Arknights: The Scarlet Devil of Terra — Chapter 14

Chapter 14: Traitor

Flandre explained that the things she called her ‘Eyes’ would not have any effect as long as she did not consciously and actively crush them. It was just like how she had been living here for so long without accidentally causing any harm to the people or the architecture around her. Hearing her explain this with such innocent certainty, the others finally let out a collective breath of relief. They realized that Flandre had indeed been wandering around their base for a long time, and they truly had never seen her accidentally destroy a single cup or table. Thus, they concluded that this terrifying Originium Arts of hers was actually quite controllable.

After learning enough about her abilities to feel at ease, Alina took Flandre by the hand and led her toward the Reunion Movement’s newly constructed schoolhouse. Alina mentioned with a gentle smile that Flandre’s spoken language was no longer a major issue, so for the foreseeable future, Flandre could attend classes alongside the other children in the camp.

“Really?” Flandre asked, tilting her head.

Flandre pondered the greatest significance of going to school for herself. She was not averse to contact with others. To be precise, as a child, she really wanted to play with everyone. It was just that in the past, her older sister had kept her under very strict control, locking her away in the basement. also, according to another set of memories, her emotions used to be highly unstable, making it easy for her to lose control. Once her god-like strength went berserk, it could effortlessly obliterate anyone nearby. Because of that, she had obediently stayed indoors, trying her very best not to cause trouble for anyone else.

Now that Alina said she could play with other children, did that prove she had finally grown up?

Flandre’s genius mind reached a perfect, flawless conclusion.

Alina nodded gently. “Of course. Do not tell me little Flandre is not willing to play with the others?”

Flandre nodded her head vigorously.

“Flandre is willing, Flandre is willing!”

She raised her small hand high into the air.

Soon after, she was brought into the Reunion Movement’s makeshift classroom. The room was packed with children of all sizes; the oldest were fourteen or fifteen, while the youngest were merely six or seven. It could not be helped. The living conditions and resources of the Reunion Movement were severely limited in the frozen tundra. They could not afford to separate the students by age or grade, so everyone had to study together in one large group.

Thanks to the patient foundation Alina had laid for her, Flandre’s academic progress was incredibly fast. Even though the distinct, crystalline wings on her back continued to broadcast her identity as a Vampire to everyone in the room, the children only looked at her with faces full of sheer admiration, completely devoid of any fear or dread.

A certain little white-haired boy had originally intended to surpass Flandre in their studies to prove his own superiority. But after half a month of sharing the classroom, he discovered that she was absorbing knowledge faster and faster, while he was the one left sweating, struggling desperately just to keep up with her pace.

‘Dammit, even in studying, I cannot compare to that monster of a girl!’

Mephisto watched Flandre sitting happily in the middle of the crowd not far away, grinding his teeth in silent frustration.

“Flandre, please come out for a moment!”

One day during the middle of a lesson, Alina was called out into the hallway. Shortly after, she walked back into the room with a deeply worried expression and called out to Flandre.

“Flandre is coming!”

After stepping out of the warm classroom and into the biting chill of the corridor, she saw Talulah standing a short distance away.

The Draco leader’s severe injuries were mostly healed. Flandre had to admit that this woman’s physical constitution was truly impressive. Back when Flandre first found her, Talulah was so heavily wounded she could not even lift her arms. Yet, she was able to walk after just three days, and a week later, she was already jumping around the camp, actively leading patrol teams out into the snow to handle Reunion affairs. Alina had advised her several times to rest in bed for a few more days, but once Talulah’s professional drive and sense of duty kicked in, she simply turned a deaf ear to all warnings.

“Is there trouble you need Flandre’s help with?”

Upon seeing the serious look on the leader’s face, Flandre more or less understood the reason for this sudden visit.

Talulah nodded slowly, her eyes scanning the little girl.

“It has been a long time since you last fed, has it not?”

Flandre rubbed her flat stomach and then nodded in agreement. She was indeed feeling a little bit hungry.

At this point, Alina knew exactly what dark topic the two were about to discuss. Not wanting to shatter her own warm, innocent image of the little girl, the gentle Elafia turned around and quietly walked back into the classroom, closing the door behind her.

After Talulah led Flandre away from the school and back into the secure depths of the Reunion Movement’s headquarters, she pulled out a crumpled photograph and handed it to the girl.

The black-and-white photo showed an ordinary-looking Elafia woman, roughly forty or fifty years old, with tired eyes and a weathered face.

“Flandre knows her. She is the auntie from the neighboring village!” Flandre replied brightly after inspecting the picture.

