Arknights: I'm Pretty Strong With Minecraft — Chapter 53

Chapter 53: The White Rabbit

“Let’s go.”

Amiya’s pixelated avatar was perfectly locked onto the corner of Ivan’s minimap UI. Without a single second of hesitation, he broke into a dead sprint down the ruined street.

Behind him, Meteor, Frostleaf, and Jessica exchanged deeply bewildered glances. The ash-filled wind whipped past them, carrying the distant sounds of urban warfare, yet their new vanguard seemed entirely unbothered by the chaos. How could he be so absolutely certain of the Doctor and Amiya’s exact coordinates without a single radio transmission or scout report?

Still, given the utterly logic-defying abilities Ivan had casually demonstrated earlier—and the absolute fact that he wore a Rhodes Island Operator tag—the trio swallowed their doubts and hurried to keep pace with his rapid footsteps.

They hadn’t run far when Ivan spoke up. He didn’t even bother to turn his head.

“Meteor, watch your back. Nine o’clock. Third-floor window of that gray abandoned complex. There’s an old fox lurking in the shadows.”

Meteor flinched, her combat instincts flaring as she whipped her head around. Her sharp eyes scanned the designated building. Nothing. Just a dense cluster of shattered glass and jagged concrete. There wasn’t a single silhouette in sight.

“No… how did you—”

“Don’t waste breath, just trust me!” Ivan interrupted, his tone light but commanding. “Put an arrow right through that gap!”

Despite the heavy skepticism gnawing at her, Meteor chose to trust her new teammate. She dug her heels into the asphalt, raised her heavy crossbow, aimed at the seemingly empty window Ivan had called out, and squeezed the trigger.

Whoosh—bang!

The heavy crossbow bolt tore through the air, plunging dead-center into the darkness of the third-floor window.

A split second later, a muffled, agonizing groan echoed out, followed by the heavy, sickening thud of a body plummeting to the earth.

A Reunion Movement sniper, clad in dark urban camouflage that had blended perfectly with the interior shadows, crashed violently onto the pavement below. Blood pooled beneath the masked figure. Even in death, the sniper likely had absolutely no idea how his perfect hiding spot had been compromised.

[Reunion Movement Soldier: Hacker! No footsteps, no sound! You’re blatantly cheating!]

Meteor let out a sharp gasp, her eyes widening at the dead sniper.

Before any of them could process the sheer absurdity of the situation, Ivan’s rapid-fire callouts struck again.

“Frostleaf! End of that narrow alleyway to your left. Down in the gap of the ruins beneath the collapsed billboard. There’s a faint life sign. It’s a civilian survivor. Move!”

He didn’t stop there, pivoting his finger toward the opposite side of the street.

“Jessica, don’t just stand there gawking! To your right, eleven o’clock! On the rooftop of that half-collapsed structure, a Reunion Caster is channeling an Arts strike. Interrupt him!”

This time, the operators didn’t waste a single millisecond questioning him.

Frostleaf immediately dashed into the inconspicuous, debris-choked alleyway. Slashing aside a pile of heavy rubble with her halberd, she found exactly what he had described: a dying civilian trapped desperately in a narrow crevice.

Simultaneously, Jessica hoisted her handgun, aiming directly at the rooftop Ivan had pointed out. Sure enough, the faint, volatile glow of Originium Arts was gathering around a masked Caster preparing an ambush. She pulled the trigger twice. The sharp cracks of her firearm echoed, and the Caster slumped backward over the ledge, his spell fizzling into harmless sparks.

After Frostleaf secured the injured survivor and Jessica neutralized the aerial threat, the three Rhodes Island operators regrouped. The lingering confusion on their faces had completely melted away, replaced by absolute, unadulterated shock.

What kind of terrifying tactical ability was this?

Seeing through solid walls and dense concrete ruins? Pinpointing perfectly concealed hostiles in the pitch-black shadows of a rooftop? Was this some kind of supreme, undiscovered branch of Originium Arts?

Unable to hold back their burning curiosity any longer, the three women quickly surrounded Ivan. Their expressions practically screamed for an explanation.

Meteor’s voice was laced with pure disbelief. “No… how… how on earth did you pull that off? How did you know?!”

Beside her, Jessica nodded vigorously, her feline ears twitching in frantic agreement.

Ivan looked at their stunned, wide-eyed faces. Instead of offering a grand, mystical explanation, a smug, highly punchable grin spread across his face.

“Don’t ask. Because if you ask, it just means I’m cheating.”

“Cheating…?” Jessica repeated blankly, her brain short-circuiting. “Cheating at what?”

