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ArabicArknights: How Did I Actually Become the Doctor? — Chapter 35
Chapter 35: A Happy Transition, Bears, Bears, We Love You!
To our naive little feline, Kal’tsit:
The Trade Department, Manufacturing Department, and Power Supply on our ship need to be strictly maintained at a 2:4:3 ratio. This is the optimal meta. Regarding the Trade Department’s permanent production queue, if you find yourself a bit tight on LMD and resources, old cat, you can start by slotting in Gummy, Catapult, and Midnight. The professional qualifications required for those specific personnel aren’t particularly high, so they can handle the baseline workload.
(Note: Please train Mint as soon as possible. She clearly has talent in this area and can handle two tasks at once. I will track down Tequila and Pallas as soon as I can to improve the gold flow.)
For the Manufacturing Department, you can start by testing out FEater, Conviction, and Vigna. (Speaking of which, when exactly are you going to hand over a complete roster of the personnel currently on the island? I have amnesia, remember? I don’t know which of these names actually belong to my employees yet.) As for Gitano, Lancet-2, and the rest of the crafting queue, we can improve their rotations once I bring Frostleaf back to base.
That is all. Finally, do me a favor and just go back to the Command Center and sit down. I’ve already seen the logs of you making things worse in multiple facilities. If you are really that bored, go negotiate with Emperor about a long-term employment contract with Penguin Logistics.
Yours truly, the Doctor, returning with a full load of loot.
With a final, dramatic flourish of your pen, you heroically scheduled the base shifts for every single operator on Rhodes Island, adding a strict addendum that absolutely no one was allowed to touch your Carbon building materials without explicit, written permission.
You set the PRTS terminal down and stretched your stiff shoulders. When you finally looked up, the heavy canvas of the tent was already glowing with the pale, bruised purple of early dawn.
Another night completely devoid of sleep. Fantastic. My sanity meter is going to hit zero at this rate.
“You really are… fragile, yet entirely too hard to kill.”
A weary, distinctly feminine voice drifted from the shadows directly behind your chair. You snapped around, your heart seizing in your chest. Wis’adel sat perched on a crate behind you, though you hadn’t heard a single footstep announce her arrival. She was propping her head up with one hand, looking thoroughly drowsy. A thin, glittering layer of morning frost clung to her pale eyelashes.
Did she stay up all night sitting right behind me?
Your pulse hammered a frantic, terrified rhythm against your ribs. ‘Jesus, a ghost!’
Had she been sitting there for six hours, just quietly debating whether or not to put a grenade down the back of your coat?
Wis’adel caught your panicked expression and shot you a look of pure, unadulterated disdain. “When you used to step out of your office in the old days, countless people wanted your head on a pike. How many years do you think I spent guarding your door for you?”
You stared at her, thoroughly offended by the accusation. “Who on earth would want to kill me? I am a virtuous, kind-hearted champion of justice. I am a humanitarian warrior, a friend to small animals, and I even distinctly recall promoting national independence and dignity for the Sarkaz people…”
Just a fraction of a second before Wis’adel completely lost her temper and detonated the entire command tent, you wisely pivoted the conversation. “So, hypothetically, what exactly did I do back then that made so many people wary of me?”
Wis’adel, who had been vibrating with suppressed rage, slammed her fist down onto the frozen dirt floor. “What, you still won’t give it up? Are you still clinging to these pathetic fantasies about your past?” Her eyes narrowed, flashing with a dangerous, volatile light. “You cannot possibly think you’re some kind of great, misunderstood hero, can you? Or are you about to tell me you can respectfully repent for the blood on your hands?”
You considered the question for a moment, weighing the heavy silence of the tent, and answered with complete honesty. “No. I suppose I cannot.”
Earlier, while cross-referencing the operator files stored in your fragmented memory, you had noticed a glaring anomaly. There were numerous operators who absolutely should not have appeared on the Rhodes Island roster at this point in the timeline. Without exception, every single one of those early arrivals was directly tied to your past actions.
Most of them hailed from Laterano, Iberia, Sami, and Victoria—regions heavily associated with the pre-civilization relics that were easiest for your past self to acquire.
If this world were a stage play, the logical narrative progression would demand that you start suspecting “him”—your past self. You should be wary of the Ghost of Babel, questioning his motives, and doubting your own foundation.
But as it happened, there existed an unbreakable bond of understanding between you and the phantom of your past. Armed with your meta-knowledge of the plot, you knew for an absolute fact that he could not be controlled by the Gray Nail. Every ruthless calculation, every sacrifice, every cold decision he made had been entirely voluntary.
As the sole transmigrator in this world, if you didn’t believe in the sheer competence of your former self, did you believe in the Sarkaz national hero, Theresa? Looking at it from that angle, your unshakeable confidence did seem a bit arrogant.
Relying on your well-honed survival instincts, you slipped out of the tent with practiced agility, making your escape before Wis’adel’s rising killing intent could wake the rest of the camp.
Alright, that confirmed it. There was absolutely no way to clear your name with the Babel veterans. You mentally prepared yourself for the worst-case scenario of being assassinated in the bathroom.
