Devouring World Dragon

Chapter 194 War Knight
"..."

Amidst the melodious sounds of violins and pianos, there was no trace of the clamor of war. The magnificent hall was filled with gentlemen in suits, valiant generals, and elegant ladies, while the tables nearby were laden with fine wines and delicacies.

People laughed and danced together, as if they were in a peaceful and tranquil era.

"Troutz, let's dance."

Eva Braun, Hitler's semi-public lover, enthusiastically invited Hitler's secretary to dance. The secretary seemed somewhat nervous and uneasy. Eva seemed to see through her thoughts and smiled as she spoke.

"Don't worry, everything's fine. Look how happy everyone is."

After hesitating for a moment, the female secretary took Eva's outstretched hand, and the two danced joyfully on the dance floor. Eva seemed to be the star of the bunker, and everyone cheered as they watched her dance.

Gradually, the joyful atmosphere infected Trautz as well. A smile appeared on her face, and the world seemed to be spinning around her. There were no worries or unhappiness, and she lost track of where she was.

But as she danced, she inexplicably started to cry, her voice becoming choked with sobs, and tears streaming down her face uncontrollably.

"What's wrong, Elsa? Are you unhappy?"

Eva Braun asked with a smile, and Trautz shook her head, choking back tears as she wiped them away.

"No... I just feel like I'm dreaming..."

"boom!!!"

Suddenly, one side of the ballroom wall collapsed, plunging the brightly lit hall into darkness. A large amount of mud and bricks poured in, and amidst the screams of women and the shouts of men, the sounds of cannons and gunfire outside were so clear and real.

The dream eventually came to an end.

……

After that day, Adolf seemed much more dejected. He no longer cared about the war, but instead began to think about how to handle his affairs after death. Out of some stubbornness and unwillingness to accept defeat, he resolutely refused to leave Berlin for refuge, and said the following.

"If you think that I will leave Berlin, you are wrong. I will stay here and live or die with Berlin."

As the Führer became decadent, the generals also began to lose their will. Some generals chose to drink heavily all day, while others indulged in singing and dancing. Only a few die-hard Nazi Party members were still struggling to hold on, but the price of this struggle was extremely tragic.

At this moment in Berlin, a large number of teenagers were forced to enlist in the army. All those who were capable of fighting were required to carry guns and Molotov cocktails to fight against the heavily armed Soviet army. Those who tried to surrender were hanged on stakes. The entire city of Berlin was filled with stakes and the corpses of hanged Germans.

Hitler began to contemplate how he should die. He believed that he would not have a good end when captured, and even in death he would be placed in a museum. So he asked his personal physician to prepare a poison that would kill him quickly. But before that, he had one more thing to do...

"Eva, will you marry me?"

Facing Eva, the Nazi leader, known for his misogyny, said...

Eva Braun was his almost public lover; everyone knew that her relationship with the Führer was extremely intimate. However, Hitler never intended to marry her. This was not only because of his ascetic principles, but also because a "great leader" should not have a worldly wife, and he should be flawless in the eyes of the German people.

Before realizing his death was imminent, Hitler proposed to Eva Braun. Faced with Adolf Hitler's proposal, Eva, who had waited for many years, was overjoyed beyond words and nodded with tears in her eyes.

Just one day later, an extremely simple wedding was held inside the bunker.

Afterwards, Hitler distributed his poison to every general and even his female secretary. When the poison was handed to Isa, he said apologetically.

"I'm sorry, I can't give you a better birthday gift."

……

On April 30, 1945, just half a day after the wedding, Hitler and Eva Braun entered a secret room together, but two other people rushed over upon hearing the news.

"Your Majesty, please, let me see Your Majesty!"

Margot Kebund, the usually composed and elegant Madame Goebbels, was now disheveled and weeping like a madwoman, desperately pleading with the young general guarding the secret room to let her see the Führer one last time.

Goebbels, standing behind him, was equally anxious, but unlike his wife, he couldn't maintain a semblance of composure despite his distress. Both were staunch believers in Hitler's Nazi ideology; to them, Hitler was practically a god. How could they accept that their god was abandoning his followers?

"The head of state has ordered that no one should disturb him again."

The young general guarding outside the secret room had to say something.

"Peter, please, just once, just for a moment."

Magta gripped the general's hand tightly, her eyes filled with panic, and she spoke almost urgently.

