Arknights' Lock of Heaven

“You should say what I did and say, ‘It’s a pleasure working with you,’” Merlin said with a smile, noticing his silence.

"…a pleasure to work with."

The patriot replied sullenly.

From gifts to transactions... when does he ever have the right to choose?

With 200,000 people on the verge of starvation and the Orville, considered their lifeline, not expected to arrive for another week, everyone was frantic. They even resorted to a near-suicidal attack.

In this situation, someone steps forward and says, "I can give you enough food, but you have to pay with Originium in exchange..."

Are there any other options?

No, no matter how vigilant he is, he will definitely agree. If he were alone, he would not give in, but he has 200,000 mouths to feed behind him.

The responsibility weighed heavily on his shoulders, making it hard to breathe.

Patriot could tell that the person in front of him didn't care about Originium.

He only called it a transaction to make himself accept it.

For someone like him, Originium is not very useful. If he wanted, a ninety-nine-year-old eternal flower could bring him hundreds of years of wealth and honor.

Patriot couldn't imagine why he would need Originium.

Those amazing methods—once they're revealed, what can't you get?

In Chernobog, he lured himself into the investigation by stealing Originium; now, he uses a trade as an excuse to provide assistance to the base.

Originium is just an excuse.

The patriot believed he had seen the truth.

But... I don't know why.

Why would this person favor me so much? First, it was because of priceless treasures like the Everlasting Flower, and now it's because of this person's help to solve my food shortage.

There's no such thing as a free lunch.

The only explanation is that they are infected.

He, or they, need the infected person to do something.

But what good is it to figure it out?

Both for public and private reasons, patriots cannot refuse the other party's conditions.

Merlin noticed the struggle in his eyes.

I can only say you're overthinking it...

If this base were even slightly "clean," we wouldn't have had to go through such a long and complicated process to deliver the food, which only heightened the Patriots' vigilance...

It can only be said that Froststar's stubbornness was not just for show.

Moreover, Xia Yu had some ideas. Merlin's identity had great potential in Victoria, and it couldn't be exposed like this.

Of course, "exposure" refers to the clone, while Merlin's disguise... the bigger the commotion it causes in the base, the better!

After all, there are countless spies in this base. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, and the news from this friend is credible to many people.

Once this identity is confirmed, then Victoria, hmph.

There’s a lot to be done!

Led by Quartermaster Andrew, Merlin swaggered through the center of the base and made his way to the guerrillas' warehouse.

435 Spy

"Petal? Petal??"

Upon arriving outside the warehouse, Quartermaster Andrew impatiently began banging on the warehouse door.

But no one answered.

“This… wait a minute,” Andrew turned back to Merlin with an apologetic smile, then turned and kicked the warehouse door hard.

"Petal Stojanovich! Where the hell have you been?"

“Petal? Petal!”

Andrew still received no response, so he could only turn around and give Merlin an awkward smile. "Ah, I'm sorry, please excuse my behavior. Petal is usually a very reliable person, I don't know why he's acting like this today..."

As Andrew spoke, he kept an eye on Merlin's expression, praying that the other man wouldn't be displeased by Petal's blunder.

There was no other way; you had to ask them for a favor. They controlled the food supply that could sustain hundreds of thousands of people. You had to humble yourself for the sake of those behind you.

Even if the other person doesn't seem to care about this, and is even happy to be delayed, you can't pretend nothing happened.

At the very least, we should make a show of respect.

"It's nothing, it'll only take a few minutes," Merlin said with a generous smile. "Time is the least valuable thing to me."

"You even cured the captain's illness. Someone as capable as you naturally doesn't care about a little time, but we do! Hundreds of thousands of people are waiting for food to be cooked. Damn it, where did that guy Petar go?"

"Once I find him, I'm going to punish him. I'll get rid of the manager who was just promoted!"

Merlin raised an eyebrow upon hearing this. According to his magical senses, there were no signs of life in the warehouse.

On the contrary, behind him... tsk tsk tsk, the quartermaster Andrew couldn't detect the magical fluctuations for that instant, but in his eyes it was as conspicuous as a flashbang in the dormitory in the middle of the night.

Interesting, very interesting.

"Perhaps something really has happened," Merlin thought with a smile. "After all, managing the logistics of such a large base involves a mix of people and spies. On the Orville, I heard Anton mention that the base has been arresting spies one after another and is facing a food crisis. It's normal for the logistics staff of such a base to be extremely busy."

