Progressing from Arasaka Without Limits

Vehicle engines roared as military vehicles drove along the tracks of tanks, sending mud and debris flying under their wheels.

Upon arrival, the EU soldier in his gray-blue uniform jumped out of the vehicle, clutching his tactical helmet. He lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke rings, and shouted, "Hey guys, supplies are here."

This is a semi-permanent outpost located in a burned forest area, converted from a former forest fire lookout's firebreak. Not far away are the ruins of a bombed-out fire observation tower.

Hearing the shouts, the miserable infantrymen huddled in foxholes and trenches jumped out cursing.

"Another No. 4 field ration? It's so bland it's practically tasteless. Sigh, when will our company get a chance to rotate home?"

"Putain! Those cowards in Paris and Warsaw, their reinforcements are taking forever to arrive."

"And those damn Britannia pigs, they're at war every year, don't they know how to live?"

During handling and unloading, chirp—

The sound of something cutting through the air rang out.

The falcon cried out uneasily and agitatedly climbed higher. It seemed to be venting its discontent, as the deterioration of its habitat forced it to increase its flight distance and expend more energy to migrate.

In response, a thunderous roar followed!

The dull bang echoed through the heavens and earth like a bell, growing louder as it approached.

It was artillery fire.

But no one paid attention to the burning forest blocking the defensive line, except for the newly arrived greenhorns.

People who come here need to get used to this kind of life.

That is, throughout the morning, noon, and evening, the Britannia artillery in the east would tirelessly bombard EU military units in the area between Narva and Tallinn. Mostly Kivieri, perhaps Tapa, or even Tallinn.

It was obvious from their ears that the artillery wasn't targeting them, but rather the cities and supply routes further back, as well as any valuable units that Britannia might be able to detect.

A veteran soldier chuckled and told the new recruits that the screams of shells streaking across the sky were like free reveille and mealtime bells for them.

Unfortunately, before he could finish speaking, his companion exposed his embarrassing situation.

For example, a few days ago when a shell actually hit the Huoshaolin defense zone, he was relieving himself and awkwardly crawled into the air-raid shelter with his bare bottom exposed.

Amidst the clamor of "live for the moment," the EU lieutenant, who had just returned from the observation post, put down his tactical terminal, but was somewhat worried.

"Everyone, be on high alert."

He said.

Britannia's recent playing style gave him a bad feeling...

To the east, although the Order of Saint Raphael Knights suffered heavy losses from the WZERO Unit' Kamikaze Special Attack and had to retreat to Order of Saint Michael stepped in to fill the gap. The day after their Third Princess returned to Saint Petersburg, Britannia launched a counterattack and captured the Narva, Syramai, Yama, and Ahmet line.

Then, Britannia's Northern Army Group came to a halt.

Every single day of the week was the same: the cannons fired without fail.

Moreover, there was no pattern to it. Sometimes it would happen in the morning and evening, sometimes only at noon, and occasionally, the shelling would continue all day long. The location and type of weapon were not fixed. Heavy artillery groups, railway guns, rocket launchers—anyway, once his defense zone was shelled, the surrounding large areas of burned forest were the marks. His platoon lost a squad as a result.

Large-caliber artillery and new ammunition from Britannia joined the bombardment. These were characterized by the fact that the shells were almost inaudible in the air, giving people very little time to react and seek shelter.

Unlike the urban battles in the southern Ukrainian region, where close-quarters combat is necessary even with dedicated Knightmare armored cavalry sweeping units and vehicle fire support after artillery bombardments, the main battles in Estonia for the past week have consisted primarily of artillery duels and aerial dogfights, with very few face-to-face infantry skirmishes.

Is it because Britannia's Southern Army Group is at a crucial stage in its attack on Kyiv?

Is Vera's "big black vulture" focusing its breakthrough this year on the Ukraine-China region? Even Moltke, the Fifth Round Table Knight, has been deployed to the Ukraine battlefield, where the pressure is immense, with telegrams requesting assistance arriving one after another.

In contrast, the North does seem to be training troops and experimenting with some kind of integration.

Having suffered losses from Kamikaze Special Attack, Britannia also formed a special task force composed of people from District 11.

Scouts reported seeing watermelon-sized aircraft frequently moving back and forth between the two ends of the front line; large numbers of Knightmare armored cavalry were active in the Narva direction; and it was said that the casualty rate of special operations brigades carrying out infiltration, reconnaissance, and sabotage missions behind enemy lines had suddenly increased...

Hopefully, those idiots at the Warsaw East Line headquarters won't make any rash decisions based on assumptions.

