Arknights: The Scarlet Devil of Terra — Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Ursus

Upon reaching the riverbank, Flandre found a large, smooth rock to land on. She folded her crystalline wings and peered at a massive wild bear drinking from the shallows nearby. With a bright, innocent smile, she offered a perfectly polite greeting.

“Mr. Wild Bear, Flandre is planning to drink some water here. Could I trouble you to go a bit further downstream?”

“Roar!”

Clearly, the towering beast did not appreciate the interruption. It spun around, water dripping from its maw, and lunged at the tiny intruder without a second of hesitation. A foul, bloody stench washed over the riverbank, causing Flandre to wrinkle her nose in distaste.

“So, Mr. Wild Bear, that’s a no, then?”

Flandre tilted her head slightly. She simply raised her hand and made a light, grasping motion in the empty air.

In the next fraction of a second, the charging bear abruptly stopped. Its massive form shuddered violently before instantly detonating into a shower of crimson mist and shredded meat.

“How unlucky,” Flandre sighed, brushing a stray speck of dust from her dress. “Flandre originally wanted to wash up here, but you’ve gone and made a terrible mess of things, Mr. Wild Bear.”

With a graceful leap, she bounded across the water, landing softly on another stone slab dozens of meters upstream, far away from the expanding pool of red. Cupping the pristine water in her small hands, she washed her face, scrubbing away the lingering metallic taste of blood from her lips.

Refreshed, she looked up at the night sky, her crimson eyes reflecting the twin moons of Terra.

“What a rare sight,” she murmured, her voice softening. “These twin moons rise and set together, unchanging for ten thousand years… just like me and Sister. Sister would surely love them if she saw them.”

The thought filled her with a sudden burst of joy. Flandre giggled, spinning in circles on the stone slab, the crystals on her wings chiming like wind chimes in the quiet night. In the past, Remilia’s fond praise would have immediately followed such a display. But now, only Flandre remained, dancing entirely alone beneath an alien sky.

Slowly, her spinning came to a halt. The quiet of the wilderness pressed in around her.

“Sigh… Flandre really does need to find a way back,” she whispered, her shoulders slumping. “I’ve only been out for a day, and I already miss you, Sister.”

Seeking comfort, Flandre curled up on the cold stone, hugging her knees tightly to her chest. She drew her wings around herself, the glowing crystals forming a protective, glittering cocoon. Lulled by the gentle sound of the river, she drifted into sleep.

The next morning, the piercing glare of the sun woke her.

“Good morning, Mr. Sun!”

Flandre rubbed her eyes and sat up, suddenly pausing. She looked down at her hands, then up at the sky. “Come to think of it, Flandre doesn’t seem to be afraid of sunlight anymore!”

She stretched her arms wide, letting the golden rays wash over her pale skin. There was no burning, no ash—only a gentle, comforting heat.

“It’s like Sakuya’s embrace… not a bad feeling at all!” Flandre clapped her hands together, delighted to have found the perfect comparison for this strange new warmth. After a quick stretch and another simple wash by the river, she took to the sky, setting her sights northward.

Shortly after her departure, news of a grisly death reached a local financial commissioner in Leithanien.

His son, Little John, had been found dead. Upon learning that the boy’s corpse had been entirely drained of blood, the commissioner was paralyzed by a terror that eclipsed even his grief. This bore the obvious signature of a Sarkaz Blood Fiend. If he dared to cover it up and the situation escalated, the fury of the Elector and the Spire Nobles governing the region would see him torn to shreds. He immediately reported the incident.

The Spire Nobles moved swiftly, dispatching specialists to examine the remains.

The autopsy reports were grim: The deceased were indeed drained of all blood, bearing identical, small puncture wounds on their necks. Dental comparisons indicate the culprit is a juvenile Sarkaz Vampire. However, memories extracted from witnesses via Originium Arts reveal the target moves at terrifying speeds and is capable of sustained flight. While the presence of a juvenile Blood Fiend in this region is an anomaly, it is essential to dispatch professional Casters for immediate investigation.

This dossier quickly landed on the desks of the Elector and the high-ranking Spire Nobles. Tracing Flandre’s flight path, their trackers soon stumbled upon a gruesome scene on a riverbank several kilometers away: the utterly pulverized remains of a Rift Beast.

Rift Beasts were apex predators of the wilderness. No ordinary creature possessed the strength to challenge one, let alone detonate it into dozens of scattered, unrecognizable pieces.

