Chapter 56: A New Ability

The group continued their silent trek through the ice fog, with Walter leading the way.

As they rounded a pile of discarded wooden crates, a dry, metallic grinding sound suddenly erupted less than ten meters to their front-left.

Creak—

It was the sound of a tank hatch being pushed open.

Walter dropped instantly, flashing the hand signal for "halt." The three veterans lowered their silhouettes in a heartbeat, hugging the snow. Within the thick fog, a blurred outline flickered in and out of view.

Walter saw it clearly now: a T-26 light tank. It was almost entirely swallowed by the frozen earth and drifts. Due to a desperate lack of diesel, these tanks were no longer capable of maneuvering through deep snow. The Soviets had simply converted them into fixed steel pillboxes, leaving only the turrets exposed as fire points.

A Soviet soldier, neck pulled deep into his collar, climbed down from the hull while swearing under his breath. Shivering violently, he fumbled to undo his belt, clearly unable to hold back a nature call any longer.

"Curse it all... in this place, even piss turns into an icicle..." the soldier grumbled, shaking like a leaf. He had no idea that Death was already standing at his shoulder.

Walter spared a glance for Vatanen. The veteran caught the look but didn't move yet, waiting for the right moment. Walter crept forward soundlessly. Just as the soldier finished his business and looked down to pull up his trousers, Walter lunged from behind.

His left hand clamped onto the man's mouth and nose from the rear, stifling a terrified shriek in his throat. The dagger in his right hand swept across; the blade severed the windpipe and efficiently sliced through both carotid arteries in a single motion.

Pshhh—

A spray of scalding blood erupted. The soldier's body went limp, his struggles too weak to even be called a fight. Vatanen, Lindholm, and Ojala closed in rapidly. Together, they shoved the corpse under the tank and crudely piled fresh snow over it.

"Squad Leader, we're dancing in a minefield right now," Vatanen whispered into Walter's ear, his voice barely audible. "These iron cans are everywhere. If we wake one up, we're finished."

Walter didn't answer.

Eye of Death, activate.

In that instant, Walter felt as if a heavy iron gate deep within his mind had been violently battered open. A surge of violent energy, unlike anything he had felt before, poured through his optic nerves. A prickling warmth washed over his eyes, and then, the world before him shed its disguise entirely.

The ice fog, previously a leaden curtain that turned everything into a grey-white paste, suddenly became as transparent as a cicada's wing. But what made Walter's heart race was that this was fundamentally different from the slow-motion effect he was used to.

"This is..." Walter marveled internally.

The world before him was no longer composed of simple colors and shapes. It had transformed into a frequency map of pure temperature. The entire forest was dyed a deep, cold blue, and the frigid air, cold enough to shatter steel, appeared as flowing ripples of dark purple.

Amidst this dead, cold palette, clusters of "life sparks" flickered and leaped out in varying shades of orange and red. It was a visual ability similar to thermal imaging, yet far more detailed and intuitive than any electronic instrument.

He saw them.

Thirty meters to his front-left, beneath a snow ridge, a faint, dark red glow bled through the deep drifts. It wasn't fire; it was the weak body heat exhaled by three Soviet soldiers huddled together. Due to hunger and hypothermia, their heat signatures flickered like dying candles in the wind.

The semi-buried tanks were no longer just cold iron shells. In Walter's vision, they were blue blocks emitting a metallic glint, but their interiors encased thick heat signatures—the final sparks of life the tankers managed to preserve with their own bodies.

This novel experience sent a shiver of excitement through Walter. In this line of sight, all camouflage, trenches, and even thick snow lost their meaning. As long as a heart beat, as long as a body remained warmer than the -40°C wasteland, they were as conspicuous to Walter as torches in the night.

Walter greedily perceived this new domain. He looked deeper into the encirclement. There, in an area previously masked by heavy fog, a piercingly bright red light erupted. The color saturation was extreme, with a core that glowed with a near-white intensity.

That wasn't just body heat; it was the "man-made sun" of a high-level command post, created by high-powered kerosene heaters and insulated tents. In Walter's vision, this red glow illuminated the silhouettes of the surrounding trees. He could even see two tall, orange-red figures moving slowly at the edge of the light—the guards.

"Found you."

Guided by this peculiar perspective, the terrifying forest of ice fog was no longer a maze of unknown risks, but a one-way slaughterhouse where the enemy had been forced to show their hand.

"Nowhere else matters. The rest are just cannon fodder about to lose their fingers to frostbite. Follow me," Walter whispered to the veterans.

He led the three men forward, precisely bypassing the snow pits filled with "residual life heat," heading straight for the brightest red center. Walter halted twenty meters from the glowing orange-red aura.

"One, two... six... thirteen..." Walter counted the vivid human outlines in his field of vision.

There were about fifteen or sixteen people in the tent. Two outlines sat very still, facing a table that emitted a faint heat, while the rest were scattered around. At the entrance, the two guards showed as deep orange; they were pacing back and forth, trying to maintain their body temperature through movement.

Walter didn't know it, but sitting in that tent was Colonel Sergey Iovlev. In the original timeline, this commander of the 97th Rifle Regiment would, through sheer willpower and composure, lead his remnants through the "Forest of Death" in the coming weeks. He would become one of the very few high-ranking officers of the 18th Division to survive, eventually rising to the rank of Major General during the Great Patriotic War.

But now, history was about to deviate under Walter's hand.

"Squad Leader, there are quite a few of them in there," Vatanen murmured at Walter's side. Although he couldn't see the exact numbers, the size of the tent and the guards at the door said enough. "There are only four of us. If we toss in a few grenades, the ones who survive will charge out to suppress us. We won't be able to retreat through this mist."

Walter didn't speak. His eyes scanned the surroundings, searching for a lethal bargaining chip. Suddenly, his gaze locked onto a large object thirty meters to the left of the tent.

It was a Soviet 45mm 19-K anti-tank gun, shrouded in ice fog.