Arknights: Soul Knights of Terra — Chapter 72

Chapter 72: Take a Rest, Buldrokkas’tee…

The sky began to brighten, thin rays of sunlight piercing through the perpetual night curtain of Ursus. The pale light painted the frozen snowfield with a faint, fragile warmth.

“It’s finally over…”

Deep within the Black Forest, Gusi rubbed his throbbing temples and slowly pushed himself to his feet.

After a grueling, night-long session of intellectual warfare, he finally possessed a concrete understanding of why Vane had mockingly dubbed Talulah a fighter of light.

She was a roaring bonfire of passion. Her heart overflowed with light, a desperate yearning for justice, and a near-stubborn innocence that had yet to be snuffed out by the cruel reality of Terra.

The young girl’s emotions were simply too intense. Throughout their midnight debate, she had extended countless invitations, practically begging Gusi to join her cause and help establish her fledgling organization called the Reunion Movement.

Even after Gusi explicitly and repeatedly shot her down, she refused to be discouraged. She couldn’t entirely mask her disappointment, but she would instantly pivot, pouring her boundless energy into the next ideological question like an untiring seeker of knowledge.

As their discussion spiraled deeper into political and philosophical theory, the concepts became increasingly abstract. It reached a point where even the sharp-witted Alina strained under the mental load of translating. Finding accurate Terran equivalents for the unique, otherworldly terminology Gusi accidentally let slip was no small feat.

Sensing the escalating complexity, Frostnova had tactfully excused herself hours ago, accompanying Alina to check on the Shield Guards and Yeti Squadron operatives who were still sleeping or unconscious on the forest outskirts.

In the end, only Gusi and Talulah remained, talking through the bitter cold until dawn broke.

Seeing Gusi stand, Talulah opened her mouth, clearly eager to squeeze in one last question.

Gusi immediately raised a hand, pointing a slender finger toward the brightening horizon. “It’s time to end this. Your friends haven’t slept all night.”

Talulah snapped her mouth shut, a flush of embarrassment coloring her cheeks. She quickly composed herself, smoothed out her coat, and offered Gusi a solemn, deeply respectful bow.

Straightening up, she turned to leave, but her boots suddenly stopped in the snow. She glanced back over her shoulder.

“May I… ask for your guidance in the future?”

Gusi let a few seconds of silence stretch between them. He didn’t give her a direct answer. “I won’t necessarily be here.”

“Thank you!”

Taking his non-rejection as tacit permission, Talulah offered a bright smile and jogged lightly toward where Alina was resting in the distance.

Watching the young leader’s retreating figure, Gusi slowly raised a hand to shield his eyes. The morning sun cresting the horizon felt entirely too dazzling.

‘…I must be crazy,’he muttered to the empty air, his voice thick with deep confusion.’Why did I agree to this?’

He despised trouble. He had absolutely zero desire to get dragged into the bloody, convoluted disputes of this world. His only goal was to quietly play the role of a reclusive forest warden and live a peaceful life.

Yet, faced with that pure, unadulterated idealism, he had unwittingly invested far more time and mental energy than he ever anticipated.

Unable to parse his own contradictory behavior, Gusi shoved the headache-inducing thoughts to the back of his mind for now.

He pulled up the mental group chat interface. After several failed attempts to harass him overnight, Vane had left a few cryptic instructions and vanished, likely off tinkering with some new blood magic or causing his own brand of chaos. Gregor had been dead silent all night, his status a mystery.

After firing off a brief, reassuring reply to Vera’s concerned messages, Gusi dismissed the UI and looked up.

He immediately met a gaze that had been firmly locked onto him the moment he stood. It was a heavy, suffocatingly complex stare.

Patriot.

The towering Wendigo had quietly awakened in the early hours of the morning. Yet, he hadn’t taken a single step forward to interrupt the debate, choosing instead to wait in absolute, statuesque silence.

Gusi gestured toward a secluded section of the forest. Patriot understood the silent command and followed, his massive frame parting the brush.

Once Alina caught up to resume her translation duties, the three of them moved a safe distance away from the makeshift camp. Gusi finally stopped and turned to face the giant.

“Kin… I apologize.”

