Chapter 17 Part 1

The pounding rain and crashing thunder suddenly faded into the distance, as if the world around them had fallen silent in that instant.

G8273 watched a raindrop trace along the brow of that bone mask, sliding down to the tip of the nose. It fell onto those pale lips, then smashed against the wearer’s own.

A strange illusion gripped him, as though the droplet carried heat—perhaps the searing heat of magma, enough to incinerate any existence utterly.

Hastur stared into G8273’s light-filled eyes, which seemed to have ground to a halt. Countless mental tentacles gently lifted his chin, like a lover cradling a beloved’s face. Yet what flowed through that inhuman chest was never love, but only the venom of a predator:

“—Those corruptions are still eroding your code.”

A person’s downfall often began with a single tiny mistake.

A system’s collapse often began with a single bit of chaos.

G8273 suddenly gripped Hastur’s mental tentacles in return, squeezing hard:

“I can hear your heartbeat too. In this shell of a body before me.”

“Rhythmic. Powerful. Ever-repeating.”

“—Will you be assimilated by order, Hastur?”

Lightning split the sky, as if cleaving the world in two.

Order and chaos stared each other down across the raging sea, like twin abysses locked in confrontation.

The ship lurched violently. Detective Dustin’s ragged, near-breakdown voice echoed from somewhere nearby:

“Can you two quit with the close-up tango?? Can’t whatever you’ve got to say wait until— !! Watch your back!!“

That earlier jolt had tossed several Nirvana Gang leftists near the stage.

They scrambled up on all fours, guns at the ready—only to see the yellow-robed man and the young gentleman face-to-face in the center of the stage, pressed so close it looked like they were about to kiss.

The young gentleman’s suit shirt was half-torn open, exposing half his chest, while the sodden yellow robe clung to his tanned skin.

One of the leftist thugs let out an instinctive whistle: “Damn, you’ve got balls. Making out at a time like this?”

Another gaped in shock: “Holy shit! Gay dudes!”

The long-haired one among the three—the calmest-looking—leaned on his gun, shook his head to clear it, and fixed his gaze on the pair onstage: “I remember rumors on the ship about some yellow-robed guy tangled up with those modified soldiers disguised as sailors.”

“Not the same one, are we?” The homophobic thug’s finger tightened on the trigger.

The long-haired man raised his gun with cold indifference: “If it’s the same guy, it means this yellow robe’s been schmoozing everywhere with ulterior motives. If not, thinking about making out in a scene like this means he’s no one to mess with either.”

Gunfire erupted alongside his barked order: “Open fire!”

—How long did it take a god to destroy a person? The blink of an eye? A fleeting thought?

How long did an AI need to kill a person? A few seconds to burn a thumbnail-sized chip? Or a trillionth of a computation cycle?

Hastur had never calculated such things. In his line of work, he preferred quick resolutions; the most time-consuming part was usually the preliminary surveys handled by colleagues.

G8273 had never calculated them either. His operational logic dismissed such meaningless metrics, and he certainly wouldn’t waste time on insignificant people.

So while Detective Dustin was still bellowing “Get down!!”, those three Nirvana Gang thugs went from blasting away one second to dissolving into puffs of ash the next.

Neither the power of chaos nor that of order showed them mercy. The clashing laws turned their bodies into skinsacks stuffed with contradictions and strife, detonating from within.

Hastur’s tentacles still clutched G8273’s collar, but he merely turned his head to glance at the ashes scattering into the rain:

“—You killed them. With power utterly inhuman.”

“You might be surprised, but I’m authorized to prioritize self-preservation.” Mockery laced G8273’s tone as he wrenched his collar free from the mental tentacles’ grasp.

He too glanced at the now-empty wooden stage: “At least they died without pain, unlike the innocents cut down by their bullets or poisoned wares.”

Finnian barreled back into the rain-leaking theater, kinetic rifle—snatched from the enemy—in hand. He looked up to see this very scene:

The Dean was raising invisible hands to straighten his inexplicably crooked bone mask.

G8273, a few steps away from the Dean, kept his head lowered as his bare hand methodically refastened his inexplicably undone shirt buttons, one by one.

“—??”

Finnian’s brain nearly short-circuited. Without hesitation, he fired off two sharp cracks—Bang! Bang!—straight into an enemy’s gut to drop him, then whipped around to blow through another’s skull.

