Arknights: The Prophet of Penguin Logistics — Chapter 89

Chapter 89: Mercy (Part 1)

“Hell is nothing more than this…”

“I have let you see the flip side of the medal, Doctor Shining.”

“No, I have seen similar scenes before. But how should I put it? Even if I were to see a scene like this another hundred times, I would never be able to get used to it…”

Looking at the tragic state within the magnificent Knights’ Council, Shining sheathed her longsword. Her typically calm face revealed a rare, clear expression of emotion. A deep disgust toward the slaughter surrounding her.

Nearl felt the exact same revulsion. Looking at the carnage painting the polished floors, she knew her own expression mirrored the Sarkaz medic’s perfectly.

But this was merely a single stop on their violent journey. They had to reach the most critical location: the stadium.

“Do not collect the bodies yet. Let us head to the stadium first.”

Nearl cast one last disgusted glance at the bloody, pungent corpses littering the ground and beckoned Shining to run with her.

The Knights who had forsaken their honor were actively slaughtering each other within the very halls of the Knights’ Council, a place that once stood as the absolute symbol of their nobility. For reasons entirely unknown to the defenders, this rebellion had been launched in a hasty, unprepared frenzy. Yet even with such terrible planning, more than a fifth of the city’s Knights had drawn their blades against their sworn brothers in arms.

If not for Nearl’s timely report, the loyalists might have truly been overrun.

Catching an unprepared enemy off guard usually yields a decisive victory, but when both sides are armed and waiting, the conflict instantly devolves into a brutal, grinding street battle.

By the time Shining pushed open the heavy doors with her sword drawn to end the skirmish, nearly fifty bodies had already fallen inside and outside the Council grounds. Counting the sniper team that had attempted to ambush Shining and perform targeted eliminations on the noble Knights, the total number of traitors involved in the uprising easily exceeded two hundred. This included a massive swarm of Knight squires and several elusive assassins from the Armorless Union.

The Armorless Union existed to hunt Knights. They were the standard military black-ops force used by the Kazimierz ruling class to intimidate lone wanderers and unaffiliated personnel. Seeing their shadows moving through the grand hall made Nearl and the conservative High-ranking Knights realize the situation had completely spiraled out of control.

Strangely, despite possessing the sheer numbers and strength to wipe out the loyalists, the traitors had triggered the rebellion in a reckless rush. It ultimately caused only a localized disturbance. The death toll was surprisingly low for a coup. Only one urban connection point lost its signal, and the technicians restored it within ten minutes.

All thunder and no rain. That was the shared verdict among the survivors as they finished clearing out the rogue Knights who had scrubbed their identifying marks.

No matter how one analyzed the tactical situation, the rebellion was foolish. The traitors only needed to delay their plans for a single month to secure total control over the city, yet they chose to throw their lives away here in the mud.

Realizing the pieces did not fit, Nearl led Shining out of the Knights’ Council. They hurried alongside the remaining loyalists toward the secondary attack locations extracted from the surviving prisoners.

One of the loyalist Knights had arrived early to assist them. He had joined the Council defense immediately after helping wipe out the sniper unit that targeted Shining.

This High-ranking Knight wore a heavy hood and grotesque, cape-like equipment that flared out behind him. He darted through the streets and alleys above them, leaping effortlessly between stone protrusions and balconies. His unique Originium Arts granted him extraordinary gripping power and enhanced kinetic leaping ability. He maintained perfect balance in mid-air, keeping a vigilant watch over the surrounding rooftops while shouting down his report to Shining and Nearl as they sprinted through the streets below.

“The low-ranking Knight, Red… he was the only child of Midir the Lightless!”

“Not long ago, the boy was executed on the spot for allegedly murdering a High-ranking Knight. His head was severed, tanned into a macabre statue, and delivered straight to Midir. It was the ultimate humiliation, and it drove the old man completely insane. He mobilized immediately, rushing to eliminate everyone who killed his son, and anyone even remotely connected to the boy, before the authorities could silence him.”

“The servants and followers who had been lying in wait were dragged out by him and scattered across various districts to create a massive diversion. He didn’t want to truly conquer his homeland. He ordered those people to create chaos simply to buy time. He personally took his most elite subordinates directly to the stadium, intending to corner all his true enemies in one place. That is why the enemy presence was exceptionally heavy at the Knights’ Council and near Miss Shining, while the rest of the city remains practically empty!”

“This is nothing but a clumsy, desperate act of revenge.”

From a tactical standpoint, the rebellion was unbelievably stupid. But from the perspective of a crazed, grieving father preparing to burn the world down for revenge, the chaotic deployment made perfect, terrifying sense.

As a hidden leader among the radicals, Midir had always commanded considerable power in the shadows. When his mind snapped and he flipped the board, his subordinates had no choice but to bite the bullet and follow him into the fire.

, because a large portion of the radical faction had gone outside the city limits to receive a black-market shipment of Originium-laced weapons, the military strength of the Knights within the city walls was instantly unbalanced. The radicals left behind could only be wiped out piecemeal by the unified loyalists.

Midir had anticipated this from the start. He used his core force to trap Nearl and Shining at the Council and in the countryside, theoretically deploying enough manpower to kill them all.

Then, he marched his largest, most lethal battalion straight into the stadium, fully intending to sacrifice his political enemies in a sea of blood to appease his murdered child.

Midir the Lightless possessed Originium Arts that could not only manipulate physical darkness but also violently cloud the human mind. No one doubted for a single second that the crazy old man was capable of slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent spectators just to make his point.

The Knights’ Council, having finally freed up some manpower from the defense, immediately dispatched strike teams toward the massive stadium, praying they could prevent the impending disaster.

“He has gone completely, hopelessly insane. He lost his mind the very second that head was delivered to his estate. It was less than twelve hours apart. The head arrived, and immediately after, he initiated the great rebellion. But he deceived his own subordinates. He only wanted to kill the two of you, along with the couriers delivering the weapon shipment.”

“The number of Knights they sent after us was truly staggering. If I did not know a thing or two about martial arts, I would certainly have been killed in that ambush.”

“…Regardless, their conspiracy has temporarily failed.”

Glancing down at Shining, who kept pace with the armored Knights with a calm, effortless grace, the hooded Knight monitoring from the sky took a deep breath. He forcibly suppressed the rising panic in his chest and continued shouting directional coordinates to the strike team handling the labyrinth of streets and alleys.

They had to reach the stadium before those madmen locked the gates.

A suffocating weight pressed down on the hearts of the vast majority of the runners. Everyone here lived in Louvre, and they knew these streets intimately.

When they noticed that their memorized shortcut routes were already covered in fresh, overlapping footprints, a cold sense of foreboding began to churn in their stomachs. The enemy had beaten them to the chokepoints.

But even if they could only save one person, they had to push forward. They wanted to save those innocent civilians trapped in the stands.

This was what it truly meant to be a Knight of Kazimierz.

“The entrance to the stadium’s express passage is at the end of the alley ahead. We might be too late…”

“Wait! Look at that over there!”

“This… what is going on…”

Looking at the thick, crimson bloodstains spreading outward from the mouth of the alley, the Knights ground to a halt. Standing downwind, the vanguard was nearly knocked unconscious by a terrifying, suffocating stench of fresh blood that rolled out from the shadows like a physical wall.