Lin Cuo watched deployment markers light up one after another across the Indian subcontinent, then dragged the map northwest.
By any normal person's reckoning, since India had ordered a general mobilization in the name of mutual defense, and Britannia had just annexed the Middle Eastern Federation and established Area 18, these troops ought to have assembled directly at the West Coast ports and along the Persian front.
The reality was entirely different.
Troop strength on India's West Coast had indeed increased, and the newspapers reported on warships, airfields, and coastal fortresses every day, but the actual main force had not stupidly marched straight into Britannia's sights.
Thirty-eight divisions entered the Punjab-Peshawar sector, deploying along the railways toward Kabul and the Hindu Kush Mountain Pass; forty-one divisions deployed to Sindh, Baluchistan, and eastern Persia, controlling the Karachi-Quetta-Kandahar-Herat line; twenty-six divisions moved toward the southern foothills of the Pamirs and the transport hubs south of Kashgar, while the remaining thirteen stayed in Delhi, Lahore, and the upper Ganges region as a general reserve capable of supporting all three directions at once.
Publicly, they called it the "Persian Arc of Resistance."
It sounded as though they were confronting Area 18 head-on.
In reality, vast buffer zones and mountainous terrain still separated India's westernmost Category A divisions from the bases of Britannia's main force. They could claim in their propaganda to be facing the empire's spearhead without ending up in an all-out war with Cornelia the next day because some border officer acted on impulse.
Lin Cuo stared at the map for a few seconds before finally saying in a low voice:
"Sure enough, the Indians aren't fucking idiots either."
The Secretariat official standing beside him pretended not to have heard.
Aditya Singh and the Autonomous Council of State being willing to honor the