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ArabicArknights: The Prophet of Penguin Logistics — Chapter 23
Chapter 23: Intensive Training
“Ah… my warm, wonderful bed…”
Stumbling into the deepest recesses of the Penguin Logistics safehouse, Lynn practically threw himself onto his mattress without even bothering to strip off his dust-caked clothes. Feeling the sheer, unadulterated joy of rest transmitting through every exhausted cell in his body, he let out a long, ragged sigh of absolute satisfaction.
This room was originally nothing more than a storage closet. Space was at a premium here; Sora and Croissant shared one dorm, while Texas and Exusiai shared another. There were a few other Operators on the payroll, but they all maintained external accommodations and rarely crashed at the safehouse. The cluster of rooms in the back were strictly for hoarding supplies—until Lynn arrived. His current sanctuary was simply a cleaned-out utility room. It had been hastily tidied up, but it contained a bed, a desk, and everything else necessary to sustain human life.
The soundproofing, however, left much to be desired.
Excited cheers soon drifted through the thin walls from Croissant’s room across the hall, punctuated by the unmistakable clinking of LMD and the rapid murmurs of financial calculations. Croissant pulled in a massive income, but her expenses were equally astronomical. Her heavy defender gear, shield maintenance, and various mechanical odds and ends were all bottomless money pits. Still, the one high-risk emergency trip and the four standard delivery runs she had completed today would keep her in high spirits for quite a while.
In stark contrast, the room next door—belonging to Exusiai and Texas—was dead silent. He had no idea what the two of them were doing in there.
After lying paralyzed on his bed for a good ten minutes, Lynn forced himself to swallow his lingering drowsiness. He groaned, pushed himself up from the mattress, and dragged his aching body over to the small wooden desk.
“Ah… today, I still have to work hard on the settings for my new book… even if absolutely no one reads it…”
Lynn flipped open his notebook, clicked his pen, and sat there contemplating the blank, white page.
Every single draft and setting he had originally written had been reduced to floating ash during Meteorite’s explosive bombardment, leaving him with nothing but a single, crumpled outline page. But even that outline wasn’t particularly useful anymore. Many of the standard sci-fi and fantasy concepts he had conceived in his past life already existed in this world. Terra was a land of walking catastrophes, magical Originium Arts, and mobile cities; standard fantasy tropes wouldn’t impress anyone here.
So, Lynn chewed on the end of his pen and decided to write about something completely alien to this reality.
He needed the most outstanding, mind-bending lore from his previous world. Writing a full novel was an agonizingly slow process, but an excellent, airtight setting could instantly hook a legion of loyal readers. In this unfamiliar world, where he was still completely in the dark about local literary tastes, introducing a few wildly exciting concepts first was the safest bet. Since he had nothing left to write about regarding biotechnology, should he pivot to pure fantasy? The Lord of the Rings? World of Warcraft? Warhammer Fantasy?
Or… something truly grim and epic. Warhammer 40K.
If he wrote a novel set against the backdrop of the grim darkness of the far future—even if the plot itself didn’t achieve massive commercial success—the sheer scale and brutality of the setting would surely attract a cult following, right?
Staring at the blank notebook, Lynn made up his mind to establish the foundational lore first. The bookstores and newsstands in Lungmen were a disorganized mess, and he wasn’t entirely sure what the local demographic craved. But a good setting possessed an inherent gravity. Establishing the foundation of the Imperium first couldn’t possibly hurt.
But just as he pressed the pen to the paper to chronicle the first millennium, the distinct click of a door opening echoed from the adjacent room. Soft, measured footsteps approached, stopping right outside his threshold. A light, rhythmic knock followed.
“Is that you, Exusiai?” Lynn called out, not looking up from his page. “Just come in. Since when do you ever knock when I’m in my room?”
“It’s me.”
Lynn’s pen slipped, leaving a stark black line across the page. “Te—Texas?!”
Why was she here?
Startled out of his creative trance, Lynn scrambled to his feet and pulled the door open.
