“You think so?”
To Nyarlathotep’s surprise, Cavendish actually picked up on Its remark. He kept his gaze fixed on the Opera House, his tone utterly calm as he said, “No. You’re wrong. He is completely different from us.”
Inside the Lyceum Theatre.
The belt strained against the tentacles with a cracking sound. The dark wings connected to the young man’s elegantly arched back flared out suddenly, then drooped limply once more.
Ode panted softly. In the darkness, his pale body gleamed with a sheen of sweat. His slender, pallid hand groped weakly backward, like a man plummeting into an abyss in his final death throes, desperately reaching for any lifesaving straw.
Hastur, looming behind him, mercifully coiled a tentacle around that searching wrist. “Feeling despair yet?”
Despair? Ode almost wanted to laugh.
It had been far too long since he had felt anything like it.
His heart was perpetually filled with rage and hatred, driving him every moment to seize any weapon he could grasp, to drag anything—and anyone—he could touch straight down to hell, consequences be damned.
He craved battle so fiercely… craved striking out… craved shattering every obstacle in his path with raw violence. Despair? He had no time for such useless drivel.
【Ode, if you want to kill Hastur, now is a good opportunity. But…】 Faust hesitated for a moment but ultimately chose to respect Ode’s personal wishes before taking action. His tone shifted to one of cool efficiency. 【You could also probe the true stance of the Old Gods.】
【I prefer the latter, soldier. We don’t need enemies who’ll stab us in the back.】
In the darkness, Hastur could see the red-haired youth—every inch of whose body was controlled by its horrific tentacles and hooked claws—suddenly curl his nearly bloodless lips into a grin of eerie satisfaction. In the next instant…
“Squish…”
The red-haired youth hugged one rigid hooked claw tight to himself and drove it straight into his own waist and abdomen. Flesh tore with a sickening, wet squelch.
“…”
Hastur’s robes parted slowly, like eyes widening in shock. Scalding blood sprayed across Its muddy yellow garments and pale mask, blooming like roses fattened on gore across bleached bone.
The red-haired youth pressed himself closer to It of his own volition, seemingly oblivious to the claw plunging deeper into his flesh. That hand Hastur had taken for a search for support now brushed against Its icy mask, caressing it gently—as if stroking through the hard bone to touch Its nonexistent breath, Its very soul. “Have you learned yet?”
Blood trickled down the mask and splattered onto the youth’s pale lips, staining them a vivid crimson. Hastur floated motionless in place, feeling those lips press against the side of Its mask near the ear. “If you want me to feel despair, at least manage this much first.”
In the next second, the red-haired youth’s face drooped against It. His wings fell like an overwhelming canopy, draping over Hastur’s head in a velvet shroud before sliding away like water, until they hung limp and still in the darkness.
Hastur: “…”
No one would hear it, but the King in Yellow—who should not possess lungs or a windpipe—let out ragged, hurried breaths at some unknown moment. It froze in place, sensing “warmth” for the first time in its existence—from Ode’s blood. Sensing “softness”—from Ode’s corpse.
Out on the street.
“How could this…” Nyarlathotep trailed off in shock, staring incredulously alongside Hastur at the motionless red-haired youth for a full half minute before whipping around. “Aren’t you worried?? He’s dead! Just like that—so… What was he thinking!? What are you thinking? He—wait, you can see the future. Does that mean he isn’t dead?”
In GORCC’s command room, Faust and Eva unconsciously held their breaths, their eyes locked on the flatline of the heart monitor in the surveillance window.
Eva: “…Three minutes already. You sure—”
“Ode wouldn’t do anything without a follow-up plan. If he really wanted to die, he’d have arranged everything first—at the very least, he’d tell me.” Faust’s voice sounded calm, but it carried an undercurrent of tension. “He told me that every time he dies, he’s pulled to a Corpse Sea. Once he treks across it, he comes back… Right now, all we can do is use the intelligence he sends back to capture the Secret Society.”
Meanwhile, on the Corpse Sea woven from red and white.
Ode clutched the gaping wound in his abdomen with one hand as he staggered forward.
The wasteland one had to cross in true death felt even more real than his dreams.
Few ghosts greeted him. Instead, the dead endlessly repeated the scenes of their demise—limbs snapping, brains bursting. Blood rose in sheets to fall as rain, pattering onto pale bones and sodden flesh, splashing up vivid crimson blossoms.
