Chapter 98: Hi! Hydra! (First Update) (Requesting Subscriptions)

"I'm going too! I've had professional training as well."

To Mei Mumu's surprise, Natalia was also on the invitation list.

Mei Mumu instantly felt a knot in his stomach.

This incarnation of Black Widow's growth trajectory was exactly as he remembered it. At age ten, Natalia had been discovered for her astonishing agility, reported all the way up the intelligence chain to the Central Committee.

Stalin himself had ordered her to be placed under the tutelage of spy Taras Romanov, raised as his adopted daughter. She learned many combat and espionage skills from her foster father.

But no matter how much training she'd had, it was still only apprentice-level stuff.

Compared to this near-suicidal operation, she was far too green.

Besides, if she came along, how was Mei Mumu supposed to use magic?

For low-level spells, he could manage with silent casting, but the crucial portal magic required the sling ring combined with hand gestures.

Mei Mumu's face darkened on the spot. "Don't be ridiculous. That place is a den of devils—Berlin. If we slip up, a million troops could tear us to shreds at any moment. Your skills aren't up to par!"

Natalia was taken aback.

She knew full well the gap between herself and Mei Mumu. If agility was the only measure, she could barely keep pace with him, but in every other category, the gap was enormous.

She had a record of killing enemies at a hundred meters, but compared to Mei Mumu's cheating, never-miss accuracy, she was at least two tiers below. And that was just the visible gap.

The biggest difference lay in sensory perception.

Mei Mumu's Balance System could mount heat radar, infrared sensing, and night vision—a single Fate Fragment was enough to integrate those twenty-first-century off-the-shelf functions into the system.

This allowed Mei Mumu to easily detect any personnel or military dogs within a hundred-meter radius. To Natalia, this manifested as a gap in hearing and perception.

Essentially, the fourteen-year-old Natalia was outclassed by Mei Mumu in every conceivable way.

But that intelligence colonel... Mei Mumu genuinely wanted to strangle him.

"But Comrade Romanova is the only one in the entire 62nd Army, even the entire Stalingrad Front, who can keep up with your movements. Won't you really consider taking her? Even if you just leave her outside the camp's perimeter as backup!"

That old codger's words were like a lifeline thrown to the fiercely competitive Natalia.

"Yes, yes! I can find a sniper position on the perimeter to cover you. If you need to retreat, I'll have your back."

Mei Mumu massaged his forehead. "Fine!"

The moment he relented, Natalia pounced on him, planting several kisses on his cheek.

He had no choice but to agree.

He didn't know how much longer the time rewind of the Eye of Agamotto could hold out. He'd secretly opened it before and discovered that the Time Stone's energy diminished with use. That meant he couldn't stay at this point in time indefinitely.

Since going back to the past would affect the future, the biggest challenge of his return to this time point was figuring out how to raise the power levels of various Marvel heroes as much as possible without completely wrecking the timeline—while opportunistically gathering more Fate Deviation Points to strengthen himself.

The intelligence colonel was quite satisfied. "Excellent. Now, I hope you two can withdraw from the front lines. You'll undergo two weeks of specialized training. At minimum, both of you need to learn German. We don't exactly have direct flights to Berlin."

The colonel cracked a somewhat dry joke.

And so, Mei Mumu and Natalia left Stalingrad, which they'd been fighting in for over a month, and—escorted by two fighter planes—arrived at a small city that didn't appear on any map.

In an abandoned school, they underwent spy training.

Mei Mumu got chewed out royally.

The instructor sprayed spittle all over Mei Mumu's face:

"Idiot! Your identity is SS Major Bartner von Berman! A former Junker aristocrat. We don't have the resources to fabricate many legitimate identities that can get you within ten kilometers of Sachsenhausen concentration camp. You must adapt to your cover identity."

"You are nobility! Even if you've fallen on hard times, nobility is still nobility!"

"Show some arrogance!"

Mei Mumu bared his teeth in frustration.

Damn it. Before his transmigration, he'd just been a student from an ordinary working-class family. His first transmigration made him a doctor, the second a hunter kid—and if it weren't for relatives like Lopakhin, he'd never have come close to nobility in a dozen lifetimes.

Where was he supposed to get aristocratic bearing from?

Enough talk—just send yours truly to Berlin and be done with it.

You losers—I could take on a whole division by myself!

Hmph! Weak sauce!

"Excellent! That's the look. You pass." The instructor's face suddenly lit up with delight. "Since you have a dedicated German driver as your inside contact, keep that mindset and that arrogance. You'll clear at least eighty percent of the checkpoints."

Huh? What?

This... this actually works?

The essence of being a spy was playing the part so convincingly you became the person.

When Mei Mumu put on that smug, swaggering look, he started to inhabit the role.

Natalia, meanwhile, was posing as his sister, Ilona von Beckman. Compared to Mei, Natalia's almost innate espionage talent let her slip into the role of an aristocratic young lady faster and better.

In the blink of an eye, the clock reached the end of 1942.

At this point in time, the German military was still dominant, and all of Europe trembled beneath the treads of the German war machine. This was also the year when Germany's territory reached its greatest extent.

Setting out from Leningrad—what would later become Saint Petersburg after the Soviet Union dissolved—aboard a small fishing boat, it took Mei Mumu and Natalia a week to secretly land on the northern coast of Germany on a foggy night.

They made perfect contact with their liaison.

To rescue the target, the Kremlin had deployed its finest resources.

One could say they'd activated countless intelligence lines and covert networks; if this failed, the losses would be catastrophic.

Heading south, they encountered scares but no real danger.

Finally, on December 20th, they arrived outside Sachsenhausen concentration camp. The intelligence officer guiding them said, somewhat dejectedly, "We lost three of our best agents—all top-level sleepers embedded for over a decade—and still couldn't find out where Comrade Yakov is. We only know he's in Sector A, the most heavily guarded area. I'm sorry, but from here on, it's up to you."

"No problem."

"What's the plan now?"

For five kilometers in every direction around Sachsenhausen camp, there was nothing but endless open grassland—nowhere to hide. High-power searchlights swept back and forth ceaselessly. It looked utterly hopeless.

After passing the final ordinary checkpoint, Natalia, hiding in the trunk of the car, pulled on a ghillie suit covered in leaves and slipped out to find a sniper position.

Just then, the system scan revealed an interesting detail to Mei Mumu.

He said to the driver, "Drive straight to the camp's main gate."

The intelligence officer's heart nearly leapt out of his chest. "We don't have a pass!"

"It's fine. Trust me."

The car drew closer and closer. The agent could even see the deadly glint of the MG42's barrel on the watchtower.

"Halt!" A guard immediately came forward at the gate. "What's your business? Where's your pass?"

"To hell with the pass." Mei Mumu rolled down the window and leaned toward the guard, whispering a single phrase: "Heil Hydra!"