Texas stood in the doorway, fully dressed in her usual sharp attire, casually chewing on the end of a chocolate Pocky stick. Her golden eyes swept over him, taking in his frail, pale complexion—the lingering aftermath of his severe motion sickness, vomiting, and diarrhea from earlier that day. The formidable Lupo driver and elite Vanguard Operator leaned her head in slightly, her gaze shifting to the open notebook on his desk. She raised a slender eyebrow.
“Planning to write a novel?”
“Ah, I haven’t quite gotten around to the actual writing yet…”
“Don’t write yet,” Texas interrupted, her tone flat but carrying an obvious weight. “Judging by your performance today, your physical condition is a serious liability. You need training. Follow me.”
Lynn blinked, gripping the doorframe. “Can’t I just train in here? Do some push-ups?”
“You didn’t actually think Penguin Logistics lacked a dedicated training ground, did you?”
Our dorms are cramped like pigeon coops, and now you’re telling me we actually have a secret training facility?
Looking at Texas, whose expression remained completely deadpan and justified, Lynn cast a sad, longing glance back at his notebook. The pages were still blank. Defeated, he let go of the doorframe and followed the Lupo girl out into the hall.
He always felt a strange, suffocating sense of guilt whenever he was alone with Texas. On one hand, he felt like he had inadvertently ‘stolen’ her best friend’s attention; on the other, Texas had seen him at his absolute most pathetic today. He had a lingering, irrational desire to avoid her gaze entirely.
, Texas always maintained a strictly businesslike, unreadable demeanor. She was undeniably beautiful, but being near her wasn’t like hanging out with Exusiai or Croissant, where he could run his mouth and joke about anything. The air around her was always sharp. Lynn could only follow her in silence, his expression bitter, as she led him down a hidden stairwell into the deep basement structure of the building.
With a casual tap of her hand against a wall panel, heavy industrial lights flickered to life, illuminating a massive, reinforced underground training ground.
Texas turned to face him, her posture relaxed but perfectly balanced. “I apologize to you for what happened today. I truly didn’t consider your personal physical limits. I’m very sorry that you suffered so much during the journey.” Her golden eyes narrowed slightly. “However, your physique is entirely too weak. You lack the basic constitution to resist even minor impacts. At this rate, the mere act of traveling will kill you before the enemies do. Over the next ten days, I am going to work hard to train you. At the very least, you need to perform better than you do now when handling express deliveries.”
Buzz.
Texas calmly reached down to her hips and pulled two sleek sword hilts from her pouches. With a slight flick of her wrists, pale orange light beams instantly ignited from the emitters, casting an unsettling, fragmented rainbow glare across the concrete walls. It was the magnificent, lethal radiance of highly compressed Originium Arts—a fantastical, destructive power that Lynn currently had zero access to.
“,” Texas added, her voice dropping a fraction of an octave, “high-intensity sparring will also ensure you forget about doing boring things.”
Wh—Why? Writing isn’t boring!
Looking at the deadly serious expression settling over Texas’s features, Lynn could physically feel the atmosphere in the room shift.
A heavy, suffocating pressure, like the static charge right before a catastrophic rainstorm, closed in on him from all directions. It wasn’t as conspicuous or glaring as raw killing intent, but he could acutely feel the absolute determination of the Vanguard standing before him. Lynn, being a shut-in writer, possessed absolutely zero martial arts experience. His entire combat repertoire consisted of vaguely remembering medieval fencing videos he had watched online.
Swallowing hard, he backed up toward the weapon racks lining the edge of the room. He awkwardly pulled a blunt training rapier from the wall, gave it a shaky, experimental wave toward Texas, and nodded to confirm his readiness.
Hmm. If we actually fight, I will definitely die.
Lynn looked at Texas, who stood perfectly poised and lethal before him, and offered a strained, overly sincere smile. He tried to project as much goodwill and respect for her profession as humanly possible.
“Ah, um, Texas? I actually very seriously suggest that we should just do some light stretching first, really.”
“…Are you ready?” Texas asked, completely ignoring his plea. “I’m coming.”
Looking at Lynn, who held the rapier with all the grace of a startled civilian, Texas’s hair instantly flared crimson under the violent glow of her Arts. Her expression hardened into stone, and in the span of a single heartbeat, she vanished from her spot.