Chapter 951: The Best of the Best

“No retreat! Keep attacking!” Wolf glanced at the Soviet tank exploding behind him, then at the twenty-odd Soviet tanks swarming around him—a dozen of the faster T-34s, only five or six Stalins. The concept of retreat didn’t seem to exist for him. He waved his hand and ordered the attack to continue. “Rein! Today, you die!”

He couldn’t care less whether the Soviets won or lost. He didn’t give a damn if this attack cut off the Das Reich’s retreat and annihilated the entire SS division. All he cared about was whether he could kill Rein here. That was the only motivation that had kept him going until now.

The thought of the humiliation Rein had brought him made the deep scar on his face throb with a phantom pain. He reached up and touched the wound that had been his constant companion since that day, his expression unspeakably terrifying. He would make the man who had brought him this shame die at his own hands. He would personally reclaim his dignity with his own strength!

“Rein! We’re almost out of ammo. This situation is really bad for us,” Andre’s voice came through. He could feel the time between Bruce’s reloads stretching out. It wasn’t a problem with Bruce’s stamina; after his last physical exhaustion, Bruce had trained himself into a mountain of muscle. Loading these shells was no heavy burden for him.

The delay was because Bruce had to fetch shells from the more distant storage racks. The ones in the ready-racks were all gone. And unlike Rein and Andre, Bruce had to stand in a constantly lurching tank, his feet needing to avoid the empty shell casings clattering on the floor as he turned and moved.

“The problem is whether we can even get out of here!” Rein stared at the Soviet tanks ahead, answering Andre with narrowed eyes. “I sensed danger from the start… and now I’m sure… Wolf is out there. He’s here!”

He could feel the immense pressure the other man exuded. The way these Soviet tanks attacked, heedless of losses, was not the normal Soviet playbook. Rein couldn’t explain with common sense why this Soviet tank unit refused to retreat even after losing dozens of tanks. In that instant, he truly felt Wolf’s presence.

He keyed his throat mic and yelled to the other tank, “Markus, Wolf is on the other side! That’s the main reason these Soviets are fighting to the death and not retreating! Their target isn’t the infantry of the Das Reich. Wolf’s target is you and me!”

“My God! Rein, you’re not kidding, are you! Fire! Damn it! Keep firing!” Markus’s voice in the headset wavered for a moment. When he came to his senses, his tone was trembling. “He’s here! That bastard really knows how to pick his moment. Rein, I’ll cover you… Don’t look back, get out of here now! Right now!”

“Alice! Markus says we should run! What do you think?” Rein didn’t immediately answer Markus’s hysterical plea, but instead asked his radio operator.

“Captain, I’m here because I screwed up last time and almost shot down the Führer’s plane. Abandoning your comrades and running is also a death sentence,” Alice answered loudly, her machine gun chattering as she suppressed the enemy tanks to their front. “Aren’t you supposed to be the best? Kill these bastards, then propose to me!”

“…” Because of the small crew, Rein hadn’t closed the other communication channels, so everyone in both tanks heard that. Unfortunately, in this situation, no one was in the mood for cheers or jeers. Everyone had a more important job to do—they were busy killing.

“Don’t ask me such a boring question! I’m busy, Captain!” Baumann carefully manipulated the control levers in front of him as if caressing a beloved wife. His movements were clean and precise, but he rarely used brute force, creating a sense of artistry.

Under his control, the tank slowly reversed. Though it bumped and jolted, it was entirely within a tolerable range. Perhaps Baumann wasn’t a problem child in tank No. 113, but he had always been one of the most trusted members of the crew.

“The radio operator is proposing to the captain, the gunner and driver have wives and kids. If I don’t die this time, I’m applying for leave to go home and get married immediately! This is so unfair!” Bruce yelled as he slammed a high-explosive shell into the breech. “Andre! HE loaded!”

Andre didn’t speak. He just glanced at Rein in the dim light of the tank. By chance, Rein was looking down at him. Their eyes met, and in less than a second, they understood each other without a word. Rein felt that Andre would surely choose to “fight to the death with his comrades.” Andre’s gaze meant: “I don’t have time for your nonsense!”

