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ArabicArknights: I'm Pretty Strong With Minecraft — Chapter 33
Chapter 33: Conflict
The L.G.D. transport vehicle rumbled smoothly down the desolate, neon-lit streets of Lungmen’s slums. Inside the armored compartment, a heavy silence stretched between the occupants, broken only by the low, steady hum of the engine.
Ch’en stared out the reinforced window. Her reflection ghosted over the glass as her gaze swept across the dilapidated streetscapes—crumbling facades and shadowed alleys that blurred past in the gloom. After a long, suffocating silence, she finally spoke. Her voice was slow, measured, and she didn’t turn to look at Ivan.
“Now. Can you tell me about Talulah?”
She paused, her gloved fingers tightening against her knee. The question that had been gnawing at her very core finally clawed its way out. “The massacre in Chernobog… these coordinated strikes across Lungmen… were all those atrocities really her doing?”
The quiet returned, heavier this time, save for the whistling wind outside.
“…No,” Ivan answered. His tone was decisive, cutting through the tension with absolute certainty. “Talulah is no longer the sister you knew. The entity currently occupying and puppeteering her body is her adoptive father. The ‘Undying Black Snake’—Kashchey.”
He leaned back, his expression darkening. “That old bastard’s consciousness hijacked her mind and stole everything she built. The current Reunion Movement? It’s nothing more than a disposable pawn in his hands.”
At those words, the rigid tension in Ch’en’s shoulders broke. She relaxed almost imperceptibly, her tightly clenched fists slowly uncurling. A crushing weight lifted from her chest—the atrocities were not born from the gentle sister she remembered. But that fleeting comfort was instantly swallowed by a sharper, deeper agony. A suffocating dread coiled around her heart as the reality of Talulah’s fate set in. Her expression twisted into a complex knot of emotions: a desperate relief at the truth, warring against a blinding, helpless rage at the violation her sister was enduring.
Just then, Ivan—who had spent the last ten minutes seemingly spacing out at the dashboard—snapped upright. His gaze locked onto a blind corner in the ruined street ahead. “Don’t drive any further!” he barked. “Ambush ahead!”
Ch’en snapped out of her spiraling thoughts, her sharp eyes darting to him. “How do you know?!” Her ingrained tactical instincts flared with suspicion; the road ahead looked completely empty, devoid of any Originium Arts signatures or movement.
“Just trust me. Stop the damn car,” Ivan fired back, his eyes fixed on an invisible point in the distance.
Ch’en frowned deeply. For a fraction of a second, her gaze flickered between Ivan’s unusually deadpan, serious face and the desolate street. Ultimately, she chose to trust the anomaly sitting beside her. She slammed her hand against the partition. “Hit the brakes!”
The driver slammed the pedal. The heavy transport screeched, tires smoking as it halted dead in the middle of the asphalt.
Almost instantly, a figure stepped out from the shadowed ruins ahead. A clear, dangerously playful female voice drifted through the air, tinged with genuine surprise and a heavy dose of annoyance. W strolled out from behind a collapsed concrete pillar. She tilted her head, her crimson eyes narrowing at the vehicle that had stopped just short of her kill zone.
“Tsk…” W clicked her tongue, twirling a detonator around her finger. “Why’d you have to go and stop there? I was just about to throw you a grand welcome party.” A manic grin stretched across her face. “Oh well. Guess we’ll just skip the fireworks and go straight to the main event.”
Across the city, the air rang with the screech of metal and the crackle of Arts. After a grueling series of fierce clashes—striking, bleeding, and retreating block by block—Franka’s sword arm was growing numb. She shook out her wrist, her usual smirk replaced by an irritated scowl.
“Seriously, is there an end to them?!” she complained, parrying a rusted machete. “These guys are like locusts! It’s just wave after wave of absolute nuisance!”
Beside her, Liskarm planted her heavy shield into the concrete, deflecting a volley of crossbow bolts with a deafening clang. Her brows were knit tightly together, her voice heavy with exertion. “Their numbers far exceed our tactical projections. Why is a Reunion battalion of this size concentrated in this sector?”
