Very odd—the detective had his headlights off, radiating the same sneaky, guilty air as a thief on the prowl.
Hastur paused only briefly before gliding silently toward the lobby, his agility stat of 40 making him a ghost in the night.
“Huslu, Huslu!”
In the darkened hall, Detective Dustin hissed conspiratorially, beckoning. “Over here.”
“Let’s keep it quiet, don’t wake anyone. I swear, soon as this month’s paycheck hits, I’ll get us a place outside—Waaah! Hastur!!”
Hastur flicked on the ceiling lights with a sharp clap, descending from the second floor to the lobby like justice itself incarnate. “Who’d you bring back? Wasn’t this a follow-up visit?”
Detective Dustin snapped ramrod straight, throwing himself in front of the figure behind him while mumbling excuses. “It was! I just… f-finished up and came straight back, yeah?”
Footsteps thudded from upstairs. Finnian, roused by Dustin’s shout, shuffled down yawning. “What’s all the noise…”
He froze mid-step. From his elevated view, he could easily spot the person Dustin was shielding. “—That kid?”
Dustin realized there was no hiding it now and stepped reluctantly aside.
“It’s the boy from the cruise ship. I sent him to the best orphanage in the district—figured they’d have more experience, better care. But not even that long ago, I saw on their homepage that he’d been adopted!”
Any other detective would have been thrilled for Huslu and left it at that. But Dustin’s instincts were sharper than most.
“If his new family was from Lowend District or High Pei Street, that wouldn’t raise an eyebrow.”
“You know those places—crawling with politicians and fat cats. Plenty of them adopt ‘special needs’ kids for the PR optics.”
Dustin clamped his hands over Huslu’s ears at the words “special needs,” though the boy probably had no clue what they meant anyway.
“But Phoenix District? That makes no sense.”
Phoenix District was the nadir of slums, where survival was a daily deathmatch. Who there would adopt a child with severe intellectual disabilities?
“…”
Finnian’s hand gripped the railing as silence fell over him.
The harsh truth turned the late autumn night even colder, the lobby thick with a stifling pall.
The non-human whose knack for reading the room was hit-or-miss, however, failed to register the mood.
Hastur eyed the handsome but blankly staring youth behind Dustin, then glanced up at the inscrutable Finnian on the landing. For some reason, it struck him like a giant matryoshka doll gazing down at a tiny one inside it.
“So you brought him here? Then why the sneaking around?”
Baffled, he opened the game’s orphanage roster and slotted in their second official resident.
Orphans needed dorm space, but bunking the kid with those unsorted delinquents would be a disaster.
Hastur simply crammed the little doll into the eight-bed room currently occupied solo by the big one. He sold off the extras and swapped in two singles.
There, in the building interface: two nearly identical avatars—large and small—crammed cheek-to-jowl in the same space, squished flat.
Hastur found a strange comfort in the cramped, lopsided arrangement.
A tentacle hovered over “confirm,” but he halted abruptly.
Wait—did the detective think adding Huslu to the orphanage would burden him? Was that why the secrecy, and the talk of renting outside once payday hit?
His mimic eyes shifted. Hastur snapped the interface shut. “Detective, there’s something I need to confess.”
Thank goodness for Huslu!
Hastur had been wracking his brain over how to break the news to Detective Dustin—that the body in Nolly’s grave wasn’t him—without the man bolting for the exit. And here was his chance!
He briskly recapped the night’s escapades, cutting off Dustin’s impending outburst with a swift promise. “It won’t happen again.”
“?” G8273 had just descended with Ithaqua—now back in human form—when he caught Hastur mid-oath to Dustin.
After a hesitant pause, he rifled through his memories and leaned down to murmur to Ithaqua. “I know non-humans don’t have emotions… but does your foster father have a thing for Detective Dustin?”
“?” Ithaqua gaped in shock. Feared G8273 or not, the question burst from his throat. “Where’d you even get that idea??”
G8273 explained, “The evil god is making concessions for humanity. Hastur is trying to keep Detective Dustin around.”
Dustin had indeed hit a sore spot downstairs courtesy of Hastur. Simmering with anger and ready to erupt, he couldn’t help looking up. “…?”
G8273’s words were straightforward and calm, striking a chord with him.
