Arknights: How Did I Actually Become the Doctor? — Chapter 101

Chapter 101: Mad Shrike (Part II)

‘Are you there, my dear past self who would definitely never screw me over?’I screamed internally, watching the memory unfold like an unskippable cutscene.’Why is it that I have only just woken up, yet the plot has already skipped the tutorial and dumped me straight into the endgame battlefield?’

“Doctor, I apologize, but Theresa and I must take command of two separate major fronts,” Kal’tsit said, her usually stoic gaze carrying a rare, heavy weight of expectation. “The defense of the vanguard fortress… I will leave it in your hands. Is that acceptable?”

“You” opened your mouth, completely at a loss for words. What was I supposed to say? ‘Hey, fun fact, I am actually not the tactical god you are waiting for?’ Or maybe point out that in the single, measly week since I arrived, I had not even figured out the UI for the various troop formations, let alone gained any actual combat experience?

“…Alright,” the voice that belonged to me replied.

Babel was bleeding manpower so badly that I had zero chance to undergo even a basic military crash course. I had not even exchanged more than three sentences with the Sarkaz mercenaries who were about to lay down their lives for me before I was shoved onto the front lines of a completely doomed fortress.

But thanks to this immersive memory dive, I finally got to see what those Originium Slugs I used to casually farm for materials actually looked like without the PRTS family-friendly censorship filter.

Maybe, once upon a time, the Reunion Movement actually did herd literal mutated bugs into enemy lines. But on this battlefield, the term referred to something far worse: Infected cannon fodder. They were as fragile, disposable, and numerous as insects.

“You” stared out at the advancing horde, utterly blindsided. I never expected to see such emaciated Sarkaz driven onto the killing field. Mixed within that surging tide of meat shields were women still frail from childbirth, and children whose total height did not even match the rusted broadswords dragging behind them in the dirt.

The Sarkaz mortality rate was astronomically high, forcing their birth rate to desperately keep pace. These elderly, sick, and crippled individuals—people whose mere presence on a battlefield would be a gross violation of human rights back in my hometown—were voluntarily charging into the meat grinder. All for the sake of the so-called Future of the Sarkaz.

“Most of you are likely hearing my voice for the first time, aren’t you?” I watched my past self’s hands trembling faintly beneath the sleeves of the coat, yet the voice that filtered through the mask was a terrifyingly steady, glacial calm. “From this moment on, abandon your individual thoughts. Use the numerical designations I assign you as your names. I shall act as your brains. I expect that in our future operations, I will not have to emphasize this a second time.”

“Who the hell do you—!” A naturally rowdy Sarkaz mercenary barely got the words out before the person standing directly behind him moved. A cold blade flashed in the dim light. A severed head, its eyes still wide with indignant shock, hit the dirt with a wet thud.

“Very good,” the Doctor’s voice echoed, completely devoid of empathy. “I hope the other Executioners I have embedded among your ranks will not find it necessary to step in.”

Ignoring the suffocating, deathly silence that instantly gripped the ranks, my past self casually adjusted the loudspeaker’s volume dial. “After all, I do not require your morale. I only require your absolute obedience. Seven hundred terrified militia who follow orders are infinitely more useful in my hands than eight hundred undisciplined mercenaries.” He paused, letting the cold reality sink into their bones. “Now. Follow your designations and man your corresponding defensive lines.”

Siege warfare was, without fail, the most brutal meat grinder ever conceived.

The vanguard charges of Theresis’s Sarkaz legions were a frenzied tide of violence. Blinding beams of Originium Arts sliced through the choking dust, deafening explosions rattled the fortress foundations, and the screech of rending metal drowned out the dying roars of warriors.

Inside the command room, the atmosphere was suffocating. Not a single one of the technical consultants Kal’tsit had assigned dared to breathe too loudly, let alone speak. The only illumination came from the flickering tactical markers and cascading data streams of the holographic sand table. The only sound was the Doctor’s voice—synthetic, measured, and utterly devoid of panic—cutting through the chaos via the comms.

“Sector A3. The enemy has deployed an elite siege squad,” the Doctor commanded. “Garrison, abandon the perimeter. Retreat to the secondary low wall and detonate the preset traps.”

Mere seconds after the order was issued, the cluster of blue dots on the holographic map—which had been on the verge of being swallowed by a massive red tide—pulled back with desperate speed. The moment they cleared the blast radius, a dense, overlapping chain of detonations lit up the sector. Several Gargoyles that had led the breach took the absolute full force of specialized armor-piercing Originium explosives. The concussive shockwaves nearly forced the massive Sarkaz sub-race into their stone dormancy on the spot, instantly shattering their offensive momentum.

