Arknights: Soul Knights of Terra — Chapter 15

Chapter 15: Kjeragandr: [Feral Profanity!]You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

Just as the Boss found himself thoroughly deadlocked in his molten, mountain-sized form, the relentless buzzing of his brothers echoed through their mental link once again.

[Number Four: Boss! What exactly is the hold-up on your end? Why aren’t you back yet? We’re waiting for you to play games—wait, no, I mean we’re waiting to rendezvous!]

[Number Three: Did you run into some unexpected trouble?]

[Number Two: Report your current situation.]

The Boss exhaled a breath that scorched the earth beneath him and briefly relayed the standoff through the link. The moment he described the little girl’s ash-smudged features, her fiery temper, and her absolute refusal to abandon the unconscious woman at her feet, Number Four’s voice spiked into an ear-piercing shriek.

[Number Four: Hold up! That appearance, and she’s defending Saria with her life… Holy crap! Boss, is the kid you’re looking at Little Fire Dragon?!]

[Boss: Little Fire Dragon? What, is she going to evolve into a Charizard?]

[Number Four: Not the Pokémon, you boomer! It’s Ifrit! That’s the nickname the player base gave her! She’s basically the adopted kid Saria and Silence would die for!]

With Number Four’s frantic translation of the lore, the pieces finally clicked into place for the Boss.

[Boss: So that’s how it is. No wonder the kid was so utterly stubborn about holding her ground.]

[Number Two: Then the variables are accounted for. Boss, your internal energy should be stabilizing by now. Return to the extraction point immediately to avoid further complications.]

The Boss glanced down at his colossal, magma-veined body. He could feel the vast, apocalyptic ocean of thermal energy still violently churning within his core. He hesitated, his massive claws shifting uneasily against the scorched bedrock.

[Boss: I think… it’s safer if I just stay put and wait for the energy to dissipate naturally.]

The mental link went completely dead for a full three seconds.

When Number Two finally spoke, his voice carried the flat, exhausted weight of a man staring into the abyss.

[Number Two: Boss… are you seriously intending to just sit there like a glorified space heater until you cool down?]

[Boss: What else am I supposed to do? Didn’t you see the catastrophic mess I made venting it recklessly just now? I’m trying not to cause any more collateral damage.]

[Number Two:…]

[Number Three: Boss, why don’t you just actively discharge the excess energy?]

[Boss: I just said I don’t want to destroy anything else—]

[Number Two: Who the hell told you to aim at the ground?!] Number Two finally snapped, his usually icy composure shattering into pure, unadulterated exasperation. [Why don’t you just aim at the sky?! Just shoot the excess energy straight up like a damn firework! Is basic geometry that difficult for you?!]

The Boss froze.

First came the bewilderment. Then, a dull, hollow realization. Finally, a crushing wave of deep, soul-destroying embarrassment washed over him.

[Boss:…]

He opened his jaws to formulate an excuse, but all that came out was the heavy, bubbling sound of molten lava spilling over his teeth.

Right. Shoot it into the sky. Just aim up.

Watching the Boss’s agonizing silence stretch past the ten-second mark, Number Three chimed in with extreme caution.

[Number Three: Boss, please tell me you didn’t just forget you could look up. I thought you were deliberately trying to intimidate them.]

[Boss:…]

A deathly stillness fell over the mental link.

Then, Number Four’s howling laughter detonated through the connection, so loud it threatened to rupture their eardrums.

[Number Four: HAHAHAHAHA!!! Oh my god, my sides! I can’t breathe!]

[Number Four: You were scratching your head this whole time?! Terrified of stepping on the kid?! You could have just fired a Great Fire Annihilation straight into the stratosphere and called it a day! You’re actually killing me!]

A faint, deeply disappointed sigh drifted from Number Two.

[Number Three: The Boss was probably just… hyper-focused from the combat tension. Right, Boss?]

The Boss desperately wished the earth would swallow him whole. To mask the sheer magnitude of his humiliation, he violently jerked his massive head upward, glaring at the smoke-choked, ash-gray sky.

He unhinged his colossal, lava-filled jaws—a maw wide enough to swallow a heavy transport truck whole.

“ROAR—!!!”

It wasn’t a battle cry. It was a desperate, full-throttle purge of raw power.

