Arknights: How Did I Actually Become the Doctor? — Chapter 103

Chapter 103: The Mad Shrike (IV)

The motion of your hand was sluggish, suspended in a heavy daze, but your gaze remained anchored to the Technical Advisor bleeding out at your feet.

If it were the current you standing there, you would possess a dozen different methods to drag him back from the abyss. Blood transfusions, emergency field surgery, high-clearance Originium Arts authorization. But the past you was entirely powerless. You could only stand frozen, watching the desperate, clawing desire to live slowly extinguish from his eyes until his neck finally gave out, his head slumping forward into the blood-soaked dirt.

He died because he threw himself into the line of fire to shield your coordinates at the very last second.

A mixed-blood Sarkaz mercenary broke the heavy, suffocating silence, his voice trembling with sheer disbelief. “We… we actually won?”

The realization hit the survivors like a physical shockwave.

“We held the line!”

“We are still alive!”

The manic joy of survival rapidly infected the remaining mercenaries. Cheers tore through the smoke-choked air. Bloodied warriors embraced, their faces smeared with soot and gore, grinning like madmen as the adrenaline washed over them. It was an unmatched, impossible victory. The casualty rate was absurdly low for a suicide defense, and they began chanting each other’s names into the ruined sky.

“You made it! I swore I was going to have to bury you today.”

“Look who is talking…”

In wars waged over abstract convictions, the victors usually inherited nothing but mass graves. To walk away from a hopelessly outnumbered siege with a seventy percent survival rate defied all tactical logic. It was nothing short of a miracle.

A cluster of Sarkaz brothers, realizing their entire squad had survived intact, surged forward. They looked ready to tackle you to the ground in a tearful, bloody embrace.

“It is a miracle! Every single one of us made it! That settles it, I am following this commander to the ends of the earth!”

They had simply witnessed too much slaughter to mourn the quiet ones. A lone Technical Advisor with no clan, no family, and a habit of isolating himself was just another nameless casualty in the meat grinder. That was exactly why his first instinct during every skirmish had always been to retreat.

So why did he throw himself into the crossfire to save you? Was your life truly worth more than his?

Surrounded by the deafening roar of victory, you stood in absolute silence, watching two medics haul away his corpse. His back was completely shredded, riddled with jagged black Originium clusters.

In the midst of this desperate, post-battle revelry, your total lack of reaction felt entirely alien.

Fortunately, the Sarkaz mercenaries simply chalked it up to aristocratic eccentricity. The ancient lords of the Royal Court were notorious for their dead-eyed apathy, and it was entirely normal for a high-ranking commander to possess a few morbid quirks.

A sudden wet, tearing sound made you snap your head around. Your pupils contracted violently. A few yards away, a Vampire mercenary was casually watching a mass of writhing muscle and bone knit together, slowly regenerating a severed limb from a bloody stump.

“Vampires… can regrow limbs?”

A surviving Technical Advisor standing nearby immediately dropped his celebratory grin, bowing his head in deep reverence. “Yes, My Lord. Their inherent Arts revolve around blood manipulation. Most of the Vampires serving under our banner have received direct blessings from the Royal Court. As long as the injury is not a clean decapitation, the flesh will always remember its shape.”

You could not stomach the sight any longer. You raised a trembling hand and placed it heavily upon the shoulder of your past self.

The phantom sensation of the battlefield finally crashed over you, shattering the emotional dam. The visceral horror of your very first command could no longer be repressed. The slick, spilling viscera, the suffocating stench of burnt ozone and vaporized blood, the glassy eyes of the dead staring accusingly at the ash-choked sky.

The delayed psychological trauma ignited like a silent, creeping fire, burning the ruined landscape into a permanent, blood-red afterimage across your retinas. Your stomach violently convulsed. You doubled over, curling inward like a dying insect, dry-heaving over the scorched earth until your throat burned, but nothing came up.

Your vision smeared into a rapidly expanding canvas of dark crimson. The jubilant cheers of the mercenaries warped and twisted, bleeding into the high-pitched ringing in your ears until it sounded exactly like the agonizing wails of a stray dog having its legs severed.

The dark, coagulated blood of the nameless dead soaked into the cracked wasteland, perfectly matching the color of the parched earth. Blood feeding blood, indistinguishable from the dirt itself.

They died like mayflies. Like short-lived, insignificant insects.

You finally understood why the cold, detached interface of PRTS rendered their lives as nothing more than low-tier Originium Slugs on a tactical map.

[Doctor, we have secured the victory. I am currently en route to your coordinates. Are you alright?]

Kal’tsit’s transmission arrived a lifetime too late.

