Chapter 520 Our War (Part 2)
Jerome, the former knight of the "Holy Crow" thieves' gang, was not introduced in the previous article due to space limitations... Although he has fallen to the point of mixing with the thieves' gang, Jerome is indeed a knight. He not only once had a glorious surname inherited from his ancestors, but also once owned a fiefdom.
Jerome, like Hal and Anthony, is a Kenyan. In the Kenyan Empire, where internal struggles are fierce, a relatively good background does not mean a lifelong support; if one fails to climb to the top of power, there is always the risk of sliding down from the slippery power pyramid.
When Hal's father, the Maxwell family, a newly rich and powerful aristocracy, was strangled by the wealthy and powerful aristocrats in northern Kenya, the aristocrats that Jerome's ancestors had served for generations also unfortunately lost in the civil war. The Jerome family, who depended on the aristocrats, fell from the bottom of the aristocracy to the civilian class overnight and were forced to start a wandering life...
Of course, the title of Imperial Noble Knight that he once held could actually allow Jerome to live a good life. Those wealthy businessmen did not mind hiring people like him to show off. When Jerome wandered to the south of Kenya, he did get such a well-paid job.
But Jerome soon couldn't do it anymore...
In order to cope with the endless slave uprisings, the Kenyan Empire introduced a number of "equal rights" laws including the "Orc Citizenship Act" twelve years ago, granting citizenship to the "Nth generation of slaves" born in the Kenyan Empire and prohibiting the open slave trade, which naturally included the Middle-earth people.
But a clear ban on paper does not mean that it can be truly banned... In southern Kenya, keeping and enslaving orcs and foreigners is still an unspoken rule; especially for those wealthy southern merchants who are eager to spend money to show off, who doesn't have hundreds or thousands of slaves at home?
Material vanity was already difficult for these southern tycoons to satisfy, so it was only natural for them to gain spiritual pleasure by trampling on their fellow intelligent creatures - strong orc male slaves and beautiful Middle-earth human female slaves were dragged to cocktail parties to "live up the fun" and even had their lives ruined. This was just a small daily routine for the wealthy in southern Kenya as they passed their ordinary days.
This is actually the norm of human nature, and no plane or civilization is immune to it...Forcing men to get drunk and make a fool of themselves, and forcing women to show off their sex appeal and flatter others at the drinking table is essentially a way to gain satisfaction by humiliating and trampling on one's own kind. If the law did not prohibit it, those who defend the "drinking culture" would be able to do even more shameless things.
Jerome, who was dissatisfied with the situation around him but unable to change it, was depressed all day long. When he met Hal, who was about to take his brothers south to the Eastern Kingdom, Jerome felt like he had grabbed a life-saving straw and ran after him without saying a word.
Hal was actually quite a bad person. The "Saint Crow" thieves did a lot of things like burning, killing, looting, and collecting tolls. But in Jerome's opinion, Hal and his gang were at least not as inhumane as the Kenyan rich men he had served (who took human lives for fun). Plus, there was nowhere else to go, so he just followed them in a daze...
It was not until the "Holy Crow" had conflicts with his peers and was on the verge of bankruptcy, and was easily deceived by Yang Qiu, that Jerome's life took a turn - he was a standard knight who had received chivalrous education since childhood and regarded "holding a sword for the king" as the highest pursuit in life. Finally, he found an opportunity to use his strength.
When Hal, Tattle and their gang were fighting wits and courage with Yang Qiu, Jerome, who seemed to be a little transparent, seemed to do nothing, but in fact he was quietly observing whether Lord Yang was worthy of being a "wise leader"... When a group of thieves conspired to rebellion, only Jerome clearly expressed his opposition.
When Tattle was innocently burdened with huge debts and kicked out to be the Lord of Westram, Jerome hooked up with Yang Qiu, who was also quietly observing who could be used and who could not be used among these thieves.
The fact that Yang Qiu was able to safely let Jerome lead the Rhine People's Army and that Zhao Zhenzhen had no objection was enough to prove the awareness and loyalty of this Kenyan knight. Tattle, who was not very close to Jerome before, did not seem too surprised when he learned about his status in Lord Yang's mind. This shows that even among the original members of the thieves' group, Jerome's sincere nature was no secret.
