No sooner had he finished introducing the Dismer Gang than he asked if he wanted to inherit it—what difference was there from walking into a supermarket and asking why he didn’t inherit the supermarket?
Finnian refrained from rolling his eyes purely out of brotherly affection. “See that police station outside? See that manor in the distance? Nuri District is so affluent, so why is the branch station built like a gardener’s shack?”
“Because the rich folks’ money in Nuri District doesn’t belong to the branch station. Get it?”
“I have zero connection to the Dismer Gang, just like the branch station has zero connection to the bank accounts of the rich people living here.”
“Connections can be forged.”
Hastur hadn’t abandoned his plans to push Finnian—not when he’d just hatched the idea of bringing the game into the real world, making Finnian his very first true familiar.
In human society, that kind of bond rounded off to father and son. So what was wrong with a father hoping his son would become a dragon? What was wrong with a boss wanting his employees to climb the ladder? What was wrong with a player urging his NPC to level up fast?
Nothing. It was perfectly reasonable, utterly logical, the most natural thing in the world.
The system chimed once, displaying the task completion notice.
【Series Task: Silver Tongue (Completed)】
【All conspiracies begin with the lies spun from greedy lips.】
【Task Reward: Unlock Orphanage Underground Area】
Hastur eyed the reward as he casually peeled open the long bun and took a bite of the sausage inside. “Detective, once you’ve handed him over, get out here… Mmm.”
It hit him out of nowhere.
His teeth crunched through the crisp, thin pastry skin. Salty-sweet juices squirted from the sausage, flooding across his tongue.
Sweet, plump kernels of corn burst open, their refreshing juices lending a fruity sweetness to the rich meat gravy.
What is this?? His inner voice turned into a screaming loop. What is this??
We’ve had corn dogs before! In the company’s executive cafeteria! The softest buns with premium smoked meats were nothing compared to this!
This is just a vacuum-packed convenience store hot dog. How is it better than the company cafeteria?
It had to be one of the materialization’s side effects—like the drowsiness that had come with his first embodiment.
Hastur clamped his mouth shut and stopped talking. He even rewrapped the bun he’d previously shoved aside, savoring every exquisite sensation exploding across his taste buds.
“…” Up front, Finnian stared in stunned silence, a flicker of self-doubt creeping in. “This junk food… it’s that good? Better than the meals I cook?”
Hastur’s mouth flooded with saliva. “How long to get from Nuri District back to the orphanage? Can we make your breakfast by eight?”
Finnian’s headshake sparked that familiar agony so many office drones and gamers knew all too well:
Work kicked off at eight sharp! But the game experience he craved came after eight!
Worse still, who knew how long this materialization would last? What if the effects wore off by the time he dragged himself home from overtime?
—Wait.
The egg yolk jellyfish suddenly had a flash of insight: Materialization effects carried over to reality. Which meant the company cafeteria should deliver the same mouthwatering bliss.
Hastur—who’d been set to prod Finnian a bit more and check last night’s system messages—scarfed down the rest of the hot dog in a whirlwind of bites and logged off on the spot.
~~~
F District. Real-world time: 7:00 a.m.
The company cafeteria was jammed to the rafters. H District’s tyrant had only wrapped up his rampage the day before, and the cafeterias in other districts still hadn’t reopened.
Even the executives who usually reveled in their privileges—never stooping to rub shoulders with the rank-and-file—had no choice but to queue up at F District’s public cafeteria. They’d been stewing in frustration for a full month.
“Sir, sir.” At the entrance, a few staffers steeled themselves to block a squad of armed goons packing heat. They whispered urgently to the gray-haired executive cocooned amid his entourage:
“This is the public cafeteria. You can’t bring guns inside… and your men can’t barricade the door or bark at other employees to ‘get lost’ just because you’re used to dining solo—”
The gray-haired executive narrowed his eyes, his gaze turning icy and predatory. “Do you have any idea who I—”
“Move.”
The curt, unyielding command dropped from behind him.
In the next instant, every pistol at his subordinates’ waists was ripped away by thick, sinewy dark-brown tentacles. They twisted and pulverized the weapons into scrap.
A yellow figure glided past him without a care, while the men who’d been set to block his path scattered in terror, clearing a wide berth.
The cafeteria staff had never dreamed they’d feel such glee at Hastur’s arrival. They grinned as they watched him drift inside, then wheeled back on the now-disarmed troublemakers with feigned concern that dripped sarcasm:
“Oh no, whatever shall we do? Sir, mind waiting your turn? We can’t very well tell the gentleman inside to ‘roll out’ for you, can we?”
