“Its” birth? It??
Hastur had no time to ponder whether the task’s name was some kind of hint, for the familiar countdown effect began flashing before his eyes.
The pulsing red light filled his entire field of vision. He swiftly reverted to his normal size, snatched up his phone, and opened it—
The Parent Locator App.
Thank goodness he had recently bought new phones for both Ithaqua and himself, and thank goodness Ithaqua had thoughtfully brought his along before heading out.
He followed the phone’s signal, streaking toward the Desert Wasteland to the south at top speed. The incessantly flashing countdown made it hard for him not to worry that Casey might face some danger when the timer ran out.
“Ithaqua, keep an eye out for any ambushes around you,” Hastur said, rapidly considering various possibilities. “Even though the Caesar Gang hiring Casey was just a plot, the gang might still rush over to eliminate a useless pawn.”
Ithaqua’s hesitant voice came through, faintly mixed with the growing roar of wind. “I don’t sense anyone nearby, Father, but I see… dust clouds rising in the east—zzzt—”
The voice on the other end was suddenly drowned out by the howling wind and sand.
Pale moonlight bathed the entire wasteland, turning it into what looked like a vast sea of snow. In the southeast, Hastur spotted towering waves of sand surging forward like a tsunami!
Meanwhile, in the heart of the sandstorm.
Casey sprawled flat on the sandy ground to minimize the wind’s battering. She wore protective goggles and had a scarf tied over her face to keep out the choking dust—clearly, she had come prepared.
Unfortunately, there were two things in the Desert Wasteland that no amount of preparation could fend off.
One was the damned sandstorm, since the equally damned weather bureau never bothered monitoring conditions out here.
The other was the cursed quicksand. Even the best desert guides were helpless against the stuff, because it didn’t play by the rules of nature. The harbinger of death gave no colorful warning like “Stay off me!”
Casey cursed everything under her breath in her mind—including herself for choosing to set out tonight. Why couldn’t she have stayed at the Orphanage a few more days, eaten a few more full meals? Now she was about to end up as a skeleton in the quicksand, with no one around to cry out to—
“!!”
Casey’s sudden scream startled Ithaqua. “Ca… pfft!”
Revealing his inhuman form did let Ithaqua navigate the sandstorm with ease, standing unmoved like a mountain. But it did nothing to block the wind and sand. He had to hold his breath to avoid clashing cold and warm air currents and spawning an even worse disaster.
But that was enough. This tall, sturdy body was more than capable of yanking Casey out of the quicksand like a child fishing a little tin soldier from a barrel of rice. “Don’t worry, I’ll get you out—uh, you don’t mind if I use you as a shield against the sand for a sec, right?”
“…” Casey stared blankly at the monster before her, seemingly made of swirling mist with only two crimson eyes gleaming like falling stars. The next second: “Ah—!!!”
Her piercing shriek made Ithaqua’s vision go black. Adding insult to injury, she gripped his fur with the force of someone yanking out a radish. “Monster! Monster!!”
Casey’s words were curses, but her tone brimmed with feverish excitement.
She even flung herself forward heedlessly, practically hugging half of Ithaqua’s massive head, her hands switching to seize his antlers.
“What are you?? Why do you exist? How long have you been here?? Have you—have you seen a couple around?”
She was so worked up that she didn’t even notice the storm had abruptly vanished.
It wasn’t until the light overhead was blocked by something opaque that she instinctively looked up and saw a vast yellow cloth billowing overhead, as if it shrouded the entire sky.
It undulated silently and gracefully like the tentacles of a Portuguese man o’ war—the curtain of death…
But at this moment, this yellow shroud that reeked of death draped quietly around them, like some silent guardian.
“…” Casey’s adrenaline-fogged mind gradually cleared.
Though she couldn’t guess that her lack of contamination reaction was because the System had added her to the orphanage roster, she could sense that these two “monsters” before her meant no harm. In fact, they seemed to be protecting her.
And once calm, she realized the voice of the big furry monster she was clutching sounded familiar…
“…Ithaqua?” Casey tentatively loosened her embrace, though her hands still clutched his massive antlers as if afraid he’d vanish like a dream if she let go. “Is that you? Then what’s that up above…”
No one knew that Hastur, who appeared so imposing, was actually frantically surfing the web:
What should a father do if his underage adopted son suddenly gets tightly hugged by an underage girl??#
The search engine spat out a slew of hot topics on family dynamics, child protection, and legal ethics.
