King Collin I, King of the Southern Dominion, had made his declaration, shattering the Empire's political structure, but translating ambition into stable power proved immediately and brutally difficult. Emperor Alaric, despite his deeply unsettling fear of the Western 'sorcerer,' was no fool. He had immediately diverted the bulk of his standing legions, including the formidable Imperial Earth Mages and the famed Mythril-clad heavy cavalry, south to crush the rebellion before it could consolidate. The Imperial response was rapid, organized, and overwhelmingly conventional, putting immense, predictable pressure on the newly declared Southern Kingdom.
Collin's first week as king was a desperate fight for legitimacy, and the battles were defined by bloody, traditional warfare. His armies, while large and well-provisioned from his accumulated ducal wealth, were still organized under the predictable feudal doctrines they had known for centuries. They were highly effective at holding fortified castles and engaging in ceremonial, set-piece field battles, but they were decisively no match for the rapid, disciplined maneuvers of the veteran Imperial legions. The battles were conventional but devastatingly effective for the Emperor. Imperial Earth Mages, operating under central command, decimated Collin's vital supply lines by causing controlled landslides across mountain passes and, in one disastrous engagement, swallowing up entire Mythril-clad cavalry formations into sudden, deep fissures in the ground. The Imperial general, operating with the mandate to secure the South at any cost, showed no mercy, ordering the immediate execution of any noble who had sworn allegiance to Dunbar, sowing terror and doubt among the Southern vassals.
Collin's forces suffered a massive, demoralizing defeat at the strategic River Cynos crossing, a battle where the Imperial army simply outflanked and outmaneuvered the newly crowned King's predictable, line-based formation. The cost was staggering: thousands of Southern footmen were lost, and key southern nobles began to waiver, their loyalty strained by the Emperor's swift, uncompromising conventional response. The rebellion was not collapsing, but it was being choked by superior Imperial generalship and the methodical application of established magical power. Collin realized his initial gamble had bought him chaos, not genuine control. He was now locked in a massive, costly, traditional war, diverting the Empire's attention perfectly, but at immense personal risk, consuming the precious resources he needed to cement his new kingdom.
While the South burned in the predictable chaos of conventional warfare and magic, Maximilian was focused on creating the unpredictable. He viewed Dunbar's struggle as proof that even massive, well-organized armies could be neutralized if the right shock weapon was introduced—a weapon that defied the simple physics that governed their battles. The MSW-1 (Maximilian Shockwave Weapon-1), codenamed Classified Project 005 within Valum's deepest R&D bunkers, was the physical manifestation of Max's need for an absolute deterrent—a weapon that would make the rapid fire of the MG 42 look like a flintlock pistol. This weapon was the ultimate, volatile fusion of Max's advanced scientific knowledge and the raw, untamed magical elements of this world.
The MSW-1 consisted of a massive, robust steel barrel, two feet wide and five feet tall, designed not to fire a projectile, but to withstand immense, contained internal pressure. It was, in essence, a sealed chamber of death. Inside this chamber were six carefully engineered copper canisters, each filled with a hyper-volatile component: nitroglycerin (a potent, shattering chemical explosive), liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen (volatile cryogenic fuels Max's new oil fields allowed him to manufacture), highly compressed black powder (the initial chemical trigger), refined petroleum (to feed the subsequent thermal combustion wave), and, most uniquely, liquid mana (a concentrated form of ambient energy used to amplify and stabilize the destructive release).
The core operational technology of the MSW-1 was an evolution of the apparatus Max had created for airship stability—the liquid mana vacuum. In this weapon, the apparatus was used to suck in and displace air at an alarming, almost instantaneous rate, creating a powerful, localized vacuum inside the barrel. Once the vacuum was sealed and the oxygen level critically low, a series of intricately carved lightning runes lining the interior of the barrel rapidly heated the remaining compressed air in the chamber to an astronomical temperature. This process instantly converted the dense, superheated air into a burst of plasma. The resulting internal pressure from the plasma instantaneously and simultaneously ruptured the six copper canisters, triggering a devastating, cascading, multi-stage explosion designed for total annihilation.
The weapon was tested three days later at Valum's most remote and secure weapons testing site, a desolate, barren valley far beyond the surveillance of any Imperial Scrying Mage. Max, Elias, and the core engineering team watched from a heavily reinforced concrete bunker a mile away. The MSW-1 was positioned near a full-scale mock-up of an Imperial fortress section—a section built with five feet of packed stone and earth.
The ignition sequence was unnervingly silent at first. The apparatus hummed with focused mana, drawing in air with an unnatural, sickening speed. Then came the rupture—a sharp, cracking sound that signaled the destruction of the canisters. This was immediately followed by a terrifying, prolonged BOOM, a sound that deafened the valley and echoed across the mountains.
The initial blast—fueled by the combined chemical energy of the nitroglycerin and black powder—was massive, but it was the secondary shockwave that stunned the observers. The released hydrogen, oxygen, and refined petroleum instantly vaporized into an aerosolized cloud that violently ignited, creating a sustained, monstrous thermobaric explosion that consumed all available oxygen in its blast radius. The resulting concussion wave was monstrous, far outstripping the localized damage of any simple black powder charge.
When the thick dust and smoke eventually settled, the reinforced stone wall was not merely damaged; it was pulverized. The blast had not only shattered the stone but had left a huge, concave burn mark, indicating an overwhelming, instantaneous temperature spike. Most unsettling was the complete devastation within a quarter-mile radius: the terrifying, invisible pressure wave had instantly and completely crushed and flattened every standing structure and tree, leaving a sterile, terrifying void where the very air seemed to have been violently sucked away and consumed.
Max lowered his binoculars, his face pale with a mixture of terror and dawning, absolute certainty. The MSW-1 was not a siege weapon; it was an absolute area denial weapon. It proved that the combination of his advanced chemistry, physics, and the raw, explosive power of this world's mana could produce a weapon capable of wiping out entire battlefield formations or breaching any known fortress in a single, devastating blast. Project 005 was a success, and Max now held the single most powerful weapon in the world—a final, terrifying deterrent against any military intervention by the now distracted Imperial forces.