But—how did this guy have the nerve to spread rumors about him?
Who was it that had indulged in public displays of affection three or four times? Who kept spouting those ambiguous remarks?
Him? Really?
Dark undercurrents swirled through the hall, but Hastur remained focused solely on the matter at hand.
“If I hadn’t made this trip, we’d never have discovered that the body in Nolly Qianning’s grave isn’t him at all. And I promise, there won’t be any more tricks like that next time.”
Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
The great slacker god Hastur pressed on. “So, shouldn’t we prioritize the issue of the forged corpse? And figuring out where the true Pontiff is?”
He glanced once more at Huslu, who stood ramrod straight. “Also, can someone scan Huslu’s condition?”
Who among them had scanner implants in their eyes? Every gaze in the room converged on G8273.
G8273: “…”
Dustin suddenly snapped to attention. “Right, right! When I met Huslu earlier, I thought his state was off too. Back on the cruise ship, he couldn’t even stand. He was drooling. But now…”
He eyed Huslu, who stood rigidly with an expressionless face. “…he’s like a robot.”
At the humans’ request, G8273 scanned the human youth. “He’s been implanted with a dedicated brain core. The brain core is controlling his actions.”
Hastur guessed the outcome without much surprise. “Dedicated to what, exactly?”
“Sex trade,” G8273 stated objectively, offering a suggestion. “Best to remove it. Otherwise, Huslu will respond to specific keywords or actions with—”
“Enough!”
Dustin cut off G8273’s ensuing graphic description with a low growl, his face darkening. “I’ll take him to the hospital to have it removed.”
He rubbed his forehead wearily and with disgust. Suddenly, facing the ugliness of humanity, Hastur’s actions that evening seemed downright insignificant.
At least Hastur’s original intent had been to seek the truth. He’d gained intelligence and even bought a grave for that drug dealer who hardly deserved a decent burial… Hell, more humane than most humans.
Finnian had descended from the second floor at some point. He stared at the face so eerily similar to his own, his expression equally grim.
He reached out and gripped Dustin’s shoulder firmly. “I know a reliable black doctor—the one who swapped out my cybernetic body for me.”
“We can head to him first thing tomorrow morning. Maybe he can remove the chip and has ways to treat Huslu too.”
Hastur chimed in at just the right moment. “I’ve already added Huslu to the orphanage’s roster. The orphanage will cover his medical expenses.”
“…” Dustin slowly raised his head, his pale blue eyes basking once more in the warm yellow glow of the lights.
It felt as though someone had dragged him out of an icy cellar and back into the warmth. His throat tightened for a long moment before his voice came out strained. “Thank you.”
“I… I’ve never had companions who would help me out before.”
The system pinged suddenly, but Hastur figured now wasn’t the time to pause and check the game notification.
Mimicking Finnian’s gesture, he patted Dustin’s shoulder.
Dustin took a deep breath. “Ahem… back to business. If the grave doesn’t hold Nolly’s real body, then the Pontiff is likely still alive. I’ll look into his whereabouts somehow—Ithaqua? What’s up?”
Ithaqua withdrew his raised hand, speaking cautiously. “Just now, some ideas occurred to me…”
Hastur met his gaze, his thoughts frantically toggling between “…fluffy would still be cuter” and “a dutiful father shouldn’t nitpick his child’s looks.”
Under the weight of everyone’s stares—mostly G8273’s—Ithaqua cleared his throat nervously. “Well… there are two things.”
“First one came to mind when I saw Huslu.” Ithaqua gestured vaguely. “The brain core?”
“Detective Dustin said he was attacked and saw incarnations of Nyarlathotep. But Father said that if they were real incarnations of Nyarlathotep, there’s no way two of them couldn’t take down one detective.”
“In other words, those two incarnations were fakes.”
“But here’s the thing: if they were fakes, they should have left traces behind. Yet Father entered the empty house afterward and smelled no trace of kin or humans?”
Hastur reacted abruptly. “—I never actually saw those two incarnations myself. I only heard Detective Dustin’s description.”
“What if those two incarnations never existed at all? What if it was just a hallucination induced by a brain core?”
His protection had been applied after Detective Dustin escaped the empty house.
