Arknights: The Prophet of Penguin Logistics — Chapter 51

Chapter 51: A Dream of Scraps

On paper, Lynn was a ghost. He was a mysterious young man who had materialized inside Lungmen without a single shred of background information, identification, or history. Because he lacked the proper documentation, he had been unceremoniously expelled from the city limits, only to be dragged back a month later by the sheer, chaotic gravity of Exusiai. Through his own quiet efforts, he had secured a place within Penguin Logistics, embedding himself into the industry and becoming an indispensable gear in their erratic machine.

To the average Lungmen citizen, this data read like a mildly inspiring underdog story. Most people didn’t think twice about it.

However, after a complete physical examination by the L.G.D.’s medical division, the truth proved far more disturbing. The prevailing theory among the doctors was that Lynn was not suffering from amnesia, as everyone had assumed. The chilling reality suggested something else entirely: he had just been created. His so-called memory loss and his sporadic inability to grasp the local language were simply because he had never lived in this world to begin with.

“Your internal structure is a graveyard of malformed tissue,” Officer Ch’en said, her voice tight as she read from the thick medical dossier in her hands. The sterile white lights of the hospital room cast harsh shadows over her serious features. “Your organs are filled with all sorts of defective anomalies. Some of them have overlapping functions, while others are completely unnecessary vestigial remnants that only serve to hinder your body’s normal development. Our medics don’t even dare to use conventional Originium Arts or standard treatment methods on you. We can only wait, carefully and helplessly, for you to heal on your own.”

She lowered the file slightly, her piercing eyes locking onto Lynn. “Your body is agonizingly fragile because a full third of your nutritional intake is violently siphoned straight to your brain. Only the meager remainder goes toward sustaining your vital organs.”

Lynn lay quietly in the hospital bed, the steady beep of the heart monitor filling the silence.

“Your life expectancy will be tragically short,” Ch’en continued, her tone softening just a fraction, betraying a trace of pity. “Most likely, you won’t even live to see a hundred., the neural structure of your teeth is completely malformed, serving as nothing but a painful burden. It isn’t just your teeth, either; the architecture of your optic nerves and your inner ears are riddled with structural flaws. Looking at your skeletal frame, you might have even been intended to be a compatriot of my own kind, yet your coccyx has completely degenerated—as if your tail was erased from your very genetics.”

She flipped a page, her brow furrowing deeper. “The connections between your pelvis, thighs, and foot joints are dangerously thin and overly complex. Structural damage could occur at any moment just from excessive running or jumping. But what the medical staff found most appalling is your nervous system. Your nerves possess absolutely zero self-healing ability. You cannot repair nerve damage through simple rest.”

Ch’en took a slow breath, as if the words she was reading disgusted her. “Your genetics tell the same story. Your DNA is cluttered with countless redundant chains that actively collapse or mutate on their own, forming strange tumors within your flesh. The only reason you are maintaining your current biological balance is that your body is teeming with specific foreign germs and viruses. These microscopic entities are propagating inside you as we speak, artificially sustaining your life.”

She closed the file with a soft, heavy thud. “In other words, your physical body is essentially a cursed lump of flesh. It contains hundreds of antibodies, bacterial strains, and a chaotic mess of organs that seem to have only evolved to handle the proliferation of internal toxins. Your brain is disproportionately vast, piled with countless gyri, and houses neurons operating on principles our doctors find completely alien. These elements maintain a terrifying, precarious balance. Aside from your brain, which is relatively well-developed, everything else is an extremely malformed, wasteful tragedy. Some of your biological structures even look as though they were specifically engineered to counter some kind of horrific mutation. If not for the dozens of bacterial colonies within your system keeping you alive, you would have already died from multiple organ failure.”

Ch’en stepped closer to the bed, her expression grim. “We don’t dare touch you. Your body is like a complex, crumbling machine; the slightest external modification could cause your life to end instantly. So, we have chosen to maintain the status quo and let you make your own choices. The medical staff felt you shouldn’t be told the truth, but I believe you have the right to know what was done to you.”

She placed a hand on the metal railing of his bed. “Therefore, I strongly advise that you never participate in any combat situations in the future, nor should you ever step foot into a conflict zone. That is the doctor’s official advice, and it is also my personal warning.”

“…”

Looking at the earnest, deeply troubled face of Officer Ch’en, Lynn opened his mouth. He wanted to say something, anything, to bridge the gap. But after thinking for a long time and failing to find the right words, he simply closed his mouth again.