"Ms. Zhao handed me something."
After a few pleasantries, Jerome called Ms. Shirley, the leader of the civilian team, and Tuttle, who was in charge of battlefield reconnaissance, to the temporary command center. He pointed to the equipment that was well protected by a waterproof tent and was being assembled and adjusted by several technical soldiers and said, "This is an electromagnetic pulse device that can interfere with the enemy's telegraph signals."
Tuttle: "??? What did you say??"
Jerome understood Tuttle's reaction very well. He was also surprised when he first learned that such a thing existed. He explained, "Mr. Yang and Ms. Zhao both hope to completely devour the Nosk coalition forces in the no-man's land of the eastern border and try not to let the enemy transmit the battle situation back to the rear. When the undead army comes into direct contact with the enemy, we need to launch a supplementary attack from the side to block the enemy from transmitting telegrams."
Tuttle clapped his hands and suddenly said, "I see. The attack route that Anthony and I discovered was provided to you."
"Yes, the Undead Army does not need an attack route... and they may not be willing to launch an attack as planned." Jerome laughed.
Everyone may not understand the style of the Undead Army, but Jerome definitely cannot fail to understand it - no one can make those aliens obey orders, not even Mr. Yang himself.
"In addition, the logistics department of Moses Port has captured some telegraph signals transmitted from the Norsk Federation during this period. The decoded content shows that the vanguard troops that have entered our territory so far are composed of the Principality of Lionel, the Kingdom of Kashmir, and three other nearby federal countries, with a total strength of about 30,000. There is still an army of 60,000 people in the Kashmir region."
After the two digested this part of the information, Jerome continued, "The organization of the Nosk Federation is much worse than ours. The current vanguard army that has entered the country has spent nearly half a year from the time the Storm Church issued a conscription order to the preparation of food and supplies, to the reorganization of the army, and to the departure of the army. The 60,000-man central army in the rear that is still being reorganized, Ms. Zhao estimated, will not be able to move before the end of the year."
Even electromagnetic pulse equipment has been brought to the front line, so the national team will certainly not miss the radio wave signals frequently sent out by the enemy... Although the radio wave frequency of this dimension is slightly different from that of the earth, and the radio wave encoding habits are also different, as long as you find the right routine, it is not a problem to just move a home computer over to decode the military telegrams.
"Hmm? What you mean is, after we eliminate this vanguard army, we can move in and eliminate the central army as well?" Tattle reacted quickly, pointing his thumb to the east and making a gesture of moving eastward.
Jerome smiled innocently, "Ms. Zhao said that if we want to make it in time, we should bring all the prisoners back before October. We have to start the construction of the bridge after the autumn harvest, so we can't delay."
The commander of a 4,000-man army boasted that he could defeat an army of 90,000 within three months. If this were to spread outside, I wonder how many people would laugh their heads off...
But at this moment, Lord Westham Tuttle Joe and senior civil servant Ms. Shirley, who heard these words, not only had no smiles on their faces, but were also seriously considering the feasibility of this outrageous plan.
"To invade Kashmir, we have to defeat Lionel first. Will we not have enough time?" Ms. Shirley frowned.
Generally speaking...the biggest problem with a long expedition is always logistics.
Even a powerful empire like Kenya is hampered by logistical problems. It has been fighting for nearly three hundred years in Middle-earth and is still in a stalemate...
But this problem is not a big deal for the Undead Regime. The largest combat force, the more than 200,000 Undead troops waiting to go to the battlefield, not only do they not need any supplies, but they can also help transport supplies to the People's Army, and their efficiency is very high...
Before Jerome could speak, Ms. Shirley realized that she had said something stupid. She raised her hand and gently patted her forehead, saying shamefacedly, "Don't pay attention to me. It's my own fault. We don't need to occupy Lionel. We can just fight our way there and fight our way back."
The Undead Regime is not in a hurry to swallow up the Rhine Kingdom, which is already on its plate, so it is naturally not stupid enough to rush to seize the land of the Nosk Federation - the meat in the pot will sooner or later end up on the plate and in the mouth, so why rush to eat the hot tofu?