At the same time as Rein’s and Markus’s crews were having their melodramatic moment and preparing for their glorious deaths, Wolf frowned. He sensed the approach of danger, the feeling of being targeted by a hunter, something he hadn’t felt in many years.

Even when facing Rein, the most gifted youth in the Wolf Knight Academy, Wolf had never felt like this. Back then, he was the true hunter, and Rein was merely a slightly more troublesome prey in his eyes. But now, this feeling unsettled him. It was a dangerous aura that was beyond his control.

Suddenly, he looked up and met the sight of two Stuka II attack planes diving down from the clouds. This was the most terrifying natural enemy of the Soviet armored forces, the grim reaper circling above the Soviets’ heads. Whenever these terrifying planes appeared, they brought casualties and losses. To say they were the eagle on the German national emblem was a perfect metaphor.

Wolf knew that the current situation had slipped from his grasp. In this situation, all the tanks on his side were likely to be destroyed by these two damn German attack planes. The numerical superiority they had so painstakingly established was about to turn into a German advantage in an instant.

As he was contemplating whether he should seize the opportunity and hold on, the two German planes had already begun their attack performance. A string of aerial bombs was dropped among the Soviet tanks. The huge explosions made Markus let out a cry of “Banzai!”

A Stalin tank was hit directly by an aerial bomb. The massive blast wave rolled over the other Soviet tanks. Immediately after, another Stuka II began to strafe the billowing smoke with its cannons. Tracer rounds fell like rain, clattering against the tanks.

Although the Soviet tanks had always held an overwhelming numerical advantage over the Germans, in terms of fire support and combined arms warfare, the Germans had an insurmountable advantage. The mode of warfare seemed to have quietly changed a long time ago. Sometimes, you simply couldn’t achieve final victory with numbers alone.

The air support that Rein had been desperately waiting for had finally arrived. Markus’s fearful expression was gone, and he suddenly seemed fearless. He let out a strange cry of “Long live the air force!” or something similar, as if wanting to vent the desperate emotions that had been suppressed until now.

Rein watched as a Stalin tank slowly drove out of the smoke, a strange flame burning on its engine deck. The tank moved forward slowly and then, after a few dozen meters, a huge explosion occurred. The hatch and some of the engine’s cooling grilles were blown into the air by the explosion. The terrifying 122mm cannon drooped at a strange angle, pointing powerlessly at the ground.

From the not-so-thick smoke, the flames of exploding tanks could be vaguely seen. The attacking Soviet tank force had, at this moment, experienced another world-shaking catastrophe. From the roadbed all the way here, a distance of nearly a thousand meters, was now littered with the wrecks of dozens of Soviet tanks.

This was definitely another graveyard for Soviet tanks, a heartbreaking place for the Soviet armored forces. Almost an entire independent tank brigade had been annihilated in the open field by the German panzers, artillery, and air force. For the Soviet army, which had already lost Stalingrad, this could be considered another piece of bad news.

The two Stuka II attack planes flew low over the battlefield, blowing one T-34 after another to pieces. The Stuka IIs, armed with rockets and aerial bombs, were like two cannons with eyes, accurately dropping one bomb after another on the heads of the Soviet tanks.

The explosions rose and fell. The Soviet tanks, which had seemed to be on the verge of victory just a moment ago, were now lambs waiting to be slaughtered. The tanks, exposed on the open ground, were perfect targets for the attack planes. It was clear that these Soviet tanks had once again proven with their own bitter experience that the skill of the German Air Force’s attack pilots was unparalleled.

Rein looked at the blurry sea of fire and also felt the urge to let out a loud cry at the two climbing Stuka IIs in the distance. He knew better than anyone how terrifying Markus was. To not have to face such a terrifying opponent face to face was a very fortunate thing.

That was a terrifying person. In that academy that symbolized death and ruthlessness, the Wolf Knight Academy, the experience of every person could probably be written into a novel. And Rein and Wolf were undoubtedly, among these terrifying people, the few, but well-deserved, best of the best.

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