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ArabicArknights: It Can't Possibly Be My Fault... Right? — Chapter 1
Chapter 1: Zero Sanity
“Kai? Wake up! Kai?! If you don’t wake up right this second, I’m going to use you as a live test subject for my new coagulants~”
The heavy bedding was ruthlessly yanked away, letting the sterile, climate-controlled air of the dormitory bite at his skin. Kai groaned, struggling to resist a certain Vampire’s rude intrusion into his sweet dreams. He curled his knees to his chest, squirming gloomily across the mattress like a salted Originium Slug trying to escape the sun.
Warfarin stood by the bed, hands resting on her hips, watching the grown man refuse to face reality. She let out a long, helpless sigh, her crimson eyes rolling toward the ceiling. Pulling out her communicator, she tapped a channel and spoke into the receiver. “Amiya, you need to come down here. I really can’t get him up. It’s been half an hour! I even threatened to use him for experimental drug trials, and he still won’t drag himself out of bed.”
A pause. Warfarin pouted. “Sigh! What do you mean I can’t actually do that? Of course I was just trying to scare him, but clearly, my intimidation tactics need work.”
The noise echoing by the bedside didn’t affect Kai’s sleep quality in the slightest. He had stayed up the entire night before, staring at a mountain of tactical maps until his vision blurred, directly leading to a total, catastrophic loss of Sanity.
After trying his absolute best to tune out Warfarin’s nagging voice, Kai felt his consciousness happily drifting away once more…
Kai, male, had originally been born as an ordinary citizen on a peaceful blue planet. His usual hobbies consisted of grinding gacha games, clicking through galgames, and occasionally drawing digital art. In fact, he had been a somewhat famous ‘Mommy’—a god-tier fanartist who birthed beautiful illustrations—within the fan creation circles.
Holding down an ordinary job in a second-tier city and living a thoroughly ordinary life, he had always assumed his existence would just continue down that mundane, predictable path.
Then, an accident occurred.
It had been a violently thunderous, rain-soaked night. He was huddled in his cramped rented room, grinding through a brand-new Arknights event. Just as he clicked on Wis’adel’s ultimate skill to gloriously clear the screen of enemies in one go, a blinding bolt of lightning shattered his window and struck his monitor.
Thinking back to a long, long time ago when Kai was still a super newbie to the world, his parents had warned him that playing on the computer during a thunderstorm would get him struck by lightning. He had completely dismissed it. As a modern youth who had received a modern education, he fully trusted the flawless invention of the lightning rod. However, life on Terra—and Earth—was entirely unpredictable.
Kai was struck by lightning. That was the firm conclusion he reached after deep, philosophical consideration. As for why he was still alive to reach a conclusion at all, it was naturally because he had undergone a classic, textbook transmigration.
The explosive sound effects of Wis’adel’s skill still seemed to ring in his eardrums. When Kai finally opened his eyes, he found himself sprawled in the back seat of a violently shaking, armored rover, surrounded by the desolate, gray wasteland.
He had been scooped up by an external Rhodes Island dispatch team. Kai, who was originally dizzy, nauseous, and utterly confused, snapped awake the absolute second he laid eyes on Amiya. His internal Arknights radar lit up with a massive, flashing warning. He almost lost his mind on the spot.
Regarding that specific incident, the Rhodes Island operators present in the rover recalled it like this: The strange man first saw Amiya and scrambled backward several steps as if he had seen a ghost. Then, he slowly, creepily inched toward her. Before Amiya could even offer a polite greeting, he blurted out, “My good daughter really is the cutest in the world,” leaving the young Cautus completely baffled. Before the guards could even draw their weapons, the man suddenly started pinching his own cheeks and laughing hysterically at the ceiling.
Everyone in the vehicle assumed the dispatch team had picked up a terminal lunatic. Then, he fainted again.
After waking up following a thorough examination and treatment in the Medical Department, Kai vehemently expressed that he had absolutely, one hundred percent, definitely and certainly no memory of that embarrassing display., since Kai behaved like a relatively normal human being after waking up—aside from occasionally muttering bizarre slang in an unknown language—he didn’t seem like a dangerous threat. The medical staff could only assume his previous head injuries had caused temporary mental confusion.
During the initial orientation period after his arrival, the operators expressed heavy curiosity about his origins. Kai simply stated that, aside from waking up in the rover and arriving at Rhodes Island, he had absolutely no memories of living on this war-torn land.
This, of course, was not a lie. It couldn’t be more true. He didn’t belong to Terra.
Eventually, after passing a rigorous inspection by the Bunny and receiving reluctant approval from the Old Lynx, Kai officially became a proud operator of Rhodes Island. His specific combat profile was graded as ‘stinky mid-tier’—the kind of unit a veteran player would never recommend pulling for.
Ahem, getting sidetracked again. Anyway, given Kai’s suspected amnesia and Rhodes Island’s chronic, desperate shortage of manpower, the pharmaceutical company took him in. Although his physical stats were only equivalent to a four-star vanguard in the game, Kai firmly believed he would surely carve out a bright future!
At least, that was what he thought three years ago. Right now, he only wished that noisy Vampire standing over his bed would shut her mouth so he could resume his sweet, uninterrupted dream.