The Doctor had effectively become the human replacement for Babel’s yet-to-be-completed tactical PRTS. He was the sole stabilizing anchor in a sea of blood and fire. He held no weapon, armed only with a master console wired directly into the fortress’s sensor grid and communication network. This claustrophobic room was his battlefield.

“Report! The western outer wall has been breached by a heavy battering ram!” a frantic voice screamed through the headset, accompanied by the shrill whistle of incoming artillery.

My past self did not even blink. His gaze remained locked on the sand table as his gloved fingers danced across the console, isolating and magnifying the western sector’s telemetry.

“The breach is exactly 3.7 meters wide. Unfavorable for large-scale legion deployment,” the Doctor analyzed instantly. “Deploy the Shadow-fiends to plug the gap. They do not need to push; stalling is sufficient. Notify the engineering corps to urgently construct overlapping crossfire points twenty meters behind the breach line.”

He did not order the breach sealed. The crash-course Terra military theory I had crammed into my brain explicitly stated that repairing under fire took too long and exposed squishy Engineers to lethal risk. Instead, I was going to exploit the gap. It was basic tower defense logic: turn the choke point into a kill box to devour the enemy’s DPS and vanguard units.

A specialized squad of Shadow-fiends slammed into the interior of the breach, acting as living wedges that bogged down the incoming horde. Meanwhile, the Casters in the rear rapidly linked their Arts, establishing a firing squad that began systematically harvesting the entangled enemies.

I hated passive defense, but my terrifying talent for shaping the battlefield was practically hardwired into my soul. The Doctor turned a crumbling, fragile defensive perimeter into a lethal, blood-soaked spiderweb. For every single inch Theresis’s forces advanced, they paid an agonizing toll in flesh.

“Warning! Massive high-energy reaction detected! It’s the channeling precursor to a strategic-level destructive Art!” One of the tactical consultants finally snapped under the crushing pressure. Desperation bleeding into his voice, he lunged forward, trying to seize the comms. “Dr. Kal’tsit and Her Highness Theresa aren’t here to shield us! We can’t possibly tank a spell of that magnitude! Why aren’t we sounding the retreat?!”

The man was practically hyperventilating. He had signed up for a cushy command post, not to be buried alive alongside a mob of Infected cannon fodder!

For the first time since the siege began, the Doctor slowly raised his head. His cold, calculating gaze seemed to pierce straight through the reinforced walls, locking onto the distant ridge where the enemy Caster battalion was gathering their mana.

“…Kal’tsit actually allowed trash like you to command her forces?”

‘Hell yes!’Even with a literal nuke about to drop on our heads, my past self still had the absolute gall to trash-talk the NPCs.’As expected of me!’ My internal gamer soul practically gave a standing ovation.

The Doctor’s voice remained a chilling monotone, effortlessly weaving sarcasm into his tactical adjustments. “All Defender units, shift your Arts defensive matrices to scattering mode. If I recall correctly, I assigned all ultra-long-range strike Casters to Squad 4. Lock onto their coordinates. Shut them up.”

In a heartbeat, the defensive nodes scattered across the fortress lit up in perfect synchronization. The Defenders anchored to each squad ignited their Arts, their shields syncing together to project a massive, fluctuating energy membrane over the vanguard.

Simultaneously, a dozen streaks of dark, nearly invisible Arts fire launched from the fortress’s concealed high-ground positions. Guided by the Doctor’s precise telemetry, the sniper-casters struck the enemy channeling formation with pinpoint accuracy.

There were no fiery explosions upon impact. Instead, an oppressive, suffocating Silence field instantly bloomed across the ridge, violently severing the enemy’s connection to their Originium Arts. The strategic-level spell was brutally interrupted mid-cast. The resulting mana backlash was catastrophic, triggering a chain reaction of internal explosions that tore through the enemy Caster ranks.

The apocalyptic torrent of energy that was meant to wipe Babel off the map largely detonated within Theresis’s own backline. The fragmented remnants of the spell that managed to fire forward slammed into the Defenders’ scattering matrix, refracting harmlessly off the energy film like light through water. While the sheer kinetic force melted a few outer barricades and kicked up a blinding storm of debris, the lethal core of the strike was completely neutralized.

Inside the command room, the Doctor casually adjusted the zoom dial on the holographic sand table, his posture completely relaxed. It was as if the strategic nuke he had just swatted out of the sky was nothing more than a trivial annoyance.