American Isekai - Chapter 160 (Patreon)

My debrief with Polly was quick. The mission was a joint operation at another base, so it technically wasn’t our issue. For the sake of protocol though, I had to give a general overview with Pollux. That went by quick. 

Then, I got a good piece of news. 

“Congratulations, John. Your application has been accepted.”

Polly held out a sheet of paper. I took it and read a bunch of gibberish that generally said I was now allowed to take the test to become a Captain. 

Then, she held up the test. 

“Would you like to take it now or do you want to brush up?”

“Uh…”

I thought for a second, recalling every page of the Golden Trio books. 

It was all still there. 

I smiled. 

“Sure, I’ll do it now.”

“Very well. It’s 200 questions and you’ll do it right here. Go ahead and get started.”

“The hell…”

I scoffed, flipping through a dozen pages of densely packed questions. I hadn’t had to take 200 question tests since I was at college. Not to mention that this wasn’t some multiple-choice test. Every question had a blank line or two underneath it that I needed to fill in. 

I sighed and sat down near Polly, receiving a pen and starting the test. 

Thankfully, I still had every page memorized. Unless they asked about something completely unrelated, I had no issues. I flew through each question, even going so far as to cite my answers with the page number and lines. 

And it took over an hour to reach the final question. By then, my hand was sore and my head was throbbing. Not out of exertion, but annoyance. 

“Some of these questions are stupid.”

“Yes, and it’ll only get worse as you try to climb ranks. They like to ask about the most subtle topics in those books. If you don’t have it all memorized, it's easy to fail.”

“This was definitely made by a bitter summoner. Well, I’m done. And none of those answers are wrong. I’ll fight whoever says otherwise.”

I handed back the test, Polly smiling. 

“I’ll keep that in mind while I grade.”

“Oh…”

“That’s right. Now get out of here. You can come pick up your new insignia tomorrow.”

“Yes ma’am.”

I gave a quick salute before evacuating, grinning on my way out. 

I was basically a Captain!

I stretched after leaving headquarters, still hobbling on my leg a bit. I had gotten a splint and the cigar was accelerating my healing, but I still needed some time before I could walk or run normally. 

Since I had nothing to do, I decided to go to my room and project. 

Once there, I laid down and closed my eyes. What appeared in my vision after that was a vast expanse of darkness, the dimension of my 5th star. 

I formed two drones of Psyka, my eyes within this place, before launching them in different directions. Simultaneously, they released occasional pulses of power which helped me detect anything in the vicinity. 

One drone went toward the signal from whatever spirit was trying to call out to me. The other went out further in the dimension. 

Along the way, I saw the usual stuff. Knives, rifles, grenades, tons of bullets, even some equipment like boots, helmets, shovels, bayonets, and socks. 

Most of the stuff I had no use for since I either already had as good or better gear, or it simply didn’t fit my style. Knives, for example, would be seldom used since it required that an enemy be within arm’s reach. If that was happening, then I had bigger issues. And I didn’t need things like socks since I had the wonderful Warm Socks from Luna. 

So guns and bullets were really the only things I needed to worry about. There were also some special weapons like gas canisters and explosives, such as satchel charges. 

I spent some hours simply searching. After that while, I finally started coming upon the special weapon that was calling me. 

When I approached, I recognized the design of the weapon. 

At first I thought it was a Mosin Nagant, and perhaps it technically kind of was. When I made contact with it though, I found out exactly what it was. 

My vision went dark, and I found my consciousness shifting. 

……

A gentle breeze, carrying terribly cold air, nipped at my nose as I lay within a small crevice. Snow elevated in a pile in front of me, a small barrier to conceal my figure. 

From behind, I stared down my rifle. The M28-30 was a precision rifle with a rather heavy barrel, a small price to pay for the improved iron sights. 

I looked down at my target area, estimating the distance from my barrel to the floor of the trail to be about 230 meters. It was a good range for reliable accuracy, and my ladder sight was perfectly adjusted for it. 

And so I waited. Hour after hour passed as the sun went form the horizon to high in the sky. It hardly made the environment warmer, and occasionally I’d eat some bread out of my coat pocket. 

