Another Worldly Summons

Chapter 100: Reign Of Fire

Former Imperial Capital Esthirant
December 25, 1641

At the Jade Palace, formerly the residence of the Emperors and Imperial Family of Parpaldia, it was renamed mostly due to its characteristics and the revisionism aimed at removing the imperial status and history of Parpaldia from its successor state of Southern Philades. Here lies the government and military center of ASEAN in Philades.

In the former imperial conference room, a large circular space, several government and military officials gathered around photo reconnaissance images depicting the situation in the north. Forest fires raged without cease, while military assets of Nurzaga formed a 4-kilometer-long convoy, with countless artillery pieces lined up. Destroyed settlements littered the landscape. Some officials yawned in disinterest, others examined the images with seriousness, while some simply didn't care, lacking empathy for the devastated northern regions of Southern Philades.

"As of 9:15 AM today, 8 towns and 2 major cities have been occupied by the northern coalition with little to no opposition. They are establishing what appears to be air defense sites in their beachhead in north. The probability that they are hoping to hold them seems to be their priority. Meanwhile, their airforce is believed to number between 500 to 600 aircraft. Their airbases have already been located, none of them extending further than 80 miles from the border. They may be fearing a potential anti-aircraft network or perhaps avoiding a frontal collision with our air units — the reason is still unknown. However, they are within our combat range for offensive counter air operations."

Said by the officer, to whom everyone either nodded or simply disinterestedly sipped their cup of coffee, tidied their papers, or didn't understand the situation or the report.

"Furthermore, an estimated 800 to 1,200 TDGs are currently engaged in guerrilla warfare as they are trapped beyond enemy lines. The potential death toll on their side is estimated to be between 3,000 to 4,000, which is quite shocking. We never expected Nurzagan, with the support of S'vam, to accurately hit smaller outposts, decimating them, and rapidly deploy troops to mop them up due to the poor terrain and road conditions in the north. This feats occurred within just a two-day period, which is quite remarkable." He said, expressing surprise and admiration, as they never anticipated such speed of attack and scale of destruction caused. They had assumed that the trained Nurzagan — with their little few months of crash course training, would be slower, disorganized, and tactically disadvantaged.

"Are we done yet?" The secretary of the Ministry of Immigration and Customs chimed in, garnering attention from the crowd. "We'd like to proceed with the counteroffensive plans and your requests to end this quickly. Every second counts. We'll just take over those captured lands later, so don't dwell on it." A brief awkward silence immediately ensued, and the officer promptly continued.

"Yes, yes," he replied, but some of the officials were not letting it go.

"Secretary Go, it's not really professional to react that way," a major immediately responded.

"We have too much paperwork to do. Attending here is just a waste of time for non-military personnel like us."

"That's the request from the central government—to cooperate with all agencies for this war."

"We'll definitely cooperate, but it's the work of the military and the foreign mercenaries of the Ministry of Territorial Guards, not ours. It's an entirely different sector and field. If anything else, just give our branch a call."

"Secretary..." However, he's immediately cut off.

"Please, Major, I know the military definitely has some difficult work, but ours is not something you can trifle with. We had to slash half the budget of education, almost 30% for tourism, and potentially cut retirement benefits and a few more things that would probably throw the country into complete chaos with at least 50 million senior citizens and their families, not counting the retired soldiers, officials, and regular citizens who will likely want to have a chat with our government in mass protest. Crushing internal dissent due to the repercussions of those budget cuts in times of war, due to your extravagant military spending, is really, really hard. Not to mention persuading the 10 member states within the Union and its 600 million people to join yet another costly and bloody war. Now we're ordered to close the borders of Philades and Rodenius to our people? Do you understand what I'm implying? Our people will be locked in for the next year, like in the pandemic back on earth. Except it's been almost six years since its disappearance, yet our people are enduring almost a decade-long lockdown and immigration restrictions and we — from immigration and customs will highly likely take the burnt of criticism and blame."