Hastur felt like a guy who’d merely sneezed only to have his browser diagnose terminal nasal cancer—dizzy and rattled by all the overblown hysteria. He looked down again at the two fledglings, who had already separated.
Not only had the kids parted ways; the storm had long since ended.
Now the two sat cross-legged together. Casey asked Ithaqua glumly, “What’s up with the Dean? Why doesn’t he respond when you call him?”
Ithaqua resolutely slipped on his rose-tinted glasses. “Father must have been shocked by our close call just now. He’s still recovering from the fright. You really shouldn’t have run off into the desert alone at night. Couldn’t you have asked everyone for help?”
Hastur eyed his search results suspiciously, then the two kids getting along amicably. After a moment’s thought, he refined his query with more specifics:
What should a father (non-human) do if his underage adopted son (non-human) suddenly gets hugged by an underage girl (human)?#
The search engine showed a flicker of confusion before coughing up some matches:
Three-year-old daughter steals my kitten; mama cat glares daggers#
Exposed: my cat treats me and my daughter differently! It scratches me just for looking, but when my daughter cuddles it, it just sits there#
Human kids seem to have special privileges around cats#
Hastur mentally equated the cats’ non-human status to his own and slotted Casey neatly into “human fledgling.” His heart finally settled. “It’s getting cold with winter coming. Let’s head back to the Orphanage first.”
He curled two tentacles around Casey and Ithaqua, placing them atop his head, and sped back to the Orphanage.
When he plucked the fledglings—who for some reason had ended up face-down in a spread-eagle sprawl—from his head, they both struggled in varying degrees.
“? Was I going too fast? Did I scare you?”
No! His egg-yolk head was just so perfectly huggable!! The two fledglings watched the Dean revert to his original form, shedding reluctant tears in their hearts.
Hastur merely rapped on a black stone by the lake. “Sit. Now talk. What exactly happened?”
“…” The paternal authority in Hastur’s tone was overwhelming. Casey’s expression sobered at once, and she shrank back guiltily. “I-I wanted to find my parents.”
Hastur paused in shaking sand from Ithaqua. “Weren’t your parents dead?”
“Of course not!” Casey reflexively raised her voice, then realized she shouldn’t snap at her unknowing rescuers. “…No, they didn’t die. They just went missing.”
“…” Hastur slowly set Ithaqua down.
In the real world, a missing persons case wouldn’t have pinged his radar, but things were different in the game.
Just months ago, they’d dealt with a string of cult-related disappearances, and some victims were still unaccounted for. Who knew if Casey’s parents’ vanishing tied into that?
Hastur paused Casey’s account for now and headed upstairs to drag Dustin out of the dorms. Thanks to the dorm layout, summoning one Dustin meant rousing the entire staff.
Five minutes later, everyone crammed into the now even more crowded Dean’s Room, listening as Casey continued.
“My parents vanished three months ago. The day they left home, I was at an autumn camp.”
“The last video call with them, they were asking if I wanted to join their trip. They said they could wait until camp ended…”
“But I turned them down.”
“I told them they deserved some couple time without their little third wheel tagging along…”
Casey’s body hunched, as if curling up could fend off the regret, pain, and self-blame. “I shouldn’t have said that. If I’d agreed, maybe nothing would have happened to them, right?”
Dustin murmured soft reassurances to Casey, while Hastur pointed out coolly, “That depends on why your parents went missing.”
“If they were targeted by someone, then even if you’d delayed them for months, misfortune would still have struck.”
Hastur’s words were cold, but the Ithaqua-brand pillow wedged beside Casey was soft and warm, striking a delicate balance.
So Casey managed to answer his question.
“I don’t know why they disappeared. All I know is, they were always fascinated by the legend of the ‘Endless Golden Fertile Soil.'”
“Three months ago, on their trip, they picked the Desert Wasteland for a self-driving adventure. They wanted to experience the thrill of the pioneers’ journeys firsthand and maybe get lucky enough to witness the ‘Golden Fertile Land’ with their own eyes.”
Finnian leaned in from the side and whispered a reminder to Hastur. “Golden Fertile Land—that’s the blood writing we saw on the basement wall—”
“I remember.” Hastur pushed Finnian back.
Casey continued, “They made the most thorough preparations for that self-driving trip.”
“A brand-new off-road vehicle, two months of desert survival training, four weapons for self-defense…”
Hastur suddenly recalled the reward from the previous task. “Is this car key your parents’?”
He pulled out the ordinary-looking metal key, smeared with bloodstains, and held it out for Casey to see.
