Arc of Fire

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Following the meeting, Wang Zhong felt like he had joined a praise group, showered with compliments by everyone.

But he didn’t care about that at all; he strove to find a time to hunt for the overall map.

From his bird’s-eye view, he could only see about two kilometers around the troops under his command and those he could communicate with directly; climbing heights allowed him a slightly farther view.

This distance might correspond to just one centimeter on the map.

He needed to find a map, preferably one of the entire battlefield or even the whole country, to understand the current situation.

Knowing that only a week had passed since the beginning of the war, he compared it to the Barbarossa he knew of; in the first week, the furthest German units had only advanced 170 kilometers.

If both worlds progressed similarly, then the next week should see the Minsk encirclement.

Wang Zhong scanned around and spotted the overall battlefield map on the most conspicuous wall with a staff officer attaching markers to it, using a small ladder.

When he got there, he suddenly remembered a scene from a movie and, to emphasize his professionalism, he asked, “What time’s reports have the map been updated with?”

The staff officer on the ladder replied, “The north is updated with the latest reports; the situation in the south was updated at five in the morning.”

Wang Zhong nodded and began to scrutinize the map carefully from north to south.

————

After Aleksei Konstantinovich Rokossovsky raced to the map, Duke Vostrom collected his smile and looked towards his command team.

They’d praised Rokossovsky not only because he had indeed fought well, but also because Rokossovsky had a good relationship with the Crown Prince.

This was common knowledge among the nobility.

Otherwise, a count like Rokossovsky wouldn’t be so well known that even the fifty-five-year-old Duke Vostrom had heard of him.

Of course, the Duke had only heard rumors about Count Rokossovsky and hadn’t interacted with him directly. Even if they were at the same social event, the Duke wouldn’t engage much with a dissipated young aristocrat.

The Duke watched Rokossovsky for a while, then turned to his adjutant and asked, “Have you interacted with Count Rokossovsky? Is he always like this?”

The adjutant glanced at Rokossovsky and lowered his voice, “I don’t know. The Crown Prince only befriends those who share his interests, and those people are usually the bottom of the class in any school—I graduated top of my class from the Suvorov Military Academy.”

The Duke looked at Rokossovsky, then questioned, “Now he’s in Peniye, holding off several times his number in enemy forces. Do you have the confidence to do the same?”

"No,” the adjutant answered without hesitation, “especially not the part where he personally took a T28 to flank and take out Prosen tanks. I couldn’t accomplish that.”

At that moment, the Army Group’s main chaplain joined the conversation, “He also rushed to the map with great urgency, obviously very concerned about the war, but I’ve heard he’s only in the military to make money and chase women.”

The adjutant spread his hands, “Maybe he’s just pretending, in order to get close to the Crown Prince. Who knows?”

————

Wang Zhong was troubled in front of the map.

As a player of the “Hearts of Iron” game series, he was very familiar with the “Eastern Front” of Earth, having fought on it countless times and on both sides.

He found that although many details were different—like the shape of coastlines, specific flow of rivers, and distribution of mountains—the map’s major components were similar to the Eastern Front he knew.

For instance, the northern line was mainly forest and swamp, while the southern line was primarily large plains.

While the countries were organized differently, Wang Zhong’s first stop, Ronied, was on the southern coast, with its location seemingly analogous to Odessa on Earth.

Traveling southwest along the coastline, nations like Romania would be bordering, but here the map directly showed borders with Prosen.

No wonder Prosen’s battleships could dock and shell Ronied from the coast.

What had happened in this alternate timeline’s history?

But at the moment, Wang Zhong had no leisure to ponder history; through the map, it was clear that three massive Prosen enemy clusters were advancing triumphantly.

Even though the specifics of cities and river courses were different from the Eastern Front Wang Zhong knew, he could still tell that the Ante Army in the central line was about to be encircled.

The situation on the southern line where he was located was also dire; they were in Bogdanovka, the capital of the Vostrom Principality and a major city on the southern front. Behind it ran the Dnieper River.

This was a large river running roughly north-to-south, which would bend in an L-shape westward after passing the Vostrom Principality.

Looking at the marks on the map, it seemed as if the upper Dnieper was connected to the Bog River, which leads to the northern sea, via a canal.

It was obvious that this river defense line was extremely important.

And Bogdanovka was the most critical barrier before the southern segment of the Dnieper River, with a tributary running through here all the way to the coast.

Initially, Wang Zhong had thought his current location was this planet’s version of Kiev, but then it didn’t seem right.

It was too far south.

The Ante Army’s huge southern group was deployed near the border, which was already doomed. Now the main southern forces were concentrated in Argesukov, northeast of Bogdanovka, right at the bend of the Dnieper.

The ode Su Fang received earlier seemed to come from Argesukov, saying that it was the headquarters of the Southwestern Front Army.

Looking at the administrative divisions, Argesukov also appeared to be the capital of the Kazarlia Kingdom, which was the overarching division above the Vostrom Principality.

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