He felt like someone desperately trying to wake from sleep: mind sharp and aware, body heavy and unresponsive. Amid the piercing wails, he picked out voices from the outside world.
“ymg’ h’ ah’n’gha? (You just killed him like that?)”
It was the Sleep God’s voice.
“In Nodens’ name, you’re forcing me to rethink everything I know about you lot. No sense of aesthetics at all. I mean… look at him. So beautiful. If Nodens hadn’t ordered me to play the good guy in front of him, I’d have dragged him back to my palace and rolled around in the sheets with him for months.”
“…” Hastur, uncharacteristically, made no reply.
“What’s with the silence?” The Sleep God teased. “You nearly scared me half to death.”
“—Enough. Hand over his body. You’re no Ghoul—his corpse is useless to you, right?”
“No.” Hastur’s voice took on a rasp unnatural to Its kind. “He is the lead I chose. He should play the betrayed fallen angel in my production—”
“But he’s dead!” The Sleep God sounded exasperated and impatient. “How’s he supposed to perform now? Oh, don’t give me that look. You killed him, not me. I wasn’t even there!”
“Fine, give him to me. This is Nodens’ command. You don’t want to refuse me here and then get hunted down by every Old God out there, do you? Is this little actor really worth more to you than your own life?”
A long silence followed. Moments later, the tentacles and claws wrapped around him loosened, slowly lowering him—as pallbearers ease a coffin from their shoulders into a three-foot grave.
“What does Nodens want with his corpse? To revive him?”
“No… but he’ll make fine fertilizer to refill the massive pit he tore open in the Phantasmal Dream Realm.”
Splash—
The corpses beneath his feet suddenly gave way. Ode tumbled down amid bones and flesh until he hit the water with a “thud,” plunging into a warm, turquoise lake.
He sank face-up, watching his limp limbs trail behind, the blood cloud spreading from his chest and abdomen, and the shimmering light filtering down from the surface.
At some point, a bony hand shot up from the depths and seized his shoulder. A memory flooded into his mind—
“Brother, did we win?” The memory rippled like a reflection on the lake, sunlight dancing in layered waves.
El wore a white hat stained red with blood. He leaned on his rifle, panting hard, but a dopey grin spread across his face. “Brother! We did it! I never dreamed we’d actually make it this far! Those Great Old Ones from the textbooks? Taken care of. The Three Pillar Gods? Shub-Niggurath and Yog-Sothoth tore each other apart, and Nyarlathotep died for good with our allies’ help… Oh man, I need to plan a vacation after I quit. Gotta bring my sister—”
“Squish!”
A claw burst through El’s chest from behind. Hot blood sprayed across his vision in a haze of red and black.
“…El?” His past self blinked, still processing it. He stared dumbly at El’s smile frozen on his face. As the body slumped, it revealed the sexy, muscular form of a woman behind it. “…Bast? What are… This—this joke isn’t funny at all.”
“Who said we were joking?” The cat goddess Bast licked the blood from her lips. Her golden pupils burned with cold, savage cruelty. “The Outer Gods are finished. What’s the point of keeping a threat like you around? —Oh, don’t bother reaching for comms. Your friends beat you to it.”
“Time for you to join them.”
Splash—
Blood stained his vision red once more.
When his sight cleared, Ode found himself gasping wildly in Faust’s office. He seized Faust’s wrist. “I want to learn Alchemy.”
“You want to learn Alchemy? What, the gear from the Old Gods isn’t enough for you to play with?” The old memory clicked into place. Faust was irritably flipping through reports in his office. “It’s not that I’m being stingy. I just really don’t think it’s necessary—what do you even want it for?”
What for?
The gear from the Old Gods wasn’t enough?
What if, from the very start, the Old Gods couldn’t be trusted—what if they were the enemy?
His past self rubbed his forehead, exhaustion bleeding through his voice. “I want to learn how to craft an Alchemy Gun.”
A weapon made by humans themselves, not bestowed by gods.
“I want it powerful enough to kill a Deep One in a single shot.”
Then the gods.
“And able to provide infinite ammunition.”
We had far more enemies than we’d imagined.
“…Our team’s Tindalos Hunting Rifle already has the power you’re after. But infinite ammunition—”
“From life itself.” He gripped Faust’s wrist tightly. “I need this. Teach me.”
