Arknights: The Scarlet Devil of Terra — Chapter 51

Chapter 51: Flandre is Going to be a TeacherYou'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.

After hearing Flandre’s explanation, the surrounding Operators immediately began experimenting with the modified training environment, their curiosity getting the better of them. One moment, they would crank the Originium density to the absolute maximum, plunging the room into an oppressive, suffocating darkness where they couldn’t even see their own hands in front of their faces. The next moment, they would dial it back to leave only a thin, lingering layer of crimson mist, transforming the sterile corridors into something straight out of a Yanese ghost story.

“The harsh white fluorescent lights in here really ruin the eerie atmosphere,” the manager in charge of the training ground muttered, stroking his chin thoughtfully as he surveyed the bloody haze. “I’ll submit a requisition report to the Engineering Department to have them all swapped out for green bulbs. Hehe, red and green—the perfect festive contrast!”

The surrounding L.G.D. Operators shot him looks of deep, silent judgment.

“I truly didn’t expect Miss Flandre’s research and mastery over Originium Arts to be so deep,” one of the senior Casters remarked, ignoring the manager. “Our Guard Department also has a dedicated tactical team that researches advanced sorcery. How about you go give them a lecture sometime?”

Just then, the heavy doors to the training ground swung open, and Wei Yenwu stepped inside.

The Chief Executive listened intently as the nearby Operators eagerly recounted the sheer scale of Flandre’s modifications. He even stepped into the testing zone to experience the oppressive weight of the crimson mist for himself. When he finally emerged, brushing a stray wisp of red energy from his tailored coat, he looked down at the little vampire.

“Mm! You mean you want Flandre to be a teacher?” Flandre’s crimson eyes widened to the size of saucers, practically sparkling with excitement. She bounced on her heels, thoroughly eager to try.

“Of course,” Wei Yenwu said, his tone smooth and persuasive. “With such a powerful and brilliant Arts Master like little Flandre right here in Lungmen, if I didn’t make proper use of your talents, I’d be laughed out of office by everyone who knows you. Besides, little Flandre is so incredibly knowledgeable. You will definitely make a magnificent teacher, won’t you?”

After spending the past few days observing her, the shrewd old dragon had naturally figured out exactly how to stroke Flandre’s ego and make her happy.

“Yay! Flandre is going to be a teacher!”

Overjoyed, Flandre grabbed Ch’en Hui-chieh’s hand and spun the dignified Senior Superintendent around in a dizzying circle, completely ignoring Ch’en’s startled yelp. Once the initial burst of excitement settled, Flandre looked back up at Wei Yenwu, her face flushed with enthusiasm.

“So when can Flandre start the class? Flandre needs to go back and prepare right now!”

“Well, I will have an official announcement posted across the entire Guard Department,” Wei Yenwu said, tapping his cane thoughtfully against the floor. “Let us say… in three days. We will hold it in the Grand Auditorium downstairs. Any Operator with an interest in Originium Arts will be permitted to attend and listen.”

Three days later would be Saturday. Wei Yenwu happened to have a rare gap in his schedule that afternoon, and he fully intended to be there in person to support the little vampire’s debut.

“What about the scope of the teaching?” Flandre asked, tilting her head. Although she was vibrating with excitement at the prospect of standing at a podium, she had to admit she had never actually taught anyone before. She had no idea if her usual methods would satisfy a crowd.

“If little Flandre is the teacher, she needs to handle the curriculum herself!” Wei Yenwu chuckled, reaching down to affectionately rub the top of Flandre’s blonde head. He then turned and left the training ground, looking thoroughly contented, leaving the little girl staring after him with a deeply troubled expression.

What do you do when a child is simply too powerful? You gently lead her into areas she isn’t naturally good at, ensuring her “well-rounded development.”

Right now, that strategy was working perfectly. Flandre’s brow was furrowed in deep distress.

What exactly was she supposed to teach?

As soon as she returned to her temporary home, Flandre rushed into the study. She dragged out every single heavy, leather-bound tome on advanced sorcery she had read recently, stacking them haphazardly across the living room table. She climbed onto a chair, crossed her arms, and began to think, her small face scrunched up in utmost seriousness.

From noon until the sky outside turned the color of bruised plums, she sat there. When Beatrice finally returned home from work, Flandre was still frozen in the exact same posture, looking utterly miserable.

“What’s wrong, my little Flandre?”

Beatrice walked over, a warm smile on her face, and leaned in to cuddle the girl. However, she was immediately pushed away by a pair of small, insistent hands.

