Chapter 33

Meanwhile, within the Sahara outpost.

Little Qianning clutched his burning ears, inwardly cursing the shameless pair as he ducked into a random multimedia classroom. He had just dashed around leveraging connections to claim some credit, only to be ruthlessly booted from his mother’s room.

The instructor at the podium gave him a calm glance before resuming the lesson for the fresh recruits:

“Cthulhu, one of the Great Old Ones with the largest number of followers in society today.

His head sprouts tentacles, his body resembles an ape’s, and wings sprout from his back. Based on accounts from captured believers, he should currently be sunk in slumber beneath the South Pacific, in a palace called ‘R’lyeh.’

The overwhelming majority of believers—for instance, the Dagon Cult and the Deep Ones—have no goal other than to awaken the slumbering Cthulhu…”

“Hey, what do you reckon those believers are after?” Little Qianning murmured to the rigidly seated trainee next to him while fishing out his phone. “Scared of living too long? Why not just wander to the kitchen after brushing their teeth in the morning and slit their own throats? If it’s immortality they’re chasing… turning into those grotesque Deep Ones might not faze them, but good luck finding a partner who looks like that. Can they even get it up on the bed?”

The trainee forced the words through clenched teeth. “One more word, and after class, I’ll beat you so badly you’ll never get out of bed again.”

Little Qianning pursed his lips, flashed a face that screamed “Whoa, you’re scary,” shrugged it off, and bowed his head to scan the day’s financial news reports.

Up on the podium, the instructor’s lecture pressed on:

“…Unlike Nyarlathotep, Cthulhu’s avatars number only three at present—or rather, only three have records of observation.

The first avatar is called Behemoth, manifesting as a mist of water aglow with aurora-like radiance that drags people into horrifying nightmares.

The second avatar is called Khirra, appearing within dreams.

Should Khirra fail to dominate a victim in their dream, Behemoth devours them from outside it—hence, these two avatars typically operate in tandem.

Beyond that, Cthulhu has one more avatar, known as the Father of Sharks…”

Little Qianning tuned out the instructor’s drone as mere background noise. He fiddled eagerly with his cutting-edge GORCC phone, capable of syncing live TV channels, and tuned to something decidedly not family-friendly to nurse the wounds his parents had just inflicted on his heart. Abruptly, the financial interview on screen cut away:

【Breaking news:

The inaugural transatlantic multilateral summit has kicked off in Southampton.

The talks center on countering the illicit flow of firearms and ammunition to terrorist groups. Yet just three minutes ago, the British royal vessel ‘Iron Rose’—serving as the conference venue—vanished into thin air without explanation.

Southampton harbor stands sealed for now, with investigations ongoing. This mishap could spark an international crisis…】

“…!” Little Qianning rocketed to his feet, his chair shrieking across the floor.

Meanwhile, in the strategic conference room of the GORCC London Outpost.

Keyboards clattered and alchemy arrays hummed without cease. Half a minute later, a cry rang out: “Got it! The watch the Director gave Ode—it’s pinging in the South Pacific now!”

Clang—the conference room door flew open from a kick. Pharaoh stormed in, her expression thunderous, Old Qianning’s suit jacket slung haphazardly over her upper body now that she had rushed to the London outpost. “Specific coordinates? The South Pacific is a big pond.”

South latitude 47°9′, west longitude 126°43′!

A hush blanketed the room for an instant, then whispers exploded:

“Wait… that’s R’lyeh, isn’t it? The palace where Cthulhu slumbers?”

“Why end up there? The threat letter came from the Black Brotherhood—they don’t worship Cthulhu.”

“Does it matter!? Point is, a spot like that, dragging all those people along—could Cthulhu actually wake up? And those people… if they end up dead…”

—Upon the South Pacific.

The cruise ship pitched like a solitary leaf adrift on the waves.

The hull’s every section lay dilapidated now, mirroring the mute ancient palace sunken below the surface.

Atop the deck, choked with seaweed, a vaporous mist laced with breathtaking auroras methodically surveyed its new domain, unhurried and precise.

Behind it, the churning cloud-sea roiled with guests sprawled like cadavers, now and then convulsing to unleash wails steeped in terror or torment.

Yet none of this concerned it.

It recalled its purpose in boarding the vessel: ‘Chorazin… mg h’. (Chorazin. No sign of him aboard.)’

‘Impossible, isn’t it?’ murmured its other avatar, its half-self, tone laced with gentle concern like soothing a child. ‘You ought to check once more.’

