The red arcs of developing battle lines on the system map did not stop thickening as the order he issued took hold and spread throughout the ranks.
They spread.
One company at a time, then two, then entire battalions advancing in deliberate increments as reports arrived one after another as if a printer was endlessly printing out new pages second after second.
Within a few hours new Rail junctions passed into Montenegrin control with barely a pause.
Nearly empty supply depots were claimed for the Kingdom with nary a shot fired as the remaining Ottoman garrisons either tried to flee in terror or surrendered on the spot rather than resisting the sizable host heading towards them.
The order he had given to his military commanders was propogating and the effects already spreading across the Thracian lands.
Elias remained at the table, hands resting flat against the oak once more, his eyes following the moving forms of his armies as show thanks to his relative hive mind like connection to them.
The tens of thousands of his men who had driven the Ottomans in Europe to the brink of collapse before resting were finally moving once again.
And move they did like a spectre of death across the land, as the boogeymen the fleeing garrison forces from earlier in the war had warned only to be ignored by their fellow countrymen.
Only to find that now those very fears that had been ignored were being validated.
As the march of the Montenegrin Royal army, swept through towns quickly dispersing the local garrisons and paltry militias that managed to form in such short amounts of time.
His order had only gone out that very morning and already the borders had shifted another 30 kilometers further east in a single day.
A thing relatively unhead of in this day and age, when armies were limited in their mobility thanks to the slow means in which they could move all but their cavalry forces.
~
For Elias the situation was no different than before, he was the Supreme command sitting in his Command Center ruling the nation from the shadows, while running more of a secret Military dictatorship that truly ruled while Peter followed a simple list of commands given to him by Lord Elias, with the civil popularity and the unyielding loyalty of the army to properly install himself as an Autocratic ruler, ruling with Authority greatly outstripping most if not all the ruling Monarchs or Europe at this time.
And a higher civil approval rating than even the most popular diplomatic ruler as well.
The mountain that served as his hidden base hummed softly around him, early electric power flowing through conduits sunk deep into bedrock.
Above, the Balkans went about their morning largely unaware this day would be one to remember in history when the Kingdom of Montenegro, which had only just became a Kingdom, had decided that a kingdom was to small for them, and initiated the war to create an empire, one that unified the balkan regions under the command of a balkan lord.
~
Far to the east, an Ottoman telegraph clerk stared at his key in mounting confusion.
Transmissions had been arriving all day in fragments.
The method of telegraph did not allow for multiple incoming signals to be transmitted lest they bleed into one another and in doing so jumble the incoming message trying to be transmitted.
From the bits and pieces that could be deciphered there was a flurry of requests.
Requests for large artillery, rapid troop deployment, even some requests that looked like either permission to surrender or even retreat.
He quickly wrote out everything that came in twice before sending a copy to the local commander, before setting up his equipment to forward the incoming transmission on to Constantinople itself.
The rapid series of forwarded messages carried on for a few hours with a few back and forth responses to the operator in the capital before even this fragmented messages stopped being transmitted and all requests for more information went unanswered.
~
By the next day,
In Vienna, a military attaché frowned at a map covered in red grease pencil marks that no longer aligned with the latest reports.
Russian arrows no longer explained Ottoman movements.
Gaps appeared where none should exist.
He drafted a cautious cable.
~
Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, the Monarchy and Military high command remained completly none the wiser.
Their own military forces were encountering stiffer resistance than they had expected.
With the Ottoman empire throwing just about everything they had to stop the uprisings and newest invasion by Russian forces into the region.
The Tsar could only shake his head in shame, as his assumption that Serbia, and Montenegro who had stated intrest in joining the great war against the Ottomans with the goal of freeing all slavic peoples from their rule.
Had instead gone out in the first round allowing the Ottoman's the ability to recomit much of their Western force to the east to decisively rebuff the invasion, before getting assistance once more from the French and British manipulators, still adopting the 'Eastern Question'.
~
Each had received the fastest report they could but these reports failed to paint a significant picture of what was really happening in the region.
This allowed Elias and his men to carry on unimpeded until the illusion broke and the world awoke from the stupor to realize the dream they were having instead had turned into a nightmare.
The offensive itself had after three days advanced deep enough into Thrace to have already passed by Edirne, and showed no signs of slowing down as they pressed to claim the Ottoman capital.
The only slowdown was the breaking off of the First army, who instead of carrying on solely eastward, moved north, and east at the same time.
Their mission was to secure the northern battle line, establishing a clear border between occupied Ottoman territory, securing what would be known as northern modern day turkey, and southern Bulgaria though not so far north as to claim Burgas.
Drawing a clear line across the Balkans from Tsarevo through Plovdiv, before curling up north into serbian territories until finally wrapping back south and meeting up with the origional Montenegro Kingdom borders.
The Kingdom occupying the whole of the South Balkan states save for the Kingdom of Greece who was aware of the Montenegrin advances to their borders but aside from greetings and a casual placement of border guards the rest of thar army turned and proceeded Eastward.
The only other contact came from Diplomats of Montenegro, offering deals of peace, and even some rather outrageous offers to ally the two kingdoms together or, from the mouth of one very drunk diplomat the words 'become a vassal state' were uttered but ignored entirely.