Considering the numerous death threats already weighing on his shoulders, the little wax doll sent by Nyarlathotep barely registered with Ode. After burning it, he collapsed into bed and fell asleep. The next morning, he rose early and joined his roommates for training. Half a month slipped by just like that.
“Wilderness survival, firearms, driving, intelligence—you took first place in every single one!”
On June 20th at noon, the cafeteria was crammed full of ravenous trainees howling for food.
Ode’s roommates had barely set down their trays beside him when they started griping. One glance at the mountain of food on Ode’s plate, and their complaints turned to wails: “Even your appetite dwarfs ours! Come on, man, don’t rub it in. Leave us some scraps to survive on?!”
“He’s left plenty,” El said. The man was a full-fledged instructor, yet here he was, wedging himself in at the trainees’ table. He sat directly across from Ode with a grin, his gaze so direct and unapologetic that the roommates wisely scooped up their trays and scattered. “That seduction course of yours—you still haven’t passed the final exam, have you?”
“I’m telling you, Pharaoh’s got it out for you. She’s making this deliberately tough. Setting Director Faust as your exam target? No way you’ll pull that off. Hey, let’s make a swap—”
“Why not?” Ode didn’t even bother lifting his eyes. He kept eating with elegant speed, flipping through a hefty tome on black mud monsters. To any outsider passing by without the full story, they might have mistaken Ode for the instructor, with El as some rebellious trainee getting a talking-to during the instructor’s shift.
El didn’t seem to care about the impression. “You didn’t know? Faust had a wife once. She died tragically—something to do with a cult, from what I hear. All these years, he’s stayed faithful to her memory, pure as the driven snow. No chance you’d shake him. If you did? That’d be comedy gold.”
El leaned eagerly across the table, his raw energy and vitality blazing hotter than the Sahara outside the window. “For real, though. Switch targets? I can put in a word with Pharaoh for you. Make me your subject, and you’ll sail right through the exam.”
“Yeah, you’d make things nice and smooth for me too.” Ode snapped the tome shut after finishing the last page. As the bell for cultural studies rang out, he calmly gathered his tray—having shamelessly milked the intel for all it was worth. “Sorry, got to head to class, Instructor.”
Ode wasn’t worried about getting held back on the seduction final. Faust hadn’t shipped him to this base just to watch him flunk out. More likely, the instructors had cooked up some kind of timed trial for him. Once they decided the moment was ripe, Faust would conveniently fall under his “seduction” like clockwork.
By contrast, he was far more eager to unravel the mystery of the black mud monster. Over this stretch, he’d combed through nearly every library book on non-human species, but nothing matched up.
“This doesn’t add up.” His roommates had saved him a spot in the tiered lecture hall, and they were just as baffled. They’d pitched in on the black mud monster intel hunt too.
“Check it out—these non-human hierarchies, top down: Tier one has to be the Three Pillar Gods at the head of the Outer Gods, plus Nodens leading the Elder Gods.”
“Tier two drops to other Outer Gods and Elder Gods on equal footing.”
“Next up, the Great Old Ones. Then Independent Races and Servant Races. Dagon’s the boss of the Servant Race Deep Ones, for instance.”
“Quachil Uttaus ranks as a Great Old One at minimum. Sure, it was gravely wounded when you faced it, enough to make it turn tail and run… So if this black mud monster isn’t a peer Great Old One, it has to be a leader from the Independent Races or Servant Races. But the archives have zero illustrations that fit!”
A mud-caked figure burst through the lecture hall’s front door—not a monkey, but some poor soul fresh off cross-country drills who’d scarfed lunch but skipped the shower. “Hey! Hey! You hear!? Word is, Chief Eva’s personally teaching our next lab session!”
Ode couldn’t help peeking up from his notes. Reflexively, his mind flashed to that 2000cc bucket of blood, and a wave of faintness washed over him.
But against all expectation, the figure stepping through the classroom door was that of a child.
She bounded onto the podium in three quick hops and slammed the blackboard. “Sit! Sit! I’m your lecturer for this class—TA Lola, filling in to run the slides for Instructor Eva!”
The trainees had gone quiet for maybe five seconds before erupting again. Some dismissed the high-school-looking girl outright; others cooed over how adorably lively the little thing seemed and figured they’d tease her a bit with Chief Eva absent.
No one noticed Ode in the back corner. The guy who’d been lounging with his chin propped on one hand, idly turning pages—he froze solid in his seat.
“…” In the clamor, Ode stared at Lola on the podium. She was tying back her hair, a white coat draped over her frame. For several long seconds, her image blurred into the twisted-limbed corpse of the adult Lola from his memories.
He nearly bolted onstage, seized her shoulders, and demanded why she was tangled up with Eva—why she’d become the woman’s student, why she wasn’t hunkered down somewhere safe—
But the half month of training under Elder Zhong had drilled something into him. Before any dark mood could take root, other memories surfaced:
Rising from the Black Sea, rescue lights streaming endlessly along the shore.
On the operating table, Lola wrapping him in a hug, her voice soft but certain: Thank you for bringing me to 1980.
Right. The past was buried. Now he walked a road brighter than any loop before. No point chaining himself to old gloom.