‘I shall.’ Behemoth registered no veiled challenge to its competence, accepting the counsel without question. ‘But promise me this: you’ll hunt for traces of Khirra in the Dream Realm too. She forms the main body’s eternal safeguard against death, she is—’

‘Hush… be still. Cease echoing the main body’s fixations, Behemoth. It leaves me fretting over whether you’ve surrendered your own sense of self.’

‘Very well, Chorazin.’

Oblivious to the barbed undertone, Behemoth replied with grave sincerity from the deck before drifting wordlessly toward the deck’s central throng, the heaviest cluster of people.

Belowdecks, Eva abruptly exhaled in the cramped stairwell leading to the squash court. After a few shallow breaths, she wrestled her long legs and arms free from the narrow crevice, then crept onward into the gloom ahead, footsteps hushed with caution.

‘llll mgr’luh ya… Heed my voice, human.’ A susurrus stirred the darkness, evoking the soft scrape of tentacles from some abyssal creature—mellow yet unnervingly off-kilter. ‘I shielded you from Behemoth’s sweep; now repay the favor…’

Eva acted as if deaf to it, thumbing her earpiece. The ensuing shrill buzz brought Faust’s irked squeeze in reply: “—Knock it off. Vendettas can wait; timing’s everything. Where are you?”

【Second-class cabins. Saw something downright bizarre—I deployed an alchemy array for an independent space, dodging Behemoth’s senses. But this little girl—in a beige frock topped with a red bow, plain ordinary kid—dashed right across the mist! Behemoth never clocked her.】

Eva faltered ever so slightly en route to second class, inquiring: “And Ode? With you?”

【…Ugh, don’t ask.】 Faust grumbled. 【Half a minute back, yeah, right beside him. Woke intending to hustle him out, and bam—tail swipe sends me tumbling into lower second-class! Snapped a few ribs… Still down here knitting bones.】

‘He’s… lying…’ The susurrus ghosted past Eva anew. ‘Unharmed, lying in wait at second-class for you… Trap.’

‘—Slay him! He’s sniffed out our bond! Ignore the human topside; Chorazin never—’

·

“—lets a soul depart my dream unscathed.”

In the Dream Realm’s sun-dappled grove, sunlight beamed as brightly as ever.

The erstwhile jolly father clamped Ode’s arm in a vise grip, jamming him backward against the bark-rough trunk, his voice soft as a lullaby: “How did you spot the impostor?”

“…” Ode wrenched hard—he had shattered the restraints the instant he clocked the father figure’s falsehood, reverting to adult form. “My father never taught me any such weird chant… What the hell does it mean?!”

“Never at all?” The ‘father’ betrayed surprise, stooping his bulkier, taller frame to nuzzle Ode’s collarbone with a light sniff amid Ode’s recoil of revulsion. “Clear as day—the reek of those Druids. What Druid skips instructing his child in shift-spells, content with mere make-believe games?”

“…?” The riposte blindsided Ode. He blinked, reflexively furrowing his brow to peer back at his foe, only for the lout in his father’s guise to seize his nape’s red locks and smash his skull against the fractured bark with a pained grunt.

“Dwr-lus-sa, the Druid tongue: water, flux, essence. Every Druid intones it before morphing into a swimmer…”

The ‘father’s’ palm trailed down Ode’s lower back to his outer thigh, murmuring silkily: “Care to glimpse your real-world self just now?”

“…” Ode held his tongue; seeing or not lay beyond his say.

His mind raced on dual tracks: First, the identity of this father-masked marauder? Chorazin seemed likeliest—he had glimpsed Behemoth’s signature mist pre-blackout. Yet who knew what transpired in his stupor? Confirmation imperative.

Second: foe’s endgame, and exploitability thereof?

Cogitations swirled until a searing melt gripped everything below his hips. He vented a deliberate husky gasp, slumping bonelessly along the oak.

His rear assailant voiced no deep suspicion, scooping an arm around Ode’s waist—slackly, by design or slip?—and easing them both rearward from the trunk several paces. Necessity turned Ode to hook the other’s neck; contact with that near-mirror face—save the chin-length deep-red curls—drained color from his cheeks. Gaze skittering away in loathing.

“Lovely look; may it endure.” No face-swap forthcoming from the enemy, seeding in Ode an ill foreboding; his extrapolated paths boded grim. “Curious about your legs’ new shape? —Have a peek. Might not stay so pretty much longer.”

“…” Damn freak. Forewarned of the horror ahead, Ode chilled his tone to feign defiance. “What in blazes are you? What do you wa— Ah!!”