“Flandre is thinking about a very serious problem. Please don’t disturb Flandre, Sister Beatrice!”

“Oh? It seems our little Flandre has run into a wall… let me see what it is…” Beatrice leaned over Flandre’s shoulder, her eyes scanning the open pages on the table. Her smile instantly vanished. “Holy crap, what are these terrifying books? Take them away, take them away quickly!”

Beatrice couldn’t help but shudder. The pages were covered in dense, mind-bending geometric arrays and esoteric Originium equations that looked less like magic and more like a cognitohazard.

“Don’t be silly, Sister,” Flandre huffed, reaching out to pinch Beatrice’s pale cheek. “Flandre is trying to decide which book’s content to lecture on at the Guard Department in three days!”

“Wait, you’re planning to lecture on these things?” Beatrice stared at the little vampire with a look that clearly screamed, Are you crazy, or am I?

“These aren’t very difficult things,” Flandre argued, patting the pages defensively. “And Flandre thinks they’re written quite simply! Look, these are just ordinary spatial formulas that can be solved by applying a little basic calculus. The Guard Department is full of Lungmen’s absolute elites. No matter how slow an elite is, they should still be able to solve calculus easily, right?”

In Flandre’s four-hundred-year-old mind, while raw Originium Arts and conceptual sorcery possessed some inherent difficulty, structural sorcery models were entirely logical constructs that could be perfectly unraveled using mathematics. She had agonized over this for hours before finally deciding to teach “basic” foundational concepts like structural modeling.

After all, if you don’t understand the abstract nature of sorcery, you must at least understand math!

…Flandre’s innocent logic was deafening. Beatrice stood there, completely speechless, her brain struggling to process the sheer disconnect between this god-like child and the average L.G.D. street cop.

After a long, agonizing silence, Beatrice finally managed to force the words out.

“Little Flandre… could it be that these things are just a tiny bit too difficult for everyone else?”

“Huh?” Flandre blinked, expressing genuine, deep shock. Would basic structural models that only required applying a few multi-variable formulas really be too difficult for the hardened elites of the Guard Department?

“Lower the level a bit,” Beatrice pleaded, rubbing her temples as a headache began to form. “Choose some high school material, or maybe something from a regular university course. Unless someone specifically majors in theoretical Originium Arts research, very few people in this entire city would even be able to look at these books without getting a migraine…”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.

“Fine!” Flandre pouted, reluctantly sweeping the terrifying tomes off the table and putting them away.

She dug through her extensive collection for another twenty minutes, muttering under her breath, before finally pulling out a thick, slightly worn book titled Originium and Sorcery.

“Sister Beatrice, how about this one?” Flandre held it up. She felt that if this one didn’t work, she was completely out of ideas and would just have to cancel the class.

“This one works,” Beatrice sighed in relief. “Originium and Sorcery is a standard, required textbook used by the Tianshi Bureau. You could say that every single Caster who joins the Tianshi Bureau knows this book inside and out. The research it provides on the absolute foundations of various Arts is very thorough, but grounded.”

Beatrice flipped through the early chapters, giving a rare, approving nod.

Seeing that this curriculum was finally deemed acceptable, Flandre immediately opened the book and began to flip through the pages at a terrifying speed, her crimson eyes tracking the text like a machine.

Seeing the little girl taking her new job so seriously, Beatrice smiled softly. She turned and walked into the kitchen to brew a fresh pot of warm black tea for her.

Drinking tea and absorbing knowledge, Flandre lost herself in the text. By the time she finally closed the book and looked up, the morning sun was already filtering through the living room curtains.

Flandre let out a cute little yawn, stretching her arms high above her head. It was then she noticed a quiet breathing sound nearby. Looking down, she saw Beatrice lying on the adjacent sofa, sleeping soundly in her work clothes.

Flandre smiled. She lightly waved her small hand through the air, and a soft woolen bedsheet floated out from the bedroom, gently draping itself over Beatrice’s resting body.

“Good morning, Sister Beatrice,” Flandre whispered.

When Beatrice eventually woke up and felt the warm sheet covering her, the corners of her mouth curled up into a fond smile. “Thanks, little Flandre.”

By the time Flandre woke up from her own daytime slumber that afternoon, she found the two maid sisters waiting quietly outside her door. Seeing her awake, they immediately hurried to the kitchen to prepare her daily blood meal.

