Arknights: I'm Pretty Strong With Minecraft — Chapter 85

Chapter 85: The Divine Power of the Diamond Pickaxe

Ivan’s fist slammed hard against the concrete wall beside him. With a heavy, dull thud, a web of jagged cracks splintered outward across the gray surface.

“Damn it!”

His voice was thick with suppressed rage, a low growl that vibrated in the quiet street. “I didn’t expect them to actually dare to kill people right in front of civilians.”

Crushed stone and dust rattled down from the fractured wall, pooling at his boots.

“Does Wei Yenwu, that absolute bastard, really not care about the lives of the people at all?”

This sudden, violent outburst stunned the Rhodes Island operators. Ivan was usually the one making light of a grim situation.

Rosa, standing closest to him, took a hesitant step forward. “Mr. Ivan, what happened?” she asked, her voice laced with worry.

Ivan took a slow, deep breath, forcing the tension out of his shoulders. When he spoke again, his tone had returned to its usual steady cadence, but the freezing chill in his eyes remained entirely unfaded.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing.” He slowly flexed his fingers, popping his knuckles one by one. “It’s just that some people are going to have a very bad day.”

His gaze shifted to the Doctor. Stripping away his usual casual gamer demeanor, Ivan spoke with absolute seriousness. “Doctor, please plan a route to the drainage system.”

The Doctor met Ivan’s eyes. In an instant, the lazy, relaxed aura that usually surrounded the masked man vanished. He straightened his posture, his gaze sharpening beneath his hood. He had flawlessly transitioned back into the ruthless tactician who always commanded the battlefield.

“I already plotted it the moment I heard your call,” the Doctor replied. He quickly swiped across his terminal, projecting a glowing holographic map into the dim air. “This path will allow us to bypass the majority of the enemy forces.”

Ivan’s lips curved into a cold, dangerous smile. “Doctor, we’ve been fighting together for a while now. Don’t you understand how I operate yet? All I need is a straight line.”

With a smooth backhand motion, Ivan drew the Fox Moon Blade from his waist. The polished steel gleamed stark white in the fading sunlight. In his right hand, a blocky, pixelated Diamond Pickaxe materialized out of thin air.

“Stay close to me,” Ivan instructed, his voice eerily calm. “This time, I’m going to roll right over them.”

Those eyes, which usually carried a hint of lazy amusement, now burned with a freezing intensity.

“Mr. Ivan, please calm down!” Amiya quickly stepped forward, her small hands unconsciously gripping the hem of his jacket.

“Wei Yenwu has already ordered a massacre in the Lungmen Slums behind our backs,” Ivan said, his voice like cracking ice. “Those Black Cloaks…”

He looked around at the dilapidated, shadow-drenched streets. “The people living in these slums aren’t staying here because they love Lungmen. They just have nowhere else to go. But that doesn’t give anyone the right to slaughter them like animals.”

Amiya gasped, her hands flying up to cover her mouth as her bunny ears trembled. “Wh-what?”

Yet, surprisingly, the young leader of Rhodes Island regained her composure in a matter of seconds. Having survived the Chernobog Catastrophe, the Reunion Movement’s violent riots, and countless life-and-death struggles, Amiya was no longer a fragile child who needed to be shielded from the world’s cruelty.

“Let’s go, Mr. Ivan.” She released her grip on his jacket, her eyes hardening with absolute resolve. “I’ll go with you.”

“Us too,” Rosa, Blaze, GreyThroat, and the rest of the Rhodes Island operators declared in unison. Behind them, a chorus of weapons being drawn and loaded clicked into the evening air, glinting coldly in the setting sun.

The subsequent journey wasn’t a battle. It was a one-sided, physics-defying crushing.

Whenever a squad of Reunion Movement soldiers or Lungmen Black Cloaks tried to block the street, Ivan would simply dart forward, his movements glitchy and impossibly fast. The Fox Moon Blade traced deadly, sweeping arcs through the air. Instead of simply falling, the enemies were launched violently into the sky, sent flying backward by an absurd, invisible knockback force.

Above the Lungmen Slums, the flailing silhouettes of Black Cloaks and Reunion soldiers rose and fell like morbid fireworks, all of them punched into the stratosphere by Ivan.

The Rhodes Island operators followed behind him, watching this surreal, gravity-breaking spectacle in stunned silence.

“The road ahead has completely collapsed! There’s no way through!” a vanguard operator shouted from the front.

The Doctor quickly checked the holographic map. “If we have to detour around this rubble, it will take at least an extra half hour.”

Amiya raised her hand, dark, diamond-shaped Originium Arts condensing rapidly in her palm. “Let’s blast a path through it.”

Beside her, Rosa gripped her heavy siege trident, and the Caster operators in the rear began to chant their spell formulas.

Just as the Arts began to flare, Ivan reached out and gently took Amiya’s and Rosa’s hands, physically interrupting their casting.

Rosa’s cheeks instantly flushed a brilliant crimson. She unconsciously turned her head away, staring hard at a piece of rubble, but Ivan was far too focused on the obstacle to notice her reaction.

“Leave it to me,” Ivan said simply. “No road? Then I’ll just dig one out.”

Under the bewildered, questioning gazes of the elite operators, Ivan dismissed his sword and pulled out a second Diamond Pickaxe. The twin tools glowed with a faint, enchanting blue light.

He held a pickaxe in each hand, dropping into a bizarre, wide-stanced starting pose.

“Ora Ora Ora Ora!!”

The Diamond Pickaxes swung wildly, blurring into a chaotic flurry of motion that was entirely too fast for the human eye to track. Amidst the deafening sound of shattering stone and flying debris, an absolutely impossible sight took shape.

A perfectly square, two-by-two meter tunnel was being rapidly chiseled straight through the collapsed rubble. Its edges were so unnaturally neat and sharp that they looked as if they had been measured with a laser level.

Even more unbelievably, the tunnel possessed absolutely zero support beams or structural integrity, yet the loose gravel and broken concrete above it hung suspended in mid-air, refusing to cave in.

“Huh??????”

The entire Rhodes Island squad collectively froze. Even the usually unflappable Doctor stood completely paralyzed, his jaw practically hitting the floor.

“No way…” Blaze aggressively rubbed her eyes. “I know Ivan always pulls off some strange maneuvers, but this is just way too outrageous, isn’t it?!”

“He just casually swings his arms and instantly digs a perfectly square hole?” GreyThroat, completely breaking her usual stoic character, joined the chorus of complaints. “And without any load-bearing supports, the ceiling just… doesn’t collapse?!”

Ivan paused his rapid-fire mining and looked back at the stunned crowd. He shook his head with a helpless sigh.

“Don’t just stand there gawking. Hurry up and follow me.”

Without waiting for a response, Ivan stepped into the physics-defying tunnel, his figure quickly swallowed by the perfectly square darkness.

The operators exchanged baffled glances. Finally, the Doctor was the first to snap out of it, following Ivan inside with a deeply wry smile.

As they walked, they ran their hands along the walls of the newly created passage. The stone was incredibly smooth, and the scent of freshly broken rock lingered heavily in the air.

None of them could even begin to comprehend how a single man had managed to carve out such a geometric miracle in a matter of seconds, using nothing but two glowing pickaxes.