Arknights: The Prophet of Penguin Logistics — Chapter 21

Chapter 21: Street FightingYou'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.

“Hold tight to your seatbelts.”

Texas’s voice was cool, utterly detached from the chaos brewing in her rearview mirror. She floored the accelerator, her hand yanking the emergency brake with practiced, violent precision. A shrill, ear-splitting screech tore through the street as acrid white smoke instantly swallowed the black luxury sedan. The heavy vehicle surged forward, a wild beast tearing straight into the encroaching crowd of interceptors. She drove with zero regard for collateral damage, forcing the armed thugs to dive frantically out of the path of the roaring engine.

Inside the cabin, survival was just as precarious.

Lynn, having anticipated the madness, immediately threw his arms around Exusiai, using the Sankta girl as a makeshift anchor. He didn’t care if clinging to a woman bruised his pride; he just wanted to live. But the back seat was crowded. A tall Sarkaz mercenary occupied the remaining space. Groaning from her fresh injuries, the mercenary was violently thrown off balance by the drift, slamming hard into Lynn’s side. Two massive, jagged horns grazed the skin of his neck, burying themselves deep into the leather upholstery inches from his face. A cold sweat broke out across his spine.

“Watch the horns!” Lynn yelped.

“S-sorry…” Meteorite gasped, her pale face tight with pain as she struggled to push herself upright.

Before Lynn could wave off the apology, Texas cursed under her breath. A makeshift roadblock loomed ahead. Without missing a beat, she wrenched the wheel and ripped the handbrake again, throwing the sedan into a brutal 180-degree slide. Inertia turned Meteorite into a living projectile. The Sarkaz woman crashed heavily into Lynn’s chest, knocking the wind out of his lungs in a sharp gasp.

All those trashy romance novels that waxed poetic about the thrill of warm, fragrant jade falling into one’s embrace were absolute garbage. When you were in a car pulling a hundred and eighty miles an hour without a seatbelt, a body crashing into you felt less like romance and more like taking a sandbag to the ribs. He saw stars, his skull throbbing like it had been struck by a sledgehammer.

He barely had time to blink the dizziness away amidst Meteorite’s frantic, breathless apologies and awkward pats before Texas threw the car into a razor-sharp ninety-degree turn. Meteorite’s weight pressed down on him again, crushing the remaining air from his lungs. Lynn let out a miserable, strangled shriek.

“Texas! I beg you, take it easy! There’s a fragile, normal person back here!”

“Then you drive!” Texas snapped back, her foot pinned to the floorboards as the engine howled. “There are unidentified armed personnel swarming every block. We have to maintain mobility!”

“Then shoot back!” Lynn yelled over the roaring engine.

“We can’t engage unless they fire first!” Texas retorted, her eyes darting between the mirrors. “Do you want to end up locked in an L.G.D. interrogation room having a chat with your Madam Ch’en?”

‘Can’t argue with the driver,’ Lynn thought bitterly, his stomach churning as the chassis rattled violently.

Pinned awkwardly in the center of the leather seat, he struggled to draw a breath while Meteorite continued to stammer apologies. Suddenly, a cold spike of dread pierced his skull, his terrifyingly accurate intuition flaring to life. Through the rear window, his eyes locked onto an unnatural, metallic glint flashing from a high-rise building behind them. The silhouette of a sniper wielding a massive heavy crossbow snapped into focus. The invisible line of fire was aimed dead center at their speeding sedan.

“Texas! Sniper on the fourteenth floor, back and to the right!”

Texas didn’t hesitate. She whipped the steering wheel in a violent 180-degree spin.

A bizarre, tearing shriek ripped through the air as a massive explosive bolt struck the concrete exactly where they had been a fraction of a second prior. The street erupted in a shockwave of shattered asphalt and rippling force that nearly flipped the heavy sedan. It was a sheer display of Texas’s monstrous driving skill that she managed to ride the shockwave, balancing the car on two wheels along the edge of the blast crater before slamming it back down.

Glancing at the geyser of dirt and debris fading in the rearview mirror, Texas slammed a glowing red button on the dashboard. “Exusiai! Meteorite! Fire!”

“Got it!” Exusiai chirped, her cheerful voice cutting through the tension.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.