After a thorough inspection, the Casters reached a chilling consensus. Though their instruments detected absolutely zero traces of Originium Arts in the surrounding environment, the sheer, excessive cruelty of the kill was the unmistakable calling card of a Blood Fiend. They deduced that the beast had likely interrupted the Vampire’s rest and paid the ultimate price.

The target is moving rapidly toward the north, the final report concluded. Given their speed, they may have already crossed into the jurisdiction of other Electors, or even the Ursus Empire. Continued pursuit is not recommended, but northern border movements should be closely monitored.

The Elector read the parchment, scoffed, and tossed it into the fireplace.

Since this monstrous child was merely passing through and not actively undermining his authority, he had no intention of wasting manpower and resources on a hunt. Two dead commoners were hardly a crisis. As long as the Sanguinarch’s Court wasn’t fixing its gaze on his territory, he was more than happy to turn a blind eye to a wandering monster collecting a minor “toll” along the way.

It took Flandre less than a week to cross the borders of Leithanien and plunge into the freezing, unforgiving territory of the Ursus Empire.

However, she immediately slammed into a highly frustrating obstacle.

She couldn’t understand a single word of the Ursus language. This made it entirely impossible to ask the locals for directions to the Reunion Movement.

“Damn it!” Flandre stomped her foot on the snowy ground, her cheeks puffing out in annoyance. “Why is it that in Japanese anime everyone speaks Japanese, and in Chinese donghua everyone speaks Chinese, but when Flandre transmigrates into a game, she can’t understand a single word?!”

She crossed her arms, racking her brain for a solution. Based on the memories of the soul she had absorbed, she knew the languages of Higashi and Yan. She had also somehow acquired the Sarkaz tongue, and she possessed a decent grasp of Victorian. But Leithanien had sounded like a mess of German and French, and Ursus was a barrage of trilling Russian. She was completely out of her depth.

But there was still hope. Talulah, the leader of Reunion, had been educated by the Black Snake and definitely spoke Yanese. And the towering Patriot, Buldrokkas’tee—the last pure-blooded Wendigo—was guaranteed to speak Sarkaz. As long as she could find those two, communication wouldn’t be an issue.

While Flandre was wandering the frozen tundra searching for traces of Reunion, a commotion below caught her attention.

It was a hunt.

Two figures, battered and bleeding, were desperately fleeing through the snow. Hot on their heels, playing a cruel game of cat and mouse, was a squad of Ursus Patrol members. They wore heavy black military uniforms and menacing masks, their waists lined with daggers and their hands gripping loaded crossbows.

“Damn it, don’t shoot them in the limbs!” the squad leader barked, slapping a subordinate’s crossbow down. “These bastards still need to be sent to the Originium mines for labor. If you shatter their legs or snap their arms, the wardens won’t take the cripples!”

The other patrolmen erupted into coarse laughter, casually lowering their weapons. To them, the two fleeing Infected were nothing more than dying insects—they wouldn’t be twitching for much longer.

Though the true dead of winter had not yet arrived, the biting north wind of Ursus was already howling. In this freezing gale, two thinly-clad, heavily wounded Infected had no chance of outrunning a rested patrol. The soldiers merely needed to hang back, applying constant psychological pressure until their prey suffered a total physical and mental collapse. Once their spirits were entirely broken, they would be easily dragged off to the mines.

It was a standard, sickeningly effective tactic. Once an Infected realized that escape was a mathematical impossibility, their will to resist died, ensuring they would quietly work themselves to death in the dark.

Unfortunately for the Ursus Patrol, their luck had just run out. They had crossed paths with Flandre.

Hovering high above the clouds, Flandre’s crimson eyes lit up. She didn’t know where the Reunion Movement was, but these Infected might. If she swooped in and played the hero, they would surely help her., the freezing weather was worsening; if she didn’t find Talulah before winter fully locked down the Ursus tundra, her search would become infinitely harder.

With a cheerful hum, Flandre began to silently tail the group from the sky.

She didn’t strike immediately. The distance between the hunters and the hunted was still too great. If she killed the patrolmen now, the Infected wouldn’t even see her do it, and without a shared language, she couldn’t properly claim credit as their savior. She needed the perfect, dramatic moment to descend.

As she watched the Ursus Patrol, a deep sense of disgust bubbled up inside her. From her inherited memories, she knew these men were the absolute dregs of authority. If you slaughtered ten Ursus officials at random, nine would be unrepentant monsters, and the tenth would be even worse. They treated their own citizens like livestock, lining their pockets by hunting and selling the Infected into slavery. They were beasts wearing human skin.

