Chapter 29: The Offensive of Public Opinion (Seeking Continued Reading)

As the entire I-16 squadron pulled up, Profiev caught a glimpse of the vast grasslands suddenly illuminated by a multitude of torches. Thousands of flickering lights merged into rivers of fire, rapidly converging toward the supply depot.

The high-pitched, resonant war cry of "Ura!" could be heard clearly even from hundreds of meters in the air.

"Ah! It’s our cavalry!"

The radio was filled with cheers in the Lasian language.

Under normal circumstances, expecting light cavalry to charge a heavily fortified camp protected by machine guns, cannons, and armored vehicles would be a suicide mission. But today was different. After the repeated, relentless ground-strafing attacks by skilled pilots like Profiev, not a single intact watchtower or functional armored vehicle remained in the massive military encampment.

Beyond a few isolated bunkers where machine guns still spat fire, it was no exaggeration to say the camp was completely defenseless.

Minutes later, those bunkers with their narrow firing angles were silenced when brave riders charged forward and tossed explosive satchels inside, sending them sky-high with a thunderous roar.

Stripped of their heavy weapons and with their organizational integrity shattered, the Yamato soldiers, now in a state of total collapse, became nothing more than lambs for the slaughter under the blades of Bagen’s cavalry.

"Kill them all!" Bagen roared, holding his rifle high in excitement. "The Third Prince has ordered it! No survivors in this camp!"

"Ooh-rah!"

"Ura—"

Some Yamato soldiers tried to flee, but how could two legs outrun four? The Buryat riders, nursing deep-seated grudges against them, even used lassos to snag the escaping soldiers, performing a gruesome display of "dismemberment by two horses."

It wasn't that the Yamato soldiers didn't try to use their trenches to mount a defense, but they were overwhelmed as cavalry swarmed in from every direction. A single grenade tossed into a trench was enough to send several soldiers flying.

It was a total, absolute massacre.

Seeing that the outcome was decided, Bagen kept his cool. "Morigen, Suhebator, take one battalion each and spread out. Watch the north and south flanks for me."

"Understood!"

"Yes, sir!"

Bagen was incredibly bold. Knowing full well that there were other supply depots just 20 kilometers away—and that enemy reinforcements were likely on the way—he ordered his men to mop up the battlefield.

Three hours later.

"As the Prince expected, those spineless Yamato cowards didn't dare come to reinforce!"

Bagen’s force consisted of only three thousand ragtag cavalrymen, yet with the support of the air force, they achieved the feat of completely annihilating the enemy.

Preliminary counts showed that this battle resulted in over 4,000 enemy kills. Captured loot included more than 5,000 Type 37 rifles, 53 machine guns, 30 pieces of various artillery—such as the Type 92 70mm gun—dozens of carts of ammunition, and hundreds of tons of supplies.

These were all carted away in stages.

But these were merely bonuses. The real focus was... the photographs.

Over a dozen war photographers had followed the troops, capturing every moment as they cleared the battlefield. Before the fighting had even concluded, film canisters containing over two thousand photos were rushed by fast horses to a makeshift field airfield about ten kilometers west of the depot. Calling it an airfield was a stretch; it was simply a patch of land the cavalry had crudely cleared.

Aircraft of this era were rugged enough that as long as there were no deep craters, they could likely take off. Since the wooden planes were light, a few dozen meters of relatively flat dirt road were more than enough.

An I-14 fighter took off rapidly.

The result was that before dawn, the entire world heard the global broadcast from the Grand Duchy of Beria: "Last night, our forces achieved a great victory on the grasslands, completely routing the Yamato 2nd Division (Moss). We neutralized over fifty officers, including Colonel Maeda and Major Takayama, killed over four thousand enemy soldiers, and wounded more than ten thousand. Over one hundred tanks and armored vehicles were destroyed, and we captured more than five thousand rifles..."

To provide proof, a special, thickened 32-page edition of the Beria Daily was freshly minted.

The headline of this special issue featured a photo of a group of Buryat cavalrymen waving their national flag atop a blown-up Yamato "bean tank." The following pages were filled with photographs of fallen Yamato soldiers. With a mix of wide shots and close-ups, combined with the images of Yamato weaponry piled like mountains, the authenticity was undeniable.

The newspaper was not only distributed along the Barovsk border but also rushed to the desks of the various Electors of Lasia via trainer planes, ensuring they would see it the moment they woke up.

That wasn't all. Zhang Shan specifically arranged a relay of aircraft to fly west to the Emperor of Asgard and the King of Britannia, and south across the great grasslands to the Seris Empire.

Zhang Shan was determined to maximize the impact of this propaganda offensive.

In the city of Barovsk, Anna was slightly puzzled. "Your Highness, the amount of energy you are spending to publicize this victory..."

"What is the point of winning a victory if you don't boast about it? It’s like wearing fine clothes in the dark," Zhang Shan replied with a Seris proverb, leaving Anna stunned.

There was more he didn't say: If I win and add some propaganda, won't the foreign aid start pouring in?

By noon that day, Emperor Odin III of Asgard received the urgent report.

"Your Majesty, that Andrei Beriasky seems to have won a major victory," his high minister, Njord, remarked.

"Hmph! Is it not just empty boasting?"

"No, Your Majesty. The Berians sent a thick stack of photos as evidence. Our intelligence department verified that there are over three thousand corpses in the photos, all of them elite Yamato soldiers with oni-horns. Combined with the captured Yamato battle flags, the possibility of forgery is virtually zero. Based on the standard 1:3 casualty ratio, it is accurate to say the Berians wiped out a Yamato Type-A division."

"Oh? That boy can actually fight."

Here, Odin III and his ministers fell into a logical trap. A 1:3 casualty ratio was a reasonable deduction. By those metrics, the Yamato had lost at least 12,000 men. Since a Type-A division only had 20,000, calling it a "rout" was perfectly acceptable.

Heaven knows Zhang Shan was playing with semantics—he had annihilated 4,000 men, yet he bragged about routing an entire Type-A division.

Odin III was fooled, as were the usually cunning and treacherous Britons.

Not to mention the people of Seris, who were struggling in despair as half their country had fallen.

Although Seris received the telegraph early that morning, it wasn't until the following morning that the international newspapers arrived and were reprinted.

The entire nation of Seris erupted!

"Extra! Extra! The Yamato Northern Expeditionary Army, overestimating their strength, challenged the Beria Duchy of Lasia and was brutally beaten! One of Yamato's ace units, the 2nd Division 'Moss', has been completely routed! The Lasians have killed four thousand and wounded thirteen thousand!" The newsboys' cries easily caught the attention of patriots.

Even though it was a thickened edition and cost twice as much as usual, the papers sold out instantly.

"Hahaha! Lasia is truly a Great Power! When they actually fight, how could they fear those Yamato devils?"

"Let me see! Let me see!" Countless people crowded around, craning their necks.

Pictures were far more impactful than text.

When the news first arrived, everyone was skeptical, but when hundreds of images were presented to the readers, they could no longer deny the truth.

The devils had truly been wiped out!

That was a Type-A division! Everyone knew that even if Seris sent a hundred thousand troops, they couldn't push back a single Yamato Type-A division, yet the Lasians wiped them out just like that?

Across Seris, countless people spent the night sleepless, shouting in feverish excitement as if it were the New Year.

Meanwhile, on the grasslands, Lieutenant Colonel Sakamoto of the Boundary Division, cowering and rubbing his hands together like a fly, spoke in the most flattering tone possible to the man who was a traitor yesterday and his financial patron's proxy today: "Natsume-kun, we will, of course, agree to Prince Beriasky's demands!"