“?” Hastur, freshly inside the doors, glanced back. “Who?”
The gray-haired executive nearly bolted then and there. But with every eye on him, he forced a strained smile. “Nobody. Just a joke.”
His ears burned crimson. He could clearly pick out the smirks and whispers of schadenfreude from behind:
“You guys hear? He’s got this nickname in his department: ‘Crab.’ Grayish hair, always throwing his weight around… but the second he crashes and burns, his face goes red as a boiled crab.”
“Who gives a damn about him? That guy who just went in—that the Uncrowned King of H District? Whoa… I thought the title was lame as hell at first. Then I heard he trashed the whole district and still squats there like it’s his personal lair. Company brass hasn’t uttered a peep! Boss gave it the silent nod! Tsk… that’s how you strut through this place…”
“Snagged the latest company internal rag the other day! It ranked all the experimentals who’ve come out of the Research Center. That one’s sitting pretty at number one with raw power.”
“Why else would the company roll out the red carpet? Wild he even hits the cafeteria. Rag says he doesn’t need food—visits are rare as hen’s teeth.”
“Hurry up and get in! Gotta see what he orders!”
At the serving window, the egg yolk jellyfish—who’d heard every word crystal-clear—blinked. “…?”
Humans. Such peculiar creatures.
They kept their distance out of fear, yet curiosity had them sprouting like mushrooms after a rain.
But that wasn’t the point. Hastur checked the clock on the cafeteria wall. “One of everything. And that leftmost window—why are the portions so puny?”
“Uh,” the server ventured cautiously, “well… the ingredients are crazy expensive? Plus, it’s executives-only, so they don’t prep much.”
Hastur thrust forward his tray. “Left window. All of it.”
Server: “??”
The gray-haired executive, who’d just stepped up to the left window with his tray: “???”
Ten minutes later, the stuffed egg yolk jellyfish floated out of the cafeteria, utterly content.
Meanwhile, the gray-haired executive sulked at the far end of the hall, griping endlessly over the slop he’d gotten from the regular line.
A cluster from Personnel entered, murmuring about next quarter’s staff rotations. True to the past month’s habit, they queued at the left window:
“? Pardon, but why’s this empty?”
Chef called out sick?
A server from the next window over whispered, “Special Warfare Division’s Hastur cleaned it out…”
“??”
A few seconds ticked by. One spoke up warily: “First off, regs say one tray per person. Second, that Special Warfare Division golden boy doesn’t even need to eat.”
In plain terms: Hastur had no use for all that food, brushed off the staff’s protests, and wiped out the entire left window anyway.
…Why?
“Sounds like he was gunning for someone… If he weren’t inhuman, that’s what I’d figure.”
The Personnel execs turned to the server. “So… ring any bells who?”
The server quivered for a long moment before sneaking a glance toward the still-oblivious gray-haired executive.
“…” The Personnel execs all narrowed their eyes.
He’d not only deprived them of chow but pissed off Special Warfare Division’s Hastur to boot… Who didn’t know Finance’s Lv Zhucao guarded him like the apple of his eye? Who didn’t know the Boss himself indulged him rotten?
They eyed the gray-haired executive still ranting at his tray, then their personnel transfer sheets. With swift consensus, they locked in the prickliest reassignment—the one guaranteed to ruffle the most feathers.
The bespectacled leader at the front traced a pitying cross over his chest. “God bless his time with the crocs and the venomous critters.”
·
Personnel’s top brass were dead certain Hastur had cleared out the left window to get back at the gray-haired executive’s “get lost” outburst.
But as far as Hastur was concerned, they’d read way too much into it.
Someone who hadn’t savored fine food for years suddenly regains the ability to enjoy it—under the right circumstances, wouldn’t they rush straight to the counter for the priciest limited-edition dishes and buy them out?
Hastur certainly would.
After gorging himself, he lingered in the pleasant drowsiness of a full stomach. What should have been a dull workday morning slipped by in a hazy, euphoric fog.
The only pity was that his growing strength had shortened this materialization to less than four hours. By lunchtime, he was back to his usual state, where no cuisine could bring him pleasure.
Joy was always so fleeting.
To indulge endlessly in pleasure was tantamount to courting destruction.
Hastur finished his remaining tasks with clear-headed calm. By the time he reached the lair, it was already ten at night.
He donned his helmet and logged into the game. The login preview had changed again.
No longer displaying the data on his kin that he’d recently uncovered, it now showed a distant view of the orphanage.
