Arknights: Soul Knights of Terra — Chapter 90

Chapter 90: This Chapter Can Be Skipped

“Once upon a time…

Salt did not yet belong to the land,

Sand did not yet belong to the sea,

And Iberia still had a king.

Friends from the sea brought knowledge, and a bridge was built between land and sea.

Iberia armed itself with knowledge, and the Golden Fleet flourished…”

On the winding path toward their lodging, Vane hummed the old ballad, his tone soft and deceptively gentle against the chilling evening wind.

Irene turned her head, her curiosity finally winning out over her discipline. “Mr. Vane, I’ve heard the legends of the Golden Fleet since I was a child… but these ‘friends from the sea’… does that refer to the Aegir?”

Vane stopped his humming. He spun on his heel and began walking backward, a half-smile playing on his lips as he faced the two Inquisitors. “It’s no mere legend, Little Bird. The Golden Fleet was as real as the dirt beneath your boots.”

With a sudden, casual leap, Vane sidled right up to Dario, slinging an arm over the stoic Inquisitor’s broad shoulder. Dario’s jaw tightened, but he didn’t push the youth away.

“Iberia was once ruled by a proper royal family,” Vane began, his voice taking on the cadence of a seasoned storyteller. “It wasn’t the absolute strongest nation on Terra, but it certainly wasn’t weak enough to be trampled on. That is, until one day… those ‘friends from the sea’ brought a gift.”

He paused, letting the silence stretch before suddenly raising his voice. “Aegir!”

“A nation hidden at the very bottom of the deep sea, boasting technology and a glorious civilization that made the surface look like the Stone Age. But even they, faced with the creeping threat of ‘monsters’ from the abyssal depths, had no choice but to seek allies above the waves…”

“And Iberia became their chosen partner.”

Vane gestured grandly toward the dark horizon. “The Aegir who came ashore brought technology and knowledge far beyond what the Iberian mind could have even hallucinated at the time. Giant ships were launched into the churning sea. Magnificent lighthouses stood tall along the coast, piercing the dark. It would be no exaggeration to say that Iberia became the undisputed strongest nation on land.”

“And thus—the Golden Age arrived.”

Vane’s voice dripped with a strange, magnetic charisma. “In that era, even the most destitute beggar sleeping in the gutters of the capital would puff out his chest, proud to be an Iberian. That was the generation when the bond between Iberians and Aegir was at its absolute zenith. ‘Friends from the sea’… they were truly worthy of the name.”

Irene listened, utterly mesmerized. Her eyes reflected visions of that glorious, bygone era, a stark contrast to the decaying ruins she knew today.

“But…”

Vane’s voice suddenly plummeted, the warmth vanishing as if they had fallen from a sunlit deck straight into a freezing ocean trench.

“Rapidly rising power feeds a fatal arrogance.”

“The Aegir warned them. Countless times, they spoke of the ‘calamity’ stirring in the deep. Yet Iberia, drunk on its own invincibility, gradually dismissed those warnings. And when that calamity finally arrived…” Vane’s eyes darkened. “…this seemingly indestructible golden glory proved as fragile as a sandcastle, crumbling at the slightest touch of the tide.”

He slowly uttered the term that was violently etched into the genetic memory of every living Iberian:

“【The Great Silence】.”

Irene’s breath hitched in her throat.

“A terrifying tsunami swallowed massive swaths of the southern territories,” Vane murmured, painting the nightmare with cold precision. “The entire Golden Fleet lost contact in an instant. Hundreds of magnificent lighthouses—save for a single one—were snuffed out…”

“Even the once-fertile farmland was drowned by seawater, permanently cursed into a desolate, saline wasteland.”

He let the words hang in the frigid air, forcing his listeners to digest the sheer scale of the horror. “Voices were stripped away. The royal capital was swallowed whole. A prosperous, arrogant civilization vanished into sea foam and smoke.”

Twilight finally broke, bleeding into night, and the coastal breeze seemed to turn exceptionally biting.

Vane tilted his head, staring directly into Irene’s pale face. His voice was soft, yet sharp as a scalpel. “When the Iberians—so accustomed to their arrogance, having fallen so hard from the clouds—finally looked up from the drowning ruins… guess what they did?”