Just as the lieutenant was walking through the trenches, praying and calling out to the quartermaster, planning to have a meal with his men before making a call to Tallinn, Estonia's largest city, to raise their alert level, swish, swish, swish—

Suddenly raising his head, the lieutenant stared wide-eyed at the 'meteor shower' falling from the sky. His muscle Remembrance reacted faster than his conscious mind. He knocked over a stool and leaped toward the entrance of the air-raid shelter, letting out a deafening roar, "Scatter! Scatter!"

The next moment, a piercing sound, like a sharp steam whistle, blared through the air.

In a short while, the sounds of the trench jokes were drowned out by the roar of artillery fire and the incessant loud clatter of bullets and explosions.

Burning heat, tinnitus, suffocation...

"Cough cough cough..."

The scalding air, gradually filling with the ash of various flammable materials, made the lieutenant cough uncontrollably. He didn't know how much time had passed before the tremors stopped. He propped himself up with his hands, wiped the dust off his clothes, and staggered outside. The tremors had disrupted his balance.

At that moment, a ringing and stinging sound in his ears told him that his eardrums were damaged.

Unable to discern how many more explosions would follow, he stepped out of the air-raid shelter. In his clouded vision, all he could see were flames and ruins. The semi-permanent outpost, converted from a fire-watcher's firebreak, had also collapsed.

"Sergeant, take a headcount and move into position!"

"Medics, save the wounded!"

Walking through the trenches, the lieutenant forced himself to calm down and gave orders to the soldiers who were still capable of fighting. Suddenly, he felt his foot touch something sticky and soft. Looking down, he saw what looked like a lump of mud covered in black and red grime. A piece of flesh...

Boom boom boom boom—

At this point, my hearing was finally restored to some extent.

He looked behind him, following the sound. Due west.

Flames of all sizes and plumes of black ash rose and fell.

A creeping barrage of artillery fire of this scale?!

As the artillery fire continued to extend into the EU army's deep positions, in the blink of an eye, a giant mushroom-shaped fireball suddenly rose from the ground—that was the location of the EU army's ammunition and fuel depots in that direction!

The earth trembled as if a heartbeat was being struck, and the thunderous echoes pounded on eardrums like heavy hammers, reaching the sky miles away.

Amidst the terrifying chain of explosions, the lieutenant heard the anxious shouts of the scout beside him, "Sir! It's Knightmare from Britannia!"

He looked up and could see it without binoculars.

On the eastern open field, black dots appeared moving at high speed, kicking up thick plumes of smoke.

Britannia armored cavalry were crossing the trench when the Dragon Fang Cone obstacle came charging towards them, the High-Mobility Drive Wheel rubbing against the ground and kicking up clumps of grass and mud.

Without any command, the counterattack by the remaining personnel blocking the other defensive lines began.

In an instant, a hail of bullets swept across the land.

The Knightmare tanks also raised the muzzles of their machine-operated smoothbore cannons, flashes of light appearing intermittently—

The lieutenant instinctively dropped to the ground. The explosion was not far in front of him, and dirt, wood chips, and small stones were sent flying high into the air, covering his back. "Fire! Fire at will!"

He yanked off his headset and yelled.

An armored vehicle, which had survived the shelling and was parked in the underground garage, drove into firing position, and its 30mm cannon began to roar.

However, at that moment, the lieutenant heard the buzzing of propellers and saw several propeller-equipped aircraft descending in mid-air and crashing straight into the armored vehicle.

Rumble!

Sand and gravel flew everywhere, and the machine gun fell silent after the explosion.

Meanwhile, a custom-designed Knightmare in platinum and white speeds through the enemy lines.

With a whoosh, the vibrating sword, equipped with high-frequency vibrations, was swung out and cleaved the sluggish and clumsy EU mech, which served as a fixed firepower delivery platform, in two with a single strike, causing it to explode instantly.

The lieutenant struggled to look at the steel giant before him.

Perhaps to show that it represents justice and orthodoxy, this annoying Britannia machine was painted white and gold.

The enormous arm slowly rose.

The muzzle, which was much larger than the machine gun mounted on the attack helicopter, was pointed directly at the EU lieutenant.

Through the loudspeaker, the Britannia pilot said, "Surrender!"

A look of astonishment flashed across the lieutenant's face.

That tone is far too humble and submissive.

They don't look like Britannia...

But the lieutenant remembered his mission—to hold off the enemy. He stalled for time, asking, "Who are you?"

"I am Kaname..."

The next second, shrapnel from the explosion tore Lieutenant EU into a bloody mist.

