Arknights: I'm Pretty Strong With Minecraft — Chapter 92

Chapter 92: You’ll Be in Charge of the Next Tactical Plan

Ivan gently sheathed his Fox Moon Blade. The metallic snick of the weapon sliding into its scabbard echoed sharply against the damp, stone walls of the drainage system. He lifted his head, his gaze cutting through the subterranean gloom to settle on Ch’en. The L.G.D. officer stood frozen, her face a tight mask of lingering anger and deep-seated confusion.

“Let me sort this out properly.”

Ivan’s tone was entirely too casual for the grim surroundings, as if he were discussing the weather rather than a city-wide conspiracy. Yet, the sheer weight of his calm forced Ch’en to involuntarily hold her breath. He took a slow step up onto a raised concrete walkway, looking down at the fresh, glistening bloodstains pooling near his boots.

“Under so many constraints, what exactly was Wei Yenwu supposed to do to resolve this crisis?”

Ivan turned to face her, raising a single finger. “First. Old Man Wei’s purge of the Slums was conducted under the convenient guise of an evacuation drill.”

A second finger joined the first. “Second. An evacuation drill? Who exactly were the evacuees? He authorized lethal force, but why keep the Lungmen Guard Department out of it? Why use the Black Cloaks instead?”

Ch’en’s brows knit together, the rapid-fire questions piercing her righteous fury like icy needles.

“Third,” Ivan’s voice bounced off the curved sewer ceiling. “Why didn’t Wei Yenwu issue the command directly? Why use Lin Yuxia as his proxy to carry out the clearing?”

“Fourth. Why did Old Man Wei propose such an extreme, outrageous plan, yet not a single official stood up to object?”

Ivan closed the distance between them, his eyes burning with a sharp, torch-like intensity. “Think about it. If he truly despised the Infected and orchestrated this massive spectacle just to entrap them, was it merely to wipe them out? As the Chief Executive of Lungmen, once he had hard evidence of the Infected colluding with external enemies, why didn’t he broadcast it? Why not declare their treason to the entire city?”

His voice rose, echoing off the damp walls. “Combine that with the general public’s existing prejudice against the Infected. Do you really think those people would receive a single ounce of sympathy if he aired their dirty laundry?”

Ivan’s tone dropped, growing heavy. He took another step forward, the dim lighting casting harsh, deep shadows across his features. “There’s one more thing.”

He tapped his fingers rhythmically against the hilt of his Fox Moon Blade. Tap. Tap. Tap.

“What if Lungmen’s military strength isn’t nearly as formidable as it appears on the surface?”

He looked up, his gaze cutting into her like glass. “If the Slum Infected and the frenzied Reunion Movement actually united… caught between a riot inside the walls and an invasion from the outside, the tragedy that would unfold in this mobile city-state…”

Ivan’s voice turned ice-cold. “…would be a Nether far worse than Chernobog.”

Ch’en’s breath hitched in her throat.

Ivan reached into his inventory and pulled out a crumpled, heavily marked piece of intelligence. It was dense with tactical scribbles detailing Reunion’s troop deployments.

“Approximately three hundred thousand casualties in Chernobog.” Ivan smoothed out the paper. The numbers, circled in glaring red ink, were staggering. “And the resident population of the Lungmen Slums exceeds eight hundred thousand. That isn’t even counting the unregistered, transient Infected.”

He jabbed a finger hard against the map’s depiction of the Slums. “Imagine it. When the flames of vengeance ignite from within the city, and the blades of invaders pierce it from the outside. The L.G.D. would be forced to simultaneously suppress massive urban riots while defending the walls. No matter how elite the Black Cloaks are, there are barely a hundred of them…”

Ivan’s words carried a heavy, prophetic weight. “The streets would turn into rivers of blood. The commercial districts would become graveyards. Reunion wouldn’t ‘merely’expel the non-Infected like they did in Chernobog. They would exact the most brutal, agonizing revenge imaginable on the city that’betrayed’ their kind.”

He stared directly into Ch’en’s eyes.

A single drop of cold sweat slid down her temple. The realization hit her like a physical blow.

All of her righteous fury, all of her indignation toward Wei Yenwu’s cruelty, had been built on a single, fragile assumption: Lungmen is strong enough to handle anything.

But if that premise was a lie…

“So… this is the answer?” Ch’en whispered.

Ivan slowly folded the intelligence report and tucked it away. “No. This only explains why Wei Yenwu made the choice he did. But precisely because of this grim reality, we have to carve out a third path.”

Standing in the gloom of the sewers, his posture was unyielding. “And that is exactly why we are standing here right now.”

“Ivan, what exactly are you…”

Ch’en started, but her voice trailed off. Her thoughts were a tangled mess, completely scrambled by the relentless logic he had just forced upon her. She tried to clear her head, but her mind felt like an overloaded redstone circuit, sparking and on the verge of burning out.

She slumped back against the damp, mossy wall and slowly closed her eyes. She carefully replayed every point Ivan had made, and the glaring holes in the clearing operation became impossible to ignore. From the choice of the Black Cloaks over the L.G.D., to the proxy orders through Lin Yuxia, to the deliberate lack of public propaganda…

When she finally opened her eyes, the burning anger was gone, replaced by a deep, lingering bewilderment.

“Aren’t you supposed to have a tactical planning defect?” she asked, her tone laced with sheer disbelief. “How did you manage to see through all of this?”

Ivan coughed twice, suddenly looking incredibly awkward as he rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Cough… well, I told you, that’s just their stereotype of me. Back in the day…”

He abruptly cut himself off, shaking his head slightly.

‘Back in the day, when W hadn’t even gotten her Alter yet, I cleared all these damn stages one by one,’ he finished silently in his head.

A complex, nostalgic glint flashed in his eyes for a fraction of a second before melting back into his signature, languid gamer confidence.

Ivan reached out and gave Ch’en’s shoulder a reassuring pat. “Sometimes, understanding the problem itself is far more important than having the answer right away. Now, do you see the massive contradictions in Wei Yenwu’s grand plan?”

Ch’en nodded silently, a sharp light of contemplation flickering within her draconic eyes.

“I understand,” she said softly. “So next time… I’ll leave the tactical planning to you.”