Casey’s expression tensed for a moment, but once she got a clear look, she deflated in disappointment and shook her head. “No.”
“Anyway, they prepared as well as anyone could. They weren’t even out to ‘claim the treasure’—just hoping to stumble across it and ‘witness’ it. No matter how you slice it, they shouldn’t have vanished like that—”
“Even if they did find the treasure and other armed groups showed up to fight over it, they could’ve just backed off and left, right?”
This time, Hastur held his tongue about the darker possibility—that they might not have wanted to fight, but whoever claimed the treasure wouldn’t let witnesses walk out of the desert alive. He simply exchanged a glance with the other employees, who had clearly thought the same thing.
Casey didn’t notice. She kept her head down, picking at her nails to keep her emotions in check. “But they still hadn’t come back by the time I returned from summer camp.”
“I went to the police station to report them missing and gave my statement. The station immediately labeled it ‘another pair of foolhardy pioneers who brought doom on themselves chasing riches.’”
“I told them it was impossible. My parents had decent, stable jobs on High Pei Street. They wouldn’t risk their lives for some treasure—they’d come back for sure. But that officer who took my statement…”
She practically gnashed her teeth, her nails nearly torn from their beds. “He got fed up, shoved me out of the station, and said, ‘But they don’t have those now.’”
—They no longer had “decent, stable jobs.”
Dustin’s face turned pitch-black in an instant:
There was a world of difference between telling Casey her parents might’ve been silenced by whoever got the treasure and grabbing the reporting family member by the scruff while sneering that her parents “didn’t have jobs anymore.” The latter was a vicious, black-humored jab.
He pressed Casey. “Who was that officer? Do you remember his ID?”
Casey tilted her face up, her amber eyes brimming with tears yet sharp as daggers. “How could I forget? He’s starred in every nightmare I’ve had for the past three months.”
“S.l89234—his officer number. He wears blue glasses and has two moles side by side on the tip of his nose.”
Dustin shot to his feet and stormed out, clearly intent on making a call to demand accountability. Finnian shook his head with little hope and signaled Adolf—the one somewhat skilled at looking after girls, apparently—to escort Casey and Ithaqua back to their rooms to rest.
Once the office had cleared out, Finnian sauntered over to the desk with his arms crossed, leaning against its edge as he addressed Hastur, who was fiddling with the car key in thought.
“An officer number starting with S.l? That’s from the Silencer Town branch station.”
“That town’s basically the Dismer Gang’s personal playground. The branch cops are long past caring about doing their jobs. God knows if Dustin’s call will make a dent this time—hey, are you even listening?”
Hastur was actually staring at the task window:
【Task: Its/His Birth: Prologue】
No description. No rewards. This was the first time he’d encountered something like this. He almost suspected a glitch in the game system, but when he asked GM, GM insisted everything was fine.
Still, just the name alone gave him plenty to mull over:
Who was “He”?
One of his own kind? An AI? Or some other non-human entity?
And where had this non-human come from? Did it possess power rivaling his own or G8273’s?
Someone suddenly pressed down hard on the top of his head. Finnian’s gritted-teeth voice came from right beside him. “You—exactly—what the hell—are you zoning out for?! Didn’t you hear a word I said?”
Hastur snapped back to reality, felt a flash of embarrassment, and quickly set the key down on the desk. He slid it over to Finnian while changing the subject. “You’re into machines. Do you know anyone who’s an expert on all kinds of vehicles? Can they trace the owner of this key?”
Finnian grimaced in distaste as he pinched the key between his fingers and twirled it. “Where the hell did you snag this thing… What’s so special about it? Whatever, I’ll poke around and see what I can do.”
~~~
The next morning, just before logging off for work, Dustin came by to update him. The Silencer Town branch station had fired the derelict officer, and Casey’s parents’ case file would arrive at Phoenix District that afternoon.
Hastur recalled Finnian’s analysis from the night before and felt a flicker of surprise. “The Silencer Town branch station moved that fast?”
“I’m not an idiot. Who’d call the branch?” A sly glint flashed in Dustin’s pale blue eyes. “I went straight to the Chief Commissioner. Told him the missing persons case might tie into Nolly Qianning’s, so we’re combining investigations now. The Chief had that officer dismissed directly through the branch.”
Hastur threw out a quick reminder before logging off—“Let me know when the file arrives this afternoon”—then rushed off to clock in for work. It wasn’t until around four in the afternoon that he finally caught a breather in the airport lounge and pulled out his phone.