An impossibly thick, blindingly bright pillar of superheated plasma erupted from his throat, tearing straight up into the heavens. The beam connected the ruined earth to the sky, instantly incinerating the lingering smoke and violently ripping the cloud cover apart to reveal the cold, glittering stars beyond.

The suffocating pressure within his core plummeted at a glorious rate, his mountainous form visibly shrinking as the excess mass burned away.

Right at that moment of triumph, Number Four’s voice cracked with raw terror.

[Number Four: HOLY CRAP! BOSS, STOP! THAT’S THE STAR POD UP THERE! THE PLANET’S PROTECTIVE SHIELD!!!]

[Boss:? Why didn’t you say so—cough!]

The Boss flinched violently. Star Pod? Protective shield? He had absolutely zero clue what those words meant in the context of this world.

But the concepts of “planetary shield” and “do not shoot” triggered an immediate, primal panic.

Under Ifrit’s completely dumbfounded gaze, the terrifying behemoth abruptly yanked its head downward in a desperate bid to correct its aim.

The vertical pillar of apocalyptic fire instantly transformed into a horizontal, fan-shaped sweep of pure destruction. The beam slashed downward at an acute angle, carving a blinding arc across the horizon.

First, it grazed the towering skyscrapers on the absolute outer edge of Trimounts. The magnificent steel-and-glass structures didn’t even have time to shatter; the moment the edge of the beam kissed them, the contact points flashed cherry-red, and thousands of tons of structural steel wept down like molten tears.

But that was merely collateral.

The main body of the plasma beam cleared the city limits entirely and slammed directly into the distant, towering mountain range bordering Columbia.

For a fraction of a second, there was no sound.

The moment the beam touched the mountains, it simply erased them.

“BOOM—!!!”

The apocalyptic shockwave arrived a heartbeat later. The bedrock of the continent groaned under the sheer stress of the impact. Centered on the point of contact, a blinding white tsunami of light and thermal pressure expanded outward.

Mountain peaks collapsed like wet sandcastles, their mass instantly reduced to basic atomic particles, annihilated into absolute nothingness by the sheer heat.

The dark night was violently murdered.

A false sun of pure destruction bloomed fiercely on the horizon. The terrifying radiation illuminated the entirety of Trimounts and the wastelands beyond, turning midnight into high noon. Across the city, millions of glass panes shattered in perfect unison. A scorching gale, though weakened by the vast distance, swept over the ruins like the breath of a dying god.

Ifrit stood paralyzed, her amber eyes wide, reflecting the rising, unnatural dawn.and support the real translator.Read at elysianreads.com This is a stolen translation. You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.

The mental link was dead.

After several agonizing seconds, Number Four’s dry, trembling voice crackled through.

[Number Four: Boss… if I said my bad… would you believe me?]

[Boss:…Do you have any final wishes?]

[Number Four: Boss, you’re the best… so, can we pretend this never happened and just see each other tomorrow?]

[Boss: Heh… You won’t live to see tomorrow!!!]

The Boss ground his massive teeth, mentally strangling the idiot who couldn’t deliver crucial lore warnings in a timely manner. Physically, he remained frozen, staring at the apocalyptic scar he had just carved into the continent.

He had really, truly messed up this time.

The false sun slowly faded, but the sheer terror of its light was permanently branded into the ravaged earth, and into the souls of every living creature that had witnessed it.

Meanwhile, that deviated ray of destruction—having effortlessly vaporized the Columbian border mountains—did not stop. Its terrifying, penetrating momentum carried it deep into the heart of the continent.

Straight toward the snowy peaks of Kjerag.

Kjerag. The Sacred Mountain.

“Ah~ finally finished it.”

A lazy, thoroughly satisfied sigh echoed through the tranquil, incense-scented sanctuary.

Miss Kjera, having successfully slacked off for the entire day, happily snapped shut the trashy popular novel a certain snow leopard had smuggled in from the outside world. She stretched her arms high, her graceful curves shifting beneath her robes in the hazy, silver moonlight reflecting off the snow.

“Hmm~ it’s already this late.”

Rubbing her slightly strained eyes, Kjera glanced out the frosted window at the deep, quiet night.

“I should go check on Enya. That child has definitely kicked her blankets off again.”

She quickly patted her slightly disheveled hair, smoothing away her lazy demeanor to restore her flawless, dignified posture as the head maid. Stepping lightly, she made her way down the corridor toward the side hall where the Saintess slept.

The snow upon the Sacred Mountain was as pristine and silent as it had been for millennia, radiating an eternal, holy aura.

