After the old bat's Magical Cooking class finally dismissed, the famished students flooded into the Great Hall.
Kyle had just sat down at the Hufflepuff table when the Weasley twins materialized opposite him like a sudden gust of wind.
"You two look incredibly shifty. What's making you so happy?"
George and Fred exchanged a look.
"We knew we couldn't hide it from you."
"We've been given a mission."
"To be precise, a highly important, glorious mission!"
"Professor Dumbledore has commissioned us."
"To retrofit the stone statue guards in the castle."
Kyle paused for a moment, then it clicked what kind of "retrofitting" the twins were talking about.
Last school year, Tom Riddle had hatched the legendary Hydra and brazenly invaded Hogwarts, an event that had left a profound impact on the school.
Otherwise, programs like military training—which were clearly designed to forge the proto-framework of a wizarding army—would never have passed the Ministry of Magic's approval.
During that battle, the modern weaponry produced by Weasley Industries relegated Professor McGonagall's long-anticipated "McGonagall's Delight Charm" to a total bystander.
Nearly a thousand stone guards had formed a magnificent battle array in front of Hogwarts Castle, only to end up standing in the rear and watching the show from start to finish.
To this day, whenever the subject came up, Professor McGonagall would look thoroughly resentful.
Ever since she became the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts and mastered Piertotum Locomotor—the guard magic unique to Hogwarts—she had been eagerly looking forward to commanding these sentinels to slaughter enemies on the battlefield.
Instead, the spotlight had been completely stolen by the Bane of Fathers.
Having learned her lesson from this painful experience, Professor McGonagall, after much deliberation, made a proposal to Dumbledore.
And that was to modernize and weaponize these stone guards.
Dumbledore, times have changed!
Only by picking up modern weaponry could the stone guards of Hogwarts possess sufficient capability to defend the school!
Thus, this monumental responsibility ultimately fell upon the two big bosses of Weasley Industries.
In Hogwarts—no, in the entire wizarding world—nobody understood weapons better than them.
After listening to the twins' explanation, Kyle rubbed his temples, feeling a massive headache coming on.
What on earth was his old man playing at?
Did he want to stage a Beer Hall Putsch over at the Three Broomsticks in neighboring Hogsmeade, raising the rebel flag to overthrow the Ministry of Magic?
"Even though the two of us know a lot about Muggle firearms..."
"...we don't really understand how Muggles actually fight in a war..."
Hearing this, Kyle understood. "So you want me to explain the Muggle military doctrine and tactical systems to you?"
The twins nodded vigorously.
Retrofitting these stone guards of Hogwarts certainly couldn't be as simple as swapping out their swords, spears, and halberds for weapons of mass destruction.
The stone guards possessed no sentience; they could only fight according to pre-programmed routines.
If they just handed them weapons like that, the most likely outcome would be the statues blindly rushing forward to engage the enemy in melee combat while holding their weapons of mass destruction.
To upgrade their weaponry, the alchemical cores controlling their movements would have to be modified alongside the weapons.
Propping his chin in his hand, Kyle carefully pondered the military tactics he knew.
The first thing that sprang to mind was the famous Three-Three Fire Team Tactics from his past life.
With a squad as the basic unit, it would be divided into three combat groups of three soldiers each. To facilitate mutual support, they were generally arranged in three echelons.
The three-man fire team formed a triangular offensive formation, with each soldier having a clear division of labor: assault, cover, and support.
But after a brief moment of thought, Kyle discarded the idea.
Given the simplistic control cores of the stone guards, implementing such complex tactics was utterly impossible.
Furthermore, this tactic was originally invented to compensate for a lack of individual squad firepower.
As the saying goes: when poor, rely on flanking and infiltration; when rich, employ overwhelming fire saturation.
With the funding the Hogwarts Board of Governors provided to the school every year, as long as Old Dumbledore didn't secretly skim off money to support his Order of the Phoenix, Kyle had absolute confidence that he could build him an army capable of flattening the European Ministries of Magic within three years.
