Death Notice

“Lieutenant Colonel Kluge, you woke up?” The blonde young man immediately waved his hand to stop the team, and hurried over to the soldier carrying Qin Lun, “Please forgive our rudeness. Time is urgent right now, we need to move you to a safe place first!”

“They, took, took away… that sick… sickroom’s people!” Qin Lun weakly moved his fingers, pointing towards the room they had just passed.

His voice was as faint as a thread, but with their focus, these German soldiers surprisingly heard every word clearly even from several meters away. Without waiting for the young captain’s order, several soldiers immediately turned and rushed into the sickroom behind them.

A few minutes later, they came out carrying several patients in hospital gowns.

Qin Lun glanced at those patients and quickly recognized Grant and Lace from the two pairs of eyes that were already open. The Joker and the female archer now looked extremely weak, just like him.

Seeing the three of them finally reunited, Qin Lun felt a sudden relief in his heart. Drowsily, he leaned against the soldier’s shoulder and fell asleep.

……

Half-asleep, Qin Lun suddenly felt a vast whiteness before his eyes. Instinctively, he tilted his head slightly, woke up, and raised his hand to shield his eyes. Realizing he was awake, he didn’t open his eyes immediately, but calmly checked his body.

The Death Notice showed his Law Body condition: 74%. The task stay time had already passed one and a half days.

Qin Lun breathed a sigh of relief. Although not fully recovered, this physical condition could already support him in short battles. But he soon noticed a small, inconspicuous message below his physical condition, indicating that his body was in a state of mild paralysis.

The paralysis state’s duration was fading quickly. Qin Lun checked and realized it was the effect of the Dagger of Sin. It seemed his Life-Taking Relic could not only absorb soul power but also devour negative status effects caused by drugs.

“Haha, meeting a war hero under such circumstances is truly a pity!” A hearty laugh reached Qin Lun’s ears.

Qin Lun opened his eyes and looked around his surroundings. He was in a spacious medical room, filled with various medical devices. Many monitoring lines were attached to his chest and arms.

There were three people in the room now. Joker Grant lay on a hospital bed on the left, already awake. Seeing Qin Lun’s gaze, he gave a barely noticeable nod.

Besides the two of them, opposite the hospital beds stood a white-painted tall round stool, seemingly a standard fitting of the medical room. Sitting on the stool was a fat man wearing a white military coat.

The fat man wore gold-rimmed glasses, had regular features, and his light blond hair was combed into a neat, slicked-back style that looked shiny. Seeing that both Qin Lun and Grant were awake, the fat man stood up from the stool, snapped his heels together, raised his head and chest, and gave a standard Nazi salute with a serious expression.

“Allow me to pay my respects to you, the empire’s war hero—Lieutenant Colonel Kluge!”

“Who are you?” Qin Lun and Grant exchanged a look. Although both had just woken up, they already had a rough idea in their hearts. Facing the fat man’s salute, Qin Lun remained silent; it was the Joker who spoke.

“I am Montana Max, rank Major, currently the commander of this empire’s special forces!” The fat man smiled elegantly, glanced meaningfully at Grant, but still addressed Qin Lun.

“Where are we now?” A glint flashed in Qin Lun’s eyes as he cautiously asked.

“We are on the Zeppelin Airship. This is a secret airship built by the empire’s surviving scientific elite in the year 127 of the Divine Calendar, named after the Zeppelin airships from the World War II period!” Major Max explained with a smile.

“How did you find us?” Grant asked in a low voice.

After Qin Lun and Grant woke up, the memories of the characters they possessed started appearing in their Apostle Soul Marks like stored data, accessible for their review.

Actually, the Plot Identities they possessed did not completely disappear when the Apostles left the Quest World. In the World War II World, after Qin Lun and the others returned, these identities were absent from the public eye for some time.

The Third Reich launched a new wave of spy purges in the occupied territories because of this. The Axis’s Oranienburg Special Forces and the Hydra Corps even engaged in a series of conflicts with the Allied Forces’ Justice League superhumans.

However, after the Apostles returned, the Shattered Starry Sky actually preserved these Plot Identities. This was thanks to the Iron Cross Medals Qin Lun’s group obtained; these deeply connected Quest World items also served as a kind of World Token.

But as time passed, the connection between the Iron Cross Medals and the World War II World weakened, so they didn’t return to their original timeline point. Instead, they entered this Shadow World that diverged from the main timeline after the war.

Of course, due to the influence of the Shattered Starry Sky, the boundary between the World War II Shadow World and the main world was somewhat blurred. Especially since this Shadow World, under the influence of some spacetime factors, showed a tendency to break away from the main timeline’s flow and grow into an independent world.

