Chapter Eighty-Eight: Super Soldier

“Good day, sir.” Mei Mumu gave an awkward, ill-formed salute.

A few of the senior officers nearby let out low snickers.

Awkward.

“Stop laughing. Sending a young man who was a civilian only yesterday onto the battlefield proves that our struggle has reached its most critical hour.” Chuikov suppressed their laughter, then turned to Mei Mumu. “I hear your marksmanship is excellent.”

“Uh, yes.” What else could Mei Mumu say? He could only answer in the affirmative.

“How excellent? Could you hit a Stuka bomber at four hundred meters with a rifle?”

“……”

After a brief pause, Mei Mumu squared his shoulders and answered stiffly, “Yes. I think I brought down several last night. It was too dark to be certain.”

“And that is why you failed to report your results to your superior?”

Mei Mumu, the consummate scene-stealer, put on a look of utter bewilderment. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t dare report it!”

“Pfft!” One of the bigwigs laughed outright.

Everyone else wore the expression of people who understood perfectly.

Of course! Bring down Stuka bombers one after another with a rifle? Who would believe something that outrageous?

Chuikov waved a hand. “Fine. You’re a raw recruit who has never received military training. As commander, I forgive you.”

“Thank you, sir!”

“And then, this morning, was it you who hit a machine gunner from more than two hundred meters away with your submachine gun?”

“That’s right, it was me!” Since there was no point hiding it anymore, Mei Mumu decided to play the master marksman all the way.

“Where did you learn to shoot?”

“Reporting, sir. I’m from Kamenka in Brest Province. My family has been hunters for generations.” Mei Mumu hardened his heart and repeated the identity the system had cobbled together for him.

And surprisingly enough, there really had been Russians with the surname Dralovsky. Of course, that place lay on the border between Belarus and Poland; by now it was enemy-occupied territory, and the village had already been massacred by German troops.

A classic case of the dead having no witnesses.

“Let me see your marksmanship.”

“Yes, sir!”

Soon, accompanied by Chuikov and several other senior officers and surrounded by a ring of guards, Mei Mumu arrived at an underground firing range. It had probably been converted from some factory warehouse.

“Use a Mosin-Nagant first.”

Mei Mumu hefted a rifle heavy as sin, then, in the stance taught by the system’s Intermediate Shooting Mastery, slowly braced the stock against his shoulder.

At first Mei Mumu had not understood why the shooting-related skills could be purchased only with fragments of fate. Then the system had explained the truth in a single sentence: “Host, have you ever seen anyone who uses a gun make it into the front ranks of the Avengers?”

Come to think of it, that made sense. The lethality of conventional firearms was simply too low.

If an ordinary service rifle could kill Dormammu or Thanos, then what need would there be for superhuman power?

That was why Hawkeye, who used a bow, War Machine, and Star-Lord, who relied only on a tiny laser pistol after losing his divine powers, were useless even in the final battle against Thanos; at most, they could handle the foot soldiers.

Over there, seeing Mei Mumu’s shooting stance, several of the officers nodded faintly.

Bang!

Mei Mumu fired.

Missed the target.

One general frowned, while the few who knew better showed no reaction.

The rifle had been tampered with. The sights were off, and the rifling had been worn and scraped by long use. On the battlefield, this weapon would be a trap, because once the bullet left the barrel, it could fly anywhere beyond twenty meters.

Mei Mumu frowned, lowered the rifle, and adjusted the sight.

The next shot.

Bang!

A hole appeared in the three-ring zone of the target twenty meters away.

Chuikov had already clenched his fist in secret.

The generals had reached a conclusion: this young man was an old hand with a gun.

Sure enough, the third shot confirmed it.

Bang!

A perfect bull's-eye.

Many noticed that Mei Mumu’s muzzle had been angled one degree to the right.

“Sir, shall I continue?”

Chuikov said nothing. He simply pointed at the targets at fifty, one hundred, and two hundred meters.

Mei Mumu’s swagger reached the heavens. With hardly any preparation, he casually fired three shots in succession.

Bang! Clack... Bang! Clack... Bang! Clack...

The sharp reports of the Mosin-Nagant and the bolt cycling sounded astonishingly clear despite the constant distant detonations.

Chuikov signaled for a pause, and a soldier pulled the rope to drag the targets swiftly back.

Bull's-eye! Bull's-eye! Still bull's-eye!

There were no professional marksmanship competitions in this era, no such thing as a 10.9-ring score.

Ten rings was the maximum.

Hiss!

A group of bigwigs drew in a sharp breath.

They had seen sharpshooters before.

But every sharpshooter they had seen had carried a carefully tuned Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle.

This one had no scope at all, only crude iron sights aligned in the cheapest possible way, and the rifle itself was a worn-out piece of junk with damaged rifling. Yet at that distance he had still put three shots through the center of the target. The man’s marksmanship was simply supernatural.

Even with a proper scope, it would be difficult, because of manufacturing limitations. The standard scopes used by the Red Army at present only magnified 3.5 times. In truth, that was already somewhat insufficient for two-hundred-meter sniping.

That was why the famous snipers of the Second World War were all freaks with extraordinary eyesight.

“Young man, use your submachine gun!” Chuikov said.

“Yes, sir.”

Soon the crackling staccato of the PPSh filled the range.

The PPSh submachine gun had no three-round burst mode. If one held down the trigger, the weapon’s theoretical rate of fire of 900 rounds per minute could empty a drum magazine in just a few seconds.

The generals quickly noticed that Mei Mumu was firing in controlled bursts. Each pull of the trigger sent only a few rounds downrange. Although the later rounds all went wide, at least the first two shots could still land within the nine-ring or ten-ring area.

In their view, this was not something a sniper school could teach. This was talent that crushed everything in its path.

“Sir, would you like me to demonstrate long-range sniping as well?” Mei Mumu asked Chuikov.

Chuikov waved a hand. “No need. This range is only two hundred meters. Right, I heard from Rodimtsev that you’re very agile?”

“Not bad.”

“Show me. Can you climb that pipe?”

A spell was silently cast, and Self-Acceleration activated. Even without the Boots of Walto’s Leap, strength, speed, and agility twice his own were beyond anything an ordinary man could match.

The generals watched as Mei Mumu climbed a pipe as thick as a bowl in the corner of the range like a nimble cat, needing no footholds at all. In just a few movements he had reached five meters up, then crawled along the horizontal section to more than ten meters away.

Most impressive of all, despite the military boots on his feet—clearly stripped from some German soldier—he made almost no sound at all while climbing.

At first, Chuikov had not believed the Americans could produce anything like a super-soldier. But seeing this monster standing at the summit of human limits, he began to believe.

Private Dralsky, in recognition of your feat in bringing down the Stukas and your performance on the battlefield this morning, I, Chuikov, commander of the Sixty-Second Army, hereby promote you to sergeant. I also have an important mission for you.