Chapter 86: A Bewitching Talent!

Mei Mumu cheated.

He snatched the Mosin-Nagant from Ivan, who was cowering into a ball beside him, quickly cast a spell, and fired a shot into the sky.

Bang!

Three seconds later, without any bombs dropped, without pulling up, and without being blasted into a fireball, that Stuka dove straight past the escort ship, skimming less than twenty meters above the water, and crashed headlong into the river’s surface.

Boom! A massive column of water, over ten meters high, erupted instantly.

The plane hit the water at a steep angle, shattering into pieces on impact. There was no towering fireball—after all, the fuel on a single aircraft is quite limited. And unless it’s a forced landing, the plane sinks within moments.

On board the escort ship, a chorus of “Hurrah!” erupted.

Every soldier counted themselves lucky to have survived.

Truth be told, with the steep diving attacks of the Stuka, it was rare for them to miss their mark.

“Well done, Sergeant Portnov!” A Red Army lieutenant at the bow laughed heartily, clapping the anti-air gunner next to him on the back.

“No, sir, that wasn’t the anti-aircraft gun.” The sergeant spoke honestly. “If the gun had hit it, the plane would have turned into a fireball in midair.”

“Then what was it…?” The young lieutenant was clearly new to the battlefield.

“It must have been a machine gun or rifle that hit the pilot, most likely…”

The German air raid continued. The flying skills of the German pilots were far superior to the poorly trained Soviet ones, especially at night.

The troops crossing the river could do little but put up a sparse, almost useless barrage, suffering one-sided punishment.

In the era before anti-air missiles, anti-air defense relied on high-density barrages from anti-aircraft guns and heavy machine guns.

The Red Army’s river crossing was already a stealthy, nighttime operation because their anti-air cover was practically nonexistent and their air force was almost absent. Ordinary submachine guns were nearly useless against the steep-diving Stukas—even a lucky shot would often be deflected by the aircraft’s metal skin.

Tonight, however, things were different.

After who knows how many nights under bombardment, the captains began to notice something strange.

The Stuka’s siren wailed.

Boom! Another Stuka crashed into the river.

The siren wailed again.

Boom! Another Stuka went down.

Four Stukas in total attempted to take out the escort ship Mei Mumu was on. All of them ended up in the river.

If someone with extraordinary night vision and dynamic eyesight had been watching, they would have seen that each Stuka pilot was shot in the head during the dive at about four hundred meters above the escort ship.

The bullet would smash through the front windshield, penetrate the skull, and splatter brain and blood all over the cockpit.

In daytime bombing runs, dive bomber pilots would typically release their bombs at about five hundred meters from the target, so that the bomb would hit within about twenty-five meters of the intended point. For World War II, that was already an impressive accuracy rate.

The daring German pilots, knowing the Soviets had little anti-air fire, favored close-range bombing runs over the Volga under cover of darkness.

Recently, they had been dropping bombs at around three hundred meters, and the thrill-seekers among them would release at two hundred meters before pulling up to escape.

Such near-vertical dives were almost guaranteed hits.

Tonight, though, the Stuka pilots felt cursed. The downed planes didn’t even smoke—they just fell straight out of the sky.

Who had ever seen a plane crash with no smoke, no warning?

One was odd. All four was terrifying.

Below, the Soviets roared “Hurrah!” over and over, while the frightened German pilots hurriedly turned tail and fled.

“The Soviets obviously have a new kind of anti-aircraft system,” reported the returning pilots.

On the escort ship, Mei Mumu was not the only one firing, so no one suspected him.

He acted as if nothing had happened and crossed the river with the rest.

Who could have known that the next morning, an officer from the People’s Commissariat came to see General Chuikov.

“What is it?” Chuikov said impatiently.

In the Soviet army, the People’s Commissariat was universally despised.

“Last night, during the river crossing, our forces shot down four Stukas. All of them were piloted by German aces, as confirmed by the paintwork on the recovered planes.”

“The boys did well,” Chuikov replied indifferently.

The officer produced two pieces of Stuka windshield and placed them in front of Chuikov.

Chuikov was taken aback. “What’s this?”

The two windshields were from different planes, with varying degrees of shattering. But both had a circular bullet hole right in the center.

“These are Mosin-Nagant bullet holes, from the standard M1891 model. According to our calculations, all the sniping took place at about four hundred meters altitude. After that, the pilots would normally drop their bombs. But last night, when four Stukas tried to attack the Red Moon escort ship, every single one was silenced at that height, then crashed.”

Every officer who heard this drew a sharp breath.

The mass-produced M1891 had a theoretical range of eight hundred meters. Firing upwards, the bullet would lose at least half its energy.

To snipe at planes at the extreme edge of range, hitting Stukas diving at over four hundred kilometers per hour, and to shoot the pilot in the head every time with a battered rifle whose sights might not even be adjusted… That marksmanship was almost supernatural.

Chuikov suddenly burst out laughing. “Ha! It seems Mother Russia has finally sent me a true sharpshooter!”

When his laughter had subsided, Chuikov grew serious. “Find this remarkable fellow for me at once. I want him to deal with those damned German snipers across the line. My adjutant Bakanov was shot dead from three hundred meters just yesterday!”

Elsewhere, two hours earlier—

Unaware of his overnight fame, Mei Mumu was still obediently playing the role of a common infantryman. Before dawn, he was ordered to prepare to assault a German-held factory.

One glance from afar and Mei Mumu wanted to die.

How brainless could command be, to send a bunch of farm boys—who could barely aim—to charge a German machine gun nest?

Using his system’s night vision binoculars, Mei Mumu could see at least six MG42 heavy machine guns five hundred meters away.

Those things mowing down charging infantry was even easier than harvesting wheat.

To make things worse, there was almost no cover for the three hundred meters they would have to cross. The Germans on the other side were already firing flares.

The charge signal blared!

“Hurrah!” The Soviets charged.

Forced to follow, Mei Mumu charged as well, all the while squeezing the trigger.

The muzzle of his PPSh spat fire.

Unbeknownst to anyone, every bullet he fired carried an added transmutation spell—Arrow Shot. Originally, this spell allowed a crossbow bolt to be fired as if by a light crossbow.

But when Mei Mumu added a shard of Fate to the spell, it evolved into Divine Marksmanship!

The 7.62mm bullets from his PPSh easily crossed two hundred fifty meters and struck the German machine gunner right in the forehead, even though he was hiding behind a concrete pillbox and protected by a gun shield.