Compared to this industrialized cruelty, even the bloodthirsty Sanguinarch’s Court of the Sarkaz felt somewhat more civilized. To the Ursus nobility, the Infected were merely fuel for their empire’s engine. And these patrolmen were known to deliberately infect healthy commoners just to meet their slave quotas.

Because of this, Flandre felt absolutely zero guilt about what she was about to do to them.

An hour later, the two Infected finally collapsed in the snow, their lungs burning, unable to take another step. The Ursus Patrol casually strolled up behind them, panting lightly but grinning beneath their masks.

“Damned bastards, you can really run,” the leader sneered, uncoiling a heavy leather whip. “If it weren’t for the fact that I still have vacancies in my quota, I’d really love to just beat you both to death right here.”

He raised his arm, bringing the whip down toward the trembling pair. The Infected squeezed their eyes shut, waiting for the agony.

Snap.

Mid-air, the long whip suddenly warped, twisting violently before shattering into several useless segments that dropped harmlessly into the snow.

“Who’s there?!” The leader roared. The patrolmen instantly drew their daggers, forming a defensive circle and scanning the barren tundra.

Floating above them, Flandre briefly considered dropping a dramatic, theatrical catchphrase, but realized it would just sound like foreign gibberish. She abandoned the idea. Actions would speak louder than words.

She didn’t say a thing. She simply reached out her small, pale hand and began to point at the patrolmen, one by one.

With every point, she located the invisible, structural “Eye” of their existence. And with a delicate squeeze of her fingers, she crushed it.

Bang.

The squad leader violently exploded, his armor and flesh bursting outward in a geyser of gore.

“Damn it, it’s a Caster! Scatter! Run!”

Panic erupted. As three more men detonated into bloody mist without a single visible Originium Art being cast, the survivors broke formation and sprinted in all directions.

But it was far too late. Flandre had already gathered the “Eyes” of every single man present into the palm of her hand.

Seeing them try to flee, Flandre giggled and clapped her hands together.

A chorus of wet, sickening pops echoed across the tundra as the remaining patrolmen simultaneously exploded, painting the white snow a brilliant, steaming red.

Down below, the two Infected were paralyzed with absolute terror. They huddled together, shivering violently, their wide eyes darting around the blood-soaked snow, desperately searching for the invisible monster that had just butchered an entire armed squad in seconds.

“Why is it that not a single one of them is ever willing to look up?” Flandre sighed, shaking her head. She had been hovering directly above them the entire time.

Folding her wings, Flandre descended from the sky. She landed softly in the snow before the trembling pair, pinched the edges of her skirt, and executed a flawless, elegant curtsy.

Seeing a little girl drop from the heavens—sporting fangs, a terrifying aura, and bizarre wings hung with glowing crystals—the two Infected shook even harder. To them, she looked exactly like the legendary, blood-drinking monsters from the darkest Terra horror stories.

Noticing their sheer panic, Flandre kindly refrained from stepping any closer. She tilted her head and examined them.

They were a father and son. The older man looked to be in his fifties, while the younger was around seventeen. Both bore the distinct, rounded ears of the Ursus race.

Then, Flandre’s eyes locked onto a specific detail on the young man’s tattered jacket. It was an insignia—an ‘X’ shape with the right side elevated higher than the left.

It was the mark of the Reunion Movement.

Flandre’s face lit up with a brilliant, sweet smile. She had saved the right people.

The young man, Peter, and his father, Old Peter, were indeed members of Reunion. They had recently attempted to ambush a local mine to liberate the Infected slaves inside, only to walk straight into a trap set by the Ursus Patrol. Most of their comrades had been captured. Peter had barely managed to drag his father away, leading to the desperate chase through the snow.

They had fully expected to die today. Instead, they had been saved by a creature that casually turned elite soldiers into paste.

Seeing the terrifying Vampire girl staring at him, Peter swallowed hard, his heart hammering against his ribs.

Flandre raised a finger, pointed directly at the Reunion insignia on Peter’s shoulder, and then tapped her own chest.

Realizing the monstrous girl wasn’t attacking, but rather trying to communicate, Peter took a shaky breath. With trembling fingers, he slowly pointed back at the Reunion mark on his arm.

[Rhodes’s Note: Sakuya Izayoi is the Chief Maid of the Scarlet Devil Mansion from the Touhou Project, known for her time-manipulation abilities and close care of Flandre and Remilia.]