Irene’s throat went completely dry. She instinctively shook her head, dreading the answer.

“…They twisted the very warnings the Aegir had given them into vicious curses.”

“【It was you who brought the calamity!】”

“【Devils from the sea! Go back to the bottom of the ocean!】”

“【Without you, Iberia would still be Iberia!】”

“The riots began,” Vane recounted, his tone devoid of any warmth. “Harmonious neighbors turned into bloodthirsty murderers overnight. Once-honored guests were dragged from their beds and beaten in the streets.”

“Countless Aegir died in those senseless purges. And the most symbolic tragedy among them all was…”

Vane shifted his gaze to Dario. The veteran Inquisitor had his eyes closed, the muscles in his jaw pulled taut enough to snap.

“…Breogán. The chief ship designer who first came representing Aegir. The man hailed as the ‘bridge’ between two worlds.” Vane’s voice dropped to a whisper. “He was dragged from his home by a mindless mob and beaten to death on the very bustling streets he had personally helped design and build.”

The lingering notes of the ballad had long since died away. Irene’s face was deathly pale, her illusions of the past thoroughly shattered. Dario remained locked in a heavy, suffocating silence.

Vane finally released his arm from Dario’s shoulder and turned back to face the dirt road ahead.

“Masses of refugees emerged. The once-noble army fractured into thugs and warlords. Physically, those who were starving turned to banditry. Spiritually, the Church of the Deep slithered in, preaching its twisted doctrines and brainwashing the desperate.”

“Even though the State Church eventually transformed into the Inquisition and the National Defense Force to violently turn the tide, Iberia could no longer hide its terminal decline…”

“And thus, the Golden Age came to an end.”

“…”

“…”

Watching the two Inquisitors stew in their grim silence, Vane suddenly drew out his tone, the heavy atmosphere shattering instantly. “Eh~ Is that all? The persecution of the Aegir has only just begun, you know~”

“You know far too much about Iberia’s past.” Dario opened his eyes, staring intensely at Vane, trying to dig beneath that irreverent, maddening facade.

“I know everything~” Vane chimed back.

Dario frowned, clearly about to press the issue, but Vane simply smiled and pivoted toward Irene. “Alright, history class is paused. Cute Little Bird… having heard so much, is there anything else you want to know? I can give you some private tutoring~”

Irene struggled to pull herself out of her chaotic thoughts. She looked up, asking the one question that troubled the brightest minds in Iberia: “The Great Silence… what exactly is it? The Inquisition’s records are incredibly vague. Is it… really just a natural disaster?”

“Hmm…” Vane rubbed his chin, answering in a tone one might use to discuss the weather. “…In terms you can easily understand, it was just a very large Seaborn throwing a tantrum in the sea.”

“Seaborn?!” Irene exclaimed, her eyes widening.

The answer was too direct, too horrifying. The ultimate culprit that ended the glorious Golden Age was the very monster they slaughtered on a daily basis? Before the disaster, lesser Seaborn were so weak they could serve as exotic pets for children.

“Yes, it was Seaborn.” Vane ignored her absolute shock, scratching the back of his head as he muttered to himself. “Sss—although the Iberians brutally persecuted the Aegir… it seems the Aegir really do have to take the blame for this specific mess. Though it was that particular group down in the sea, specifically…”

Dario’s eyes narrowed dangerously. He opened his mouth to interrogate the youth, but Vane had already stopped walking.

“Are we here?”

Not far away, a small stone house stood entirely alone at the edge of the village, looking distinctly isolated from the surrounding dilapidated buildings.

“Yes…” Dario suppressed the burning questions in his chest and stepped forward to lead them into the house.

But Vane reached the wooden door a step ahead. “Is anyone home~ I’m coming in~”

Without waiting for a single response, the youth pushed the door open and stepped inside, moving aside to let the others in.

“Thanks~” Vane chirped, immediately looking around the room with intense interest.

Unlike the lonely, crumbling feeling it gave off from the outside, the interior was simple but kept exceptionally neat. The furnishings bore the heavy, obvious signs of daily life, clearly indicating that someone had been living here for a long, long time. It directly contradicted the villagers’ earlier claims that the resident had “only recently arrived.”