Clutching his gut-shot meat shield, Finnian dashed to Detective Dustin’s side:

“What the hell happened?? I was just out getting intel—how’d these two end up looking like they just fucked again!”

Detective Dustin roughly spun a portly guest halfway around, dodging bullets while firing off two precise shots that punched through an enemy’s brow from behind a corridor pillar:

“You asking me? Who do I ask? Hell if I know if non-humans count eye-fucking as rolling in the sheets!”

Exhausted. Whoever wanted to clear this shit up could damn well do it.

Detective Dustin kicked away the sniveling fat guest who’d latched onto his leg, begging for protection instead of fleeing the theater on his own:

“Get out of the theater! Or die here! There are still so many people to evacuate—I ain’t your personal bodyguard!”

Across walls of roaring flames, Hastur caught the snark from his companions.

He glanced their way briefly—taking stock of his top point earners—before turning back and tucking the contract, now free of G8273’s pressure, into his robes.

In the interim, G8273 had vanished.

The theater was choked with fire and black smoke. Selling off this cruise ship would take a save file reload.

What? You have no save file! Restarting now means starting from scratch—I don’t want to waste time on that crap!

His inner voice roared in frustration.

And don’t forget—that AI might not rollback. You wanna face him with a blank panel after he’s already broken through that bottleneck once?

Hastur certainly didn’t. A single cruise ship wasn’t worth that risk.

He drifted through the scorching inferno to find his two top point earners.

Dustin had just tumbled from the other side of a firewall, locked in a mutual chokehold with a dreadlocked thug: “F…”

Dustin clamped one hand on his foe while groping the floor with the other, finding only a shard of wood.

He jammed the jagged splinter into the thug’s throat and shoved the body aside: “—H.J! Finnian took… **, why do you look so damn leisurely.”

It wasn’t something Hastur could control. He could hardly roll around on the floor deliberately to blend into the human infighting. “What’d Finnian take? Where is he?”

This was the same guy who’d just been trash-talking him about hookups—he was the one who’d run off to the backstage for some fun.

Besides:

“You won’t die. Mr. Detective.”

So his ragged state had nothing to do with Hastur. That was all on Dustin himself.

Dustin panted, hands on his hips, glaring at Hastur before deflating and looking away with a mumble: “I just feel like… immortality as a habit ain’t good for me… Here.”

Dustin pulled a garish red phone bedazzled with rhinestones from his pocket: “Finnian gave it to me before charging off for revenge. He snapped some backstage photos—got all the actors without their masks.”

Dustin lowered his voice: “I recognize them. At least some of them.”

“All five missing persons from the case—they’re right here in this backstage. That priest Coran is the one who kidnapped these cultists!”

Hastur skimmed the photos of the attractive actors, sensing something off: “But what about the medical reports?”

“What?” Detective Dustin didn’t follow.

Boom—

The cruise ship rocked side to side again, gradually listing.

Hastur cut short his musing on why the clue hadn’t panned out and shoved the phone back into Dustin’s pocket:

“Coran slipped away while G8273 and I were facing off, but there are no lifeboats here. Unless he jumped overboard, he’s still on the ship.”

“Take the Byakhee and evacuate the guests. I’ll go find Coran.”

Dustin’s eyes gleamed in the firelight, clearly moved by thoughts like “Evil gods aren’t all bad—Hastur’s the perfect example, so proactive in chasing the truth!” He had no clue Hastur’s zeal stemmed entirely from the flashing timer on his task list:

【(Countdown remaining: 24 minutes) Task: Silver Tongue II】

As if to heighten the tension, amid the pounding rain rose a soft singing voice, its tone blurred and unisex:

“London boat is falling down, falling down, falling down.

London boat is falling down, my fair Hastur…”

I hate this song! his inner voice growled low. Grab Coran Domino, quick!

