Arknights: Soul Knights of Terra — Chapter 63

Chapter 63: Only a Little Bit Stronger Than You…

On the other side of the desolate continent, deep within the unforgiving borders of Kazdel.

Vera stared at the glowing screen of her terminal, her brows knitting together in a deep frown as she scrolled through the latest messages in the chat group. Vane’s question mirrored her own lingering doubts; Gregor’s current state simply did not sit right with her. The chaotic energy radiating from his recent updates felt volatile, even for him.

“She’s a cripple!?”

A sudden, harsh exclamation shattered her concentration. Vera snapped her terminal shut, her irritation flaring as she turned toward the source of the commotion.

A few paces away, a burly mercenary stood looming over a young girl seated in the dirt, his face twisted into a grimace of disgust and confusion. The girl remained entirely silent, offering absolutely no reaction to the mercenary’s aggressive questioning. She stared blankly ahead, her presence so hollow it seemed as though her mind was adrift in another world entirely.

Seeing the mercenary raise a hand as if inclined to get physical, Vera suppressed a weary sigh, forced down her rising temper, and closed the distance between them.

“What is going on here?”

The mercenary flinched, quickly stepping aside when he registered Vera’s cold glare. He pointed an accusatory finger at the fragile figure on the ground.

“Big Sister, this girl seems to be a total cripple. She can’t walk at all!”

“Can’t walk?”

Vera shifted her gaze to the girl sitting in the dust. The very first thing that struck her was the girl’s face—delicate, ethereal features that not even the grime of the Kazdel wasteland could completely obscure.

Dazed for a brief moment by the stark contrast between the girl’s pristine appearance and their rugged surroundings, Vera quickly regained her focus. She crouched down, her sharp eyes carefully sweeping over the girl’s slender limbs.

“Where exactly is she crippled? Her arms and legs look perfectly intact.”

“She just refuses to walk!” the mercenary emphasized, throwing his hands up in exasperation. “The other guys have been taking turns carrying her this entire time. She doesn’t move a single muscle on her own!”

Vera was taken aback. She looked closely at the girl again. The mercenary was right; she remained as utterly unresponsive as a discarded porcelain doll.

Standing up, Vera scanned the perimeter of the camp and beckoned to a scruffy figure who had been timidly peeking out from behind a stack of supply crates. It was Reese.

“Get over here!”

“Yes, Big Sister!” A flash of nervous joy crossed Reese’s face as he scrambled over, eager to please.

Seeing his foolishly grinning face only caused Vera’s anger to spike once more. She took a slow, deep breath, forcing the irritation down into the pit of her stomach.

“What is the deal with her?”

Reese looked down at the girl and scratched the back of his head awkwardly.

“She was just a bonus thrown in by that shady slave merchant we passed earlier. The boss said she knows some sort of healing Originium Arts, but he definitely didn’t tell me she was a cripple…”

“Stop calling her a cripple.”

Vera rubbed her throbbing temples, feeling the onset of a massive headache. She turned and waved over Hoederer, who was busy organizing the camp’s defensive perimeter nearby.

“Hoederer, are we currently short on healers in the squad?”

“Healers?”

Hoederer walked over, slightly confused by the sudden question, but the context clicked into place after Vera gestured to the girl and gave a brief explanation of Reese’s transaction.

Approaching the girl, the towering Sarkaz warrior half-knelt in the dirt, deliberately softening his usually gruff voice to ask:

“Do you know healing Originium Arts?”

The girl, who had been a statue of silence all along, finally registered the sound.

She slowly, mechanically raised her head. Her eyes—inorganic, vacant, and resembling polished glass beads—met Hoederer’s gaze, causing an involuntary tightness to grip the hearts of everyone watching.

Her pale lips parted slightly. When she spoke, her voice was painfully light and airy, carrying a hollow, ghostly echo.

“Do you… also need healing…”

A strange, creeping chill washed over the gathered mercenaries. It did not feel as though they were conversing with a living, breathing Sarkaz girl, but rather an exquisite, empty puppet that had been forcibly endowed with sound and form.