Agony detonated low in his gut. Blood welled from beneath the wrenched scale, drenching the deep-crimson fish tail in richer scarlet.

The drooping fish tail trembled, its deep crimson hue under the sunlight as vivid as blood trickling before candlelight. The enemy held him as they sat on a nearby low tree branch. If one ignored the patch where scales had been brutally torn away, his posture—curled up in pain against the other’s chest—could even be called intimate.

“What… do you want?! If you don’t tell me… how can I answer!” Ode’s pale lips quivered with every word, each one squeezed out like a gasp amid excruciating agony.

“You really don’t know?” The chest pressed to his ear vibrated with a low chuckle, the laughter carrying an inexplicable delight. “There’s a heavy aura on you from Dagon’s death curse, and Khirra’s scent… You killed Dagon, didn’t you? You took Khirra away… right?”

“I didn’t— Ah!!”

“Where is Khirra?”

“I don’t know…! Stop! Don’t pull anymore… I-I heard that someone else ruined the ritual to summon the Father of Sharks that day, and… maybe that person took Khirra. I really don’t… No, no! Please, I beg you… Y-you’re Chorazin, aren’t you? Don’t pull, please don’t pull anymore…”

“…”

Chorazin’s smile, previously devoid of any ripple, shifted slightly as Ode shrank into his embrace, his pleading breath warm against Chorazin’s jaw. For an instant, when his name was sobbed out amid the tears, the disguise meant to amplify the victim’s mental torment flickered like a mirage, and his throat bobbed faintly.

The next second.

“Oh… so you really are Chorazin.”

The mermaid who had been trembling in fear moments before suddenly drew out his tone, laced with intrigue. The pain that had wracked him to the point of abandoning all resolve now seemed trivial.

Having confirmed the identity and achieved his probing goal, Ode met Chorazin’s abruptly terrifying gaze without flinching. He even had the leisure to playfully kiss the black-orange slit pupil that the other had finally revealed by dropping his disguise. “Your eyes are pretty nice too. Make sure to look at them more when you’ve got time. Hm?”

The Fingertip Blade slid silently from his sleeve.

As Ode leaped backward, he slashed his own throat without hesitation. The long, sharp, exquisitely beautiful fish tail swung deliberately, its fluke landing like a resounding slap across Chorazin’s face.

In the next moment, he jolted awake from the nightmare with a sharp gasp on the deck. He clutched his neck, which had been leaking air just a second ago, and tried to sit up—

But he couldn’t manage it.

The sea of clouds-like mist took on solid form, weighing down on him like a boulder. He flailed once before collapsing back onto the deck. “—If you’re gonna do it, just get it over with quick.”

‘?’

This was undoubtedly the strangest human the Behemoth had ever encountered. It couldn’t even comprehend what “get it over with quick” meant, let alone misinterpret it. Just as it prepared to methodically devour Chorazin’s unfinished prey, Faust—who had called himself “the guy lying in second-class cabin with aching bones”—rose into the air on a fragmented Alchemy Array, one hand tucked in his pocket.

He took a drag from his cigar, then pinched it off with his left hand, adorned with a golden ornament, and casually flicked it toward the gorgeous mist pinning down Ode’s chest.

“You can light it up now, Eva.”

In the next instant, a massive, branch-shaped rune blazed to life on the deck.

The churning sea of clouds flickered uncertainly for a few seconds before vanishing without a trace in a heartbeat.

The deck fell silent for one second. The next—

“Hiss!! Hiss!!” Ode shot bolt upright, frantically brushing the cigar—now stripped of the Behemoth’s cover—off his chest.

Faust, who had just pulled off that big move, sucked in air through his teeth as well. He shook his left hand furiously while hopping on his feet and wailing, “Hot… hiss, so hot!!”

The two fingers wearing the golden ornament were smoking. Ode could even smell the scent of scorched flesh.

Ode held high hopes for Faust. “Did you guys just take out the Behemoth?”

“Then it wouldn’t just be these two fingers that got burnt to a crisp.” Faust crouched down dejectedly, eyed the lush fish tail enviously for a moment, then couldn’t resist reaching out to touch it—only to get smacked hard across the face by the hypersensitive Ode.

As the cool, slick fish fin grazed his cheek and slid away, Faust’s head unconsciously stretched after it, and he touched his face with some reluctance. “Not that I’m complaining, but you really ought to watch yourself. Don’t go tossing out sex hints every chance you get.”