“You must have investigated this place already. What’s the situation?” Dario walked to the center of the room and efficiently lit the fire in the stone kang, the crackling flames slowly dispelling the lingering damp cold and the heavy smell of salt.

Irene answered on behalf of her teacher, her tone softening with sympathy. “The young man living here cannot speak, and his education is severely limited, so…”

“So that means he’s unable to communicate~” Vane raised an eyebrow. He suddenly reached out and hooked his arm around the shoulder of the trembling Aegir youth who had been huddled in the corner.

The boy flinched violently.

“Is it that he’s illiterate, or is he just unwilling to speak?” Vane asked, leaning in close.

“Mr. Vane!” Irene hurried forward, her righteous anger flaring as she pulled Vane’s arm away, firmly shielding the terrified Aegir youth behind her back. “He is a victim too! Please stop scaring him!”

“Alright, alright~” Vane raised both hands in a lazy gesture of surrender, though his sharp eyes never left the trembling boy. “I’m just a little curious. After all, he is the only Aegir in this entire, miserable village~”

Ignoring the glaring Little Bird, Vane’s attention drifted to a crude hammock strung up in the corner of the room. He walked over in three long strides, threw himself backward into it without a shred of ceremony, and kicked off the floor, letting himself swing back and forth like a pendulum.

Irene, still processing Vane’s deep historical lecture, watched him swing and found herself entirely speechless. “Mr. Vane… even though you know so many deep things, why is your behavior always so… lazy?”

She found it impossible to connect the swinging slacker before her with the eloquent, sorrowful scholar from just ten minutes ago.

“Is there a possibility~” Vane closed his eyes, thoroughly enjoying the sway of the rough fabric, “that in some dark place you can’t see, I’ve actually been working secretly, exhausting myself to death, and right now is simply my designated rest time to enjoy the fruits of my labor?”

Irene froze. Then, a look of absolute admiration bloomed on her face. “So that’s it! The time Mr. Vane disappeared earlier… you were investigating the clues about the village and the Church of the Deep all by yourself?!”

“Ahem… kid, do you have anything to eat around here? It’s almost dinner time, right?” Facing the Little Bird’s intensely sparkling eyes, Vane hurriedly changed the subject, suddenly feeling very awkward.

The Aegir youth blinked, his expression becoming troubled as he looked at his empty shelves.

Dario spoke up from the fire. “The villagers here stated they would provide our food.”

Vane’s eyes cracked open, and the amplitude of his swinging noticeably decreased. “So kind? In a resource-scarce coastal hellhole like this, food should be more precious than gold, right?”

“Let’s wait for now…” Dario muttered, closing his eyes and resting his hands on his weapon.

Vane sighed. “Sometimes I really wonder if you can actually sleep while sitting straight up.”

“The Teacher is silently reciting the doctrines and laws of the Inquisition,” Irene explained earnestly, her posture straightening. “It helps to calm the mind, focus the spirit, and maintain absolute judgment in complex environments.”

“Oh? Can you do that too?” Vane raised an eyebrow from the hammock.

“Of course!” Irene puffed out her chest proudly. She cleared her throat and began to recite the heavy, archaic Iberian laws in a low, rapid voice.

Vane listened for exactly ten seconds before his head started buzzing. Groaning, he waved his hand frantically to cut her off. “Stop, stop, stop! I believe you can recite it! But I don’t understand a single word of Iberian!”

Irene stopped mid-sentence, stunned. Then, her eyes lit up with terrifying enthusiasm. “That’s right! Mr. Vane, you don’t know Iberian! In that case… let me teach you! We can start with the most basic daily phrases!”

Vane instinctively felt a trap closing around him. Just as he opened his mouth to find an excuse to decline, Irene had already marched over and sat down right next to the kang. She picked up a thin, charred twig and began scratching letters into the dirt floor, repeating the simplest greetings in a slow, agonizingly deliberate tone.

“Come, Mr. Vane, please repeat after me—’Hello’…”

Seeing no response from the hammock, Irene turned and stared straight at Vane, her gaze burning with the intensity of an Inquisitor interrogating a heretic.

Vane slumped his shoulders in defeat. Staring at the ceiling, he repeated with a bitterly resigned face:

“Hello…”