Frostleaf, however, looked utterly speechless. Her usually cool demeanor cracked as she couldn’t resist snapping back. “How is that even an answer?! This is a battlefield, not a video game! Where does ‘cheating’ even factor into this?!”

She felt as though her tactical intelligence was being actively mocked.

Ivan merely chuckled, offering zero further clarification, and turned back around to lead the vanguard.

“Almost there.” Ivan murmured. He kept his eyes glued to Amiya’s pixelated avatar, which was steadily inching closer to the center of his minimap. He quickened his pace, his boots crunching over the broken pavement.

Suddenly, his gaze drifted toward the very edge of the map interface. A highly distinctive, glaringly white marker had just rendered into his detection radius.

“Hmm? This icon… why is there a white rabbit?” Ivan muttered under his breath, his brow furrowing.

Wait. No. This specific location…

Ivan’s head snapped up, looking down the ruined avenue. His casual demeanor vanished in a heartbeat, replaced by a drastic shift in expression as a curse slipped from his lips.

“Damn it! It’s going to hit us right in the face!!”

Before the final syllable even left his mouth—

Boom!!!

A colossal, towering pillar of jagged ice, radiating a violently absolute cold snap, crashed down from the sky. It plummeted directly toward the intersection where Ivan and the Rhodes Island operators stood, carrying apocalyptic destructive force.

Wherever the freezing shockwave passed, the asphalt was instantly entombed beneath a thick, jagged layer of permafrost. Even the ambient moisture in the air shrieked as it was flash-frozen into falling snow.

“That’s… Reunion’s… Frostnova!” Frostleaf’s voice trembled uncontrollably, her own ice-based Arts feeling entirely suppressed by the sheer magnitude of the incoming freeze.

“Everyone! Prepare for battle!” Meteor shouted over the roaring blizzard, forcing down the terror rising in her chest. She immediately barked a secondary order. “Jessica! Grab the survivor and fall back to the safe zone! Hurry!”

“No need to run!”

Ivan’s voice cut through the panic. It was unusually calm, even carrying a faint, unmistakable edge of gamer excitement.

He shouted over his shoulder, “I already told you I’m cheating! Everyone, stand back!”

Facing the terrifying, building-sized impact of the descending ice pillar, Ivan didn’t take a single step back. Instead, he lunged forward.

With a flash of inventory light, a massive, absurdly heavy greatsword—the Blade of the God of War—materialized in his grip. He planted his feet, gripped the oversized hilt with both hands, hoisted the weapon high above his head, and brought it smashing down into the earth with devastating force.

[Earth: First of all, I didn’t even provoke any of you!]

Thump—!!!!

A massive, violently visible shockwave erupted outward, centered entirely on the exact point where Ivan’s blade struck the pavement. It swept forward like a raging kinetic tsunami, tearing the street apart.

Wherever the shockwave traveled, the frozen ground cracked and violently splintered inch by inch. Heavy chunks of concrete and gravel were instantly pulverized into fine dust by the sheer physical pressure.

A split second later, the kinetic tsunami collided head-on with the descending glacial pillar.

Crack—rumble!!!

Under the pure, mathematically absurd numerical impact of Ivan’s strike, Frostnova’s seemingly invincible ice construct was rendered as fragile as cheap window glass. The colossal pillar instantly shattered into millions of jagged pieces.

The devastating attack was reduced to a sky full of cold crystal dust, refracting a tragically beautiful, glittering light across the ruined city block, before being completely blown away by the trailing winds of the shockwave.

Far in the distance, standing atop a ruined square, Frostnova watched the spectacle unfold. The biting cold wind whipped her long white hair around her shoulders.

She stared blankly as her full-power Originium Arts strike was casually, utterly obliterated by her opponent in such a physically unreasonable manner.

Yet, her pale, frost-kissed face didn’t register much surprise. She simply let out a soft, misty breath of cold air, muttering quietly to herself.

“Sure enough… this level of Originium Arts still isn’t enough to deal with him, is it?”

However, the elite members of the Yeti Squad standing in formation behind her were far less composed than their commander.

They had just witnessed a cataclysmic, city-leveling ice strike get shattered by a single swing of a sword. Their faces were completely drained of color, twisted into masks of absolute terror and disbelief.

One of the Yeti Squad members swallowed hard, his voice violently trembling as he cautiously leaned toward his leader.

“B-b-b-Big Sister! Maybe… maybe we should retreat first! Th-th-that… that guy… he-he-he definitely turned on hacks! This is not something a normal person can do!”