The Rhodes Island vanguard battered their way into a relatively open plaza, desperate for a choke point. But before they could even catch their breath, the synchronized thud of heavy boots echoed from all directions. Shadows poured from the alleyways. They were completely surrounded. The front and rear avenues were instantly choked by a dense, suffocating mass of Reunion soldiers. Hundreds of masked faces stared them down, their crude weapons glinting coldly under the flickering streetlights. Their retreat was entirely severed.
Analyzing the grim tactical layout, the Doctor lowered his voice, his masked face turning toward his core Operators. “Now is the time. Take out the Golden Apples Ivan gave us.” He instinctively tightened his grip on the absurdly blocky wooden stick he held—a bizarre gift from their eccentric ally. “Listen to my command. The second the enemy charges, consume the apples and we force a breach straight through their center!”
“Understood!” the Operators murmured in unison, hands slipping into their tactical pouches.
The sea of Reunion soldiers parted like a dark tide. A heavily armored figure stepped into the plaza, the twin grenade launchers mounted on his gear marking him as a high-ranking Cadre. Skullshatterer. His furious gaze locked onto Amiya and the Doctor, who stood protected in the center of the Rhodes Island formation. When he spoke, his voice trembled with a raw, volatile rage.
“Where did you take her?!” he roared. “Did you… did you hand her over to Lungmen?! Is that it?! Answer me!”
Amiya stepped forward, her slender frame standing tall. She met the towering Cadre’s gaze without a shred of fear. “Miss Misha is currently under the protection of the Lungmen Guard Department! It is the safest place for her right now!”
“Safe?!” Skullshatterer barked a harsh, broken laugh, as if he had just heard the sickest joke in Terra. His voice spiked into a frenzied scream. “You hypocrites! You claim to fight for the Infected, yet you gladly act as Lungmen’s lapdogs! Everything Rhodes Island stands for is a naked, disgusting betrayal of our brothers and sisters!”
His furious declaration echoed across the ruined plaza, dripping with deep-seated hatred. “Leaders of Rhodes Island… your hands are stained with the blood of our kin! And for this blood debt, I will make you pay with your lives!”
“Reunion!” Amiya’s voice rose to match his, ringing with fierce conviction. “Was it not you who let resentment blind you? Was it not you who first harmed the innocent, who first resorted to slaughter, who dragged all of Chernobog into a senseless disaster?!”
As she spoke, she drew the wooden sword Ivan had entrusted to her, holding the blocky weapon horizontally in a defensive stance. Her brown eyes sharpened into piercing points of determination. “Mr. Ivan was right… For people like you, whose eyes are so completely blinded by hatred that you refuse all reason, there is no need for meaningless sympathy!”
“Kill them all! Reclaim everything that belongs to us!” Skullshatterer roared to the horde behind him, raising his grenade launcher high.
“Doctor, now!” Amiya shouted.
At that exact split second, the Doctor threw his hand forward. “Eat!”
Without a moment of hesitation, the Rhodes Island Operators shoved the gleaming Golden Apples into their mouths. The crunching sound was immediately followed by a bizarre phenomenon. Swirling, ethereal particles and strange golden bubbles erupted around their bodies. An unmatched, explosive surge of vitality and sheer physical resilience flooded their veins.
“Oh my~” Franka hummed, savoring the intoxicating rush of power coursing through her muscles. She even found the time to smack her lips in delight amid the charging enemy. “The buff on this is seriously good… I’m definitely going to have to sweet-talk Brother Ivan out of a few more of these.”
The Doctor swung his wooden sword, pointing the pixelated tip directly at the weakest link in the Reunion encirclement. Usually relegated to the rear lines to analyze the battlefield, his voice now carried an uncharacteristic, thrilling edge of pure battle intent.
“It gets incredibly boring just standing in the back doing math! I was just waiting for you to say the word, Amiya!” He gripped his weapon tight. “Break through!”