In that nearby settlement of non-Infected citizens, Flandre had seen this person before. She vaguely remembered that the woman had a family member who had contracted Oripathy, which was the entire reason she had moved to this desolate area in the first place.

“Correct. Her son was an Infected, and because of him, she stayed here and became a member of the village.”

Talulah’s voice grew heavy, carrying the weight of the frozen wasteland outside.

“Three days ago, her son suffered an acute Oripathy seizure in the middle of the night. By the time our patrols discovered the situation, it was already too late. Although our medics did their absolute best to stabilize him, we still could not save the child’s life. After receiving the tragic news, she firmly believed it was our Reunion Movement’s fault, convinced that her son might have lived if we had done things differently. So, she packed her belongings and left the village.”

Talulah paused, her expression hardening into cold steel.

“Normally, there would not be any issue with a grieving mother leaving. The Reunion Movement was indeed partly responsible for failing to monitor the boy closer. But early this morning, Joseph, our deep-cover mole embedded within the Ursus Fourth Army Group, sent an urgent transmission. He reported that she had appeared inside the Fourth Army Group’s military camp. It is highly likely that our geographical coordinates and internal intelligence have been exposed to the enemy.”

Another figure stepped out from the shadows of the command room. It was Frostnova. Compared to Talulah, the Yeti Squadron leader appeared much calmer, her aura radiating a chilling, absolute frost. Having studied military tactics and brutal survival under Patriot since childhood, she viewed the situation with ruthless clarity.

“Fortunately, it is the dead of winter right now,” Frostnova said, her voice like cracking ice. “It is extremely difficult for the Ursus army to mobilize their heavy armor and artillery through these blizzards. We suspect they will use this intelligence to launch a full-scale eradication assault on us in the spring. Joseph has already gone dark to gather more intelligence. This is his name and his physical description.”

Frostnova handed over a second file, her gaze locking onto Flandre with undisguised killing intent. Clearly, the boy’s death was a tragic accident. If the grieving woman had merely cursed the Reunion Movement and walked away, they would not have laid a finger on her. But Frostnova could absolutely never forgive the act of running to the Ursus Army Group to sell out the lives of every Infected hiding in the tundra.

“I need you to infiltrate the Fourth Army Group’s encampment to confirm the situation,” Frostnova commanded. “If she truly has exposed our information, kill her. Then, destroy as much of the intelligence held by the Fourth Army Group as possible to buy us enough time to execute a full withdrawal before spring arrives.”

“Understood. Is there anything else Flandre needs to know?” Flandre asked, her tone completely casual, as if she were being asked to pick up groceries rather than assassinate a military informant.

“The mole will tell you exactly how to operate and how to delay the military’s actions,” Talulah added, kneeling down so she could look directly into Flandre’s crimson eyes. “We cannot give you specific tactical commands from here without enough real-time intelligence. The Fourth Army Group is stationed in this direction, directly northeast of our base. Remember, once you get there, do not act directly on your own. Find our man first.”

“Okay, then Flandre is setting off right now!”

After Flandre nodded obediently in agreement, she turned around, her crystalline wings flaring to life. In a blur of crimson light, she soared straight into the violent sky under the watchful gaze of the two leaders.

The relentless blizzard continued to howl and spread its white veil over the camp. Aside from the students in the schoolhouse, Talulah, and Frostnova, no one even noticed that the little Vampire was no longer among them.

By the time the afternoon rolled around, Flandre had already crossed the frozen wasteland and arrived at the perimeter of the Fourth Army Group camp shown in the photographs.

However, the sky was still quite bright at that hour. With heavily armed Ursus soldiers and logistics personnel constantly coming and going throughout the military camp, she decided not to force her way inside. Instead, she found a snow-covered ridge outside the perimeter, burying herself in the drifts to wait patiently until after nightfall to slip past the watchtowers.

By nightfall, the temperature outside had plummeted to nearly thirty degrees below zero. The biting wind felt like thousands of invisible knives slicing through the dark. Even inside the heavily fortified military camp, absolutely no one was willing to walk around outside except for the occasional, miserable patrol squad huddled in their thick coats. Thus, even if Flandre walked openly down the center of the road in her bright red dress, she would not be discovered as long as she avoided the sweeping searchlights and surveillance cameras.

She recalled the specific location of the mole Talulah had mentioned. After wandering through the freezing shadows for a long time, she finally spotted a dimly lit room attached to a warehouse, labeled ‘Clothing Management’.

She crept up to the frost-covered window and carefully peered inside. She saw only one person sitting at a desk, a man who looked exactly like the second photo Talulah had given her. Only after confirming his identity did she raise her small fist and knock on the heavy iron door.