The general hesitated for a moment, but still knocked on the iron door of the secret room. Adolf Hitler opened the iron door from the inside, his cold gaze fixed on the three people outside.

"What's up……"

"Führer, please don't do this! We need you, Germany needs you! Please leave Berlin... What will we do if you leave..."

Before he finished speaking, Magta nearly knelt down, hugged Hitler's legs, and begged him while weeping. Goebbels, whose eyes were also red and who had just been crying, did not say a word but just stared at Adolf.

Hitler glanced at Goebbels, then at Magta on the ground, paused for a moment, and said in a deep voice.

"Tomorrow, hundreds of millions of people will curse me, but fate cannot be reversed."

After he finished speaking, he returned to the secret room, leaving behind only Mrs. Goebbels, who was being forcibly dragged away by the guards and weeping uncontrollably. Goebbels, meanwhile, gazed at Adolf Hitler and his newlywed Eva Braun inside, and silently lowered his head.

A few minutes later, a gunshot rang out in the tightly sealed room.

Hitler, dead.

……

"I reiterate, Germany cannot surrender. As long as I am Chancellor of Germany, Germany cannot surrender!"

In the military conference room, Goebbels, who succeeded Hitler as Chancellor of Germany after his death, roared in front of a group of generals. But he didn’t even need to pay too much attention; he could feel the strange expressions on the faces of the generals.

After Hitler's death, the generals had their own thoughts. Some tried to follow the Führer to the death, while others tried to surrender with the Allies. Goebbels felt powerless as he watched this scene unfold.

Back home, he looked at his wife and nodded silently.

The two made a decision a long time ago, and now it's time to make it a reality.

Pushing open the children's door and entering the small bedroom, Madame Goebbels found three bunk beds and six children of varying ages. Among them were the oldest, 12-year-old Helge, the most intelligent of the children, possessing a mind far beyond her years, and Goebbels' little helper; and the youngest, 4-year-old Heidi, who had just begun to recognize words and knew nothing.

"Children, it's getting cold, so Mommy needs to get vaccinated so she doesn't catch a cold."

Looking at her children, Madame Goebbels gave a kind smile, a smile tinged with a barely perceptible sadness, but the children were oblivious to it, except for one of them…

"Mom, what about Uncle Adolf? Will he get vaccinated too?"

Eight-year-old Holder tilted his head and said that he was a very brave little boy and his favorite thing to do was play war games where he played the role of a soldier.

When Adolf was mentioned, Madame Goebbels paused for a moment, then smiled and said...

"Of course they will, and Uncle Adolf will be the first to get vaccinated. We'll be flying away from here with Uncle Adolf later, so who should get vaccinated first?"

Adolf held great authority over the children, who admired him greatly, which is why Goebbels emphasized Adolf's name.

But they were still children after all, and when they heard about the vaccination, they all hesitated. Mrs. Goebbels looked at the child in front of her, and then spoke to 11-year-old Sylder.

“Silder, you are usually the bravest child, and you are also the older brother. Come on, set an example for everyone.”

Seeing his mother's encouraging gaze, Sylder mustered his courage, got out of bed, and obediently stretched out his hand.

The syringe was inserted into the child's body. The 11-year-old frowned but did not cry out in pain. Then Mrs. Goebbels smiled at the other children.

“Look, Sylder has already been vaccinated, and it doesn’t hurt at all.”

After Mrs. Goebbels had vaccinated all the children, when it came to the eldest, Helge, her face showed hesitation and fear.

"Mom, I don't want a shot."

The usually intelligent and oldest girl seemed to sense something; she showed an unnatural nervousness and unease. Madame Goebbels paused for a moment, then smiled and said...

"Look, everyone else got their shots, but you didn't. You'll catch a cold if you do that."

"No...Mom, please..."

But the girl shook her head, shrank back, and pleaded desperately. But Madame Goebbels knew that she could not delay any longer and, disregarding all that, spoke sternly.

"Haigel, listen to me!"

But when Heigl tried to dodge again, Goebbels, who had been watching from the sidelines, stepped forward and grabbed Heigl's arm tightly, allowing Magta to successfully inject him...

The morphine worked wonders; within minutes, all the children were asleep, just as the Goebbels had hoped—that their children could leave this world without pain.

Every time Magta fed her children hydrocyanic acid pills, she would whisper goodnight in their ears. The effects were rapid, and the children would die within seconds.