Stepping out into the biting, sub-zero Ursus air, you nearly collided with a figure standing just outside the flap. Frostleaf spun around, completely caught off guard. Her face flushed with the awkward, guilty expression of someone who had just been caught eavesdropping.
She glanced around the empty campsite, her boots crunching nervously against the snow, before inching closer to you. She leaned in until she was just inches away, her voice dropping to a whisper as quiet as a mosquito.
“I… I didn’t mean to listen to your conversation in there,” she stammered, her usual cool demeanor cracking. “But I want you to know that I believe in you. Most of our squad members aren’t witnesses from the Babel era, so maybe our words aren’t very convincing to the veterans… but we really do trust you, Doctor.”
Before you could even process the confession, she spun on her heel and sprinted away like a frightened rabbit, leaving you standing alone in the freezing mist, thoroughly stunned. A complicated knot of emotions twisted in your chest.
‘Please… you guys really need to stop believing in me. The main issue here is that I don’t even believe in myself!’
The average moral standard of the people on this land was simply too high. You knew deep down that you only deserved to sit at the same table as those two cartoonish villains from Skyfire’s event who hadn’t transcended their base, low-level interests.
The journey to the rescue site had been a frantic, high-speed chase, but the return trip was significantly slower and more relaxed. By the time your convoy finally arrived, the Rhodes Island Ursus branch had already completed its rapid reconstruction.
Looking around the newly built facility, you noted that the interior decoration style was, once again, entirely Kjerag-themed.
It seemed this specific furniture set had completely taken over Rhodes Island’s logistics. The good news was that the base comfort level was maxed out, meaning no one had to sleep in cardboard boxes anymore to recover their morale. The bad news was that SilverAsh had just sent you a highly confused message on PRTS, stating that he was beginning to wonder which company was actually named Karlan Trade.
After all, to help covert communication with the outside world, even the official branch offices of Karlan Trade had been remodeled into a Columbia style to avoid suspicion. Meanwhile, Rhodes Island had boldly constructed its covert facilities deep in the Sargon rainforest using full Kjerag aesthetics!
Just a few days ago, Gavial had returned to the rainforest to visit her family. When she subconsciously fired up a Kjerag-style small stove to cook, the surrounding Sargon natives had stared at her with expressions of deep grief and indignation, as if they had just witnessed a monumental betrayal of their culture. This sense of betrayal reached an absolute boiling point when they watched her dip her freshly roasted Feathered Beast meat directly into a bowl of yak butter tea.
How was that culinary atrocity any different from eating pineapple chocolate pizza right in front of a Siracusan mafioso?
Fortunately, the heavy wooden furniture and thick furs didn’t seem out of place here in Ursus, as the freezing temperatures in both regions were practically identical. By simply claiming it was the traditional style of a wandering Sami tribe, no one could find any fault with the decor.
It was in this newly furnished lounge that you finally met the Bear Group—officially designated as the Ursus Student Self-Governing Group.
Because of your hyper-efficient, violently direct speedrun through the enemy lines, the cruel, psychological torture of the Peterheim Middle School battle royale had never come to pass. Mephisto, the sadistic little mastermind who loved orchestrating such twisted games, had suffered a complete mental breakdown long before he could trap them. You had simply shattered his psyche by repeatedly whispering, “You wouldn’t want Faust to be bullied now, would you?” into his ear until his mind snapped.
Now, several little bears stood waiting outside the lounge early in the morning to greet you, their eyes wide with a mixture of deep gratitude and awe.
The moment she saw you, Gummy rushed forward, presenting a carefully wrapped tin of special handmade cookies. You had worked yourself to the bone, tossing and turning through sleepless nights, violently beating the Reunion Movement until they were as soft and chewy as dough—and wasn’t this exact wholesome outcome the entire reason you had done it?
This soaring sense of gamer achievement reached its absolute peak when Zima, the notoriously fiery vanguard, actually bowed her head and thanked you in a quiet, timid voice. You mentally patted yourself on the back. From now on, you highly suspected that if you ever failed a stage command, her defeat voice line would definitely no longer be a venomous “Disgraceful.”
While you were chatting happily with the little bears, soaking in the wholesome atmosphere, Wis’adel had long since sneered in disgust and vanished into the morning mist. It seemed that actively avoiding her former mercenary colleagues was a strict personal principle, though you could still feel the heavy weight of her gaze tracking you from the shadows.
Meanwhile, far away at Rhodes Island headquarters, Kal’tsit was currently staring at her terminal, completely overwhelmed by your overnight message bombardment.
The most recent message, sitting at the very top of her inbox, read: [Cat, I want Patriot to be my personal assistant.]
Kal’tsit slowly pinched the bridge of her nose. Her expression perfectly mirrored that ancient, pre-civilization meme of an old man squinting at his phone on a subway in sheer, bewildered disgust.
‘Who?’she thought, her blood pressure spiking.’You won’t even spare a dying old man?’
[Rhodes’s Note: “Subway, old man, mobile phone. JPG” is a classic Chinese internet meme referencing a viral photo of an elderly man on a subway squinting at his phone with an expression of intense confusion and disgust. It is used to express utter bewilderment at something stupid or absurd.]