Volume 1: The Last Rays of the Empire Chapter 2: Yet Alive

  The difference between 800 meters and 500 meters was not intuitive to Lin En before, he only knew that the effective range of the Mauser 98k was 800 meters. This "effective range" actually refers to the killing range of the bullet, which is affected by factors such as wind speed and bullet weight. At distances over 500 meters, even a sniper would find it difficult to accurately hit the target, and the "person" seen with the naked eye is just a blurry outline, not at all like in the movies where you can tell if someone is tall or short, fat or thin, what color their skin is, or even what they look like.

  Forty hours, three battles in daylight and one at night, gave Lin a new understanding of the two distances. When the enemy target was only 800 meters away, the defender still used artillery, mortars and heavy machine guns to intercept, and 500 meters was the scale where light machine guns and rifles began to play a role - perhaps it would be more effective to let the enemy get closer before shooting, Lin thought. However, facing the enemy's surging human wave attack, the commander of his own side did not have that kind of courage at all. They would rather consume more ammunition to try their best to repel the enemy in front of the defense line.

  Flare after flare soared into the sky, illuminating the night sky, the earth, the Soviet troops who were advancing, and the German defensive lines. The artillery was still roaring, the defenders' anti-tank guns, the attackers' tanks and self-propelled guns were all doing their best to attack each other. Dark red shells flew back and forth across the battlefield, and the sounds of explosions filled the air.

  The first time Lin saw dozens of tanks launching a cluster charge, he was deeply shocked. He found that even Hollywood war movies with investments of hundreds of millions of dollars were not enough to depict the real battlefield. What's more, he and his classmates who also loved military affairs used to admire the filming techniques of those movies.

  This time, the Soviet army again invested a large number of tanks, in addition to the "golden signboard" T-34 of the Red Soviet, there were many big heads in the attacking column, especially the IS series named after Comrade Joseph Stalin. Every battle, the defending army relied on the joint efforts of anti-tank guns, minefields and infantry to barely repel the enemy's attack, the heavy casualties made the front-line soldiers constantly supplemented...

  Lynn didn't want to die. In fact, there were deserters in the battle, but they either died under the enemy's guns or were shot by their own officers. Having seen such precedents several times, Lynn also gave up his idea of escaping. Besides, even if he managed to escape from the battlefield, how could he conceal his identity as a deserter and survive?

  Staying in this purgatory-like battlefield had become his best option at the moment.

  As the Soviet tanks and soldiers approached step by step, Lynn felt oppressed and tense in his heart. When a dirty hand suddenly appeared on his left side, he was startled and almost pulled the trigger. Turning his head to look, there were several rows of bullets beside him, and the owner of the "dirty hand" - a thin and weak boy who had not yet come of age - was distributing ammunition to each soldier waiting in battle array along the trench. Looking at the military uniform and cloth cap that didn't quite fit him, Lynn felt a strange sadness in his heart: Now it's the last rays of the empire, isn't it?

  As a World War II military enthusiast, Lin En was extremely familiar with that period of history. In fact, he personally did not have any factional inclinations, but rather admired the US military's solidity and composure, liked the German army's rigor and precision, respected the Soviet army's tenacity and resilience, and looked down on Japan's recklessness, Italy's incompetence, Britain's conservatism, and France's weakness. If he had to choose a side to experience war, he would have chosen the German army before 1943 or the US military after that. However, the ruler did not give him the power to make a free choice.

  The prolonged battle consumed a lot of ammunition, but Lynn quietly stuffed two rows of bullets into his pocket. On the one hand, it was to cope with the situation that might continue to deteriorate, and on the other hand, he felt that with his current shooting skills, the more bullets he fired, the more wasteful it would be. Rather than fighting with all his might, it was better to wait calmly for the outcome.

  Life is like a battle, perhaps!

  As time went on, the number of Soviet tanks hit by anti-tank fire in the offensive increased, but the human tide like a black tide continued to surge forward, and the frenzied "Hurray" cries faintly covered up the gunfire. For every German officer and soldier in the late stages of the war, such scenes were what they least wanted to see.

  "Feuer! Feuer!" (English: "Fire! Fire!")

