Target! Dunwich

Three hours—only three hours after the battle began, the Gammel-Wali defensive line, built by the New California Republic at enormous expense and with vast amounts of manpower and resources, was submerged.

The front-line reports used the word "submerged" rather than "breached" or "occupied," because it was not a figurative embellishment, but something that was truly happening.

Only two hours after the war began, at least five million Orks had squeezed across the Sikasen River. They had practically crossed atop the floating corpses in the river, and the massive deaths of their comrades had not frightened them in the slightest.

The Gammel-Wali defensive line had been pushed to its limits within the first hour.

According to the New California Republic Ministry of Defense's requirements, eight armies and over nine hundred thousand soldiers should have been deployed there. But because replacements had arrived too slowly and troops had been rotated out, there were only six armies and fewer than seven hundred thousand soldiers on the line at this time.

They had to defend a riverbank front at least five hundred kilometers long. Even with more than a hundred thousand local militiamen added in, their forces were still woefully inadequate.

Therefore, a conventional linear defense was absolutely unworkable.

Under the original plan, the front-line troops would withdraw to the second and third defensive lines after delaying the enemy. During that time, they would continually impede the Orks' advance, using artillery fire and bunkers to offset their momentum.

Once the Ork offensive had been checked, the armored forces inside the fortresses would strike out, joining the front-line troops in a counterattack to drive the Orks who had crossed the river back.

This flexible defense plan had been tailored specifically for the Orks by the New California Republic's military leadership after incorporating the opinions of