“…???” Ode had been mulling over the Druid matter Chorazin had mentioned, but he whipped his head around at that, glaring at the utterly baffling pervert. “I just slapped Chorazin with my tail, so how come he didn’t call it a sex hint?”

“Did you give him time to say anything?” Faust snorted. “Just wait and see if he wants to jump you the next time you meet. —Getting serious now, can you retract that fish tail of yours?”

Faust sobered up. “Thanks to you pulling all that aggro, the enemy retreated, and no one died. A few went mad, but that’s treatable.”

“We’ve gathered everyone in the central banquet hall for protection. While the Behemoth’s too grossed out by that Old Seal Array to come back anytime soon, let’s recap quick. I have a feeling this ship faces more than just the Behemoth’s threat—there are other dangers still lurking below the surface.”

Ode nodded gravely. After sitting on the ground for a few seconds, he said, “—So, do you know the Druid shapeshifting incantation?”

Faust: “…Uh… Eva! Eva! Do you know it?”

Eva’s ethereal voice came through the earpiece: 【If the ship’s computers could connect to the net, I could find out. Unfortunately, under current conditions, all I can get you are electric eels and fishing nets.】

“…”

Ode and Faust slowly, painfully clutched their heads together.

One minute.

Two minutes.

Eva: 【…What are you waiting for?】

Faust grunted, a faint spark of hope in his eyes. “Maybe if the wind dries it out, the tail will turn back into legs?”

Ode rubbed his face, muttering unwillingly, “Someone… who’s free, go call Cavendish for me.”

Faust: “? Huh? Why call him? Is he a Druid?”

Ode licked his lips, parched from prolonged time out of water. “If he’s willing, he probably can…?”

—

Ten minutes later.

In the lavish bathroom, restored using what was supposedly divine power.

Ode lounged bored in the bathtub—spacious for a human but a bit cramped for him—fiddling with the foam on the water’s surface. After a while, he splashed his deep crimson fish tail up with a whoosh, admiring how it gleamed like a blood-drenched ruby under the warm yellow lights.

Click. The bathroom door opened softly.

Ode immediately splashed his tail back down and perked up his ears to listen to the voices outside.

“Are… you sure the queen’s line had Druid blood?” That was Faust, sounding skeptical of the history.

“It came down through my mother’s side… You guys sticking around here—is the banquet hall safe?”

“Uh… fine. But promise me: get our agent back in ten minutes, okay? I know things between you two are… intensely hot and heavy. But this really isn’t the time for getting frisky. Hold it in, please, hold it in.”

Faust’s reluctant footsteps faded away. Cavendish’s steady strides then carried him across the pricey mosaic tiles of the lavish bathroom.

Ode went on high alert the instant he saw the man loosen his tie and shrug off his jacket upon entering. He braced his hands on the tub’s edge and popped halfway up. “Wait, I said only ten—”

Splash…

Warm water slapped against the cold floor, foam leaving white traces amid the ornate tile patterns.

“Not just ten minutes.” The Duke, stepping directly into the tub, murmured, “You forgot—I can borrow power from the gods.”

Ode nearly burst out laughing. “Borrowing power from your god… to cuckold him?”

“If the Marriage Contract doesn’t count, how could it be cuckolding?” Cavendish straightened up, undoing the straps under his leather gloves and tossing them aside. He arched a brow at Ode. “Or do you not want to know how to change back?”

“…” Ode’s gaze lingered half a second on the chest muscles straining Cavendish’s vest, then trailed down to the man’s lean, powerful waist and hips. He tsked half-heartedly. “You dare threaten me.”

“You’ve threatened me plenty of times. You have to let me even the score once, right?” Cavendish leaned in slightly, his arms braced on either side of the tub. The lines of his muscles stood out sharply through the wet white shirt, the broadest part constrained by the black leather armbands, the flexing bulk nearly bursting the rigid cuffs.

“…” Ode narrowed his eyes a fraction, then asked casually after a moment, “No other show of sincerity?”

“What do you want?” The tub’s water overflowed with the added body inside. Cavendish seized Ode’s hands, pinned against the tub walls. “There is one thing you might want to know. —When the captain died earlier, I heard piano music.”

“What?” Ode’s brow furrowed on reflex. “But I didn’t hear anything. Eva checked the surveillance and didn’t mention hearing—”

Any further analysis choked back in his throat along with a hitch in his breath.

Cavendish kissed the shell of his ear. “I can throw in one extra piece of intel… Do you know what’s hidden under a mermaid’s hardest scales… right here?”