The mercenary who had been shouting earlier couldn’t help but take two steps back, muttering under his breath while rubbing his arms.

“What is wrong with this girl? She feels incredibly creepy…”

Reese scratched his cheek, trying to rationalize the unsettling display. “Maybe she’s just starving? She probably doesn’t even have the physical strength left to speak properly.”

Vera ignored his useless commentary. She knelt back down, reaching out to gently cup the girl’s dirt-smudged cheeks, carefully studying those unfocused, emerald eyes.

Feeling the sudden warmth of human touch, a faint, agonizingly slow expression of confusion finally rippled across the girl’s face. She blinked, asking softly once more:

“Excuse me… do you need healing?”

“What is your name?”

Vera deliberately bypassed the question, opting for a direct inquiry to ground the girl in reality.

“Name…” The girl’s gaze became even more vacant, as if searching through a shattered archive in her mind.

“Big Sister… she might not even have a name.”

Just as Reese was about to offer another unhelpful observation, a weak, trembling voice interrupted him.

“Liz…”

Vera and Hoederer immediately exchanged a sharp, loaded look. Vera stood up, turning her piercing gaze toward the incredulous Reese.

“Did that slave merchant happen to mention exactly where he found her?”

“Uh… no,” Reese answered honestly, shrinking back slightly.

“Then we have a massive problem…”

Hoederer stood up to his full height, his singular eye looking out toward the distant horizon where the Scar Market lay hidden. His tone turned deadly somber.

“We might have to break camp and leave much earlier than planned.”

“Huh? Why?” Reese was still completely bewildered, oblivious to the political landmines surrounding them.

Beside them, Ines stepped out from the shadow of a tent, crossing her arms as she analyzed the situation with her usual cold clarity.

“While it remains unclear exactly where that bottom-feeding merchant acquired her, this girl is clearly no ordinary Infected slave.”

Ines walked a slow circle around Liz, her eyes narrowing. “She possesses highly specialized healing Originium Arts, and this catatonic state of hers… she seems far less like a person and much more like a tool. A tool that was confined in the dark for a very long time and specifically cultivated for a singular purpose.”

She paused, turning her gaze to Reese, and asked a seemingly unrelated question.

“Tell me, Reese. In Kazdel, which faction is currently involved in the fiercest, most brutal fighting, and consequently suffers the highest number of casualties?”

“Babel and the Military Commission…”

Reese’s voice gradually trailed off as the gears in his head finally turned. A look of dawning realization, followed swiftly by sheer panic, washed over his face.

“Indeed…”

Hoederer sighed, his deep voice laced with a heavy resignation.

“Babel is led by Her Highness Theresa. Given her gentle nature and ideological style, she would never sanction the creation of something like this. But the Military Commission…”

He shook his head, leaving the grim implication hanging in the dusty air.

“The most likely source for a cultivated Infected weapon with precious healing abilities…”

Ines didn’t need to finish her sentence. The chilling reality settled over the group. They were holding stolen Military Commission property.

Vera looked back down at the girl, who was still quietly staring up at her. She softened her tone as much as she could manage and asked:

“Liz, do you remember where you came from?”

Liz’s brow furrowed slightly. A flicker of genuine pain and terror broke through her glassy exterior.

“Darkness… a cage…”

Vera’s heart tightened with an unexpected pang of sympathy, but she steeled her nerves and continued to press for vital intelligence.

“Then how did you manage to get out of there?”

“She… cut open the cage. She took my hand… and led me away.”

Liz murmured the words to herself, lost in the fragmented memory. Hoederer immediately followed up:

“Who was she?”

Vera shot Hoederer a warning glare, shaking her head to stop him from pushing the fragile girl too hard, and asked a different, safer question.

“Then how were you caught again?”

“They chased us, we fled… she told me to hide in the dark, and I stayed there… but I saw the wounded bleeding, and then…”

Liz’s small body began to tremble violently. She opened her mouth to speak, but the traumatic block was too severe. In the end, she couldn’t force another word out and simply leaned forward, burying her face into the fabric of Vera’s coat.