To a certain extent, the L.G.D.’s medical judgments weren’t wrong. Back in his original world, Lynn had already understood this reality through various scientific journals and biological data. The human body was far less ‘sacred and inviolable’ than poets claimed; it was only sacred because humanity collectively agreed to pretend it was.

If you stripped away the philosophical sanctity of humanity and looked at it purely from the cold perspective of biological engineering, not a single human organ was optimal. In fact, they could easily be described as appallingly inferior. Overlapping organ functions, extremely wasteful neural pathways, dense, tangled blood vessels that wound around blindly instead of taking a straight path, and a massive amount of junk DNA starting from the genetic level. It was a masterclass in unreasonable design.

A scholar on Earth had once joked that if you viewed the human body as an engineering system, it was an unqualified reject—a machine that only functioned through constant patching, duct tape, and sheer evolutionary coincidence. If not for probiotics, centuries of medical corrections, environmental shielding, and the heavy support of vaccines, human life would be even shorter than Ch’en’s grim estimate. The natural average life expectancy might not even break twenty-five years. Yet, it was precisely because of this inherent biological crisis that humanity had developed an environmental tolerance and endurance surpassing all other large organisms.

However, that evolutionary advantage was clearly a joke in the world of Terra.

With apocalyptic Catastrophes and Originium storms ravaging the land every single day, and the local populace possessing animalistic traits and terrifying physical strength, it was perfectly normal for a baseline human body to appear as a malformed, useless tragedy by comparison., most of the germs keeping Lynn alive were specialized human-targeting pathogens, completely harmless and useless against Terran species.

That explained why the L.G.D. examinations had found him to be entirely non-infectious.

Still, how should he put it? Being told so bluntly to his face that his entire species was an evolutionary garbage fire made Lynn feel a tiny prick of wounded pride. But that fleeting annoyance quickly dissolved into a relieved, quiet smile. Regardless of his biological inferiority, he had survived his transmigration. He was living quite well, all things considered. That was enough.

“Mm, I understand,” Lynn finally said, his voice soft.

“…Don’t you want to say anything else?” Ch’en asked, her brow furrowing at his calm acceptance.

“There’s nothing really to say, is there? I’m still alive here, the medical treatment is continuing, and I haven’t dropped dead yet. Isn’t that good enough?”

Lynn wanted to spread his hands in a casual shrug to emphasize his point, but with his body immobilized by the hospital blankets and IV lines, he settled for raising his eyebrows and putting on a perfectly indifferent expression.

“I’m just the type of person who wants to live in a stable, harmonious society,” he continued, his tone light. “No wars, no sudden attacks, no violence. A peaceful world is best. That’s why I have always felt incredibly fortunate just to be breathing. I want to use something as warm and simple as writing to convey this feeling to others. All in all, I am just grateful to this world for letting me live. At least I haven’t starved to death on the streets. That is more than enough for me. As for the doctors’ opinions on my body… aren’t there countless people suffering from Oripathy out there? They have it much worse than I do.”

Ch’en stared at him for a long, heavy moment, her eyes searching his face for any sign of despair. Finding only genuine peace, she slowly nodded.

“…I understand. Rest here and take your time recovering.”

“Hm? Ah, take care, Officer Ch’en. Please forgive me for not being able to see you to the door.”

“Rest assured.”

Walking to the edge of the doorframe, Ch’en paused. She placed her hand against the metal trim, tilted her head slightly, and spoke in a low, dangerous voice that practically vibrated with suppressed fury.

“I swear to you, Lynn. I will make those who twist and torment life pay the price they deserve. I swear I will make them pay for what they did to you.”

“Huh? Oh…”

Lynn blinked. It felt like a massive, dramatic misunderstanding had just taken root in the officer’s mind, but honestly… whatever.

Watching Ch’en march out into the hallway with a look of absolute, righteous determination, Lynn thought about raising a hand to call her back. But the heavy, lethargic warmth spreading through his fragile, ‘cursed’ body caused his eyelids to droop. He couldn’t fight the exhaustion, and he quickly drifted off to sleep.

Standing in the corridor, Ch’en glanced back one last time just as Lynn closed his eyes. She bit her lip, her expression hardening into cold resolve, and turned to walk into the depths of the hospital, her mind already hunting for ghosts.