Arknights: Suika's Messenger Journey

Normally, Suika only needed to use her ability to increase her density in the area the blade was about to strike, and she could easily block the attack.

But considering her bizarre luck, she did not hesitate to circulate her ability through her entire body.

Sure enough, although the other party's blade had descended along an arc and should have been aimed at her arm, just as it was about to hit, he suddenly slipped. The long blade in his hand involuntarily thrust forward, its target pointed straight at her neck.

"Clang."

The blade struck her neck, leaving behind a thin white mark.

Suika wore an expression of just as I thought, then reached out, grabbed the person before her, and tossed him straight into the crowd ahead.

Amid a wave of wails, the crowd was knocked sprawling in every direction, yet not a single person was injured.

She retreated in a flash behind a large tree, and mist spread outward.

"Where is she?" The soldiers rushing over looked around, trying to find Suika.

At that moment, a fierce gust of wind blew through for some unknown reason.

But everyone was astonished to discover that the cloud of mist not far away remained completely still in the wind.

"Fire into that mist!"

Seeing this, one of their leaders immediately gave the order.

"Fuck!" Suika only wanted to flip the heavens off.

She just wanted to leave. Was it really necessary to target her this hard?

Although she looked like mist, the mist was actually her body. If spells pierced through it, she could still be hurt.

So she could only reveal herself again, then charged forward through the other side's arrows and spells.

Ten minutes later, Suika fled the area looking utterly bedraggled.

She felt incredibly unlucky. These soldiers were clearly far weaker than her, yet with the heavens helping them, their luck was off the charts.

Her attacks would always miss because of one accident or another, or have their damage reduced to the absolute minimum.

Yet even a casual swing from them might somehow hit her head-on.

After several exchanges, Suika felt numb all over.

Since she could not fight them, she would retreat.

With that thought, she used Ice Burst, forcibly blocking their pursuit with the suppressive barrage while retreating into the distance.

Sure enough, even opponents blessed by heaven and earth, with luck beyond all reason, could not withstand Ice Burst's overwhelming bullet barrage when their fundamentals were too weak. They could only be stopped there.

Taking advantage of the opportunity, Suika found the right direction and escaped.

But she had not expected to leave the wolf's den only to enter the tiger's lair.

She ran straight into another army that had rushed over from a different direction after receiving news of the battle here.

As expected, they recognized her the moment they met and another round of fighting began.

And so, while fighting and fleeing, Suika crashed headlong into the army sent to sweep the area and search for the Reunion Movement's location, dragging them south with her.

Meanwhile, FrostNova and Patriot had hidden with their troops in a forest.

"You old fossil, didn't you say an Ursus army would be sweeping through here? We've been waiting until it's nearly dark, so why hasn't there been the slightest sign of them?"

Patriot was equally puzzled. The intelligence should not have been wrong, but according to the information, the enemy should have arrived by now.

Even Talulah had already begun notifying the civilians to pack their things. If the enemy forces were too numerous, they could only abandon this place again and find another settlement.

But after waiting all day, they had not seen even a single Ursus soldier, let alone scouts or vanguards.

Even Patriot could not immediately figure out what had gone wrong with this strange situation.

At that moment, at the military's forward command post.

"She is indeed a member of the Reunion Movement, and she has close ties with Talulah. She must be captured." The Black Snake's avatar appeared there.

After hearing the soldiers' report, he immediately ordered the army to pursue Suika more aggressively.

The reason was that he mistakenly believed Suika's journey south was highly likely to bring news of Talulah back to Lungmen.

Once Wei Yenwu learned of Talulah's relationship with the Reunion Movement, there was no guarantee he would not send people to join forces with them.

If the Reunion Movement received aid from Lungmen or even Great Yan and dug up all sorts of weapons from who knew where, his plan to wipe them out and replace them would likely fall apart.

Because he did not know that Suika had long decided to leave the Reunion Movement and head for Victoria, he believed that Suika, who had deliberately appeared in Talulah's sight last year and deliberately befriended her, had to be someone arranged by Wei Yenwu.

If she brought the news here back to Lungmen, the consequences would naturally be endless.

It was precisely because of the Black Snake's insistence that the army originally assigned to search the area turned around and devoted itself fully to pursuing the fleeing Suika.

That was why Patriot had spent an entire day waiting in vain.

The intelligence itself had not been wrong. The plan had merely been changed at the last minute.

"Pah! Are these Ursus bastards some kind of sticky plaster?

No matter how hard I shake them, they just won't come off."

Suika broke through another military formation, then seized an opportunity when the enemy had not caught up and sat on a rock, panting heavily.

It had been two full days. She had not slept properly or eaten much of anything.

The cycle was basically running into enemies, fighting them, escaping, then running into more enemies.

At first, she had still wanted to hold back, because she did not want to personally create too much bloodshed.

But she discovered that it was completely useless.

If her output, force, and range did not reach a certain threshold, all her attacks would be erased by the Great Cosmic Will through all sorts of bizarre means.

So now, she opened with Ice Burst the moment they met, suppressing the enemy while directly charging up Mt. Togakushi Throw.

Then she would drop a mountaintop on them, burying her opponents underground.

After that sequence, even if the enemy's luck was heaven-defying and they did not die immediately—

Being pinned beneath dozens of tons of earth meant death was only a matter of time.

Once the enemy discovered that they had begun suffering serious casualties, they were even more astonished that the battle could alter the terrain.

This made them place even greater importance on pursuing Suika. After all, the stronger the opponent, the more it proved that this operation was the right choice.