Finally, after noon passed, I saw a troop. Soviet soldiers, none of them camoflauged for the snow. They were painfully obvious to see and track, and killing these targets wouldn’t be unsimilar to my target practice back home. The poor bastards were practically begging to be shot, no thanks to their lord and master Stalin. They couldn’t even paint their uniforms white. 

After they had advanced far enough, I looked to the right, checking the general area where a few of my other squadmates were supposed to be. I couldn’t see them, a good thing. 

After focusing back, I took aim, feeling the wind on my face and adjusting for it ever so slightly while acquiring my target. Thankfully these rifles worked well in the cold, and I’d had plenty of practice with mine. I knew it well, and through experience I knew it wouldn’t fail me. 

So I fired, feeling the predictable recoil into my shoulder. 

A soldier collapsed to the floor, a bullet through his chest. I chambered another round before adjusting. At the same time, a few more shots were heard, echoing through the snowy land and scaring away a few dozen birds in the trees. The Soviets soldiers dropped to the floor while the two tanks near either side of the formation came to a halt, adjusting their bodies in our direction. 

They couldn’t see us, of course, and their ammunition was limited. But that wouldn’t stop them from trying to fire and kill us anyway. Even the slightest hint at our location, and they wouldn’t hesitate to shell us. 

I stopped to pack a bit more snow into my mouth, keeping my breath from giving away my position. Then I continued to fire. 

It wasn’t long before I’d gone through my 5 rounds. Each bullet had hits its mark, 5 Soviets now in the snow, either dead or dying. 

I loaded another 5 rounds before continuing. In the distance I could see a few of my squadmates rise from the snow and shower the two tanks with molotov cocktails. We didn’t have much in the way of anti-tank weaponry, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t disable those tanks all the same. A tank that couldn’t move, or one with nothing inside of it alive, was nothing more than a metal tomb. 

The soldiers who were being fired upon scrambled, many trying to hide behind the tanks, only to be met with Finns on the other side of the trail behind them. They were ambushed, barely being able to return fire before being gunned down by submachine guns. 

It was a massacre. They had nothing to protect them and were sorely prepared for a fight. They managed to wound some of our men, even kill a couple. But this battle, like many over the past couple months, would go down as a victory. 

And I had killed about 22, using about 28 rounds to do so. An efficient use of ammunition, with a wonderfully accurate rifle. 

There was little to complain about, except for the fact that I’d have to do it again tomorrow. The Red Army really knew how to make me work.

The battle concluded, and time wound forward. 

More battles, most of them ambushes. A clever tactic of ours was to wait a columns of soviets advanced into our homeland, and then strike from behind, cutting off any avenue of escape. We employed guerilla tactics to their fullest. The Soviets were well equipped. Tanks, planes, and hundreds of thousands of men. Our cities were being bombed while we continued to hold the northern lines.

As we shaved away at their armies, the southern line, the Mennerheim Line, held against the brunt of the Soviet advance. We had a fraction of that firepower, no defensive lines to speak of. But we knew our forests. They were our home, and they provided us with a battlefield unlike any other. 

Day by day our battles continued. I had plenty of time to get used to them, getting better and learning new tricks in order to keep myself concealed. In a way, killing those men was even easier than trying to hunt a deer. With a deer you had to avoid hitting their organs so as to not spoil the meat. You had to go for clean shots. With these guys, hitting them at all was a job well done. Plus, they generally didn’t run, unlike easily spooked deer. 

I laid behind my sights, taking the lives of my enemies one by one. Each round I fired screamed like all the rest. 

Seldom were there fights that I felt afraid of. I was a good shot, but apparently I stood out enough to get names like the Magic Shooter. Along with the name came a certain level of fame, as well as shit from some of the other soldiers who had no qualms poking fun at it. 

At some point it was clear that my name was circulating through the army, as well as through the Soviet Union. That fame didn’t spare me the troubles of a soldier though. I still had to bear the cold, long hours of these battles. I liked to set myself up safely, in advance of battles most often. But that came with a certain level of discomfort with each hour I had to lie in wait within foxholes, stalking my target areas. 