Ode drew a silent, steadying breath, quelling the tremor in his chest. He was mulling whether to step in and help the little girl enforce some order when Lola calmly clicked to the next slide. The screen filled with the Red Flood—the very topic that had sparked a frenzy at the outpost just half a month back.
“Today, we’re covering Chief Eva’s long-sealed research breakthrough. No one’s been able to wield it…”
“…” The room plunged into silence.
The tighter the instructors had clamped down on Eva’s weapons before, the more the trainees’ curiosity burned now.
Lola thumbed the remote, and the Red Flood onscreen broke apart on command.
Even those metal panels dissected further, exposing vivid tissues beneath—like muscles and sinews pulsing with life.
“As you can see, the Red Flood’s hull blends metal and monster tissues. Just like your Tindalos Hunting Rifles and Mi-Go Masks.”
“The Tindalos Hunting Rifles are now free of mental pollution. But Mi-Go Masks can still hook the wearer into a fleeting mental link with Mi-Go brains, triggering mutation.”
“A mere scrap of monster tissue packs that much mental pollution punch. Imagine scaling it up high-density like the Red Flood. That’s why this version’s power is heavily nerfed—Chief Eva exhausted every trick to cut back the monster tissue ratio…”
“…” Ode sat up straighter.
Be it the lecture’s substance or Lola’s pointed glances his way, everything screamed this was a tailored sales pitch just for him.
But hadn’t he devoured the Red Flood down to a single wing? Why drag Lola in for this demo?
A hunch stirred in Ode’s gut—something he hesitated to dwell on, yet thrilled at the prospect of. He tamped down his feelings and tracked Lola’s breakdown, scrutinizing every Red Flood component.
He learned the biological secrets lurking under each ironclad panel. And he finally got why, on worm assault night, raw instinct had him chomping those “iron chunks.” Iron? Hardly. Back then, to him, they were premium, pre-sliced sashimi!
“…Best of all, monster tissues link up across types. Carry a matching small arm on you, and you can summon the Red Flood itself…”
“Hey, Ode! Ode!” A roommate jabbed his arm, whispering fiercely. “Glance back—Director Faust is waiting. Back-row relay just said he wants you out now. Got something for you.”
“?” Amid Lola’s rundown, Ode twisted around. There was Faust: one hand tucked in his suit pocket, unlit cigar clenched between his teeth, lounging against the lecture hall’s rear door. He gave Ode a curt nod.
In that instant, Ode knew: his seduction final was about to clear.
·
“Before I sent you to the outpost, I promised: the moment we nailed down intel on the Old Madman, I’d loop you in.”
Faust lounged in the black leather executive chair of his private office, suit impeccable, sideburns slicked to perfection with pomade. He slid a thick dossier across the desk like the trainee apparently perched astride his lap was invisible. “Have a read—or want the executive summary?”
“…” Ode kept his expression poker-straight as he slid off Faust’s lap, legs bare. Grabbing the files, he wondered idly if the director swung that way at all. “Jay J… He’s partners with that undercover agent who almost took me out?”
Faust crossed his legs with casual poise. “Affirmative. Else why the perfect timing? Morning: undercover spots your sky-high charm value at the interview. Afternoon: Old Madman locks onto you, baits you to Dreamcatcher Town for the chop?”
“All Dagon Cult. They round up pretty boys and girls for the Deep Ones—their leader included—even their god—to breed.”
“You gutted Dreamcatcher Town. This J wizard never got the SOS from his crew—most wound up as your lunch, naturally. Point is, he assumes they’re golden, still hunting marks.”
“Our assets pinned it: barring curveballs, he’ll hit a slum girl this afternoon…”
Faust’s face hardened. He paused, gaze lifting to Ode, who leaned against the desk. “You want first crack at payback?”
“Think you need to ask?” Ode had zero issue broadcasting his grudges. He speed-read the dossier, chucked it aside, then strode to the sofa. Bending down, he reached for the training pants draped over the armrest.
A cold, pale, bony hand intercepted him. Eva’s voice slithered from behind like a specter: “Skip those.”
“I’ve got new ‘essentials’ lined up for you.”
“…” Ode jolted at Eva’s vanishing act mastery. Wheeling around, he spotted a crisp classic British suit hanging from a makeshift rack on the office wall.
Along with the suit came a Beretta 92F Pistol, an FN MAG machine gun, and an AW Sniper Rifle.
“If you still remember what Lola said earlier,” Eva said, unhooking only the Beretta pistol and placing it into Ode’s palm, “then you should know that as long as you’re carrying this—”
“—it’s like carrying an entire arsenal,” Ode finished. His heartbeat gradually lightened, like a balloon filled with helium, pounding so fast it might explode. If not for his rationality holding him back, he would have dashed right back into the training ground to test it on anything handy.
But Eva shook her head. “It’s more than just an arsenal. Take a look outside.”
The blond Russian expert leaned against the windowsill, a hint of pride visible on her otherwise impassive face as she nodded toward the street below.
“…!” Ode hurried over to the window without a care for the wind catching his fly. He peered down and spotted a silver-gray sports car parked curbside, its razor-sharp lines and unapologetically flashy metallic paint gleaming coldly in the light.