After receiving approval, a High-Speed Battleship carrying an Ursus caster formation joined the pursuit.

When Suika saw the High-Speed Battleship, dozens of meters tall, tearing through the land and crushing toward her from behind, even she got angry.

"Damn it, if Flower Mama doesn't show her power, you think I'm just soybean paste?"

One Punch Man

Clenching her fists as she watched the High-Speed Battleship draw nearer, Suika felt it was necessary to give the Ursus people a little Touhou Project shock.

Standing in the middle of the road without dodging, Suika was naturally spotted by the observers aboard the High-Speed Battleship.

"Reporting to Sir Binoyev, we have discovered and locked onto the target.

She is one kilometer away and has made no move to flee. What should we do next?"

The observer asked the High-Speed Battleship's commander for their plan.

"Run her over.

Our opponent buried hundreds of brave Ursus warriors beneath the earth. She must receive the same punishment.

Don't talk to me about the command center demanding that she be captured alive. She must pay for her mistakes with her blood and pain.

The Warrior will not allow a criminal aboard."

Commander Binoyev did not even raise his head. His gaze remained fixed on the border map between Ursus and the Eastern Country.

In his view, his landship, the Warrior, should have been stationed on the border between Ursus and the Eastern Country, expanding Ursus territory.

Instead, he had been framed and assigned to the interior to chase down one insignificant enemy.

For a single enemy, the command center had actually dispatched the Warrior. Binoyev felt deeply insulted.

To retaliate against the command center for underestimating him, he had never intended to bring back any prisoners alive from the moment he set out.

He was not even willing to waste a single Originium Bomb.

His plan was to ram the target to death, report the news to the command center, and then demand to return to the Eastern Country front.

He had no desire whatsoever to keep playing this childish game of hide-and-seek with these soft-legged fools in the interior.

Faced with the High-Speed Battleship drawing closer without any intention of stopping, Suika instead let out a sigh of relief.

After all, the two skills she had that could damage the thing had major weaknesses. One required charging in place for a long time, while the other required getting right up in its face.

She had not chosen to throw a mountaintop because the High-Speed Battleship was not stupid. Such an obvious movement could easily draw artillery fire.

She had originally been wondering how to get close to the High-Speed Battleship, but the other side had charged at her so directly.

Facing the approaching High-Speed Battleship, Suika calmly opened the Ibuki Gourd.

Gulp, gulp, gulp.

After taking a satisfying swig of alcohol, she clenched her fist and stepped forward.

Three-Step Ruin had a huge weakness, because her constantly enlarging body also increased the area she could be hit.

Furthermore, the move was extremely cumbersome. If the opponent was fast enough and nimble enough, they could completely evade its killing blow.

But this landship before her possessed neither quality.

When the caster standing at the bow saw Suika swell as if inflated and become taller than the High-Speed Battleship in less than two seconds, he was completely dumbfounded.

By the time he realized that he should use sorcery to attack, Suika's fist had already smashed down from above into the center of the High-Speed Battleship.

The High-Speed Battleship, which had been moving at nearly a hundred kilometers per hour just moments ago, was abruptly brought to a complete stop.

Then the entire battleship was snapped in half at the waist, as secondary explosions erupted continuously from all over it.

The battleship's command center was located in the uppermost section, and it had now been completely flattened.

The six-meter-tall raised structure was now almost level with the deck. Everyone in the command center peacefully passed away in an instant.

The massive battleship resembled a famous Great Yan dish—Sweet-and-Sour Scale Fish.

Its bow and stern were raised high, while the middle section smashed apart by the punch had sunk into the ground.

That punch not only completely scrapped the Warrior, but also wiped out nearly everyone aboard in an instant.

After the punch, Suika came to a distant hill and watched the Warrior suffer secondary explosions as fires began spreading across it. She looked down at her fist.

"Has this damned bad luck finally passed?"

Over the past few days, she had felt that her misfortune had reached its limit.

She had thought that her punch just now would suffer some inexplicable deviation like the previous ones, preventing her from dealing full damage.

But unexpectedly, the punch had gone incomparably smoothly. It felt like someone who had been constipated for days suddenly getting diarrhea—the sheer sense of relief was deeply addictive.

"I'm out of here!" At that moment, Suika saw the faint outlines of Ursus troops appearing behind her. She rubbed her nose, then ran south again without looking back.

Half an hour later, the late-arriving troops stared blankly at the ruined High-Speed Battleship.

They immediately reported to the command center. "The Warrior High-Speed Battleship has suffered an attack by an unknown force. The entire vessel has been broken into two sections. Personnel casualties are unknown. Numerous areas within the landship are on fire, making rescue operations impossible. Requesting support."

When this news reached the command center, everyone there was dumbfounded as well.

This was a High-Speed Battleship.

Even in Ursus, a nation governed through military merit, High-Speed Battleships were not something that could be deployed casually.

And now they were being told that, in order to capture one Infected, they had not only lost an entire battleship, but the personnel aboard had also suffered devastating losses. The command center went numb with fear.

Once this news reached higher authorities, everyone in the command center would likely be punished. Forget retaining their military posts—even avoiding being sent to the northern tundra to farm potatoes would require thanking the heavens.

Along with the report, photographs were quickly sent over.

Upon seeing the Warrior's miserable state, even the command center's elite officers drew sharp breaths.

From the Warrior's condition, it was obvious that an enormous force had struck the central area at the very top directly from above.

The immense force had torn through the Warrior's armor and smashed its middle section into the ground.

The two ends had risen due to the break and collapse in the center, forming a strange V-shape.

All of this could be seen clearly in the photographs.