ragnar first met him, Hakon was just a simple blacksmith’s apprentice trying to fix a broken plow. Now, under Ragnar’s patient tutelage, Hakon was a master of high-pressure steam boilers and complex gear ratios.

Ulf, on the other hand, was the muscle. He was a massive, scarred Viking warrior who had once believed only in the glory of the axe. Slowly, Ragnar had taught Ulf how to channel his wild aggression into disciplined tactical strikes and artillery formations.

The relationship between the three of them had grown from a typical king-and-subject dynamic into a genuine, unbreakable brotherhood. They had grown through countless challenges, forging a bond in the fires of their new foundries.

Ragnar trusted them with his life. If Hakon and Ulf failed to position the trains tonight, the Wessex keep would starve, and Ragnar’s dream of a peaceful industrial utopia would be crushed under the boots of the Tang infantry.

Down in the courtyard below, Lord Ealdred, the old Saxon noble, was pacing nervously in circles. Ragnar felt a brief pang of pity for the elderly man. Ealdred was used to a world of honorable cavalry charges, simple medieval politics, and predictable sieges.

This new, terrifying era of mass production, logistical warfare, and ruthless efficiency completely baffled and terrified him. Ragnar knew he had to be extremely patient with Ealdred and the other locals.

They were trying to adapt as fast as they could, and Ragnar felt a very strong, personal responsibility to guide them safely through the meat grinder of this brutal new world.

Suddenly, a single, bright green flare shot high up into the dark, rainy night sky from the distant northern ridge. Ragnar stopped pacing. A wide, genuine smile spread across his face. It was the signal. Hakon and Ulf had done it.

They had successfully maneuvered the steam locomotives into position.

Down in the low-lying muddy plains, the Tang army was completely, blissfully unaware of the absolute doom hanging directly over their heads. They had set up a massive, sprawling encampment across the valley floor.

There were tens of thousands of soldiers, thousands of wooden supply wagons overflowing with stolen Middle Eastern wheat, and hundreds of warm campfire tents. The eastern soldiers were resting easily, singing quiet victory songs and sharpening their weapons. They believed completely that the Vikings were trapped, starving, and entirely helpless behind their stone walls.

They were immensely confident in their overwhelming numerical superiority.

"Cover your ears, Lord Ealdred!" Ragnar shouted down to the courtyard.

A split second later, the dark northern ridge erupted in a blinding, terrifying flash of orange and yellow fire.

The booming roar of the heavy artillery echoed across the valley like the angry thunder of the gods. Ragnar had designed these specific cannons himself, spending sleepless nights perfectly calculating the barrel rifling and the explosive yields.

They were loaded with specially designed fragmentation shells, built to burst in the mid-air and rain deadly, jagged iron shrapnel down over a massive area.

Because the trains were elevated high up on the ridge, the heavy guns possessed a perfect, unobstructed firing arc over the entirety of the Tang encampment.

The slaughter began instantaneously. It was not a battle; it was an industrial extermination. The very first volley of high-explosive shells landed dead in the center of the Tang supply train. The resulting explosions were massive and catastrophic.

Wooden wagons shattered into splinters, dirt was thrown fifty feet into the air, and tons of precious wheat instantly caught fire. The Tang soldiers, who had been peacefully sleeping or quietly celebrating just moments before, were completely caught off guard. Panic erupted instantly.

They did not understand what was happening or where the attack was coming from. Desperate officers shouted orders, and soldiers instinctively tried to raise their heavy wooden and iron shields to protect themselves.

But a shield cannot stop high-velocity, hot iron shrapnel raining vertically down from the sky at hundreds of miles per hour.

Standing on the wall, Ragnar felt a grim, heavy sense of satisfaction mixed with a deep, lingering sorrow. He really did not enjoy killing. He hated the loss of human life. He just wanted to be left alone to build his factories and improve his society.

But he had learned the hard way that in this harsh world, showing mercy to a ruthless enemy was the same as inflicting cruelty upon his own people. He watched through the rain as Hakon and Ulf directed the artillery fire with cold, ruthless efficiency.

The heavy steam locomotives provided a perfectly stable platform, allowing the gunners to fire, reload the breeches, and fire again in rapid, endless succession. The Tang camp was systematically, mathematically decimated.

The highly disciplined formations of the Tang infantry were rapidly turned into chaotic screaming mobs.

The relentless explosions lit up the night sky in flashes of hellish light, turning the once-peaceful mud plains into a burning, cratered wasteland.

Implementing the plan that Ragnar had outlined was working with terrifying perfection, eliminating them by the hundreds with every passing minute.

The encirclement from above was absolute and completely inescapable.

General Zhao Feng was an incredibly arrogant man, but he was certainly not an idiot. Standing in the center of the chaos, the General quickly realized that his brilliant static blockade was actually a meticulously designed death trap.

His proud, elite men were being slaughtered by weapons they could not even see, fired from a steep, elevated position they could not possibly reach on foot.

The continuous rain of heavy artillery shells was rapidly breaking their morale and utterly destroying their stolen provisions.

Ragnar watched carefully through his brass telescope as the main Tang command tent collapsed into burning ruins under a direct artillery hit. He honestly expected the entire surviving army to break and surrender, or simply be wiped out in the mud.

But General Zhao Feng proved exactly why he was considered a legendary, feared commander in the Shattered Realms. Instead of panicking or freezing in fear, the General rallied his elite core troops. H

Zhao Feng knew immediately that the siege was lost. The objective had failed. He rapidly organized his men into a massive, heavily armored wedge formation, putting his toughest, shield-bearing vanguard at the absolute front.

To do this, they had to abandon everything. They left behind all their warm tents, their massive stockpiles of stolen Arabian grain, and tragically, their wounded comrades. Survival was now their only priority.

With a unified battle cry that echoed even up to the high Wessex battlements, the remnants of the Tang army charged blindly out of the burning valley. They smashed forcefully through the weak southern perimeter of the mud plains, fleeing directly away from the ridge, entirely avoiding the deadly firing arc of the northern cannons.

They moved incredibly fast, their discipline holding together even as they were absolutely terrified of the thunder raining from the sky.

Ragnar slowly lowered his brass telescope. He was honestly, deeply impressed by the enemy commander’s resolve. Despite the devastating, unexpected surprise attack, General Zhao Feng had somehow managed to salvage a significant portion of his army from total annihilation.

The Tang forces had originally arrived with well over 50,000 men.

Now, looking at the massive, desperate column of retreating troops pouring out of the ruined valley and disappearing into the dense southern forests, Ragnar estimated that approximately 10,000 of them had successfully escaped.

The heavy bombardment slowly ceased as the train gunners ran out of their immediate ammunition reserves, and the ruined valley finally fell into an eerie, smoking, terrifying silence.

Down below, Lord Ealdred was staring out at the completely destroyed, burning Tang camp with his mouth wide open.

He was completely shocked, his mind unable to process the destructive power of Ragnar’s iron machines.

Ragnar took a deep breath of the cold night air. Hakon and Ulf had executed the complex plan flawlessly, proving exactly how much they had grown as military commanders.