Finally, looking at her six children lying on the bed as if they were fast asleep, Magta fell silent. She covered her mouth, overwhelmed by grief, unable to even cry out, while Goebbels, who had been watching quietly from the side, embraced her silently.

“If Germany is defeated, we will be regarded as heinous war criminals, and our children will be tortured, despised and insulted by them. They are so kind and lovely, but the future will not tolerate them. We cannot let them live in such a world.”

This was a decision the couple had made because they could not bear to see their children living in a world of defeated Germany.

A few hours later, the Goebbels committed suicide.

Half a day after the Goebbels' deaths, Germany announced its surrender. When Soviet troops stormed the German Chancellery and the last Nazi soldier's bullets ceased firing, people realized…

The war is finally over.

After the war ended, an unknown German was summoned and questioned by the CIA.

"You're a friend of Adolf Hitler, what benefits did you get from him?"

"Nothing."

"But you yourself admitted that you were his friend. Did he give you any money?"

"No."

"Where's the food?"

"No."

Has he introduced you to any beautiful women?

"nor."

Did he meet with you later?

"I have received him."

Do you see him often?

"Only occasionally."

How did you manage to see him?

"I'll just go directly to him."

"So you were sitting very close to him at the time, is that right?"

Yes, very close.

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Weren't there any guards present?"

"No."

"So you could have killed him, right?"

"really."

"Then why didn't you kill him?"

"Because he is my friend."

……

Just as Soviet troops entered Berlin and everyone was celebrating the end of the war, several Soviet officers quietly searched the German Chancellery and eventually sent out a letter.

"Target item not found..."

In an underground chapel in London, a lengthy letter contained only one sentence. Among the several old monks surrounding the letter, one of them closed his eyes, but the steel ball in his hand was so tightly squeezed that it left marks, demonstrating his strength and the anger in his heart.

……

My body felt unusually light, as if I had lost all weight, and in a daze, I slowly opened my eyes.

"Didn't I... commit suicide?"

Surrounded by a white mist, a question arose in his mind. In Hitler's memory, he seemed to have bitten open a pill containing hydrogen cyanide at the last moment, and at the same time shot himself in the head, but why...?

"Mortals, such fragile little insects, can unleash astonishing power."

A deep, captivating voice rang in his ears, and the mist before him dissipated, revealing a colossal figure unlike anything Hitler had ever seen before…

It was a gigantic human figure, hundreds or thousands of meters tall, with a naked body and skin so white it was inhuman. The sun shone brightly behind its head, obscuring its face, yet one could feel its breathtaking power, beauty, and indifference, as if it were a primitive and savage ancient god scrutinizing the tiny humans before it.

It was only then that Hitler suddenly realized that he had always been standing in the palm of the ancient god before him, a palm that resembled a courtyard.

“You tiny insect, you impress me. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse… Heh, then, as the scriptures say, the prophecy of this mortal shall be fulfilled.”

Before Adolf could say anything more, his body was instantly shattered and reshaped, eventually transforming into a knight riding a red horse. The knight didn't say much either, but simply rode the red horse out of the thick fog.

“Then another horse came out, a red one. And he was given authority to take peace from the earth and to make people kill one another. And a large sword was given to him…”

The end of the world—this is a prophecy of a mortal in the Bible, which specifically mentions four knights, one of whom is the knight who brings war, steals peace, and causes people to kill one another. Although he is revered as a saint, to the Shadow it is nothing more than a mortal spouting wild words, but it doesn't mind making this mortal's delusions come true.

However, in the prophecies of the scriptures, God descends on the end times to judge the sins of the world, but here, it is the end of the world, foreshadowed by the Four Horsemen, brought about by demons...

……

Nazi Germany has been destroyed, but the crimes it committed were not fully exposed until after the war, leaving the world in awe. In addition to the number of people killed in the war, approximately 20 million people and dissidents were murdered during the seven years of Nazi Germany, the most notorious of which were the Nazi concentration camps.

“In the past, European thinkers regarded massacres as a barbaric and uncivilized act, believing that with the progress of human civilization and morality, ancient massacres would gradually disappear. But concentration camps tell us that this is not the case. People were shocked to discover that technological progress has not only brought civilization, but also a completely new method of massacre.”

"A completely industrialized, assembly-line-style method of slaughter."