He could see Lake Hali rolling with diamond-like sparkles under the moonlight, the dormitory buildings standing sentinel by the shore, their windows aglow with the lights of students studying late into the night.
On a second-floor windowsill, Ithaqua propped his chin on his hand and blew out a wisp of wind and snow. The drifting flakes formed a snow deer the size of a hand, leaping and bounding. Huslu’s dazed gaze followed the little creature as it soared up toward the moon.
Without a heart, he drew no positive or negative emotions from the scene. Even so, Hastur watched the preview for a moment longer before clicking to enter.
【November 2nd · 10:00 p.m. · Phoenix District · Orphanage】
The game respawned the player in the office. The system chimed, alerting him to unread messages.
As Hastur rose and headed toward the underground area unlocked the day before, he opened the message center. A line of small text caught his eye:
【The one you shelter, [Dustin], views you and Finnian as family. He considers the orphanage his second home.】
【Output provided by [Dustin] increased from 50% to 100%.】
I hope the company in the waking world has more people like Dustin and Finnian. They make me feel like I’m soaking in Lake Hali.
An inner voice grumbled:
Come to think of it, haven’t we ever named the orphanage?
True enough.
When he’d first entered the game, Hastur’s focus hadn’t been on the orphanage at all—it had been venting his nesting desire. But lately, that urge seemed to have vanished without a trace.
Simply staying in the orphanage filled him with the cozy comfort of nesting in the lair.
What should we name it? Carcosa? Aldebaran?
Hastur rejected both. In the end, he entered a new name into the building interface:
【Hali Orphanage】
Why?
With no one around, Hastur answered the inner voice aloud: “Because you said the people here make you—make us—feel like we’re soaking in Lake Hali.”
It’s a warm name. A name suited for peaceful slumber.
Hastur closed the building interface in agreement. Before descending to the basement, he spotted Finnian in the kitchen.
The man wore a baggy old white tank top, his hair a tousled mess, eyes heavy with sleep. The way he stood with one hand on his hip highlighted the solid lines of his arm muscles, somewhat offsetting the dowdy vibe of the shirt.
Hastur halted his inspection of the new territory at once. He decided he should first check on the orphanage’s daily affairs.
“Has the implant chip been removed from Huslu?”
“Wha—cough! Cough!” Finnian, who’d snuck downstairs in the dead of night for an ice-cold beer, choked violently, spewing foam everywhere.
Once he’d steadied himself, hand clutching his chest, he shot a startled look at the Dean, who had appeared out of nowhere. “When did you… Never mind. Yeah, it was removed successfully—but it cost way more than expected.”
He wasn’t thrilled about it. “I originally planned to take him to that Black Doctor I know. The guy’s got real skill, charges fair prices, and we’ve worked together plenty of times—he’s trustworthy. But when we got there today, he wasn’t at his clinic. The shop owners nearby said he’d gone to some black market auction.”
“No choice, so we took Huslu to the public hospital. A simple extraction ended up costing three times as much! And the doctors there go, ‘No good options for treating this condition.'”
Hastur, who was no longer strapped for cash, watched Finnian mimic the doctor’s nasally tone. “Intellectual disability is hard to treat?”
“…Mild cases aren’t bad, but something as severe as Huslu’s… that’s a lot tougher.”
Finnian pressed one hand against the fridge door and chugged his beer morosely. “It’s not like other organs. You can swap out a heart or a kidney. But swap out a brain? Is it still the same person?”
Hastur pressed: “But you think the Black Doctor can heal Huslu?”
Finnian fell quiet for a moment. “I hope so. After all, he’s the one who implanted this mechanical heart for me. You’ve seen how well it works—I took that much damage, lay in bed for just a short while, and I was up and ready for revenge.”
Gloom didn’t suit Finnian—at least not in this storyline, altered by Hastur’s interference.
He slammed the fridge shut and slung his arm around Hastur’s shoulders in his usual rough fashion, steering him out of the kitchen. “Whether he can fix it or not, we’ll know once the old man’s back at his clinic. So, what’re you doing in the basement this late?”
The Egg Yolk Jellyfish was jostled askew in his grasp. From within the yellow robe, it fished out a flashlight he’d swiped from the Dean’s room. “The underground’s opened up a new area. I want to see what’s there.”
The first subterranean level had actually opened a small section when he’d first logged in—Hastur had even executed Nissen down there.
But compared to the ground floor, that level was cramped, clearly hiding more space.
They followed the unlit old path through several pitch-black empty rooms that had once served as warehouses.
