Arknights: It Can't Possibly Be My Fault... Right? — Chapter 66

Chapter 66: Do You Know Each Other?

Kai clicked his tongue, a pang of genuine regret washing over him. While he had been busy trying to talk down Frostnova, Faust had seized the perfect window to snatch Mephisto and vanish into the ruins. Rookie mistake, Kai thought, mentally kicking himself for his lack of field experience. But what was done was done. Spilt milk and all that. There would be other opportunities to bag those two later. The real question gnawing at him was whether Reunion would still have the sheer audacity to launch an assault on Lungmen after this entire fiasco.

Meanwhile, the Yeti Squad—abandoned as a rear guard by their fleeing comrades—remained eerily composed. They didn’t panic. Instead, they smoothly shifted back into a tight combat formation, drawing their weapons and unearthing a fresh batch of explosive Originium Ice Slugs. Kai stared at the glowing, volatile creatures. Seriously? Is no one going to deal with those things?

The standoff stretched into an agonizingly awkward silence. Even with his meta-knowledge, Kai found himself at a total loss for how to salvage a diplomatic channel here.

“So…” Kai scratched the back of his head, offering a strained smile. “Looks like your sniper buddy kind of left you high and dry?”

A soft sound escaped Frostnova’s lips—a breath that hovered somewhere between a weary sigh and a quiet lament. She didn’t answer with words. Instead, she slowly raised her hand. A chilling, icy blue light began to coalesce at the tip of her index finger. Regardless of Faust’s retreat, her objective remained absolute: capture the Rhodes Island operators first, then force a negotiation on her terms. She couldn’t let them pursue her brothers. also, she could feel the terrifying, thrumming power radiating from Kai’s body. It made her heart tremble, the dormant Arts within her flaring up in a violent defensive response.

The ambient temperature plummeted in a heartbeat. It didn’t just get cold; it felt as though the very concept of heat was being violently stripped from the air.

“Prepare for combat!” Amiya’s voice rang out, sharp and authoritative. Seeing that bloodshed was unavoidable, the young Cautus quickly directed the Rhodes Island operators into a defensive formation.

“Come on, are you absolutely sure we can’t just talk this out? Hello?” Kai shouted, exasperated, as he hastily sidestepped a volley of jagged frost spikes.

Her only answer was the haunting, melodic cadence of an ancient Ursus folk song. Frostnova was skipping the warm-up.

“…Sleep now, sleep now…”

“The hedgehog doll and the little bears…”

“She’s casting Arts! Stop her!” Meteorite barked. Having just finished putting a bolt through one of the explosive ice slugs, the Sarkaz mercenary immediately recognized the lethal shift in the atmosphere.

“Sink into the quiet black…”

As the haunting lullaby drifted from Frostnova’s lips, the moisture in the air froze into jagged, pitch-black ice crystals. They drifted downward like a funeral snowfall.

Are you kidding me? Kai’s pulse spiked. Dropping the nuke right out of the gate?! He couldn’t just unleash his full arsenal on her. If he managed to interrupt the cast, great, but what if he miscalculated? If he pushed too hard, he might accidentally kill her. He was trying to hold back, but the White Rabbit clearly wasn’t!

The moment the black crystals touched the earth, they bloomed into creeping sheets of obsidian frost. To the horror of the Rhodes Island vanguard, the dead zone expanded outward in perfect rhythm with her humming.

“We can’t let her finish that chant! Meteorite!” Amiya made the split-second call.

“Roger!”

Two high-explosive quarrels tore through the air, aimed squarely at the Yeti commander. But before they could even cross the halfway mark, a sudden wall of frost erupted from the ground, swatting the projectiles out of the sky in a harmless burst of smoke.

Tch, no time to play it safe! Kai officially stepped into the fray.

“Amiya, leave Frostnova to me,” Kai ordered, his tone dropping its usual casual lilt. “Hold the line and focus on defense. Don’t let anyone get frostbite.”

Reaching into his coat, Kai retrieved his last vial of liquid stimulant. He popped the cork with his thumb and downed the bitter concoction in a single, burning gulp. The ambient Originium density in this sector was far too thin; his passive mana regeneration was crawling compared to the saturated ruins of Chernobog. If he was going to match a powerhouse like Frostnova without running dry, he needed the artificial kick.

He snapped his fingers.

BOOM!

A concentrated sphere of hyper-compressed thermal energy materialized in the dead center of the battlefield, instantly detonating into a roaring inferno. The shockwave vaporized the nearest cluster of infected creatures and violently melted a massive crater into the encroaching black ice.

As the smoke and steam billowed outward, a relentless barrage of searing fireballs tore through the veil, hurtling straight toward Frostnova.

“Big Sister! Look out!” A heavy-shield defender from the Yeti Squad threw himself forward, planting his massive riot shield into the frozen earth to intercept the blazing volley.

The sheer kinetic force of the impact nearly tore the shield from the Ursus warrior’s grip. But before he could even draw a breath to steady himself, a second wave of fire roared out of the steam.

Kai advanced. His footsteps were slow, measured, and utterly relentless. With every stride, he carpet-bombed the Yeti Squad’s defensive line with blistering thermal Arts. The intense heat radiating from his body was so absolute that even the stubborn, pitch-black frost melted into harmless puddles beneath his boots. He cast with the reckless abandon of a man with an infinite well of mana, spending his energy like water.