"Suzaku Kururugi!"

A Gloucester, armed with a lance and sporting a Roman-style upright crown, stopped behind the platinum-painted Knightmare. A stern voice came from the loudspeaker. "Attack! Do I need to say it twice?"

In the cockpit of the seventh-generation fighter jet, model number Z-01, Lancelot Suzaku Kururugi, a member of the Eleven European Expeditionary Corps, lowered his head and murmured, "I'm sorry."

Following the main force, he immediately maneuvered his armored cavalry like an arrow released from a bow, charging into the front ranks once more.

The Gloucester military supervisor seemed quite satisfied with Suzaku Kururugi's combat performance. He glanced around, then raised his lance and broadcast through the loudspeaker on the internal radio frequency. "It was the EU that first drew back the curtain on hell!"

"It was Her Highness the Princess who gave you a new life. Now, let these Frenchmen see who the real devil is!"

"For the empire, for the princess, for you all, let us avenge this humiliation!"

"Kill! Until the earth is soaked with their blood!"

"Attack!!"

"All hail Vera!!"×N.

178

Chapter 178 The Sound of Cannons in the Baltic Sea.

"All Hail Vera!!" ×N.

The roar was continuous, and the explosions were deafening.

The relentless shelling tore the sky apart, plowed the earth, and ravaged all traces of human activity.

The dense barrage, woven from Sakurastone warheads, metal fragments, and high-energy chemical thermobaric explosives, covered most of the EU coalition's core positions in the Narva - Tallinn area like a giant carpet.

As the barrage of bullets continued to extend into the enemy's defensive depths, the smoke from the front lines dissipated, and the lush green Estonian wilderness transformed into the surface of the moon.

The KMF hangar (EU mech unit), field airfield, navigation tower, watchtower, trenches, relay station, outpost... have all been reduced to ruins.

Many unfortunate forward positions were targeted by artillery fire and lost most of their blocking function, leaving only fragmented and disorganized counterattacks. The High-Mobility Drive Wheel roared and crushed the severed limbs, corpses buried in the mud, and blood-stained vehicle wreckage along the way.

In the direction of Narva, atop a small limestone hill, command post G-1, a fully armed large ground warship, stands in the very center of the field headquarters of Northern Army Group of Britannia.

Vera rested her hand on the guardrail, which stood on the embedded balcony atop the command tower of the land-based mothership.

Her hawk-like gaze swept westward, taking in the entire battlefield situation.

Estonia has a low-lying terrain with an average elevation of only 50 meters and a forest coverage of up to 50%. There are more trees than people, making it a super wetland park, grassland natural park, and zoo. From a high vantage point, the view is boundless and unobstructed.

In the distance, flames and smoke erupted across the wilderness.

The destroyed targets emitted plumes of black smoke, which, carried by the wind, rose obliquely into the sky, overlapping and slowly advancing, like a hail of bullets falling deep into enemy territory, just like the rumble of the earth.

On the horizon, Knightmare armored cavalry surged like a tidal wave of metal, hundreds and thousands of them leaping over the ravaged EU coalition lines, breaking into the enemy's heartland and core area.

The EU coalition's counter-fire frequently landed in the middle of the ranks, creating fireballs of varying sizes and pinkish plumes of smoke.

Some unlucky ones were hit head-on by anti-tank missiles, the flames and shrapnel from the shaped charge incendiary bombs paralyzing their armored vehicles and extinguishing their combat signals; others were ambushed by hidden KMF mechs while clearing enemy lines, suffering severe damage and overloading their Sakura Stone engines, but fortunately ejecting from the cockpit in time; still others were not so lucky, being hit by aerial bombs, disintegrating, and instantly vaporizing into a cloud of blood mist, without even needing prosthetic medical care...

Attack helicopters and assault boats spewed fire as they flew low over the Knightmare armored cavalry, then staggered across the skies above the wobbling KMF mechs, leaving behind another blinding burst of fire. The already muddy ravines were now piled high with water-filled craters and burning metal debris.

Looking upwards through this chaotic scene of war, the blue sky and white clouds belong to the domain of guided and anti-aircraft fire, but are haphazardly smeared and filled with the exhaust flames of various flying objects and the winding trails left by Heat Decoy.

Fighter jets tangled together amidst a curtain of anti-aircraft fire, their contrails leaving ghostly trails in the atmosphere. The destroyed aircraft were instantly torn to pieces, their wreckage scattering like petals as they burned and fell to the ground.

There are EU members and Britannia members.

This is war; not everyone is lucky enough to survive.