Lord of Winter: Beginning with Daily Intelligence

That was a true meat grinder.

“A hundred ships… nearly a hundred ships…”

Miller’s teeth were chattering, making a rattling sound.

He saw a two-masted ship crawling with Fishmen attempting to flank, only to be blasted in half by a broadside cannon and subsequently rammed and sunk by an approaching steel battleship.

Floating debris and limbs were everywhere on the sea, while those twelve black smoke columns remained straight and indifferent.

They didn’t even pause for the slaughter.

They merely passed by, crushing anything in their way, then kept moving forward.

An unprecedented chill shot up from his tailbone to his skull, leaving Miller slumped against the broken mast.

Earlier, he thought those flesh-eating Fishmen were monsters.

But now he understood that compared to those beasts who only knew how to tear at flesh, these cold machines that ground everything into powder… were even more terrifying.

Before Miller could finish inhaling, that desolate horn blared.

His pupils, which had widened in shock, instantly shrank to the size of pinpoints.

The telescope nearly slipped out of his hands.

……

A horn sounded from deep within the fog.

The sound was muffled, carrying a damp tremor, as if played directly from underwater.

It even pierced through the roar of steam engines, making each steel plate on the deck resonate slightly.

Cole’s eyes tightened slightly.

Those dozens of broken ships blown to smithereens earlier were just a layer, meant to feed the cannons and consume the barrel heat—cannon fodder.

Now comes the main course.

The waves were violently torn apart as three massive shadows broke through the mist, carrying an overwhelming stench and oppressive aura, they pushed into the battlefield.

They could no longer be called ships.

They were monsters sewn together forcibly, combining ancient shipbuilding techniques with deep-sea flesh.

The largest one charged forward, absurdly big—it was the Tyrant.

Its freeboard was even higher than that of the Red Flame, with the original ship hull enveloped by heavy gray-white rocks.

And now, the crevices between the rocks were filled not with mortar, but countless writhing deep-sea soft-bodied creatures.

They served as a living adhesive, firmly attaching the rock armor to the ship’s hull.

The steel ram at the ship’s head was engraved with earth-element runes, while the base was surrounded by coiling thick tentacles, rhythmically pulsing.

“Concentrate fire on that big guy.” Cole’s command was calm, even tinged with a bit of disdain.

Twelve hunter-class frigates quickly adjusted their cannons, delivering a broadside salvo.

Boom! Boom!

High explosive shells hit the bow, erupting into orange-red fireballs.

Debris flew, and the layer of living rock armor was pocked with craters, slime and blue blood splattered everywhere.

But it didn’t stop; the runes on the rock armor and those soft-bodied creatures simultaneously exerted force, bluntly absorbing the energy of the explosions.

It advanced like a thick-skinned deep-sea rhinoceros, pressing forward step by step under the fire.

Next, the second ship slid out close to the water’s surface, its sleek black hull coated with light-absorbing grease.

That was the Shadow Serpent, and just as the shells aimed at it, black ink clouds burst out all around it, the hull twisting bizarrely, allowing the shells to narrowly pass and dive into the sea.

When the third ship emerged, the stench in the air became overpowering.

The sails were stitched together from human and fish skin, and the mast hung with dried human heads and giant fish gills.

Hundreds of totem poles lit up on the deck, each pole topped by a kneeling mutated Fishman Priest, their mouths agape in a silent scream.

The Death Whisper unleashed a psychic assault across the sea.

The Red Tide sailors felt a stabbing pain in their minds, but the rigorous daily discipline training took effect.

No one kneeled to beg for mercy; they just gritted their teeth, staring down the sights and continued loading.

“The distance is too close.” Cole furrowed his brow slightly as he glanced at the approaching ram, “Full speed reverse, open up a firing window.”

The command was given, but the steel giant did not nimbly retreat as usual.

The ship jolted violently with a muffled growl.

That was the transmission shaft wailing at the brink of overload.

“Sir! We can’t increase the rpm!”

The chief engineer’s voice shouted from the voice tube, accompanied by the background roar of the boilers, “There’s clutter beneath us! They’re jamming our propeller!”

Under the water, thousands of grotesque deep-diving Fishmen were frantically wedging themselves into the propeller.

Covered in thick anti-inflammatory mucus, they braved leaking alchemical petroleum, using their bodies, bones, and the corpses of their comrades to clog the spinning blades layer by layer.

Crunch—!

The grating sound of grinding flesh was incessant.

The steel propeller kept turning, mincing the drawn-in flesh into pulp, but the layer of pulp was too thick, too viscous.

Hundreds of corpses wedged between the bearings and blades, forming a high-density flesh brake pad.

The steam engine’s torque remained powerful, yet this resistance severely impacted the warship’s maneuverability.

The previously agile hunter-class became sluggish, like a giant with legs laden with blood-sucking leeches.

The shadow of the Tyrant had already overshadowed the bridge of the Red Flame.

The ram, strong enough to shatter city walls, was aimed at the starboard of the Red Flame, slowly closing the gap.

“Trying to drag us into a muddy brawl…”

Cole glanced irritably at the blood-stained sea and the grotesque rock warship.

Though mobility was impaired, his turret could still turn, and his boiler hadn’t blown.

The warship of the Red Tide wouldn’t sink because of such an obstacle, only feeling disgraced by letting this filth get close.

“Since you’re so keen on sticking close, let’s oblige you.” Cole tidied his collar, turned to the signalman, “The hound is bitten, let the hammer fall, overturn this table completely.”