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ArabicArknights: How Did I Actually Become the Doctor? — Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Huh? I’m Saving Terra?
“…Grab my hand!”
“…Emergency…”
“…Save…”
The rhythmic, sterile beeping of medical instruments pierced through the heavy fog in his mind. A warm, soft hand gripped his fingers tightly, anchoring him to reality. A sliver of cool, artificial light bled through his heavy eyelids.
‘I thought I was already dead,’ he mused sluggishly.
The freezing, viscous fluid of the Sarcophagus began to recede, the water level dropping with a mechanical hiss. A sudden rush of cold, dust-choked air flooded his lungs. It felt as though he had been submerged in an endless slumber, buried so deep in the dark that his body had entirely forgotten the simple mechanics of drawing breath.
“Cough… cough, cough…”
The violent hacking tore from his throat without permission. The small hand gripping his own squeezed even tighter, desperate to transfer its fragile warmth into his shivering frame.
“Doctor…”
He heard her call out to him. That familiar, singular title.
Blinking away a veil of physiological tears, his vision slowly focused. Kneeling beside him was a girl clad in a deeply familiar color scheme, her iconic long ears twitching with anxiety. The words slipped from his tongue almost purely on instinct.
“Amiya?”
His own voice startled him. It was raspy, hollow, and impossibly low—like the resonant scrape of a dust-covered cello.
A strong, uncompromising arm hoisted him upright. Through his still-blurring vision, the silhouettes of several figures materialized around him, all sporting the highly characteristic, asymmetrical tactical straps of their uniforms.
His brain, previously numb and fragmented from its prolonged deep-freeze in the Sarcophagus, suddenly sparked to life. It didn’t just wake up; it booted up with terrifying, crystalline clarity. In the span of a single breath, he assessed his reality with ruthless speed.
‘I’ve transmigrated.’
He had been dropped straight into the world of his favorite tower defense game, directly into the shoes of the very protagonist he used to pilot from behind a screen: the Doctor.
He was a little panicked, sure. But only a little.
First of all, he had already died in his original world. Every extra second he spent breathing this dusty air was a free bonus life.
Second, and far more, he realized he had inherited the genuine, unadulterated brain of the ‘Doctor.’This was the legendary mind capable of calculating the exact trajectory and impact vectors of a Catastrophe in mere seconds. The unmatched tactical processor feared across Terra as the Ghost of Babel.’Gotta hand it to the lore,’he commented inwardly, marveling at the frictionless speed of his own thoughts.’This brain is absolutely cracked.’ Even as the operators supported his weight and hurried him down the crumbling corridor, his eyes darted around, effortlessly cataloging structural damage, enemy patrol routes, and environmental hazards.
“Doctor, we need your help.” The little rabbit’s voice was gentle, yet it carried an unshakeable firmness as she looked up at him with expectant eyes.
He stared back at her. Inwardly, he was screaming, furiously scanning his surroundings while hundreds of improved tactical layouts flashed through his mind. He was already mentally skipping the dialogue prompts because he knew the early-game plot backward and forward.
Externally, however, he was a statue of absolute composure.
“…”
“Actually, Amiya,” he began. Despite his internal helplessness, the voice that filtered through his dark visor was smooth, steady, and entirely devoid of panic. “I seem to have lost my memory. I have forgotten almost everything… being able to call out your name just now was the absolute limit of what I could recall.”
Instructor Dobermann’s face instantly drained of color. “Amnesia? How is that even possible!” He watched her gloved hands instinctively clench into fists, her nails digging so hard into her palms they threatened to pierce the fabric.
He felt a twinge of guilt, but it was the most optimal play. He was a fake. If he tried to bluff his way through complex interpersonal histories, these seasoned veterans would sniff him out in an hour. It was infinitely safer to play the amnesia card right out of the gate. Later on, he could casually drop a few meta-knowledge spoilers and pass them off as ‘recovered memory fragments’ to solidify his authority.
The sequence of events played out exactly as the game dictated. Amiya, driven by her unwavering faith, firmly chose to believe in him, pressing the tactical command authority directly into his hands.
“It is alright, Doctor. Command us however you wish, just like you used to… we all believe in you.”
He let out a quiet sigh, reaching out to reflexively pat the top of her head. He was just a hardcore gamer before this transmigration nonsense. Now, he could only pray that this superhuman biological supercomputer in his skull wouldn’t blue-screen on him.
As for letting Amiya take the wheel? He instantly recalled the ‘illustrious’ track record of the Feline operators and the rigid game mechanics where his units couldn’t even turn around to attack enemies behind them. Yeah, no. He wasn’t trusting his life to that.
