Chapter 85: The River of Death

Is Mei Mumu an agility build? Well, that’s not entirely wrong. Normally, mages focus on intelligence, but Mei Mumu is a bit of an oddball; her growth template is none other than the White-Robed Sword Saint, Gandalf!

Old “Dried Tofu” was a berserker among mages, leaning heavily toward agility. Besides, as soon as Mei Mumu came to her senses after transmigrating, she silently cast a spell she learned from the Kamar-Taj library: “Lesser Arrow Ward.”

No one noticed the wisp of breeze swirling around her body. The moment any flying object shot toward her, the protective spell would trigger instantly.

To stay alive, when the Stuka dive bombers came, Mei Mumu also cast “Haste” on herself, making her movements as swift as the wind.

It was the dead of night. Mei Mumu led six green recruits, trudging through the frozen earth, following the main force under cover of darkness. She had more or less understood the situation: since her magic still worked, she was indeed still in the Marvel universe.

The date was October 16, 1942, right on the eastern bank of the Volga River near Stalingrad. This was Soviet-controlled territory, but air supremacy had been lost. German planes crossed the river day and night, bombing Soviet supply convoys.

To get supplies and troops to the front more safely, all high-capacity, expensive, and hard-to-repair trains ran only at night, edging closer to Stalingrad. The little train station they’d just passed was the last one armored trains could reach near the front lines.

The last ten kilometers had to be covered on foot to the Volga, praying not to get shot while crossing, and then into that infamous slaughterhouse, the Stalingrad battlefield.

Mei Mumu was a bit frustrated. Sure, she’d used time-reversal magic to escape danger, but winding up as a lowly foot soldier—it was enough to make her dizzy.

This was the Marvel universe, after all. On Soviet soil, there were only two possible connections to superheroes, but the timelines didn’t quite match up… Still, it wasn’t hard to guess. The real question was how she would encounter them.

Of course, Mei Mumu could choose not to be cannon fodder, but that would be even more troublesome. Her current magic reserves were pitifully low, and after Miss Balance overrode her authority to exchange for an altered appearance and Russian fluency, she had fallen into a deep sleep.

If she acted rashly, she might very well end up as the punchline to a dark joke: a famed wizard shot dead by a WWII rifle.

Don’t be fooled by the chaotic scene; Mei Mumu would bet fifty cents there were at least a dozen NKVD operatives nearby. And those political officers shouting “Defend the Motherland!” by the roadside were not there just for show.

As long as you kept your head down and followed orders, nothing would happen. But if anyone tried to go against the flow, and wasn’t a properly uniformed officer, trouble was guaranteed.

Yes, many scenes in war movies are lies.

At this point, the Soviets had no spare capacity to make standardized uniforms. Boxcar after boxcar from the rear was filled with peasant boys from all over the country. Forget uniforms—they didn’t even have basic military training.

They’d just picked up what little they knew from the one regular soldier guarding the boxcar doors, who’d hastily taught them how to load and fire a rifle.

It felt like these young men were pigs sent to Stalingrad, ready for the slaughter.

“Sir, where are we headed now?” A young man came up behind Mei Mumu. She recognized him as one of her own men—his name was Ivan.

“We’ll cross the river under cover of darkness. If we make it across, we’ll follow the orders of our commanding officer.”

“Um… Sir, are you a veteran? Is there anything we should watch out for?” Ivan asked timidly.

Mei Mumu glanced around; it wasn’t just her own men, but everyone nearby was looking at her with eager eyes.

There was no helping it—she stood out too much.

She was the only recruit with a collar insignia. While others carried Mosin-Nagants like laundry poles, she alone had a PPSh submachine gun.

Mei Mumu actually wanted to keep a low profile, but it was impossible! As a modern person and a half-baked military buff, she had a few tricks up her sleeve.

“Did you see what just happened? When the bombers came, all the veterans except those on the anti-aircraft guns immediately hit the ground. That shows that firing at enemy planes is a job for the veterans; the rest of us should just get down. Back where I’m from, there was once a shipwreck. A veteran sailor told me, if the ship’s going down, jump into the river right away—if you hesitate, you’ll be dragged under by the sinking ship.”

What seemed like common sense to people today was practically gospel in those ignorant times.

They spoke of the glory of dying for their country, but survival is a human instinct!

Who wouldn’t want to earn honor and stay alive, too?

These bumpkins, mostly straight off the farm, began to idolize Mei Mumu on the spot.

Her words were flawless, all based on careful observation, so even if there were NKVD agents nearby, they couldn’t find anything wrong. At most, they’d praise her keen powers of observation.

They boarded the boat with the rest of the troops, and only then did Mei Mumu feel the true terror of war.

To avoid bombing, all ferries were forbidden from using lights.

In this era before night vision, once darkness fell, you couldn’t see your hand before your face. The only reference points were the still-burning city in the distance.

Every captain relied on gut instinct and experience to steer the boat.

On the river, the hull kept bumping into something, making dull, muffled thuds. A soldier by the rail couldn’t help but look over, only to be horrified—floating on the water were corpses, all Red Army soldiers.

Someone retched.

Suddenly, the now-familiar whine of a Stuka dive-bomber rang out.

There was a reason the Allies called the Stuka “the wail of the reaper.” Its ever-heightening scream, followed by a thunderous explosion seconds later, was enough to turn men's hearts to ice.

The skilled German pilots used the faint glow of the burning city reflected on the water to pinpoint the boats’ positions and began their dive.

A chill ran down Mei Mumu’s spine. She realized disaster was imminent!

Damn it!

Judging by the dive path, the plane was definitely targeting her escort boat.

Her boat displaced just over 200 tons. But on the river, compared to the ten- or eight-meter-long sampans, the escort boat was already a whale among minnows.

Tonight, the moonlight—unfortunately—was quite bright. The escort boat stood out starkly on the water.

“Hell no! I am not going into that river at this temperature!”

In mid-October, Stalingrad’s nighttime temperature was minus ten degrees Celsius.

A southerner like Mei Mumu would freeze solid in that hellish water.

No way. She had to do something!

On the water, Red Army soldiers on the smaller boats up ahead had already opened fire.

But the Stuka’s dive angle was eighty degrees from the ground. With such a steep angle, trying to stop a Stuka diving at up to 410 kilometers per hour with the escort boat’s lone, feeble autocannon was like buying a lottery ticket.

“We’re done for!” Almost everyone on the escort boat squeezed their eyes shut in despair, waiting for that thunderous, world-shattering explosion.