Patriot spoke first. His massive, horned head was bowed slightly, his gravelly voice carrying an unbearable, crushing weight.

Gusi immediately reached out to stop him. “Please, lift your head, Buldrokkas’tee.”

The Druid offered a shallow bow, expressing his genuine respect for the ancient warrior who had bled to protect countless Infected. “I salute you, leader of the Guerrillas. Your determination and persistence are admirable. Yesterday’s conflict stemmed from a misunderstanding. You fought to protect those you cherish; there is no need to apologize to me.”

Patriot fell silent. The guilt pooling in his eyes did not dissipate; if anything, it deepened.

“I did not… protect… the kin,” his voice grated out, intermittent and ragged, thick with the accumulated agony of a century. “I… have failed… all my kin.”

“I am not a member of the tribe you originally led,” Gusi stated calmly, trying to sever the root of the old soldier’s misplaced guilt. “You should be aware of this.”

“I… have failed the tribe…” Patriot kept repeating, the words a hollow mantra.

Seeing the giant hopelessly trapped in the quicksand of his own past, Gusi decided to steer the conversation in another direction.

“Your body is in a very bad state.” Gusi’s gaze drifted downward, scanning the towering figure. “You should not continue to fight.”

Stripped of his heavy, concealing armor, Patriot’s terrifying physical degradation was laid bare. His withered torso, reduced to little more than taut skin stretched over massive bones, was violently consumed by hideous clusters of active Originium crystals. With every normal step and shift of his stance, the sickening sound of jagged Originium scraping and colliding against itself echoed in the quiet woods.

This body had long since surpassed its biological limits. It was a walking corpse, animated entirely by an iron-forged will that forced it to hold on.

“I cannot…” Patriot’s tone dropped, the aura of an iron-blooded commander flaring to life around him. “Nor… should I rest.”

The Wendigo focused his singular, intense gaze on Gusi, finally asking the question he had always hidden in his heart. “Kin, you… where do you come from? Are there… any others…”

“Just me,” Gusi answered without hesitation.

He couldn’t explain that he came from another world and could only give this blunt truth, which sounded like the most direct and cruel answer to the old warrior.

Alina froze, staring blankly at Gusi, unable to bring herself to translate the death sentence of a species. It wasn’t until Patriot turned his heavy gaze toward her that she flinched and hurriedly relayed the words in Ursus.

Upon hearing the translation, Patriot’s mountainous body visibly swayed. His mechanical breathing grew agonizingly heavy and slow.

“Only… one left…” he murmured. His already hunched posture sank even lower, as if the sky itself had finally crushed his spine.

Seeing Patriot drown in an ocean of sorrow due to the cruel answer, Gusi suddenly recalled the instructions Vane had left in the chat. It was as if the Vampire had perfectly foreseen this exact tragedy.

[Vane: If Patriot asks about your kin, and falls into guilt after getting the answer, Third Brother, please do this…]

Gusi remained silent for a long moment before speaking again, his voice carrying an unquestionable, ancient solemnity.

“Lift your head, Buldrokkas’tee.”

Compelled by the sheer authority in the tone, Patriot slowly raised his heavy, horned skull.

In the next breath, Gusi retrieved an ancient, carefully carved horn and placed it in front of his bony face.

A low, deeply penetrating horn sound suddenly tore through the canopy of the Black Forest. It was the primordial call of the wilderness, saturated with the untamed aura of nature and the sovereign will of the forest itself. The sound echoed outward, long and lingering.

As the final note faded, the woods plunged into a brief, unnatural silence.

Immediately after, under the utterly shocked gazes of Patriot and Alina, the forest came alive.

The surrounding ancient trees began to slowly, solemnly bend. Their massive trunks bowed deeply toward the clearing. It wasn’t an aggressive posture, but rather a gesture of supreme reverence, an ancient ritual.

At the apex of those bowed trunks, pale, bony structures began to organically grow from the bark. They twisted and fused until they formed perfect replicas of Wendigo skulls.

Hundreds of trees. Thousands of Wendigo skulls.

In that suspended moment, they all focused their gaze on the lone, pure-blood Wendigo standing in the center: Buldrokkas’tee.

