Chapter 53: Skipping an Entire Side Story

‘An entire chapter!’

You spent a whole chapter playing the victim, weaving a web of twisted logic to thoroughly fool Kal’tsit.

The bitter guilt she was feeling right now would undoubtedly transform into a brutal beating for you later once she realized the truth, but that was a problem for future you.

Fortunately, your convoluted acting had successfully bypassed her defenses.

For the time being, Kal’tsit would drop her guard around you.

You watched from your bed as Kal’tsit left the room in a hurried panic, only to immediately step back into the doorway to gently and quietly click the door shut for you.

The moment the latch caught, the tender, sorrowful expression you had intentionally plastered on your face vanished without a trace.

You let out a long breath and stretched your arms comfortably toward the ceiling.

That was some seriously hard work.

To be completely honest, if your schedule was not so incredibly tight, you definitely would not have woven such a heartbreaking, melodramatic lie just to manipulate the old feline.

You would have at least polished the script a bit more to make it believable in the long run.

But exactly how tight was your schedule?

It was time to sort out the timeline.

It was currently the year 1097 of the Terra calendar.

You had just successfully broken Mountain out of Mansfield Break prison.

In the upcoming month of May, according to your flawless gamer memory, the timeline would trigger the very first Side Story event of Arknights: Grani and the Knights’ Treasure.

Following that, in June, over in the Kazimierz region, Maria Nearl was scheduled to step onto the bloodstained arena sand.

At the exact same time, the Pinus Sylvestris plotline would trigger, and the Squirrel Knight Order would begin their covert operations.

Three months after that, during the Near Light storyline, the entire Kazimierz region would undergo a massive, violent political reshuffle.

And then came the summer.

As a widely recognized conscientious enterprise, Rhodes Island was actually willing to give its overworked operators a summer vacation and send them on a beach trip after experiencing so much trauma.

However, offering employee benefits in Terra did not guarantee safety.

Just going on a simple tourist trip was enough to get you dragged into a full-scale national coup.

First came the Heart of Surging Flame incident, and then the notoriously famous, sanity-draining nightmare…

Dosoles Holiday.

‘Deploy the water barriers!

Deploy the water barriers!

Deploy the water barriers!

Deploy the water barriers!

Deploy the water barriers!’

Alright, that was enough panic for the first half of the year.

You would deal with the rest of the timeline when the time came.

Grani and the Knights’ Treasure was a relatively small-scale story that took place on the rural outskirts of Kazimierz.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the overarching geopolitical situation in Terra.

It was simply a contained adventure about the kindhearted mounted police officer Grani and the walking natural disaster known as Skadi, who had wandered out on her own.

But there were still some fascinating lore details buried in that event that caught your interest.

For example, another prominent figure who appeared in that storyline was an old friend from the Integrated Strategies mode: Big Bob.

The main plot followed Big Bob leading a group of exiled Reunion Movement members, Skadi acting as a bounty hunter, Grani trying to keep the peace, and a seemingly kind village chief.

Three different factions fighting over a hidden treasure.

In the end, Skadi used a key obtained from that treasure to exchange for clues about Specter from Kal’tsit.

That exact same key was later used by Gladiia to open a specific room on the Stultifera Navis.

That was the Deep Sea Hunters branch line.

Meanwhile, Grani gifted the actual treasure within the vault to Big Bob.

From then on, he would frequently appear in various Roguelike runs, using his new capital to start a highly successful Originium Slug farm that grew larger and larger.

That was the Reunion Movement branch line.

The random bounty hunters who were searching for the treasure and got effortlessly knocked out by Skadi at the very beginning were actually friends of Toland Cash.

Toland was that incredibly unlucky satellite character who took years to finally become playable, cementing his status as the last person sitting on the famous Kazimierz three-person bench.

That was the Kazimierz branch line.

Combining the fragmented lore texts, the person who originally buried that treasure was actually the tragic figure from the second ending of the Mizuki and Caerula Arbor timeline: The Last Knight, who charged resolutely toward the churning ocean.

That was the Integrated Strategies branch line.