“…” Frostnova didn’t break her melody. She kept humming, her eyes fixed on the approaching threat, even as her loyal brothers were blasted off their feet, batch after batch stepping up to replace the fallen.

“I said, stop singing,” Kai warned. He watched, teeth gritted, as another Yeti soldier was thrown backward by a concussive blast, only for two more to immediately take his place. He was actively throttling his output, micro-managing the thermal expansion so the blasts would only concuss or incapacitate them, but the collateral damage was still mounting.

Yet, Frostnova stubbornly maintained her haunting tune. Feeling the agonizing toll her comrades were taking to protect her, her voice caught in a brief, trembling vibrato. Then, the melody shifted. The rhythm grew darker, heavier.

The ambient chill in the air suddenly reversed its flow, violently surging inward toward Frostnova’s core. Realizing that laying down a field of black ice was utterly futile against a walking, human-shaped furnace, she changed tactics. She was abandoning her area-denial Arts. Instead, she was syncing her internal Originium with the volatile crystals buried beneath the snow, drawing in every ounce of freezing energy in the sector to detonate it all at once. She was preparing to drag Kai into the abyss with her.

Oh, hell no.

Kai read the spike in her Arts instantly. Gritting his teeth, he dialed up his firepower just enough to shatter the Yeti Squad’s remaining shield wall, ensuring none of them could step up to intercept him.

Flames roared. Men shouted. And amidst the swirling vortex of fire and dancing snow, Kai closed the distance in a blur of motion.

Before Frostnova could reach the climax of her suicidal crescendo, Kai was standing directly in front of her. He raised a hand and pressed a single, burning finger firmly against the center of her forehead.

The humming stopped dead.

Severed from its caster, the massive convergence of sub-zero energy suddenly lost its anchor. The localized cold wave violently destabilized, ripping outward in a chaotic, howling storm of frost that swept across the battlefield before rapidly dissolving into nothingness.

“I told you to stop singing,” Kai sighed, his breath pluming in the frigid air.

With Kai’s Arts actively suppressing her Originium pathways, the dense, choking fog born from the clash of extreme heat and extreme cold began to thin out. They stood mere inches apart, locked in a silent stare-down.

All around them, the battered remnants of the Yeti Squad glared at Kai with enough raw hatred to skin him alive. A short distance away, the Rhodes Island operators collectively sagged in relief as the biting chill finally receded from their bones. And standing slightly apart from the main group was M3, her emerald eyes fixed on Kai with an unreadable, deeply complex expression.

Frostnova stared up at the man who had just forcibly sealed her Arts. Her grayish-white eyes flickered with deep confusion.

Why didn’t he kill me?

Truthfully, she hadn’t believed a single word of his earlier peace-peddling. She had assumed it was a cheap stalling tactic, a theory seemingly proven by the terrifying escalation of his destructive Arts. But now, with her life entirely in his hands and her defenses shattered, he simply stood there.

After thoroughly ensuring that Frostnova wasn’t going to attempt another suicidal overload, Kai casually waved Amiya and the vanguard over. Once the medics had checked the wounded and the Yeti Squad members were securely bound, Kai finally pulled his hand back, releasing the localized silence on Frostnova’s vocal cords.

“See? This is exactly what I was talking about. Couldn’t we have just had a civilized chat?” Kai shook his head, dusting off his coat with an exaggerated sigh. “And here I am, a man who truly loves peace.”

A few paces away, Meteorite leaned down and muttered to Frostleaf. “Where exactly is this ‘love for peace’ he’s talking about? He was grinning like an absolute maniac while he was blowing up half the tundra. Honestly, watching him out there made me think…”

“Think what, exactly?” Kai snapped his head around, shooting the Sarkaz sniper a dangerously flat look. His physical enhancements meant his hearing was razor-sharp. No talking behind the carry’s back! Besides, it was genuinely difficult to suppress an adrenaline-fueled smirk when you were laying down that much heavy ordnance!

“N-Nothing! Nothing at all!” Meteorite flinched, hastily waving her hands in denial.

Just then, M3 quietly closed the distance, her footsteps light against the scorched earth.

“Um…” M3 hesitated, her gaze drifting between the bound Yeti commander and Kai. “Do you two… know each other?”

She had been watching the entire exchange with a hawk’s eye. She noticed how Kai had deliberately pulled his punches, carefully avoiding any lethal strikes against the Yetis. Coupled with his bizarre, cryptic comments earlier about her past… could they be childhood friends? But the utter lack of recognition in Frostnova’s eyes contradicted that theory.

“Huh?” Kai blinked, then waved a hand dismissively. “No. Well, to be perfectly accurate, I know of her, but she definitely doesn’t know me. This is our first time actually meeting face-to-face.”

It was the truth. He had been scooped up by Rhodes Island the literal second he transmigrated into this grimdark world; when would he have ever had the time to casually bump into a Reunion ringleader?

“Why do you ask?” Kai tilted his head, eyeing M3’s shifting demeanor.

“Oh… no reason. Just a bit curious, hehe.” M3 rubbed the back of her neck, offering a sheepish, slightly awkward smile. She didn’t even realize the subtle, heavy layer of relief that had just washed the tension right out of her voice.