Rather than occupying every place we conquer and getting bogged down in a security war, it is better to gradually disintegrate the enemy's resistance, eating and digesting it bite by bite.
Jerome smiled and nodded, and said confidently: "Complete this battle mission beautifully this year, and we will have the final say on how to fight this battle next year."
The Nosk Federation is a giant in the Eastern Kingdom region, with a population, financial resources, and material resources twenty times that of the Undead Regime.
According to common sense...if the two sides go to war, the undead regime in the Rhine country alone has no chance of winning.
But war is never a matter where the outcome can be determined by simply putting the population and financial resources on paper... Under the premise that there is no power competition between the two sides (aircraft carrier fleet VS millet plus rifles), organization, reaction speed, and whether people's hearts are cohesive are the main factors that determine victory or defeat.
Unfortunately, the Undead Regime finds it difficult to lose in all three categories.
Anyway, according to the conclusion given by the expert group, after the thunder strike swallowed up the 90,000-strong army, the Nosk Federation would first have to argue madly about who should be held responsible for the defeat before organizing a more powerful army... The Chinese are very familiar with this problem of federal countries!
After conveying the strategic intentions of the top leaders in the rear, Jerome took Tuttle and Ms. Shirley to see the equipment of the People's Army... These things that had to be kept secret before can now be opened and decrypted to their own people.
As for the equipment of the People's Army, the source is also very clear... it is inventory made during the Cold War and scavenged from the original unit of a certain Undead Archon of the Principality of Shiga; it is sold to the Rhine People's Army at the same price as it is sold to Africa, and the relevant funds are directly deducted from the advance payment for nuclear waste disposal that Kingsley received as a laborer. Yang, who has a very full wallet, doesn't even look at the accounts and just signs on a regular basis.
As for whether the Storm Church, which will suffer from cross-dimensional firepower in the future, will vent its anger on the alchemists who "have no morals and no quality, and dare to sell everything", or whether it will suspect that the Upper Kenya Empire is abusing martial ethics and overstepping its boundaries to resell military supplies, that is not Yang Qiu's concern.
While the Rhine People's Army was busy making preparations for war, the Norsk Federation Vanguard Army, which was already in place dozens of kilometers away, was also not idle.
Supplies for 30,000 people were continuously transported from the Principality of Lionel in the rear to the front line and piled up in the camp; civilians recruited from various countries in the Federation worked hard to dig foundations and build warehouses, as well as barracks to detain and transfer prisoners of war and spoils of war.
The analysis of the Undead regime's movements from the Rhine Capital, the intelligence on material storage areas and factory locations in the Undead regime's occupied territories, and even the marching route map across Moses Port and Innadri directly to the Undead base camp Tarantan, all appeared on the desk of the coalition commander.
"This black magician who has been hunted by the Church of the Blazing Sun for decades is actually quite capable. He has accumulated quite a fortune in just the first few years of his career."
The commander of the coalition forces bit his cigar and calmly put down the "asset summary" of the undead regime revealed by the Rhine royal family, with the corners of his mouth raised happily.
"Even those good-for-nothing boys in my family are chasing after the goods leaked from Tarantan. The Nightmare Butcher is very powerful." A coalition officer wearing the badge of Kashmir nobility chuckled.
The Rhine royal family did spend a huge amount of money to request the Nosk Federation to send troops to rescue them, and Prince Hood, who was rich enough to rival a country, almost took out his life savings; but the real reason that made the Nosk Federation determined to send troops and mobilize tens of thousands of troops right away... was the wealth accumulated by the Undead regime itself.
The conventional non-staple food processing industries in Innadler and Adler are okay, although they are indeed eye-opening, but they are still within the scope of the Norse people's understanding.
The various Tarantan goods flowing out of Tarantan are extremely tempting - the Church of the Fiery Sun, which is thousands of miles away, couldn't help but want to reach out, but was dragged down by Middle-earth and unable to go on an expedition, so they gave up; the Rhine royal family was generous to others and took the initiative to open the door to invite thieves in, how could the Nosk Federation not be tempted?
