Another Worldly Summons

Chapter 51: Princess of a Falling Empire

Philades continent, June 21, 1640
ASEAN offensive day 10

The battle, since the beginning of the campaign has been outright one-sided. The ASEAN didn't get the opportunity to use heavy ordinance as the major forces of the Imperial army were too far and too deep inside the colonies of Parpaldia. The battle evolved into limited urban warfare, little to almost non-existent partisan sabotage of Imperial forces, and a retreating battle of some intact Imperial forces that were either being overrun by armored battalions or airstrikes by ASEAN.

There's not a single noticable major offensive from Parpaldia. Their defenses are crumbling one after another, town to town, city to city. All of them are being captured by SEADF at an incredible rate. Their attempt to mount a defense will be faced with merciless airstrikes and artillery that will flatten their defensive position.

The Vietnamese, who were tasked to take over defecting Parpaldian settlements and protect them from reprisals from Parpaldia, began building logistics bases in the northeast of the core nation of the empire. Together with the Indonesian and Filipino led army groups, they will move all the way to the east to take over and annihilate any opposition and link with the SEADF marines that landed in the eastern coastal region of the empire.

Other member states factions, such as Thai and Malaysian-led army groups, are also going ahead of their schedule and stretching their supply lines and expanding their battlefronts as days pass. Some of the units are advancing at a moderate pace of 20 kilometers per day while carefully sieging and capturing settlement after settlement. The only thing that slowed them down is the limited targets and objectives they intended to capture, as the SEADF HQ in Esthirant never planned to unnecessarily expand their frontline that could cause more problems later due to lack of manpower and any logistics issue, with the exception of the 60-kilometer blitz of SEADF on the very first day of the offensive, as Parpaldians were nowhere prepared to fight with militia and the paltry forces of the Imperial army that were facing armored columns of ASEAN supported by helicopters and attack aircraft.

That's the current situation, and it's very favorable to ASEAN as Parpaldian forces with a little nudge are enough to make them collapse.

Four PT-91M Pendekar main battle tanks and 12 ACV-300 from Force Reconnaissance 4 of the 8th Army Group of SEADF are advancing in the woods of the northern regions of the core nation of Parpaldia. They were tasked with conducting combat patrols on the last confirmed position of a fleeing Parpaldian army unit and either luring them out of hiding to annihilate them via airstrikes or on their own firepower.

This region is about 90 kilometers from Esthirant, and thus, the vegetation and forest here have been spared from being burned down by incendiary bombs or being flattened by the artillery strikes of ASEAN. Unlike the surrounding areas of Esthirant that nearly resemble the no man's land in Europe during World War 1, that has been razed to the ground by incendiary and high explosive bombs rained down by ASEAN air wings.

The place actually looks like wet land, but the ground is not muddy that could sink tracked or wheeled vehicles, nor is the water level deep enough to cause some risk in traveling because it was recently and artificially made by Parpaldian on the 5th day of the offensive by destroying a dike network to flood the area, which displaced two villages for the time being. Nevertheless, it didn't slow down the army groups of ASEAN but instead made some of the imperial armies unit stranded in these tactics that caused their demise in the hands of Southeast Asian forces or forced them to surrender after being cornered.

"The water finally came down to a foot deep... Should we move to that abandoned village 3 clicks away and find out if there's some parps hiding there?."

"No, we can't. The villages are still soaked in 3 to 4 feet of water. They were near the river the moment it was flooded by their army."

The tank crew of the leading unit exchanged positions in the middle of this not destroyed but flooded view. Compared to other theatres of war that were completely burned down forests or turned into scenes of the ruins of Parpaldian factories and military bases, this was rather new and different, as water and muddy terrain were in view as far as they could see.