Along the way, Hastur asked about Dustin. “Should we call Detective Dustin down for a nighttime tour? Wouldn’t want him straining his back hunched over his desk.”
“He’s not in his dorm right now.” Finnian took the flashlight from Hastur’s coiled tentacles and shone it around. “Before you headed out, his boss called him away. I overheard a bit—it was that persistent Deputy Chief again.”
Finnian grimaced. “Laid into him right off the bat, griping about ‘cross-district enforcement’ and ‘showing off in Nuri District.’ I bet the old coot’s feeling threatened.”
“After all, he’s sat in that chair forever without racking up much in achievements. But Dustin’s cracked more cases and hauled in more bounties in a single month than that guy’s managed in a lifetime.”
For the second time that night, Hastur paused his patrol of the new territory. “We should go help out at the police station.”
“?” Finnian swung the flashlight beam over Hastur curiously, joking, “What’s with you tonight? You’re acting like an overprotective parent, the kind who’d sneak into the school woods to spy on their kid getting bullied in class.”
Hastur was just about to agree—given the circumstances, Detective Dustin seemed to qualify as one of his system-recognized kin—when the beam flashed across his eyes. Suddenly, he spotted a door-shaped seam recessed into the sidewall of one empty storeroom. “—Southeast. I see the hidden door to the new area.”
Finnian dropped the teasing and turned the light toward the storeroom Hastur faced. “…Shit. I see a bunch of cockroaches.”
Man and jellyfish alike bristled in the passageway.
Finnian’s face took on an unprecedented look of grim readiness. With a click, he activated the sonic weapon installed in his left arm. “I absolutely will not allow these things into my domain of cleanliness.”
The orphanage’s resident cleaning expert gave Hastur a solemn glance. “Ready?”
Boom!
The sonic cannon blasted the hidden door clean open, scattering the roach family pupating nearby, along with a few opportunistic rats.
A thick, putrid stench billowed from the room—like spoiled salted fish mixed with festering wound pus, steeped in feces and offal until fermented.
“Disgusting!” Finnian held his breath as the flashlight beam swept toward the cluster of vermin. “—Corpses?! Why the hell are there so many corpses under the orphanage?!”
Rats and roaches scattered under the light.
Hastur barked a low “bug ah’mglw’nafh,” slaying all the unwelcome intruders. Then, without fanfare, he increased his height by a few centimeters and floated toward the corpses strewn on the floor or discarded amid the equipment. “—They’re not all human.”
Finnian’s gaze swept over the upturned four- or six-legged vermin corpses littering the ground. His expression flickered between utter confusion and fervent adoration for Hastur.
He vaulted over the rat carcasses and landed beside Hastur, a spot any fear-rat or insect-man would adore.
“What do you mean they’re not all human… Circuits? These are bionic humans?”
“There must be regular humans too, or the roaches and rats wouldn’t have survived this long.” Hastur floated a bit higher, circling the entire space. “This looks like a bunker built specifically for wartime refuge.”
“With bionics here, it was probably constructed fifteen years ago…” Finnian paused by one human corpse, shining the flashlight carefully around it.
The figure sat slumped in a rickety computer chair, head pillowed sideways on the desk.
Rats and cockroaches had long since gnawed away every scrap of flesh from his body. Only the two empty eye sockets and the palm bones draped over the mouse remained, a testament to what the man had been doing before his death.
Hastur eyed the bulky rectangular machine in front of the skeleton with curiosity, along with the cluster of chassis connected to its rear. “I’ve seen something like this in a museum before. Is it a computer from the old era?”
“Yes…” Even the ever-capable Finnian was stumped. He examined the ancient relic. “This person sat before the computer right up until his death. He must have been looking into something vitally important.”
“I could probably figure out how to turn the thing on, but the rats and cockroaches already chewed through its cables and internals. I never learned how to repair antiques. Do you mind calling in some outside help?”
“You still know friends who can fix antiques?” Hastur had no objection. He moved closer to the wall right beside the desk. “There’s a line of writing here, done in blood.”
“‘Endless Golden Fertile Soil’… Is that some kind of legend?”
“Sort of.” Finnian shot Hastur a meaningful look. “I don’t know any ‘friends who can fix antiques.’ But I do know that you happen to be acquainted with someone who might be quite familiar with this sort of thing… An enemy? A friend?”
Hastur: “…”
Hastur: “Enemy. Why nurture impossible hopes?”
Finnian shrugged. “So what? You expect me to take over the Dismer Gang, something that has absolutely nothing to do with me?”