“Who is it, this late at night!”

The man grumbled, walking suspiciously toward the door. He assumed it was just some freezing soldier who could not stand the bitter cold and had sneaked away from his post to beg for an extra thick coat.

When he pulled the heavy door open, however, he did not see a shivering Ursus guard. Instead, he looked down and saw a little girl dressed in an immaculate, red Gothic dress, completely untouched by the freezing blizzard.

Before the man could even process the absurdity of the sight, Flandre spoke up.

“Hello Joseph, Flandre was sent by Talulah.”

Hearing the leader’s name drop from the little girl’s lips, the man immediately released the tense grip he had placed on the hidden pistol at his waist. He quickly reached out, grabbed Flandre by the shoulder, and pulled her inside the warm room. He poked his head out, looking around the dark, howling perimeter cautiously. After confirming that absolutely no one was watching them, he slammed the iron door shut and locked it tight.

“Just you?” he asked, his voice laced with disbelief.

Flandre nodded her head.

“Just Flandre is enough. Talulah said Flandre is not allowed to act on her own and told Flandre to find you to confirm the plan of action.”

Joseph stared down at the tiny, delicate-looking child, his mind racing.

“Could you be… the Miss Flandre who single-handedly saved those people from the processing factory, and rescued the brothers from the lumber yard?” he asked, his eyes widening in sudden realization.

“It is me!” Flandre nodded cheerfully.

“If it is you, then there should be no problem at all. I have heard of your great name and terrifying deeds from my friends in the movement. Wait a moment!”

Joseph hurried over to a locked metal cabinet and pulled out a detailed architectural map of the military encampment, spreading it across his desk.

“We are here right now, and the traitor’s location is roughly in this dormitory area,” Joseph explained, tracing a finger over the blueprints. “According to the internal information I have managed to intercept, she has indeed defected and handed over our coordinates, but the Ursus higher-ups do not fully trust her yet. So, they are planning to have her personally lead a strike team to our base to provide a bloody token of her loyalty.”

Joseph tapped another section of the map.

“Our leaked intelligence is usually kept in the Confidential Documents Room right here. The information she provided should also be stored there, though there might be a secondary backup at the main headquarters building. You have many crucial things to do next.”

He looked at Flandre seriously, outlining the grim reality of their mission.

“First, take care of the target. Ideally, leave absolutely no trace of her behind. She has a massive amount of information about our base’s layout locked inside her head, and I have heard rumors that the Ursus military employs terrifying Originium Arts that can forcefully read a person’s memories even after they have died. So, she must die thoroughly. Utterly destroyed.”

Flandre nodded, her crimson eyes gleaming with innocent understanding.

“Then there are the Confidential Documents Room and the Intelligence Department,” Joseph continued. “Since it is not entirely certain where the physical documents are stored, it is best to destroy both buildings entirely. Leave nothing but ash.”

Joseph took a deep breath, his expression turning grim.

“Finally… to truly delay the Army Group’s actions and cripple their logistics, this specific location must be detonated. The Army Group’s Explosives Warehouse. Sixty percent of the entire Army Group’s heavy explosives and Originium munitions are stockpiled right here. Once detonated, the chain reaction will instantly destroy a third of the entire camp.”

He pointed to a heavily fortified bunker on the map.

“But this place is heavily guarded by elites, and you probably do not understand the complex mechanisms required to detonate the specialized explosives, so I will go there and do it personally. You will need to cause as much of a violent commotion as possible on your side of the camp when I arrive there, to draw the main troops away from the warehouse. As long as I can enter that bunker and successfully detonate it, the Army Group will find it physically impossible to launch a large-scale offensive against our base all through the spring.”

Flandre nodded to show she understood the tactical layout. She looked up at the man named Joseph, tilting her head slightly.

Actually, there was one minor detail she did not quite understand. He just said that once that warehouse exploded, the blast radius would completely destroy a third of the massive military camp. So how was Joseph, who would be standing right inside the bunker to trigger the blast, supposed to escape safely?

Flandre did not understand the concept of a suicide mission, but Talulah had explicitly told her to follow this man’s arrangements once she arrived. So, she would just be a good girl and do exactly as she was told.

“Kill the target, destroy the Confidential Documents Room and the Intelligence Department, and then cause as big a commotion as possible in this area to draw them away. Is that right?” Flandre repeated, summarizing her tasks.

