Henry stored his rifle and began to act. As his horse galloped away from the factory, he reached into his space and dropped a 50-pound TNT charge with a 20-second fuse onto the road.
He repeated this every twenty meters, dropping five charges in total along the first eighty meters of the path. One hundred meters out, he dropped a final charge with a 15-second fuse.
As he neared the bend in the road two hundred meters away, he pulled sharply on the reins, then relaxed them, rapidly slowing the horse's momentum. He kicked his feet free from the stirrups, let go of the reins, and leaped from the saddle, tucking into a roll.
Thanks to his LV 4 Horsemanship and his powerful constitution, he came up on his feet completely unscathed. His horse, meanwhile, continued around the bend and vanished behind the hill.
Henry immediately pulled the granite block from his storage. He had just raised his Winchester to his shoulder when the first of the cavalry appeared at the far end of the road. The path was wide enough for six men to charge abreast. They would be on him in ten seconds.
He stood his ground, letting the lead riders open fire on him as he silently counted. After three seconds, just as they crossed the location of his third charge, he began to shoot.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
He fired with the cold precision of a machine, maintaining his steady rhythm of fifteen rounds every nine seconds.
The riders in the rear suddenly saw the explosives on the road. Panic erupted. But a cavalry charge cannot be stopped on a dime. All they could do was pray they could outrun the fuses.
Henry's first five shots dropped the five lead riders. At that moment, the first and sixth TNT charges detonated almost simultaneously, engulfing the front and rear of the charge in a massive fireball.
Four more explosions followed in rapid succession.
A shockwave of two-thousand-degree heat tore down the first 120 meters of the road. Any man or horse within that radius was, at best, grievously wounded.
Not a single rider made it out of the blast zone.
The road was a projection of hell on earth—a ruin of fire, smoke, and shattered flesh. Not a single man or horse was left standing. Henry saw one unlucky soul get blasted clear off the road, his body and horse tumbling down the hundred-foot cliff.
He had run the calculations a dozen times that morning, planning for every contingency. A pursuit like this was just one of them. He hadn't even needed to fire his rifle; the bombs would have been enough. He had learned a thing or two from the tales of Apache warfare. The enemy advances, you retreat. The enemy tires, you strike. He welcomed a pursuit. It gave him the advantage.
Inside the factory, Commander Tom and the manager, Fabio, heard the chain of massive explosions and knew they were in trouble. A moment later, the sound of a single, steady rifle began to ring out, and their hearts sank. If their cavalry had caught the target, the gunfire wouldn't sound like that.
Tom couldn't understand it. From the sentry's alarm to the start of the attack had been less than twenty seconds. How could one man set up such a devastating ambush so quickly?
He had anticipated another attack at the same time and had placed ninety-six cavalrymen in hiding inside the factory. When the sentry had reported a single attacker, he had immediately sent his second-in-command, John, to lead the charge, telling him to take the man alive if possible.
He had waited nearly a minute with no sign of returning riders. He began to shout orders.
"Rocky, get to the residential area and tell Finn to bring every available man over here, now!"
"You ten, go and see what's happened. Watch for an ambush. Report back immediately. Do not pursue the enemy."
The ten guards ran out toward the main road.
Three minutes later, they reached the bend at the top of the slope. Cautiously, they peered around the corner.
Henry had just finished putting a bullet in the last of the survivors. He had also just noticed, with a grim satisfaction, that his progress bar had ticked over. He was now Level 3.
Before he could inspect his new upgrades, he saw the heads of the scouting party peeking around the corner twenty meters below. He had been waiting for them.
Crack! Crack! Crack!
It was like shooting at reactive targets in a gallery. The first five men who had peeked out were shot through the head almost simultaneously.
The other five dropped to the ground in terror. Before they could recover, a small, dark object landed among them. It exploded while still a meter in the air. The high-pressure shockwave ruptured their internal organs, killing them instantly.
Henry walked to the edge of the slope and looked down. Ten mangled bodies, nothing more. The factory gate was still in sight, so he left them for now.
His storage space was now a sphere with a three-meter radius, over 113 cubic meters. He also now understood that the space was not a rigid sphere, but a dynamic void that conformed to the objects within it, giving him almost one hundred percent spatial efficiency.
He figured the factory men wouldn't be sending anyone else out for a while. Still, just in case, he walked a hundred meters back down the road before he began the slow work of looting the cavalrymen, their horses, and their guns, always keeping an eye on the slope above.
Most of the horses were still alive, but with broken legs and internal bleeding. He put them out of their misery.
In the distance, he could hear the sound of more horses from the factory. The reinforcements from the living quarters were arriving.
By the time he had finished, night had fallen. He checked his Patek Philippe. It was just past 8 PM.
He walked to the edge of the cliff and looked down at the factory. It was now lit up like a fortress, with hundreds of guards swarming the grounds. The 500-meter distance was just beyond his rifle's effective range. A direct assault was pointless.