After World War II, the Plot Identity retained by Grant did not retire immediately but continued to serve in the German military supported by the Allied Forces. By the time Joker Grant’s Plot Identity retired, his rank had reached Lieutenant Colonel, not the Captain interrogator rank during the Third Reich’s defeat.

As for Qin Lun’s Plot Identity, it did not continue service after the Third Reich’s defeat.

This was related to Joey killing Kathleen Louis at that time. Kathleen was not only a member of the Justice League but also a female professor at Grimm Academy. For this reason, Qin Lun’s Plot Identity was treated as a secret war criminal after the war and had to live under a false name.

“Lieutenant Colonel Kluge, have you forgotten? You and your companions were in a car accident while traveling and were sent to the hospital.” The fat major looked at Qin Lun with a glint in his eye, “However, the Austrian police who arrived later found an Iron Cross Medal among your personal belongings. Through the serial number on the medal, they confirmed your identity!”

“Of course, our contact in Vienna also saw this report, stole the Iron Cross from the evidence room, and sent it along with the police report to me!” The fat major took out a somewhat faded Iron Cross Medal from his pocket, placed it on the nearby coffee table, and said with a smile, “If it had truly attracted the attention of Washington and London, then you might have been in trouble. In fact, when the commando team entered that simple Vienna hospital, they exchanged fire with British agents hidden near the hospital. Fortunately, the agents didn’t receive backup, which allowed us to successfully retrieve you!”

“Only…” The fat major paused, glanced at Grant, then said meaningfully, “When the airship’s medical officer examined you and your friend, they discovered something very interesting. You, who possess the medal, have DNA that doesn’t match Lieutenant Colonel Kluge’s medical records, while your friend’s matches very closely!”

“Of course, the empire’s original records also indicated that you were a superhuman with special bloodline. Changing genetic DNA isn’t very difficult for you. But… perhaps you could give me a more reasonable explanation?”

My Iron Cross… Qin Lun turned to look at the Iron Cross on the coffee table, then glanced at the real Iron Cross in his Storage Space. He finally confirmed that the thing was a useless replica, probably just a prop from the Shattered Starry Sky to help them enter the Main Plotline.

The two old, cunning Serial Killers exchanged a glance and immediately saw the same thought in each other’s eyes.

Grant only pondered for a moment before speaking in a low voice, “Your medical officer wasn’t wrong. I am Kluge. However, please do not call me Lieutenant Colonel. My rank will always be the Third Reich’s Captain. SS Foreign Intelligence, Captain Interrogator Fritz Kluge!”

Qin Lun gave the Joker a strange look. Only now did he learn that “Kluge” wasn’t his Plot Character’s given name, but his surname!

“Please forgive our mistake, Captain Kluge!” The fat major stood up from the stool and bowed slightly to Grant, though his expression didn’t show much surprise; this result was also within his expectations.

“And what about you? If he is the empire’s war hero—Captain Kluge, then who are you?” When the fat major turned to face Qin Lun again, he had already stopped smiling, and a sharp glint appeared in his eyes, “Before this, we infiltrated Vienna’s civil administration network…”

“However, we couldn’t find any records about you—job position, medical, insurance, address, email, phone number… nothing. If not for this car accident, it seems like you were an invisible man to this world!”

“Major Montana, is it?” Faced with the fat major’s question, Qin Lun didn’t answer directly.

He sat up from the hospital bed, placed the pillow behind his back, adjusted to a more comfortable talking position, closed his eyes, and said faintly, “The Third Reich has vanished. Kluge also served in post-war Germany for decades. You just mentioned that Washington and London still seem to be paying attention to him. Why is that?”

Regarding Qin Lun’s lack of cooperation, this self-proclaimed commander of the empire’s special forces, Major Montana Max, didn’t seem offended at all. Instead, he smiled and explained the underlying situation of this world to the two of them—a crisis not yet perceived by ordinary civilians.

It turned out that after World War II, the huge rift spanning high above the Earth continued to have a profound and slow impact on this world.

This black rift, which appeared in 1866 and was discovered by the world in 1867, was actually a Space-Time Rift caused by the collision of another world’s spacetime with this one.

When it first appeared, it was intermittently less than a kilometer long and only a finger wide, but over the following decades, it kept expanding.

Near the end of World War II, a small number of huge mysterious creatures appeared around the world. These creatures were later eliminated by humans, and through research and modification, some superhumans were cultivated during the war using their bloodlines as a basis.

However, after the war, with technological development, scientists from various countries were shocked to realize that the mutations in these animals and plants were actually related to the influence of the Space-Time Rift. They later discovered that this Space-Time Rift was essentially the intersection point of another spacetime world with this one…