“Correct. We will set the execution time for exactly seven o’clock tomorrow morning. That is one hour before their morning shift change, but basically everyone will have already woken up in their barracks. also, their combat effectiveness is at its absolute worst at that time due to the freezing morning weather, and it is also when the management staff are least alert, making it much easier for me to sneak into the destination.”

A look of absolute, unwavering determination flashed in Joseph’s tired eyes. He had already accepted his fate.

“Someone is coming!” Flandre suddenly chirped, looking up toward the heavy iron door.

Joseph immediately pointed to the dark inner storage room not far away, silently urging her to hide, and then frantically cleared the classified map off the table, shoving it back into the cabinet.

A dozen seconds later, a desperate knock echoed against the door.

“Who is it!” Joseph shouted, instantly putting on an impatient, gruff persona.

“B-big brother, could you please give me a thicker piece of clothing? This one is way too thin, I cannot stand the cold out there at night. I am going to freeze to death.”

When Joseph unlatched and opened the door, a miserable Ursus soldier stood there, shivering uncontrollably in the biting wind.

“The military supplies are all the same standard issue. If you cannot stand it, how is everyone else surviving out there!”

Joseph glared at the man, cursing a few times under his breath to maintain his cover as a bitter quartermaster. He turned around, pulled out a somewhat tattered, heavy cotton coat from a pile, and tossed it roughly into the soldier’s arms.

“Now take it and get lost!”

“Thank you, thank you so much!” The man clutched the tattered cotton coat like a lifeline, bowing and thanking him profusely as he hurried back out into the deadly darkness.

After listening to the crunching footsteps fade away and confirming the person had gone far away, Flandre quietly walked out of the inner room.

“Why do you not rest inside the storage room for the night? You will have better spirits for the violent action tomorrow morning,” Joseph offered, pointing toward the back room.

“No need, thank you!” Flandre replied politely, her energy boundless.

Soon, the long, freezing night passed, and the next day arrived.

At exactly seven in the morning, the Ursus sky was still pitch black, completely starved of sunlight. Under the howling wind and blinding snow, visibility was so poor that one could not even tell if a figure standing ten meters away was a living person or a ghost.

After Flandre and Joseph synchronized their timing and made their final agreement, the little Vampire slipped out of the warm room like a phantom, vanishing into the blizzard.

First, she needed to take care of the target. In theory, this was the simplest part of the mission, as the other party was just an ordinary, non-combatant civilian. But practically, it was also the most troublesome. Because the search radius Joseph had given her was quite large, she needed to locate the target within an area spanning four whole dormitory buildings, and then successfully eliminate her while causing as little commotion as possible to avoid triggering an early alarm. Doing so silently would drastically reduce the pressure and risk for Joseph’s subsequent infiltration.

However, Flandre’s luck was exceptionally good today.

She found the target just as she phased into the very first dormitory building.

Inside a dimly lit communal washroom, Ivanova splashed freezing water onto her face, wiping away the grime. Looking at her aged, exhausted countenance in the cracked mirror, a dark flash of pure resentment crossed her eyes.

Her son was perfectly fine before he went to join that wretched Reunion Movement. He was only in the very early, manageable stages of Oripathy, yet he had died mysteriously in less than half a year under their care. She firmly believed that all of this was the Reunion Movement’s fault. Clearly knowing that the Infected could suffer an acute seizure at any given time, why did they let her son live in an isolated place all by himself?

Although that specific request for isolation had been her own suggestion at the time out of fear, she did not understand anything about the disease back then. Could those people not have explained the medical risks to her more clearly?

Now her precious son was dead. It was all their fault. All their fault.

Therefore, her betrayal and her bloody revenge were only right and proper. She was merely seeking justice.

Just then, as she stared at her own bitter reflection, a look of absolute terror suddenly warped her face.

Because in the reflection of the cracked mirror, standing right behind her in the silent washroom, she saw a terrifyingly familiar figure.

It was Flandre. The little girl spoken of as a literal legend in the Infected camps.

Many whispered that she was an angel who had saved countless Infected from slaughter, while others swore she was a demon who killed heavily armed guards without blinking an eye. But regardless of the rumors, absolutely everyone considered her a top-tier, untouchable powerhouse.

Why would that monster appear here, right behind her, in the heart of an Ursus military camp?

Ivanova gasped, her heart hammering against her ribs. She squeezed her eyes shut, shook her head violently, and then snapped her eyes open to look at the mirror again.

There was nothing there. The washroom was completely empty.

She slumped against the sink, clutching her chest as she could not help but breathe a massive sigh of relief.

“What was that? I am just scaring myself!” Ivanova muttered to herself, her voice trembling slightly in the quiet room.