[PRTS connecting…]
“Establishing neural link with Rhodes Island…”
“Combat system online…”
His hand, which had been gently resting between the rabbit’s ears, suddenly froze. He instinctively lowered his gaze.
Amiya obediently tilted her head up, meeting his eyes through the visor.
[☆☆☆☆☆ Amiya]
[Promotion: Elite 1 | Level: 35]
[Skills: Tactical Chant – Type γ, Spirit Burst]
‘Oh. Oh, my.’
He blinked. He looked at Dobermann. He looked back at Amiya. According to his immediate visual processing, the others didn’t have floating holographic status panels hovering over their heads.
The sudden appearance of a crisp, high-tech UI featuring a chibi operator sprite was incredibly jarring in this grimdark reality. He was entirely certain Kal’tsit hadn’t programmed a sudden burst of moe aesthetic into his visor’s HUD.
“I think I have a handle on things now,” he said, his voice ringing with deep sincerity.
His cheat code had officially arrived.
He shifted his gaze to the elite reserve operators flanking him.
Every single one of them had a five-star rarity tag glowing above their heads. Misery, Mantra, Touch, Pith…
All of them were at Elite 1, max level.
‘The Four Kings of Integrated Strategies… they’re all here?’
He was genuinely dazed for a moment. It had been so long since he first cleared the tutorial stages that he had completely forgotten the exact roster present during the initial Chernobog rescue operation.
But looking at this absurdly stacked, luxurious early-game dream team, his lingering sense of mortal peril evaporated into the ash-filled air.
Amiya was still looking at him with mild confusion, wondering why the tension had suddenly bled out of his posture.
“Amiya, please grant me total command authority over the network. I also need to contact the other scattered squads.”
He had already made peace with his past life. He didn’t harbor any deep, deep sense of belonging to the war-torn land of Terra just yet. But…
Compared to the sheer mental exhaustion of micromanaging a squad of under-leveled rookies against the Black Snake, he had been handed an overwhelmingly powerful lineup. If he still allowed precious elite operators like Ace and Scout to die meaningless deaths today, he might as well revoke his own gamer card. It would be a massive insult to his reputation as a high-level strategy streamer.
Stumbling through the ruins and barely scraping by simply wasn’t his style. Honestly, if his muscles weren’t still stiff from marinating in the Sarcophagus for years, he would have attempted a multi-front, split-screen command operation to completely wipe the Reunion Movement off the map before the Catastrophe even made landfall.
He checked the internal clock. There were still a few hours left. If he treated this entire city like a ten-minute, 400-kill Annihilation stage, it would be more than enough time.
He had to admit a dark truth to himself: while he felt a baseline level of empathy for these animal-eared inhabitants of Terra, his heart couldn’t truly equate their lives to the people of his homeland. Their movements, their struggles, the very way they spoke—it all felt slightly detached, like watching highly advanced NPCs. The prospect of death unfolding before his eyes lacked a certain visceral reality.
, the heavy, freezing medicinal fluid of the Sarcophagus hadn’t fully metabolized from his bloodstream, acting as a chemical dampener that severely suppressed his emotional fluctuations. As he looked at the cloaked Reunion soldiers gathering at the end of the ruined street…
He had a sense of justice, sure. Just not a very overwhelming one.
“Let’s go.”
He reached up and tugged his hood forward, casting his face into absolute shadow. With a flick of his wrist, he drew a perfectly straight, aggressive line across the holographic map, cutting directly toward the heart of Chernobog. He opened the comms channel, broadcasting his voice to every single Rhodes Island operative within the city limits.
“Hello? Can you hear me? This is the Doctor. I am officially taking over command of this battlefield.”
His voice had completely shed its initial rasp. It flowed through the earpieces of the operators—warm, steady, deeply reassuring, yet layered with an obvious, crushing authority.
“Scout’s squad, hold your current position and stand by. I will break through the enemy lines and converge on your location. Do not engage without my explicit orders.”
He paused, his eyes narrowing as he reviewed the enemy deployment data. “In particular, ignore that American cockroach—” He caught himself, smoothly correcting his internal meme before it reached the comms. “Ignore the white-haired, red-horned Sarkaz mercenary for now. focus on your own survival.”
“All other squads, abandon your current skirmishes and converge on my position along this newly transmitted route.”
He looked up, his gaze piercing through the smoke and ash of the dying city.
“…I am going to lead you all as we tear Chernobog apart.”