“Ancient massacres, including the Mongol massacres, were acts of slaughter carried out to conquer a region and to warn survivors not to resist. But the Nazi concentration camps were different. As the first scientific method of extermination in human history to operate in an industrialized, efficient, and systematic way, it was not for conquering territory, but simply a modern genocide born out of hatred for and extermination of a certain ethnic group.”

"Killing is a very simple thing; a single bullet is enough. But afterwards, people have to face problems such as how to dispose of the bodies, how to prevent soldiers from feeling monotonous and repetitive, and how to prevent them from developing mental illnesses. For various reasons, a massacre can eventually not continue, because no soldier would like to kill and dispose of bodies every day; neither the cost nor the reality allows it."

"But concentration camps are different. They meticulously calculate all the costs of killing, ultimately arriving at a low-cost operating model that can be cyclical and repeated, treating the Holocaust as an industry."

“Such concentration camps can continue massacres indefinitely. Guards supervise prisoners, then prisoners kill each other, while prisoners are constantly being arrested, and finally guards kill each other. Given enough time, it could even send everyone in the world to concentration camps to be killed…”

In a room lit by electric lights, an old man was writing furiously in a book, trying to write down all the findings of his investigation into the concentration camps and tell the world about them.

Finally, looking at the book where every word was soaked in blood, and recalling the faces in the concentration camp documents, his face was filled with deep complexity. He took a deep breath and wrote in the epilogue.

"May humanity abandon all disagreements and disputes, cease to hate, and may this world be at peace."

But... is it really possible to do that?
Unaware of the old man's presence, the knight on his red horse, unseen by ordinary people, sneered. He was the knight who brought war and discord to the earth; any conflict—ethnicity, religion, culture—would ultimately escalate into war in his hands.

War will never disappear.

The Red Knight spoke indifferently, as if the remnant of what that man had said still echoed in his mind: he was willing to give up everything for the greatness of his country and nation. Throughout history, it has always been the side that considers itself righteous that starts wars.

When has war ever ended? War will never end.

The red knight chuckled and galloped across the sky...

……

Time flies. During the Cold War, humanity landed on the moon, but never returned. The sudden collapse of that red superpower cast a shadow over the entire world over a single superpower. The Americans' casual strike, achieving a near-zero casualty victory against hundreds of thousands, sent shivers down the spines of the world, demonstrating the terrifying power of information warfare.

At that moment, the United States seemed so powerful that it could take on the entire world on its own.

The ancient Eastern nation, deeply shaken, began to act discreetly and lie low, waiting for its opportunity. Just as the United States, which reigned supreme in the world, was preparing to dismantle the last bastion of communism, an Arab hijacked a plane, delivering a devastating blow to the complacent United States. Enraged, the United States became entangled in the Middle East and never had the chance to dismantle that "bastion of communism" again...

In 2012, a small town in Texas, in the southern United States.

"Go for it! Keep pushing!"

Inside the tavern, a group of strong, burly men were gathered around a table, shouting until their faces were red and their necks were thick. Meanwhile, two people were arm wrestling in the middle of the crowd.

Despite being called an arm wrestling match, one of them was leisurely drinking with one hand, while the other, a muscular black man, had a flushed face and was covered in sweat, yet he couldn't budge his opponent an inch.

He looked at his opponent, a middle-aged man with a stubble beard. Although he didn't look very strong, his strength was unexpectedly great. The other man seemed to be looking at him as well, his eyes full of mockery.

"Come on, Wyndham! Didn't you brag last time that you could do it for an hour? Why can't you do it now?"

People around him who had placed bets were anxiously shouting, realizing they might lose.

But his opponent didn't give him another chance. He let out a burp, then used his right hand to slam his opponent's hand onto the table. The crowd around them booed in dissatisfaction, but still placed their bets on the table.

Putting away the money he had won from gambling that day, and casually picking up his hat, the middle-aged man prepared to leave the tavern.

"brake……"

Suddenly, accompanied by the sound of wind, a black Bugatti Veyron sports car appeared in front of the middle-aged man. The car door opened, and the first thing that caught his eye was a long, beautiful leg.

"Roberts, it's been a long time."

Looking at the young, beautiful woman with curly hair smiling at him, Roberts showed no joy. He simply lowered his hat brim helplessly and lit a cigarette.

"Looks like my vacation is going to be ruined again?"

"Congratulations on guessing correctly. Also, smoking is not allowed in my car."

(End of this chapter)