Alchemy arrays formed, bullets chambered. As he turned to leave, Faust grabbed his arm. The gold ornament on his left hand caught the light, gleaming brightly. “You okay?”
Ode wasn’t sure.
He only knew that this path to deicide had taken him so long—across countless cycles.
With every cycle, the Corpse Sea rose higher beneath his feet. With every cycle, they tried new ways to break the stalemate, only to end in failure.
They grew reckless. They abandoned all restraint.
El had once tried merging with Pharaoh, hoping to usurp Nyarlathotep’s authority and bolster humanity’s strength against the gods alone. But they had become nothing more than a monster obsessed with power.
Eva tried to infiltrate the Great Race of Yith’s library in reverse, hoping to find a way out of their predicament amid that cosmic trove of knowledge. But instead, they ended up drawing the Great Race of Yith to Earth, dooming humanity in the end.
“Ode, how many cycles has it been?” Faust leaned against the edge of the desk. The people around him silently swept aside the piles of gold and silver treasures littering the floor, revealing a blood-red sacrificial array beneath. “Come on… can’t you lighten up a bit? Do you really have to hit us with that doom-and-gloom funeral face right at the last moment?”
“…I don’t remember.” The version of himself from his memories sounded hoarse and strained. “But I do remember that I don’t like you doing this.”
“In every cycle, you have to use yourself to activate that time alchemy array. After so many rounds… enough that the cliffs in the Corpse Sea have risen that high… I’ve never managed to preserve even a sliver of your soul.”
“It’s not like this sacrificial array is meant to let us move into your soul and set up house.” Faust chuckled as if it were the funniest thing, taking one last drag from his cigarette before grinding it out on the desk.
The people stepped into the center of the array.
As the red glow ignited, Faust—still lounging against the desk—flashed a grin at the memory-version of him. He snapped his fingers with casual flair, and the golden ring on his fingertip melted away like it had been tossed into a furnace. “See you around.”
Time rewound.
Sometimes, Faust could preserve a bit more of his power and send Ode back to an earlier time node for better preparations. Other times, Faust was already gravely wounded before the final battle, forcing Ode to ask him to send him back as far as possible.
Eventually, he grew tired of always having to bid Faust farewell like that at the end, so…
Clunk.
He wasn’t sure how many cycles this made. Alone, he passed through the gateway linking the Phantasmal Dream Realm to reality and infiltrated Ctharnid’s Palace.
The floor gleamed like a mirror. He had danced across it once.
The endless banquet table stretched out. He had dined there.
But now…
“Who’s there?” Ctharnid caught the sound of Ode landing and turned back in confusion.
Ode’s calf muscles tensed in an instant. Like a leopard lunging at its prey, he pounced!
“Hah…”
A silver gleam flashed before his eyes, and hot blood splashed across the face of his memory-self.
But he merely licked the blood from his lips slowly. Then he hoisted up the Time God—slain by the silver dagger etched with an alchemy array—opened his mouth…
This was the first time he seized the Time God’s authority.
The first time he left Faust’s soul intact amid the corpse.
The second time, he used a sharpened spike.
The third, fourth, fifth…
Poison, stabbing through the skull, severing the neck; decapitation, feeding into a meat grinder, hacking the enemy into pulp with an iron axe…
He could never succeed.
They had never won.
Despair didn’t stop him—it only fueled his rage further. In the final voluntary cycle, he was little more than hatred and feral instinct—until Yog-Sothoth rewound time.
Erasing his memories.
All the madness, hatred, fury, and despair sank into slumber beneath the Dream Realm’s lake. Until today, when they were unearthed once more.
—In the opera house’s private box.
The Sleep God’s hand trailed slowly over the red-haired young man’s chest. His gaze brimmed with greedy hunger, as if the body sprawled before him weren’t a corpse but a lavish feast.
Ambition flickered in those black-diamond eyes. Restraining his excitement, he leaned down—
“Hah—” The red-haired youth on his lap suddenly arched his chest, writhing back to life like a fish flung onto dry land. “What… what happened? My wound! Did you heal me?”
“…” The Sleep God froze as Ode fixed him with those green eyes, full of earnest trust and gratitude.
It wasn’t the near-naked beauty’s utter dependence that stunned him. To prevent certain radicals from slipping out of the Phantasmal Dream Realm to kill Ode, Nodens had bound all the Elder Gods: none could lay a hand on Ode without permission.