After that, when Detective Dustin returned to the house, he’d been puzzled to find the incarnations that should have been hiding inside had all vanished.
Hastur promptly dropped the protection. “G8273, check Detective Dustin’s brain core.”
G8273: “…”
Seriously, what was he even doing here tonight? Nothing but grunt work for his mortal enemy—and footing the bill too.
Bolstered by Hastur’s encouraging gaze, Ithaqua puffed out his chest a little. “The other thing is the medical report.”
“If we’re certain the medical report ties into the disappearance case, maybe we can approach it from a different angle?”
“The perpetrator acted after seeing the medical report.”
“So we don’t need to chase down those missing medical reports without records. We just check the existing ones—who’s accessed them—and we’ll find the common link.”
Enlightenment dawned on the group. Dustin still wasn’t sure how they’d confirmed the medical report’s definite connection to the disappearance, but he sprang to his feet regardless. “I’ll head to the police station and look into it.”
“No need.”
G8273’s voice halted Dustin mid-motion.
Strings of tiny code scrolled through his optical pupils—he’d clearly accessed the data he needed.
“Detective Dustin’s brain core does show signs of prior hacking. The path traces back to Cocoa Street Hospital.”
Hastur recalled the medical report Dustin had read aloud to him earlier. “—One of the medical reports came from Cocoa Street Hospital.”
Dustin jumped in immediately. “I’ll head to Coco—”
“No need for that either.”
G8273 closed his eyes briefly, his mechanical iris returning to normal.
“I’ve already scanned Cocoa Street Hospital’s surveillance footage. Confirmed: the person who accessed the hospital terminal to hack Detective Dustin’s brain core is the same one who handled that medical report.”
Hastur: “Who?”
G8273: “Nolly Qianning.”
~~~
Nuri District, a certain seaside villa.
Black waves churned the dark gray sands of the beach, the roar of the surf mingling faintly with the patrols of the Company Armed Forces.
This was a villa community under company security contract, backed by formidable firepower. If needed, the Company Armed Forces could wipe out an entire official army unit in three minutes flat.
In the first-floor living room, Nolly Qianning sat barefoot, curled up on the sofa. He gnawed neurotically at his left thumbnail, his eyes locked unblinkingly on the brain core pinched in his right hand—like an addict fighting the urge for one more hit.
Two interview videos looped before him. One covered “the King in Yellow that appeared on the public seas off Lowend District, silencing the cruise ship.” The other featured an elderly priest’s sermon:
“…In the face of God’s light, darkness shall retreat!”
“That evil entity in the yellow robe only dares rampage at night on the seas. It fears the gaze of light, fears the holy! Arm yourselves with prayer, holy water, and the cross, brothers and sisters!”
“When evil lunges at you, thrust light into its sneaky hood!!”
Nolly Qianning could practically recite these clips by heart, yet he remained gripped by anxiety.
A whole month had passed.
For a hacker like him, going without a brain core wasn’t just internet withdrawal—it was stripping off his armor for self-preservation.
For that month, he’d been steeped in unease and agitation around the clock, nearly driving him mad.
But he didn’t dare plug the brain core back in. He feared the so-called “King in Yellow” was just a rival who’d spotted his criminal methods and was mimicking it to taunt him.
He’d tried probing the brain core data of those who’d boarded the ship. No signs of intrusion—which meant either the enemy’s hacker outclassed him, or…
The King in Yellow, Hastur, really existed.
Was that true? Those interviews? Those speeches?
If it was, how could even the company’s armed patrols protect him from such an evil, unknowable being?
He bit his finger until it bled, crazed with the urge to reconnect and scour the latest on eldritch manifestations—instead of being cut off from the world, adrift in ignorance, awaiting a death that might or might not come.
People always make the same mistakes.
Like Orpheus, who despite Hyades’ warning, couldn’t resist glancing back just before leaving the underworld.
Like Lot’s wife, warned by the angel not to look back, yet unable to stop herself from gazing at her hometown one last time—ultimately turned into a pillar of salt by the angel.
Under the relentless pressure of anxiety and fear, Nolly Qianning finally couldn’t hold back any longer. He gripped the Brain Core tightly, his hand trembling as he inserted it into the interface at the back of his neck.