A gust of cold air-conditioning blew across the mattress. Kai shivered, stretching his limbs blindly to find the discarded quilt. His hands fumbled around the edge of the bed. He didn’t find the soft fabric, but instead, his fingers brushed against something hard, icy, and jagged…
Before Kai could even pry his heavy eyelids open to confirm what he was touching, a violent sensation of the world spinning hit his stomach. He instantly felt himself being hoisted upside down into mid-air.
Snapping his eyes open, a massive, terrifying, Xenomorph-like face was hovering right in front of his nose, so close he could feel the entity’s cold, crystalline breath washing over his skin.
“Oh… so it’s little Mon3tr. Um… good morning, buddy. Why are you hanging upside down from the ceiling?” Kai yawned, casually greeting the apex predator before him.
Mon3tr let out a low, oddly pleasant growl, its jagged jaws clicking together. Kai blinked the sleep from his eyes, looking past the crystalline beast to spot Warfarin standing near the doorway, holding her communicator out.
“Hello? Hello, hello, hello? Amiya, why didn’t you say anything when Dr. Kal’tsit deployed Mon3tr over here? You nearly gave me a heart attack.” Warfarin grumbled into the device. “Yeah, he’s up. As expected, it had to be Mon3tr to do the heavy lifting. I told you, I’m just a fragile doctor, I don’t have Gavial’s kind of brute strength.”
Warfarin paused, listening to the voice on the other end. “No injuries, don’t worry. Mon3tr knows its limits. Mm-hmm, okay, I’ll let him speak to her now.”
Looking at the glowing communicator Warfarin was holding out toward him, Kai felt a terrible, sinking premonition in his gut. After being unceremoniously dropped onto the mattress by Mon3tr, he grabbed the device. A clear, pleasant voice filtered through the speaker.
“Hello? Is this Mr. Kai? You’re finally awake.”
Kai shifted, finding a comfortable position to lean against the cold metal headboard. “Good morning, little Amiya. Have you eaten breakfast yet?”
The one who responded to Kai’s casual greeting was not the sweet Cautus, but another, chillingly cold voice that practically froze the air in the room.
“I hope you can realize the objective fact that it is not currently morning. No one’s time can be infinitely wasted on the meaningless act of waiting. The suffering on this land will never pause to accommodate anyone’s lethargy. I hope you can provide a reasonable, logical explanation to me, to Amiya, and to everyone else who has spent their valuable time waiting for you in the briefing room.”
Hearing that signature, verbose tone, Kai suddenly shuddered. He hurriedly tapped the communicator screen to check the current time.
11:30 AM.
He covered the microphone with his thumb, looking up at Warfarin with wide, panicked eyes. “What’s the date today?”
Warfarin just smiled, a wicked gleam in her crimson eyes. She didn’t answer, instead spreading her hands and asking back, “What kind of miracle are you fantasizing about?”
Kai slowly turned his head to look at the towering crystal beast beside his bed. “I’m still dreaming, right?”
Mon3tr tilted its massive, jagged head, letting out a confused, rumbling low growl.
It seemed this wasn’t a nightmare. He had actually overslept and completely flaked on the most important strategic meeting in recent times. And now, the Old Lynx had come to personally call him to account.
“Kai? Are you still there?” Kal’tsit’s voice cut through the silence of the communicator, sharp as a scalpel.
Kai quickly cleared his throat, sitting up straight. “Cough, Old Lyn—I mean, Dr. Kal’tsit, I’m here.”
Through the audio feed, Kai swore he heard the distinct, terrifying sound of something solid being crushed into fine atoms by a Terra superwoman with incredible grip strength. It had to be an auditory hallucination. It just had to be.
Kal’tsit continued, her tone dangerously even. “Then, where is your explanation? Kai, I hope you understand that although Rhodes Island never binds any of its operators with draconian rules, the basic trust required for communication between individuals remains indispensable. No one wishes to see this vital connection broken by sheer incompetence.”
“I can explain! Dr. Kal’tsit, please, just give me a chance. This is the request of a lifetime!” Kai shouted into the communicator, sweating bullets.
Kal’tsit was silent for a long, agonizing moment. “This is your third ‘request of a lifetime’ this month. But fine. Alright, you may have this chance. After all, this land is always full of the unknown. I choose to believe you will sincerely explain your difficulties this time, though you still need to formally apologize to those who waited for you.”
“Okay, Empress Dowager! No problem, Empress Dowager!”
Kai wanted to violently slap his own mouth, but it was too late. The words had already slipped out, sliding smoothly across his sleep-deprived cerebral cortex and straight into the microphone. A loud, sharp cracking sound echoed from the communicator. This time, it definitely wasn’t a hallucination.
Handing the device back to a thoroughly gloating Warfarin, Kai patted his own cheeks to brace himself. This was a life-or-death situation, stepping right into the Lynx’s den. But it didn’t matter—because the lobby host possessed the ultimate cheat item!
Kai threw off the covers and looked over at the results of his grueling all-nighter resting on his desk. Sitting proudly on top of a thick, disorganized stack of tactical documents, several large characters were written in bold Terran script.
Chernobog Operation Plan.
[Rhodes’s Note: “Empress Dowager” (太后) is a popular Chinese fandom nickname for Kal’tsit, referencing her ancient age, immense authority, and tendency to boss the Doctor around like a strict royal matriarch. “Mommy” (妈咪) is Chinese internet slang for a highly skilled fanartist—someone who “gives birth” to beautiful fan creations.]