[I am fine.]

You forced your trembling arm upward, pressing a fist hard against your churning stomach to quell the acid, and tapped out a mechanical reply on the holographic interface.

[I won, too.]

[Standard Operation: Company of Bugs]

[Perfect Clear!]

The heavy atmosphere shattered, pulling the Doctor back to the present. Deep within the shadowed halls of the castle, he casually crouched beside the grotesque, freshly slain monster. He rummaged through the creature’s dissolving remains, his gloved fingers brushing against something hard. He pulled out a delicate glass bird, wiping away the dark grime before offering it to Rosmontis.

“This is actually quite beautiful. Do you like it?”

The young feline operator accepted the little bird with both hands, her wide eyes studying it with intense curiosity. Compared to the foul, mutated abomination that had just tried to kill them, this fragile glass ornament was impossibly pristine. It defied logic that such a pure object had been buried inside such a vile host.

It looked exactly like a trinket crafted specifically to make a little girl smile.

“I like it a lot. But why was the little bird hiding in there?” Rosmontis cradled the trophy the Doctor had personally excavated for her, treating it like a priceless artifact. The etched details around the bird’s eyes were slightly clumsy, but the smooth, polished curve of its wings revealed the painstaking, sincere effort of an amateur craftsman.

The Doctor shook his head, his eyes already locked back onto his tactical terminal as he offered a deadpan theory. “Who knows. Maybe that hideous thing actually had a daughter in its past life. From a purely tactical standpoint, that would perfectly explain why the boss suddenly triggered a berserk running phase the moment its health bar dropped below fifty percent.”

He waved his hand dismissively. “Do not worry about the lore implications. Just keep it as a toy.”

The Doctor adjusted his coat and strode forward. Rosmontis followed closely at his heels, her small hands clutching the glass bird tightly against her chest.

“Stay close to my shadow,” the Doctor ordered softly, pushing open the heavy double doors at the end of the hall.

The space beyond was no longer a grand, open chamber, but a suffocatingly narrow corridor built entirely of mirrors. The hallway stretched endlessly into the dark, the walls, floor, and ceiling reflecting a dizzying array of complex, gothic patterns. Rosmontis hesitated at the threshold. Everywhere she looked, countless versions of herself were duplicated, refracted, and severely distorted across a thousand different angles. The physical path and the mirrored illusions bled into one another, creating a chaotic labyrinth of flickering light and infinite regression.

It was impossible to distinguish the true corridor from the glass reflections. They had stepped into a suffocating cage woven entirely from optical illusions and fractured light. With every blink, the architecture seemed to shatter and violently rearrange itself.

Rosmontis nervously grabbed the edge of the Doctor’s dark coat. Behind her, the vanguard Yato kept a firm grip on the young feline’s shoulder with one hand, while her other hand guided the frail caster Steward forward. The four of them formed a tight, single-file line, handling the treacherous sea of glass.

The true horror of the corridor lay in its selective reflections. As they walked, Yato, Steward, and Rosmontis could only see their own isolated figures in the glass, entirely alone, as if their companions had ceased to exist.

But the Doctor’s experience was vastly different.

He walked steadily forward, never once turning his head. From his perspective, the mirrored walls were not empty. They were suffocatingly crowded. Countless figures stood shoulder-to-shoulder behind the glass, their faces blurred and indistinct, wearing the garments of a hundred different eras and factions. Yet, every single one of them was smiling warmly at him.

Even without distinct features, a chilling certainty settled in his chest. He knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that every single entity trapped in the glass shared his exact face.

He subconsciously pressed his lips into a thin, hard line and continued his silent march toward the exit. Just as he was about to cross the final threshold, a singular, impossible reflection materialized in the glass directly blocking his path.

A woman with flowing black hair and a gentle, melancholic smile stepped forward. She playfully shoved aside the blurry, smiling phantom that had previously occupied the mirror, her movements carrying the casual intimacy of an old friend offering a mock reproach. Then, she slowly pressed her hand against the inside of the glass, reaching out toward the waking world.

From Rosmontis’s perspective, the Doctor had suddenly frozen in his tracks. To her eyes, he was reaching out like a bewitched man toward a mirror that held nothing but the distorted, menacing reflection of an evil kitten. Panic spiked in her chest.

“Doctor! Wake up, Rosmontis is right here!” she called out in a fierce, urgent whisper.

The young man did not flinch. He did not answer. He simply thrust his gloved hand straight through the solid surface of the mirror. The glass rippled like dark water. When he slowly withdrew his arm, his fingers were tightly gripping a pristine, golden playbill.

The elegant lettering across the parchment read: Ode to Triumph.