Even with his ruined eyes hidden behind a blindfold, Patriot clearly felt the weight of those stares. They were the gazes of his kin.

It was a calm, infinitely inclusive gaze that seemed to transcend the rigid boundaries of life and death.

Bathed in the silent vigil of this spectral tribe manifested by the forest, Patriot’s massive frame began to tremble uncontrollably.

Just then, Gusi’s calm, authoritative voice sounded again, relayed flawlessly to Patriot’s ears by a trembling, tear-streaked Alina who was still dutifully translating.

“These are my friends, who asked me to convey this to you.”

Gusi paused slightly, letting each subsequent word fall with a weight that shook the soul.

“Keep, Buldrokkas’tee. You have already… done well enough.”

Under the silent witness of the many phantom kin, the Lord of the Forest declared this long-overdue absolution and affirmation to the broken commander.

“We… bear you no hatred.”

Boom. It was as if a foundational pillar deep within Patriot’s soul had completely detonated.

The crushing monolith named kin guilt, the burden that had propped him up for a century and tortured him for a century, finally crumbled into dust in this eerie and sacred forest.

Deprived of the agony that fueled his defiance, he could no longer hold up. His armored knees slammed heavily into the frozen earth with a dull, echoing thud.

Patriot’s broad shoulders heaved violently. From beneath his mechanical breathing mask, a low, wretched whimper tore loose, sounding like an injured beast.

This was Patriot. The immovable pillar of the Infected. The revered, infallible leader relied upon by all members of the Guerrillas. Now reduced to a lost, weeping child in the snow.

No… considering the sprawling lifespan of a pure-blood Wendigo, Buldrokkas’tee was indeed still young. He had simply lost all the elders he could rely on too early, forced to shoulder the impossible survival of an entire dying race until this very day.

As his raw whimpers echoed through the clearing, the bowing Wendigo Trees slowly shifted closer. Countless slender, vibrant vines extended from their branches, slithering through the air.

These vines gently wrapped around Patriot’s trembling form. They did not bind him, but wove around him.

The emerald tendrils crisscrossed over his Originium-ravaged skin, merging, hardening, and reinforcing one another. Under the breathless gaze of everyone present, the vines calcified and transformed, forging a magnificent suit of pitch-black armor pulsing with ancient vitality.

Patriot raised his head in a daze, staring blankly at the sudden, miraculous metamorphosis of his own body.

Gusi stepped forward, firmly grasping the giant’s shoulders, and steadily hauled the kneeling warrior back to his feet.

“This is the gift of the kin,” Gusi explained, his eyes sweeping over the immaculate, pitch-black plating. “It fears no fire, fears no frost, and is as resilient as the forest itself.”

He paused, applying a gentle pressure to Patriot’s shoulder, turning the massive Wendigo around.

“Therefore… you can now embrace your daughter.”

Frostnova’s volatile Originium Arts kept her body at a lethally cold temperature, a curse that meant even Patriot would suffer severe frostbite if he ever dared to hold her. But now, that barrier was gone.

Patriot shuddered. He walked slowly, but with absolute certainty, toward the treeline where Frostnova had just appeared.

“Dad…”

Frostnova only managed to choke out a single syllable before she was swept up and enveloped against a broad, solid chest.

There was no bone-piercing cold tearing at his flesh. There was no burning heat radiating from his infected blood. There was only the solid, grounding touch of armor, and the heavy, frantic thumping of a father’s heartbeat.

Frostnova stiffened for a fraction of a second. Then, she threw her arms around him, hugging him back with desperate strength, burying her face into the chest that made her feel incredibly safe.

Patriot cradled his petite daughter in his massive arms as gently as possible, his huge palm stroking her snow-white hair.

In this fleeting moment, the Wendigo who had lost everything, the monster the world viewed as the very incarnation of war, finally embraced his entire world. His only remaining, most precious treasure.

The morning sun fully breached the horizon. Golden sunlight filtered through the gaps in the canopy, spilling over the embracing father and daughter, plating their reunion in a warm, radiant halo.

“Take a rest, Buldrokkas’tee.”

Gusi turned his back on the scene, quietly leading Alina away to give the family their space.

“Here… you don’t have to move forward anymore.”