It was only toward the end of the war through that I finally faced fear, as well as morbid amazement. 

It was during a battle in the forests of Ulissma. We were given orders to halt the Red Army’s 128th Division, a counterattack just like many other missions before, but we were out of artillery shells that would otherwise help stop their advancement. It was clear that the war was coming to an end, but it seemed our enemies found depseration in that fact. Or, at least the commanders did. 

Red Army soldiers occupied the forests, determined to break through our line at any cost. Tanks staioned themselves behind advancing troops while we continually fired upon every soldier that dared expose himself. We used the terrain to our advantage, hunting down man after man. It didn’t take long to kill a dozen by myself in the early stage, and my squad was right there with me, doing the same. However, they kept resurfacing. I thought that we had killed most of them, but more appeared, all of them fighting back in a desperate struggle to survive. 

I had heard that their tanks would fire upon any who dared turn around. At this point in the war, when soldiers so desperately wanted to live instead of sacrificing their lives for nothing, commanders kept them in line with the threat of death. 

Either way, we were cutting them down, with or without help from their own commanders. Sometimes I would get into engagements with enemies only two meters away. It was dangerous, but it was going well. We were making them withdraw, and my kill count had risen to a new high of 40 Russkies. 

But some of the bastards stayed behind. And then, there was a sudden shot from maybe 70 meters away. I felt it just as I was hit, a small explosion in my mouth as the bullet tore through my jaw. I lost consicousness after falling to the ground. 

Some time later I woke up to medics trying to suppress the injuries to my face. I could feel and taste the blood and bone fragments in my mouth. Then, they carried me in a stretcher. However, I only managed to remain conscious for perhaps 300 meters before passing out once more. 

I wouldn’t wake up until a week later, on the day that the armistice was signed. 

The war was over, and I was left a broken man. Yet I survived, unlike so many that I had killed before, left with a reminder carved into my face of the war I had given my life and my skills for. 

……

…

My eyes opened just as the memories ended. They had come more vividly than any other before. 

I looked down, realizing that I wasn’t a soldier in a winter war. I was no longer the White Death. 

And yet his rifle sat in my hands. When I felt it, instincts arose within me. Intuition, experience, technique. I felt like I had gained years of practice in such a short amount of time. My body felt like it couldn’t adapt to it, a disconnect between what was in my mind versus the memory ingrained within my flesh and blood. 

Still, I had gained something incredible. The experience of one of the most famous snipers in history. Whether his feats were exaggerated, mere propaganda, or not, the summon in my hands was far above any other that I had held before, and the knowledge given to me was enlightening. 

I was given more than just experience digging holes and stuffing snow into my mouth to conceal my breath. I was given… a feeling, of what it meant to be concealed, to be hidden among snow, trees, dirt and rock. 

And I knew the feeling of accuracy, the feeling that I could guide my shots, the feeling of absolute confidence in the operation of your rifle. It was experience that I simply didn’t have, especially not under the same conditions. 

There was a subtle change to my vision as well. Not literally, but metaphysically. My perception changed. 

I suddenly stood and hobbled out of my room, practically jumping across the floor until I left the residence and made it outside. 

When I did, I looked off into the distance. 

And I could estimate, with shocking accuracy, how far something was from me. Depth perception, and a damn good one at that. It wasn’t enough to simply be able to see far. Without a range finder, I had to guess myself at how far something was, which would determine how I zeroed my sights, and by extension how accurate my shots would be. 

Of course, my ability to empower and increase the speed of my bullets changed how I needed to handle zeroes. But being able to estimate distances was still crucial in estimating my accuracy. 

It seemed the White Death was good at that. With this kind of perception, it was no wonder he was a good sniper. 

I smiled brightly, before noticing that it was night. I had spent a long time absorbing those memories. I was also really tired, a lot of my Psyka drained. 

That meant it would be easy to go to sleep. Only after some dinner, of course. 

I made my way to the chow hall with a pep in my step. After scarfing down some food, I retired for the night, falling blissfully asleep with my new rifle in my arms. I couldn’t wait to test it out, especially since its power contained more than meets the eye.