“Ah, you’ve really hit the nail on the head,” Andrew said, grabbing Merlin’s hand. “I may be the quartermaster, managing the entire camp according to regulations… but two hundred thousand men!”

"When I was in the Ursus army, I was only in charge of three to five thousand people. During the Reunion Movement, although there were more people, the Shield Guards were only in charge of five to six thousand... Now I'm suddenly in charge of hundreds of thousands of people..."

"My God, I suspect I'll go bald soon. Every morning I wake up to find clumps of hair on my pillow! I open my eyes to find that 200,000 people's food, drink, toileting, and sleep depend on me."

“We couldn’t leave people in the freezing cold, so we organized a team to quickly cut down all the forests in the surrounding mountains to build enough houses and timber for so many people to squeeze through the winter.”

"Daily food supplies for each area, location planning, dispute mediation... God, if I had a choice, I would rather charge into battle carrying artillery fire."

"If we weren't in charge of military rule, but instead managing ordinary towns... we would have been exhausted long ago."

“We had absolutely no experience managing so many people. It was incredibly chaotic. Fortunately, among the infected people who were driven to the snowfield, there were some talented individuals in various fields. Only after absorbing them were we able to keep the base in order.”

"But it's just that things are no longer chaotic... I have to say, this group of people have been a great help to us."

At this point, Andrew sighed, "Take Petal for example. He used to be a manager in a southern city, overseeing construction sites. His major was a perfect fit for his job, and he was living a good life until he contracted carnage due to an accident at the construction site."

"In the end, he was reported by his competitors and forced to go to the snowfield. He is a very capable person. Under such circumstances, he was able to unite a group of infected people and endure hunger and hardship to find the base."

“Petal also helped me a lot. I couldn’t manage many things in the base without him.”

At this point, Andrew pounded on the warehouse's metal door again, "Where did this guy go? How could he just leave all that hard-earned food behind..."

"Here, here!" Just then, a soft shout came from behind the two of them.

Upon hearing this, Merlin turned around in surprise and saw a man wearing a thick earmuff hat peeking out from around the corner of a warehouse.

Andrew, on the other hand, rushed forward.

“Petal Stojanovich!!! What the hell…” He angrily called out the other man’s full name, but the other man tugged at him hard, desperately gesturing for Andrew to speak softly.

Seeing this, Merlin also eagerly picked up his rice bag and went over to see what this so-called former engineering department manager, now the base warehouse supervisor, was up to.

"There's no time for explanations!" Petal preemptively struck at Andrew!

"Quickly, Mr. Andrew, we need the Shield Guards' assistance!"

"What?" Andrew was completely bewildered. "What happened?"

"Someone wants to use the Originium warehouses to contaminate our remaining food with Originium powder!" Petal said anxiously. "They've even prepared bombs for the largest warehouses! They're planning to detonate them tonight!"

"So there's still time to stop it, but we need the Shield Guard's help, Mr. Andrew."

He said with a righteous expression, "We absolutely cannot allow our last grain supplies to be compromised!"

"What?" Upon hearing this, Andrew instinctively reached for his weapon, then immediately realized what he'd done and grabbed Merlin's hand. "Quick, we have to get out of here!"

Seeing his expression, Petal's eyes flashed with a sharp light, and he quickly reached out to grab Andrew. "Shouldn't we stop them first?"

“No…we must get Mr. Merlin away first, we can’t let anything happen to him,” Andrew answered hastily.

“But…” Petal hesitated, glancing at Merlin’s innocent face and the rice bag full of rice in his hand.

"Alright, you're the quartermaster, you're in charge."

Then he simply followed behind the two of them.

“Be normal, pretend you didn’t find anything!” Andrew reminded him. “Let’s just pretend we’re here to collect food.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than they encountered an infected person hurrying along.

“Ah, Mr. Andrew,” he saw the three of them and stopped, asking curiously, “What are you doing here…”

The main reason was that the large bag of rice in Merlin's hand was too conspicuous.

“Oh, it’s the medical department,” Andrew said without changing his expression. “A group of critically ill brothers and sisters…sigh, they probably won’t last much longer.”

“This doctor,” he said, pointing to Merlin, “hopes he won’t die on an empty stomach, because it’s too painful to leave this world like that. So, alas… I brought him here to get some food.”

"I'll also visit my brothers and sisters while I'm at it."