Flandre walked out to the dining table and picked up the Tianshi Bureau textbook. With a casual hook of her index finger, a thick stack of blank white paper and a fountain pen flew out from the study. The pen stood upright on its own and began to automatically furiously scribble across the paper, perfectly transcribing the specific curriculum Flandre mentally extracted from the book.

Before long, a piping hot, fragrant meal was set down beside her.

“Thank you, sisters. You can just leave it here.”

Flandre thanked the maids politely, her eyes never leaving the textbook as she began to eat. On the table right in front of her, the enchanted pen continued its faithful, rapid-fire recording.

When Beatrice came home from work that evening, she found Flandre carefully reviewing a dozen densely packed pages of notes.

“Little Flandre, what are you researching so intently today?”

Flandre pointed to the neat stack of papers. “This is the curriculum summary Flandre made based on the book. It’s already the absolute simplest and most straightforward content possible! But… if Flandre lectures on all of it at once, it will take at least five hours. Won’t that be too long for them to sit still?”

Beatrice picked up the summary, her eyes scanning the neat handwriting.

“Five hours is indeed quite a marathon,” Beatrice admitted. “Is there really no way to condense the material further?”

“There’s really no way!” Flandre said, her ahoge drooping dejectedly. “If Flandre cuts anything else, the foundation will collapse!”

“Then how about breaking it up into two or three separate sessions?” Beatrice suggested gently.

“Will that work?” Flandre frowned, clearly insecure. She was already terrified that these people wouldn’t be able to comprehend what she was teaching. After all, Beatrice had claimed that her ‘simple’ calculus models were impossibly deep. What she was showing Beatrice right now felt like an elementary school curriculum to the vampire.

“Why wouldn’t it work? It will definitely be fine,” Beatrice reassured her, tapping the high-quality manuscript.

“Then Flandre will change it to two parts! Three hours each!”

Flandre looked down at her notes. If she stretched it into three sessions, the L.G.D. Operators might forget the core concepts of the first session due to the time gap. Two sessions would be the perfect balance.

Although a three-hour lecture was still quite long, Beatrice looked at the sheer quality and clarity of Flandre’s manuscript and felt confident that the audience would be too captivated to complain.

“Then Flandre will go research some more. The very first class must be absolutely perfect.” Flandre puffed out her chest. Since she was finally being recognized as a true Master, she had to deliver a flawless performance.

‘Flandre, Flandre, are you there?’Just as Flandre was diving back into the textbook, a familiar, gentle voice echoed directly inside her mind, traveling across the vast distance through their shared bloodline connection.’Sister Alina! Good evening!’Flandre replied mentally, a bright smile blooming on her face.’Good evening, my little Flandre.’Alina’s telepathic tone was lighthearted and warm; it was clear the Elafia was in a very good mood today.’Sister Alina, is something the matter?’Flandre asked, her eyes still scanning the pages of her notes.’Can’t I just talk to my little Flandre if nothing’s wrong? It’s been less than half a year since you left, and you’re already going to abandon Alina?’Alina’s voice took on a teasing, exaggeratedly sad tone.’No, no! It’s because Flandre is super busy preparing for a class right now!”Preparing for a class? Is Flandre going to school in Lungmen? What grade are they putting you in? Are your new classmates bullying you?’ Alina’s mental voice instantly spiked with protective surprise.’Flandre isn’t going to school to learn; Flandre is giving a class to others!’Proudly, Flandre recounted everything that had happened over the last two days, detailing her Originium Arts modifications and Wei Yenwu’s invitation.’The people in the Guard Department are so silly, Sister Alina. Those spatial models are clearly very simple, but Sister Beatrice said the content was too hard and deep! She made Flandre change it to the absolute simplest version possible.’

Hearing Flandre’s exasperated complaint, Alina sat in silence on the other end of the connection, completely unsure of how to respond.

After all, according to Flandre’s twisted criteria of what constituted “simple,” Alina herself was definitely one of the silly ones. The Elafia didn’t understand a single thing about the complex sorceries or mathematical models the vampire was rambling about.

‘Perhaps… things that are simple for our Flandre are just very hard for normal people,’Alina finally offered, trying to soothe the girl’s frustration.’Just as all people have different strengths, maybe those brothers and sisters in the Guard Department just happen to not be good at this specific thing. Which is exactly why they need a genius like Flandre to teach them.’

It wasn’t the most logical explanation, but it was the best Alina could do to comfort the world’s most overpowered, pouting teacher.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.