Boom—

A massive explosion rocked the ship.

~~~

The entire ship lurched violently fore and aft. Finnian’s roar pierced the curtain of rain from outside the theater—or perhaps even farther away:

“The ship’s breaking apart! Get those guests out! Dustin! Hastur—”

Hastur ignored Finnian’s call. He unleashed all his mental tentacles at once. In the blink of an eye, they slithered and coiled into every corner of the cruise ship.

His mimicked eyes dissolved away. Every inch of his body became his eyes.

He saw Dustin in the corridor, standing by a window and barking orders, urging the flood of guests streaming past him toward the deck where the Byakhee waited.

He saw Finnian behind the theater’s gaping breach, savagely smashing an enemy’s skull with the butt of his heavy gun. Finnian then dragged the body as a meat shield, ring-firing with a barrage of “Bang! Bang! Bang!” shots to drive back a horde of foes.

The pin of an electromagnetic grenade lay right at Finnian’s feet. He had triggered the ship’s breakup himself to wipe out a swarm of enemies in one go.

The bow of the ship began to rear up steeply. Screams and curses filled the air as people slid forward or desperately clutched at nearby fixtures to hold themselves steady.

But none of that was his target.

His real quarry lurked deeper still.

At the ship’s lowest deck, Coran Domino pressed a bloodied handkerchief to his forehead. With mercenaries propping him up, he hurried into a cluttered storage cabin.

“We destroyed all the lifeboats before we set out, sir,” one mercenary reminded him, eyeing Coran’s wild, failure-stricken expression. “We need another way off this thing—like smashing the signal jammer and calling in air rescue from outside!”

“Oh, shut your trap, you idiot,” Coran snarled, hurling the crimson cloth aside. “Destroy the jammer? And let these guests broadcast how I colluded with the Nirvana Gang—how I nearly slaughtered everyone on board?”

He shoved the supporting mercenary away and staggered toward a shadowed nook formed by stacked shipping containers.

He paused just before stepping into it, his voice subtly hesitant:

“You—come check if the weapons in here still work.”

“?” The mercenaries advanced obediently. Then—

They locked eyes with a monster.

The maturing Byakhee, its hind legs shackled, let out a furious roar. It spread its wings wide and snapped its long, fang-lined beak at them.

In that instant, Coran watched the mercenaries become feedstock for the Byakhee’s growth. A satisfied smile crept across his face.

At the same moment, Hastur’s mental tentacles probing the cabin erupted in a frenzy. They knocked every mercenary unconscious in seconds and hauled Coran, trussed tight, right before the Byakhee.

All the tentacles began retracting toward the cabin. Moments later, Hastur himself descended.

He glanced at the Byakhee, now thoroughly spooked, then lowered his gaze to Coran on the floor. “The string of disappearances in Phoenix District—you orchestrated them all?”

Coran shuddered uncontrollably beneath the alien grip of those invisible tendrils. The terror and agony of his earlier clash with Hastur flooded his mind once more, drowning out any thought—let alone any question of why an Outer God would care about human vanishings.

His mind a blank void, he babbled pleas: “Please… I beg you… merciful King in Yellow…”

“Mercy has never been my domain.” Hastur’s tentacles squeezed tighter.

He pondered corrupting Coran’s brain outright, but that risked twisting his memories. “Answer.”

“The disappearances in Phoenix District—you orchestrated them all?”

“…” Coran twitched spasmodically for several seconds, his teeth chattering. “Y-yes… yes.”

If Hastur had eyebrows, they would have knotted in a fierce scowl. “Why?”

“I… I’d pick the good-looking ones from the believers entering the temple… kidnap them… sell them as merchandise.”

Coran’s lips drained white. “That’s… the trade I ran even before joining the Cradle Cult. The play… it was the showroom.”

In a flash, Hastur flipped Coran onto his back and loomed close. “And the medical reports? What do they have to do with the disappearances?”

“…?” Coran’s neck locked rigid, on the verge of seizure. His head bobbed in frantic little shakes, like he was high as a kite. “Wh-what medical reports?”

Stumbling footsteps echoed from outside the cabin. Dustin burst through the door, gun at the ready. “—Hastur! Don’t.”

He cut himself off mid-sentence.

Truth be told, given the scene—and Coran’s prior exploitation of Hastur—even Dustin held little hope that Hastur would let the man live.

Convincing him to hand Coran over for station-house questioning would be a long shot, procedure be damned.

Yet after sniffing the hormonal reek of Coran’s fear, Hastur withdrew with cool precision and dumped the man at Dustin’s feet. “Take him back to the Police Station. With any luck, it’ll earn you that promotion.”

Hastur wasn’t one for charity, of course. Even a non-human weighed costs against gains.

【Silver Tongue I】 was complete. Poe Lake—now legally rechristened Lake Hali—and Coran’s entire fortune had transferred to Hastur’s name through the Game System’s machinations.

Killing Coran now offered zero upside.

Handing him off to Dustin, though? That would rack up goodwill with his prime point supplier and grease the wheels for the man’s career climb. Who knew—Dustin’s ascent might yield fresh rewards down the line.