And finally, the lively and kindhearted Grani worked tirelessly to save people and find the treasure, eventually risking her own life to use her blood to activate an ancient mechanism just to help a weak little girl.

In the end, she kept absolutely nothing for herself, became a free welfare five-star unit, and was practically never heard from in the main story again.

All of this was entirely the fault of the rabbit-headed game producer.

One single early Side Story somehow managed to spawn five massive branch lines.

It was clear that the developers had designed that initial script with a lot of heart.

Having finished your internal reminiscing, you confirmed that nothing in that rural village was actually important to your current survival, and made a firm decision.

You were not going.

You were going to head to Kazimierz early.

Compared to the unique, endless suffering found in various other parts of this cursed land, Kazimierz was both highly prosperous and relatively stable.

The only real problem was the Kazimierz General Chamber of Commerce, a corrupt board of directors that you could easily overturn with a flick of your wrist and some basic tower defense logic.

More, compared to those miserable war zones where people fought on sight and tragedies happened constantly, the Kazimierz roster was incredibly friendly to you.

There was the shy and slightly airheaded assassin Platinum, the straightforward and fiercely loyal yandere hound Gravel, the blindingly sunny older-sister type Margaret Nearl, the lively and energetic younger-sister type Blemishine, and the gentle, overworked corporate housewife Mlynar.

‘Ah, Mlynar…’

But before heading off to the neon-lit city of Kazimierz, you still needed to craft some reliable self-defense weapons.

Although you were entirely confident that your tactical abilities and game knowledge would keep you out of any real danger, it was better not to risk the embarrassing contrast of a frail anime girl being able to forcibly pin you to the floor.

That way, the next time some evil small animal tried to pretend to be highly emotional and reached their wicked little hands toward you, you could simply press a high-caliber weapon against their forehead and politely force them to sit back down properly.

You truly were a tactical genius.

Taking full advantage of the old feline’s current guilty conscience and her absence from the medical wing, you marched down the hallway and kicked open the door to the medical room, heading straight for the engineering laboratory with a clear goal in mind.

“Thorns, move aside, let me show you how it’s done!” You marched up to the workbench and casually ruffled Thorns’ messy hair, but the texture immediately felt horribly wrong against your fingers.

“How many days has it been since you washed your hair!?” you demanded, wiping your hand on your coat.

“Doctor, that is simply the Aegir sea urchin race’s physical appearance not being fully vestigial…” Thorns replied, his expression completely deadpan as he held a beaker of glowing green liquid.

“No, no!

You just haven’t washed your hair.

It literally smells like machine oil!”

Under Elysium’s gloating, highly amused gaze from the corner of the room, you swiftly packed the two of them up and kicked them both toward the exit of the lab.

“Get out of my house!

Shoo, shoo, shoo!” you ordered, waving them off.

Thorns stood in the doorway, still trying to communicate with you using normal logic.

“Logically speaking, this laboratory should be considered my home…”

You did not bother answering.

You just pulled out a tactical rope, tied Thorns and Elysium together at the waist, and threw a greasy bag of fries out into the hallway.

Thorns was immediately dragged away by an eager Elysium, who was already reaching for the food.

“Listen to me, brother,” Elysium said cheerfully, “would the Doctor ever lead you astray?

When he teaches you a few of his secret tricks later, won’t that be way more powerful than the random explosions from the unstable solvents you mix in your own experiments?”

“Say one more word about my potions exploding,” Thorns warned, jabbing a sharp elbow directly into Elysium’s ribs.

“Brother!” Elysium gasped, immediately following it up with a string of colorful Iberian profanity.

The two of them stumbled down the hallway, dragging each other down in a chaotic mess of limbs and complaints.

Half a day later, looking at a heavy tactical backpack completely stuffed with high-tech gear and custom weapons, you contentedly slung it over your shoulder and left a disastrously messy workbench behind for Thorns to clean up.

The journey to Kazimierz was finally starting to heat up.

[Rhodes’s Note:

Enjoying the operation so far, Doctor?

(This daily grind literally pays the landship’s rent!

to use the links!)