Under such conditions, tactical infiltration was automatically dismissed by Kyle.
Crossing his arms, Kyle flashed an enigmatic smile at the twins. "Have you two ever heard of infantry-tank-artillery coordination?"
Over the course of lunch, Kyle focused on introducing the combined arms tactics of infantry, tanks, and artillery to the twins, along with the various equipment required to pull it off.
Crucially, tanks—the undisputed Kings of Land Warfare—were absolutely indispensable.
The twins were no strangers to these machines, so Kyle only mentioned them in passing before moving on.
Next were the two heavy-hitting dealers of destruction: self-propelled artillery and missile launcher vehicles.
Only at the very end came the infantry legions composed of these stone guards, equipped with individual armaments such as firearms and rocket launchers.
Magically retrofitting Muggle land warfare equipment and embedding control cores made of alchemical arrays would allow them to fight autonomously without human operators...
After listening to Kyle's description, both twins looked as if they had a collective toothache.
"Kyle, have you considered how much money it would cost if we actually went through with what you're saying...?"
"How much would this entire overhaul even cost?"
Kyle waved his hand dismissively. "I've looked at the Hogwarts ledger. The school has plenty of money."
"Besides..." A chilly smile spread across the Little Dark Lord's face. "If funds run short, we can just ask the Board of Governors for more. I'm not worried about them refusing."
Holy hell!
He was treating the Board of Governors like a personal ATM.
Hearing Kyle say that the budget was ample, the twins chose to drop the subject.
"Then what about that 'Air-Land Battle doctrine' you just mentioned? How does that work?" George asked inquisitively.
Kyle pointed above them at the enchanted ceiling of the Great Hall.
"Wars in ancient times were all fought on the ground, you know that, right?"
"But ever since Muggles invented airplanes, warfare shifted from a flat plane to a three-dimensional landscape."
After briefly explaining the concept of Air-Land Battle operations to the twins, Kyle proposed the idea of utilizing Explosive Clay to build an air force.
Their sole purpose in creating this legion was to better defend Hogwarts; they had no need for long-range deployment.
Therefore, attack helicopters would offer overkill performance for their needs.
Not to mention, helicopters were far too expensive to manufacture. As for the tanks, self-propelled artillery, and missile launcher vehicles mentioned earlier, Kyle could easily source a massive quantity of secondhand civilian vehicles and scrapped cars from the Muggle world to magically retrofit.
Since they would all be unmanned anyway, there was no need to consider armor plating or protection.
Adopting a Soviet-style approach—cheap, simple to produce, and mass-yield—was what mattered most.
But attack helicopters couldn't be handled that way. Furthermore, since the two big shots of Weasley Industries didn't know the first thing about helicopter maintenance, logistics and upkeep would become a logistical nightmare.
Therefore, the C2 Dragons fashioned from cheap Explosive Clay would serve as the ideal air force for this unit—or rather, the Hogwarts Army Aviation Corps.
After listening to Kyle's breakdown, the twins fell into deep thought.
After roughly calculating the military expenditures required for this upgrade in their heads, the twins raised their eyes in unison.
"There is absolutely no problem with this plan!" George's eyes flashed with a mischievous, troublemaking light.
Fred chimed in with equal excitement, "Yes, exactly! It's completely feasible!"
Kyle shrugged. "Then I'll leave the hard work to you guys."
Upon hearing Kyle's words, the excitement on the twins' faces instantly vanished.
"How could a plan this massive possibly be accomplished by just the two of us?"
A foreboding premonition welled up in Kyle's heart.
George and Fred fixed their gazes tightly on the Little Dark Lord, who was clearly looking to slip away.
"You and Cedric both have to come help," Fred said.
"Don't forget, we still have an unfinished mecha project on our hands."
"Since the term started, our progress on the mecha project has ground to a complete halt because of military training."
Kyle nodded rather helplessly. "Alright, alright, count me in."
After all, he was also looking forward to the day the Hogwarts Guard Legion was fully formed, so he reluctantly agreed.
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