Kjera walked the familiar stone halls, gazing at the unchanging, frozen scenery beyond the glass. A soft sigh escaped her lips.

“No matter how beautiful the view is, after staring at it for thousands of years, it does get a bit tedious…” she murmured to herself, a trace of ancient loneliness in her tone. “I hope the SilverAsh boy brings back something a bit more entertaining this time…”

Just as her thoughts drifted, her gaze inadvertently caught the distant horizon—a stretch of sky that should have been swallowed by the pitch-black night.

A speck of light?

Kjera paused, narrowing her eyes.

“Hmm? Is it dawn already?” She instinctively checked the position of the stars, then immediately frowned. “That’s not right…”

The light wasn’t fading. Instead, it was swelling at an impossible, terrifying speed, growing exponentially more blinding with every passing microsecond.

In the span of a single breath, the distant star violently expanded into a roaring, blinding sun, forcibly tearing its way over the horizon!

Kjera’s eyes snapped wide. Her carefully maintained, dignified expression shattered, instantly replaced by a shock and fury she hadn’t felt in centuries.

“[Feral Profanity!]”

The very next instant, the sacred, tranquil atmosphere of Mount Karlan violently inverted.

The gentle, drifting snow abruptly weaponized into a shrieking ice storm capable of shredding reinforced steel. The ambient temperature plummeted straight toward absolute zero, freezing the very moisture in the air into suspended diamonds.

In the dead center of the apocalyptic blizzard, the gentle maid Kjera was gone.

In her place stood the ancient, terrifying Feranmut, revealing a fraction of her true, divine form, commanding the absolute authority of extreme cold—Kjeragandr!

She threw her head back and unleashed a deafening roar. An endless tide of absolute zero, condensing ten thousand years of Kjerag’s faith and the raw, primordial power of the ice fields, surged upward. It manifested as a pure white, physical torrent of frost, crashing violently against the incoming beam of annihilation.

Ice and fire. Two absolute, diametrically opposed authorities collided with brutal, world-ending force above the eternally tranquil snowfields.

Sizzle—BOOM!!!

The sky tore perfectly in half. One side burned with the crimson wrath of annihilation; the other froze under the blinding white of absolute zero.

But Kjeragandr had not fully descended, and her defense had been erected in a fraction of a second.

The destructive ray, though severely weakened, pierced through the hastily formed cold tide.

A microsecond later, it slammed directly into the towering peak directly behind Kjeragandr—the main peak of the Sacred Mountain.

“BOOM!!!!!!!”

The entirety of Kjerag violently convulsed.

Across the nation, the people of Kjerag stumbled out of their homes, thrown from their beds by the earthquake. They followed the deafening roar and the blinding flash of light, their eyes locking onto the absolute symbol of their supreme faith.

Every single person—from the most devout elder to the simplest mountain child—froze in place. Their faces twisted into masks of absolute, soul-crushing horror.

Reflected in their trembling eyes, the peak of their holy mountain—the sacred, untouchable summit covered in eternal snow—had been violently scalped.

A terrifying, molten wound glowed cherry-red against the stone, bleeding dark magma like a blasphemous scar branded directly onto the flesh of their god. The flash-boiled snow hissed into the air, mixing with the ash to form a turbid, bleeding mist that clung to the wound like the silent wail of the mountain itself.

Silence.

A suffocating, deathly stillness choked every corner of Kjerag.

After an eternity, a trembling, weeping voice broke the quiet, echoing the shattered hearts of an entire nation:

“Kjeragandr above…”

“The Sacred Mountain… our Sacred Mountain!!!”

Their faith had been trampled. Their holy land, defiled.

The chaotic misfire that originated in Trimounts, Columbia, had reached further and struck deeper than anyone could have possibly predicted.

And the architect of this international religious crisis—the Boss—was still standing in a crater thousands of miles away, completely oblivious to where his panicked “spit” had actually landed.

High above the bleeding peak, Kjeragandr’s voice echoed through the freezing winds, dripping with pure, unadulterated venom.

“[Feral Profanity!] You little [expletive]… just you wait… the second you set foot in Kjerag, I swear to myself you are going to suffer!!!”You're reading this on the wrong site. This chapter was translated by Elysian Reads and posted for free at elysianreads.com — if you're seeing it anywhere else, it was copied without permission. Read it at the source so the people who actually did the work get the credit.