  Almost at the same moment as the shouting, the trenches finally erupted with long-suppressed gunfire. Scorching bullets poured down like raindrops, slowing down the approaching black tide, which even retreated in some areas. However, this situation only lasted for a short time. The heavily armored Soviet tanks fired fiercely against the defenders' artillery fire, while the self-propelled guns that followed also stopped to launch an attack. The German trenches immediately erupted with one ball of fire after another, bullets and shrapnel sweeping over like a storm, many people died before they could even cry out in grief, and most people, including Linen, retreated back into the trenches to save their lives when the enemy's firepower was at its strongest. As a result, the firepower on the battlefield naturally weakened significantly.

  Ling had barely caught her breath when a coarse voice sounded in her ear, and a large foot clad in leather boots came kicking over.

  "Forward! Forward! Forwards... Kovacs!"

  He couldn't retort when scolded, nor fight back when beaten. In this life-or-death situation, Lin En didn't have time to savor the taste of resentment and anger. He grabbed his rifle with one hand and held onto his helmet with the other, rolling and crawling back to the shooting position at the edge of the trench. As soon as he poked his head out of the trench, a strong feeling that he would be hit by bullets in the next second began to torment his senses and test his endurance. Especially when the whizzing bullets flew past close by, his heart was completely suspended, and even had an instinctive urge to urinate...

  With a grit of her teeth and a toss of her mind, Lin En fired a shot almost without aiming, and her eardrum hummed slightly.

  The butcher's intimidation was ultimately too much for the Soviet soldiers, and several nearby soldiers also returned to their combat positions. Under the cover of machine gun fire, the sound of rifles seemed sparse, but in reality, no one knew if their bullets had killed the enemy during the night battle. Perhaps they flew away aimlessly, or perhaps they fired an unnecessary shot at a dying body. Nevertheless, the soldiers wearing cloth, fabric, or leather gloves continued to pull the trigger, aim, and fire mechanically, repeating these actions until all the bullets in the magazine were gone, before being able to crouch down to reload without being scolded.

  Lynn fired three shots in a row and retreated back to the trench, panting heavily. The temperature had dropped to minus ten degrees Celsius that night, his nose was numb, and his fingers were frozen stiff despite wearing woolen gloves. The smell of gunpowder and mud filled the air, making it hard to breathe, far worse than being in a crowded smoking room. Lynn deliberately slowed down his reloading action, pretending not to hear the increasingly clear "Ura" cries, but the officers' slogans grew more urgent, gunfire and explosions intensified, hand grenades seemed to be coming into play, and the front line was likely to erupt into another brutal bayonet fight. All of this was completely beyond Lynn's control, last night he had a vague dream that he faced off against a tall Soviet soldier, who lunged at him with his bayonet, causing Lynn to wake up with a start...

  Having loaded the bullets, taking a deep breath, just about to stand up, the young soldier with a goatee next to him suddenly fell down. Lin En originally wanted to give him a sympathetic wry smile, but when the flames illuminated his head which was missing a corner, Lin En froze.

  Before coming to this ravaged muddy land that has been bombarded by countless artillery fires, he had never felt life and death so close.

  Take a deep breath, take another deep breath, and grab your gun to rise up. There were times when Lin felt that he was not afraid of fighting in his bones, that he could become an excellent soldier, and even had the possibility of changing history like in the plot of a novel, relying on his own strength to stand at the pinnacle of this world! However, the pressure of reality always made Lin unconsciously choose to retreat, return to the ground, and the world in front of him was repeating the process of brightness, darkness, and brightness in the midst of artillery fire. The Soviets seemed to want to wipe out this position from the earth, with countless shells and bullets coming non-stop, sand and gravel fragments and broken limbs flying in the air, and the violent nature of the shockwave mixed with mud and gravel was fully revealed. Those T-34s, which were highly praised for their cost-effectiveness, charged to the front of the first trench like ghosts, leaving behind the minefield that had been cleared by artillery fire.

  Under the firelight, Lin En witnessed a brave German soldier firing at the side of a Soviet tank with an "iron fist" at close range. The rocket exploded the tank, but the soldier was immediately shot by another Soviet tank's machine gun. The 7.62mm caliber bullet pierced the hero's chest mercilessly at close range, and the blood flower that splashed out from his back was so shocking that Lin En was stunned again...