Seeing Liz’s visceral reaction, Hoederer made the executive decision without hesitation.

“We cannot afford to wait another second! Pack up everything! We are leaving this sector immediately, as fast as humanly possible!”

Vera felt a massive headache taking root behind her eyes. Was she cursed with the luck of some tragic novel protagonist? Why did apocalyptic levels of trouble constantly gravitate toward her?

Their carefully laid plans to operate around the Scar Market were completely ruined. Now they had to flee into the harsh wilderness just to avoid the inevitable, bloody investigation from the Military Commission’s hunting dogs.

Watching the camp erupt into frantic activity, Reese finally comprehended the catastrophic scale of the trouble his little ‘bonus’ had brought down upon their heads. He opened his mouth to apologize, but finding no words, he simply hung his head in deep frustration and sprinted off to help tear down the tents.

The entire mercenary team fell into a suffocatingly tense atmosphere. But what Vera and the others did not know was that out in the wastes, someone else was experiencing an even greater level of panic.

Miles away on the desolate, wind-scoured wasteland, two Confessarii supported each other as they trudged forward, their breathing ragged and heavy.

One of the Confessarii couldn’t help but spit a curse into the dust, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and absolute anxiety.

“Damn it all! Of all the possible times, this disaster had to happen while Lord Qui’sartuštaj was away from the stronghold!”

“Cough, cough!”

The second Confessarius clutched his chest, his fingers slick with blood. A massive, jagged sword wound tore across his torso, still bleeding sluggishly despite his best efforts.

“Rather… that vile traitor picked this exact, calculated moment to strike…”

His free hand glowed with the faint, sickly light of Originium Arts as he desperately tried to knit his own flesh back together, but the lingering energy from the blade made the healing agonizingly slow and ineffective.

“Damn it! If the vessel were still in our possession! How could a pathetic wound like this… cough, cough!”

The wounded Confessarius’s sudden agitation aggravated his severe injury, causing him to double over and cough up a mouthful of dark blood onto the dry earth.

“Save your strength…”

His companion’s voice was hollow, filled with a dark resignation.

“She is that lord’s blood relative, after all. It is only natural that we were no match for her blade.”

“So what?!”

The first Confessarius retorted, his emotions spiraling out of control.

“The vessel is lost! Do you honestly believe Lord Qui’sartuštaj will accept our weakness as a valid excuse when he returns?!”

The mention of their master’s name caused a suffocating, terrified silence to fall between the two dark magic casters. The wind howled around them, sounding like the screams of the damned.

“Maybe… we should just run?”

The wounded Confessarius’s voice was bitter and small.

“Where could we possibly run? Where on this miserable earth could we hide from the Confessarii’s purge?”

“But if we can somehow find the vessel before he returns… perhaps we can make amends. We might still save our own lives…”

“Find her? That damned traitor hid the vessel perfectly! We have chased her bloody trail this entire way and haven’t even found a single shadow of the girl!”

“We have been hot on her heels since the breach! The geographical range of where she could possibly hide a crippled girl is limited! The vessel must still be somewhere in this immediate area; she couldn’t have taken her far on foot!”

“Then how do we find her? Look at us! In our current state, a stray wild beast could end us!”

“…We go to the Scar Market.” The companion finally made up his mind, his eyes hardening behind his mask. “We ask a Cyclops for help.”

“You want to use his prophecy?” the wounded Confessarius asked, his voice trembling with fresh skepticism. “But a Cyclops can only foresee a dark, inevitable future, and the price they demand…”

“It is the only path we have left!”

Just as the desperate plan was formed, a calm, chillingly steady voice suddenly rang out from the shadows behind them.

“What path?”

The two Confessarii spun around, ignoring the screaming pain in their bodies as their hands instantly reached for their concealed weapons.

When their eyes adjusted and they saw the newcomer was also dressed in the dark, flowing robes of a Confessarius, their crushing tension eased slightly, though their guard remained firmly up.

