Chapter 231 : A Defensive Battle with a Vast Disparity
Chapter 231: A Defensive Battle with a Vast Disparity
Cassius silently looked at the intelligence report in his hand, which detailed the composition of the invading forces.
Led by the Britian Empire and the Empire of Mantogore, along with four kingdoms, they had jointly assembled an army exceeding five hundred thousand troops for the Tsar—an overwhelmingly powerful force in both numbers and equipment.
The backbone of its officer corps consisted almost entirely of elite mid-ranking officers from each nation, though the soldiers they commanded were Roshek people.
From various types of artillery to Mechanical Bodies, tanks, and even the Church’s “Scepter”-class superweapons—everything was present.
This was merely the supported army. Each allied nation also deployed intervention forces of 20,000 to 50,000 troops, landing in nearby White Army–controlled zones closest to them. Except for the seaward side, the Ernesto Republic was already facing encirclement on three fronts.
Meanwhile, most of their own soldiers were flesh and blood, poorly clothed and underfed. The long, frigid winter was already beginning to show its signs.
The freezing snow would soon blanket the entire land of the Ernesto Republic—and also cover the path of their advance. If they failed to win this vastly uneven civil war, everything they had done before would become meaningless.
If this war was not fought now, then their descendants would inevitably have to fight it in the future.
Cassius and Yadov both clearly understood what they were facing. If they continued to delay, the White Army—continuously supported—would only grow stronger.
As for them, they might not even last until the day the Alliance could spare its hands to intervene…
At present, their only advantage lay in the air, where they had support from the Federation Air Force, allowing them to receive aerial assistance for limited periods.
And even that was not always guaranteed.
After the Kingdom of Suria captured the Alliance’s fixed-wing aircraft, other nations also began reverse engineering efforts.
As Suria’s territory fell, more and more frontline airfields were seized. For the Alliance, delivering supplies now meant either relying on extremely slow airships or transporting them by sea via cargo ships.
In truth, early aircraft were not that difficult to replicate. At their core, they were nothing more than engines, wings, and propellers—nothing more.
The power core posed little difficulty to them from the beginning. Magitech packages themselves were already power sources, and their output was quite strong.
Due to the lack of theoretical scientific understanding, they could not achieve advanced designs. However, as long as they could imitate the form, they could replicate most of the prototype’s aerodynamic lift principles. With brute force, they could still make it fly.
By mounting several self-made machine guns onto the wings, they could at least pose some threat to the Alliance Air Force.
Because of the extreme range involved, bomber formations sent to support Ernesto had no fighter escort from the Alliance Air Force.
Forcing a breakthrough through the barrage created by magitech fighter aircraft and anti-air magic cannons would result in heavy losses. Thus, the bombers had to fly in tight formations, forming a “hedgehog” defensive pattern with their machine guns.
However, this increased their scale, meaning every large-scale bombing mission had to strike high-value targets—otherwise, it would be a complete waste.
As the Alliance’s first army group prepared to land on the Main Continent under naval escort, the first round of confrontation within Ernesto officially broke out.
Just as Cassius had predicted, the 112th Division—the first to engage the White Army—suffered defeat.
Officers equipped with Mechanical Bodies could lead their troops in direct charges. The 112th Infantry Division, lacking heavy firepower, suffered heavy casualties despite having trench defenses.
Under the Church’s “Scepter” weapons’ wide-scale destructive attacks, the trench defense system was quickly destroyed and overrun, forcing the division to retreat after losing more than half its strength.
In terms of soldier quality and tactical level, both sides were roughly similar. Especially when officers led from the front in favorable conditions, the morale of the White Army soldiers was no lower than that of the Red Army.
Although total troop numbers were roughly equal, the gap in equipment was enormous.
In the end, Yadov made a harsh decision—fully adopting the Alliance General Staff’s recommendations. All heavy equipment production, except artillery, was to be canceled.
Instead, they began mass-producing anti-tank and anti-Mechanical Body mines based on Alliance technical guidance, along with anti-tank/Mechanical Body rocket launchers and infantry support grenade launchers using black powder and gasoline as propellants.
They aimed to produce the most destructive weapons with the least resource consumption. As for personnel protection and battlefield survivability, the Red Army could no longer afford to consider them.
As the Red Army deliberately pulled back to await rearmament and new orders, the White Army, having broken through resistance, rapidly occupied surrounding towns and villages.
Factories in the cities were shut down, and all food and supplies in civilian homes were looted. They adopted a strategy of scorched earth and consolidation, completely halting normal operations in the region.
After all, the White Army had supply support from allied nations. Though cutting production would make life uncomfortable, it would not impact them nearly as severely as it would the Red Army.
For essential high-consumption resources like coal and food, the Alliance could at best supply only half of what the Red Army needed. Unless the Red Army was willing to use magic crystals—normally reserved as military supplies—for civilian heating, shortages of food and coal would inevitably shake public morale.
As for how the civilians, stripped of their resources, would survive the winter—that was not something the White Army needed to consider.
Meanwhile, in the Uyanchi direction, the Church Army, having regrouped, deployed nearly 110,000 troops in a single push, attempting to break through the defenses of Uyanchi State.
Uyanchi was located along a river and served as a transit hub for Alliance-supplied materials transported by sea.
A constant stream of supplies was unloaded here and loaded onto trains for distribution to other states. If Uyanchi fell, it would mean longer delays and reduced efficiency in material transport.
Along this line, three state armies each deployed one corps for defense. However, the Church commander was highly cunning.
He chose to divert one corps to besiege Uyanchi, while personally leading the remaining main force to cross the river hundreds of kilometers upstream, attempting to link up with the White Army from the Izaven direction and cut off the waterway.
Coincidentally, the nearest unit was the recently rebuilt 112th Infantry Division, which had just recovered from being heavily battered by allied forces not long ago.
“Chris needs to hold his position for at least five days, buying time for the other two state army groups to redeploy divisions to the rear and construct defensive fortifications—at least five days.”
Yadov looked at the withered trees outside the window. “Five days… A depleted infantry division of 9,000 men holding off 60,000 regular troops for five days—can Chris really manage it?”
“Difficult. Extremely difficult. But it must be done.”
Cassius shook his head and continued, “The pressure on the western front is even greater. We have no spare forces to send back as reinforcements. We can only fight with the cards we currently hold.”
“Rest assured, sir. Not a single graduate of the Alliance military academy is a coward. Even if we die, we will die on the battlefield!”
Hearing this, Yadov instead slumped into his chair. “I believe in you. Without you, our uprising might have already failed. But what we owe you… we may never be able to repay.”
Cassius smiled faintly. “You overestimate it. If what we wanted were those things—money or honor—then so many of us would not have traveled thousands of miles to come here.”
“We don’t have any grand ambitions. It’s just… we’re living well, and we want others to live just as well as we do. That’s all.”