Arknights: The Prophet of Penguin Logistics — Chapter 88

Chapter 88: The Prophet

From the very beginning, Lynn had never viewed his precognitive intuition as a weapon.

He had never entertained the thought of actively taking a life. Even when malice was directed squarely at him, his stance remained unchanged. Take Meteorite, for instance—she had nearly killed him, yet he had simply bid her a peaceful farewell. He possessed no desire to extinguish another person’s light.

His training sessions were strictly defensive exercises. He harbored no aggressive mindset, no burning desire to conquer or win. His ultimate dream was painfully mundane: to settle down in a vibrant yet peaceful city, fall in love with an ordinary, kind-hearted girl, raise a few children, and quietly wither away into a ripe old age.

True, he possessed an unnatural, almost terrifying aptitude for violence. The mere act of gripping a weapon was enough to make his blood sing. But he firmly believed that was a flaw. Human greatness was rooted in creation, not slaughter. Killing was the domain of beasts. Those deranged murderers who threw away their humanity deserved to be put down precisely because they had regressed into animals.

Fighting only when one truly understood the weight of their actions—that was Lynn’s baseline. He was a textbook pacifist. He preferred grand speeches and literary classics over martial arts. When faced with actual bloodshed, he felt nothing but a hollow, gripping terror. In essence, he was no different from a naive college student who liked to talk a big game. It was why he had donated his savings to Officer Ch’en to help build a better Lungmen, rather than buying a comfortable house for himself. He felt he didn’t deserve it—better the money go to a dedicated L.G.D. officer than a drifter like him.

But right now, the reality of violence was staring him in the face.

Fighting hurt. Death was ugly. It might look cinematic in the movies, but the lingering sensation of ending a life left a sticky, suffocating residue on the soul. It wasn’t exactly guilt; it was just deeply wrong. He really didn’t want to do this.

Watching the old man raise his heavy greatsword within the theater of his intuition, Lynn forced his tired lungs to take a breath and exerted his last bit of strength.

“Before we do this,” Lynn asked, his voice steady despite the situation, “why does it have to be us?”

“It is not just you,” the old man replied. “The Radiant Knight, Nearl, and that wandering medic who calls herself Shining… they were dealt with long ago. You are simply the last. Because there is an Idol among your ranks, your influence is the greatest.”

“But why?” Lynn pressed. “Why go to such lengths to kill us?”

“Are you questioning a father’s right to avenge his son?”

The words hit Lynn hard. He was old. The man standing before him was decrepit, weathered by time.

Through his strange intuition, Lynn felt the crushing weight of the old knight’s sorrow. People often assumed that high-ranking figures only cared about politics and profit, brushing off personal tragedies. But in Terra, grief spared no one. Midir was just an aging father who had lost his only son—a son in his prime—to Nearl and the accomplices of Penguin Logistics. That was motive enough.

“Goodbye, young man,” Midir said, his tone devoid of malice, leaving only an empty resolve. “You must pay with your lives for my son. It is the only thing I have left to offer him. He may have been in the wrong, but it was not your place to judge him.”

“…Sorry.”

Lynn looked at the calm, grieving father. Facing the whistling descent of the two-handed greatsword and the lethal hiss of arrows tearing through the air from the shadows, Lynn closed his eyes.

Inside his mind, the timelines converged. He delivered the first genuine, killing thrust in his entire history as a prophet. This wasn’t practice. This was a deliberate, calculated execution.

In the next fraction of a second, fate—or perhaps some twisted miracle—took the reins.

In the dark alleyway, a sudden draft altered the trajectory of the elite archers’ volley. Arrows collided mid-air with sharp, metallic clacks. One deflected shaft spiraled off course, striking Lynn’s arm with a muffled crack.

The kinetic force violently jerked his slender arm aside. But instead of ruining his aim, the impact forced his blade into a bizarre, impossible arc. Midir didn’t even have time to blink. He stared in absolute astonishment at the young man whose shoulder was torn and bleeding, yet whose sword tip had inexplicably buried itself deep into his throat.

Once the killing intent was locked in, death was an absolute certainty.

Stripped of the strength to launch a final counterattack, Midir stared wide-eyed at Lynn.

‘How is this possible…’

Then, the realization dawned on the dying knight. The apology hadn’t been for his loss. Lynn was apologizing to the universe for being forced to take a life.

Blood sprayed from Midir’s severed windpipe. His grip failed, and the massive greatsword slipped from his hands. The heavy blade spun through the air, catching the sudden glare of sunlight as the darkness of the alley shattered, and cleaved cleanly through two unarmored assassins lurking behind them. Two brief, wet screams echoed off the brick walls.

Midir’s aged face froze in a mask of shock. He blankly registered his own ruined throat, severed spine, and failing nerves as his knees finally buckled.

Lynn slowly withdrew his blood-soaked blade from the Great Knight’s neck. He looked up at the remaining assassins, who were now exposed to the harsh sunlight, their faces painted with bewilderment.

Crimson droplets fell from Lynn’s sword, pooling into the cracks of the cobblestone and vaporizing into a faint, metallic mist.

Gripping his slender weapon, his bruised and swollen arm trembling violently, Lynn stared down the knights as they nervously readied their stances. His expression shifted into one of deep, terrifying compassion.

“I will not let you pass,” he whispered, his voice carrying a dreadful certainty. “None of you will leave this alley alive. And none of you will ever reach them.”