“You are… Wasinger?”

The companion recognized the mask and the posture. It was the colleague who had long since been reassigned to outer guard duty.

“It is me.”

Wasinger approached with slow, measured steps, his gaze sweeping over their pathetic, blood-soaked state.

“It seems you two have run into quite a bit of trouble out here.”

“It is absolutely none of your business…”

The wounded Confessarius spoke sharply, his tone venomous as he tried to shut down the guard’s prying eyes.

“Is that so…”

Wasinger’s hand moved with casual, terrifying grace to rest upon the hilt of the sword at his waist. His voice carried an undisguised, heavy threat that seemed to lower the temperature of the air around them.

“Are you entirely sure… you want to speak to me in that tone, considering your current, pathetic state?”

The atmosphere turned lethal in an instant. The two weakened, bleeding Confessarii were clearly at a massive disadvantage against the perfectly healthy, armed Wasinger.

The two exchanged a desperate, silent look. Finally, the companion stepped forward, his tone softening into a placating murmur.

“Wasinger, listen to me. You were sent out on perimeter guard duty early on, so you were not involved in the core project… Believe me, there are certain secrets you are much better off not knowing.”

“And what if I insist on knowing?”

Wasinger’s thumb flicked upward. The blade unsheathed a fraction of an inch, the steel ringing softly in the quiet wasteland.

“Cough, cough!”

The wounded Confessarius suddenly let out a harsh, mocking laugh, spitting blood as he glared at his companion.

“What are you so afraid of?! Since this fool wants to know so badly, just tell him!”

To the omniscient observer, the tragic mix of this secret was painfully clear. The fragile girl currently in Vera’s care was named Liz—known to those familiar with the game’s lore by her codename, Nightingale. She was no mere slave, but a living vessel carefully engineered by the Confessarii to serve as a counterfeit Lord of Fiends. Stripped of her autonomy, she had been used as a biological tool to heal wounded soldiers on the frontlines of the brutal war, forcibly drawing upon her own life force to mend their flesh. This horrific, continuous process had inflicted severe, irreversible mental and physical trauma upon her. She would have perished in that dark cage had it not been for the sudden intervention of Shining—a high-ranking Confessarius who experienced a deep change of heart upon realizing that Liz had developed genuine self-awareness. It was Shining who shattered her cage, cut down her former brethren, and carried the broken girl into the light.

Seeing Wasinger stand in complete silence after hearing the abbreviated confession of their crimes, the wounded Confessarius sneered.

“Satisfied now? Has your ridiculous, suicidal curiosity been sated?”

Wasinger did not get angry. Instead, he released the hilt of his sword, his voice taking on a subtle, almost amused tone.

“You are saying… that this lost vessel has blonde hair, emerald eyes, and possesses potent healing Originium Arts?”

“What? You have seen her?”

“I have indeed…”

The two Confessarii suddenly straightened up. Their crippling fatigue vanished in an instant, and their gaping wounds seemed to stop hurting entirely, replaced by the desperate adrenaline of survival.

“Where!?”

“Do not be in such a rush…”

Wasinger raised a single hand, calling for silence. His voice became incredibly pleasant, carrying the casual confidence of someone holding all the winning cards.

“Before we go and find your precious vessel… I would like to ask you two for a small favor.”

“A favor?”

The two Confessarii looked at each other, their desperation warring with their suspicion. They asked hesitantly.

“What kind of favor?”

“I need you to investigate someone for me. And of course… if you find yourselves capable, you can go ahead and kill them too.”

Wasinger looked at the two bleeding men, his eyes narrowing in dry amusement behind his dark mask.

The wounded Confessarius felt an unnatural chill crawl up his spine. He asked in deep confusion.

“Is this target very strong? You know our current state isn’t exactly optimal for combat…”

“Oh, do not worry about that…”

Wasinger raised his hand, pinching his thumb and index finger together, leaving only a microscopic gap between them.

“They are only a little bit stronger than you…”