As if rehearsed a thousand times, she pushed upward, popping open the modified sunroof. Her Vector submachine guns roared to life, a pair of blinding bursts instantly detonating a pursuing motorcycle into a ball of expanding fire. Beside Lynn, the injured Meteorite gritted her teeth, forcing herself upward. She hoisted her heavy grenade-launcher crossbow and fired a single, devastating explosive round back toward the sniper’s perch.

The projectile sailed through the air and struck the fourteenth floor. The small room was instantly consumed in a hellish fireball. A blackened, humanoid figure, desperately swatting at the flames clinging to its body, plummeted from the high-rise and vanished from sight.

Still awkwardly pinned in the back seat, Lynn let out a long, shaky exhale as he watched the two girls raining suppressive fire on their pursuers. He had absolute faith in Exusiai and Meteorite’s marksmanship. As the number of hostile vehicles visibly thinned out, the cold prickle of his intuition slowly receded, a silent confirmation that the immediate danger had passed.

“Well, I guess Madam Ch’en and I can never be good friends now,” Lynn muttered wistfully. He watched a pursuing sedan spin out of control after Exusiai shredded its tires, only for Meteorite to finish it off with a deafening explosion. “I was actually planning to save up some LMD and treat her to a nice dinner.”

Exusiai ducked back into the cabin, smoothly ejecting her spent magazines. “She’s never really been friends with anyone, has she?” she asked, her halo glowing brightly as she tilted her head. “Why do you want to get along with her so badly?”

Before Lynn could formulate an excuse, Croissant, who had been chilling in the passenger seat this entire time, flashed him a knowing thumbs-up in the rearview mirror.

“Because she’s super pretty and has that intense, commanding aura. She looks heroic and magnificent, right?”

“Ah, yeah, something like that,” Lynn admitted, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Heh. Boys always fall for girls like that,” Croissant chuckled. The sturdy Forte Defender sat perfectly still despite the chaotic rocking of the car, resting her massive power hammer casually between her knees. “I’ve read countless books on marketing psychology just to boost my sales. I can read what young guys like you are thinking at a single glance. So—”

“Large roadblock ahead,” Texas interrupted, her voice deadpan as she stared down the barricaded street. “Croissant, Flight Mode.”

“Alright, alright~” Croissant hummed, cracking her knuckles.

“…Flight Mode?” Lynn echoed, his blood running cold.

‘Holy crap, this car can fly? And why is Croissant the one activating it?’ He watched in sheer bewilderment as Croissant dropped her smug grin, replacing it with a terrifyingly serious expression. He had always been shocked by the sheer absurdity of Originium technology, but the next sequence of events shattered his understanding of physics entirely.

The floor panel beneath Croissant’s seat hissed and retracted, opening directly to the rushing asphalt below. Clutching her massive power hammer, Croissant licked her lips, a sharp, feral glint in her eyes as she stared at the blurring ground. Heavy metal clamps extended from the chassis, locking the hammer into a fixed position. Sizzling arcs of white Originium energy began to crackle violently around the weapon’s head. A deep sense of impending doom washed over Lynn.

A bizarre, horrifying realization clicked in his mind. Back in the era of internet shitposting, there was a famous saying: ‘If the thrust is great enough, even a brick can fly to the heavens.’ In other words, as long as a massive, concentrated kinetic force was applied to the ground beneath this two-ton vehicle, even a luxury sedan could temporarily achieve flight.

Recognizing the sheer, suicidal insanity of this plan, Lynn shook his head so hard it blurred. “No, no no, no no no no—”

“Croissant-Go! Launch!” Croissant roared with a manic grin, slamming the energized hammer downward with devastating force.

A deafening boom, like a heavy artillery shell detonating at point-blank range, rocked the cabin. The asphalt beneath them instantly spiderwebbed and exploded into dust. Amidst the howling wind and Lynn’s terrified, high-pitched screams, the heavy Penguin Logistics sedan launched into the air, tracing an elegant, impossible arc over the towering roadblock. Under the stunned, wide-eyed gazes of the interceptors below, the car smashed heavily back onto the pavement on the other side. Its tires shrieked, kicking up a massive plume of dust as it sped brazenly into the distance, leaving the chaos far behind.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.