Police showing up at the door didn’t sound like good news, no matter what their purpose was.
Ithaqua’s eyes were filled with considerable unease, yet his emotions had little effect on Hastur—
Because in reality, both “government” and “police station” were already relics of a distant past that no longer existed.
Rather than share the unease, Hastur’s attitude leaned more toward curious inquiry. After all, the mobile department he belonged to at the company was essentially a postmodern “police force.” Strictly speaking, he could even count himself as a SWAT officer.
“I’ll go receive them. You rest in the room.”
Hastur quickly relocated Nissen’s small cabin and the empty room stocked with medical supplies to the underground level. Then he simply sealed off the staircase leading below, ensuring that even if the police entered and searched the place, they wouldn’t discover the underground layer’s existence.
Only after making these full preparations did Hastur step outside to witness the extinction of a profession… no, to greet his industry senior.
Contrary to Hastur’s expectations, the police presence at this gang-infested orphanage was far from overwhelming—in fact, there was only one officer.
This lone detective, braving the bandit lair single-handedly, was woefully under-equipped: just a police uniform and a stun gun. That was his entire arsenal.
Hastur stood at the door, baffled by the suicidal display. “Where are your colleagues? Lying in wait nearby?”
“What col—oh!” A flicker of realization crossed the gray-haired detective’s puzzled face, as if he’d just thought, So that’s how you improvise. “Oh, cough, yes.”
He composed his features into a serious nod. “I’m Detective Dustin from the Phoenix District Police Station. I have a case I’d like to discuss with one of the orphans here… if that’s convenient?”
…
Hastur fell silent for a few seconds before stepping aside to let him through the door, certain there were no other officers lurking nearby.
They crossed the hall and headed toward the office.
As they passed a full-length mirror at the corridor’s corner, the detective caught an inadvertent glimpse of himself and suddenly realized his attire was hardly presentable.
He hurriedly wiped a sauce stain from his chest, straightened his loose tie, flashed Hastur an embarrassed smile, and tried to smooth down the hair that had stuck up from sleeping in the patrol car.
This was a young man brimming with passion for police work.
Hastur made the judgment effortlessly.
He detected no scent of lies or conspiracy on the detective—only fatigue mingled with vitality.
A job so demanding it left no room for personal life hadn’t eroded the gray-haired detective’s enthusiasm or ambition. If anything, it had made him more resilient with every setback, bold enough to charge alone into a gang den just to pursue his case.
“Uh…” Detective Dustin’s blue eyes scanned their surroundings uncertainly. “I figured there’d be gang members resting here at this hour?”
“I never meddle in gang affairs.” With those words, Hastur—who had just buried a red-named monster’s corpse beneath the front yard—pushed open the dean’s office door without batting an eye.
“Okay.” Detective Dustin dropped any notions of drug busts or gang sweeps. That wasn’t his beat, and it was well beyond his current capabilities anyway.
“I’m looking for a child born with disabilities, suffering from multiple congenital genetic deficiency diseases. His father is named Philip Brown?”
Hastur knew exactly who Dustin meant.
“I only took him in for genetic surgery yesterday. He’s still recovering and hasn’t woken up yet. Why don’t you tell me about the case? I might know some of the information you’re after—maybe Ithaqua mentioned something to me.”
Truth be told, Hastur had zero interest in carrying over his real-world job into the game. He only spoke up because he’d promised to shoulder a father’s responsibilities, and Ithaqua wasn’t in any condition to meet visitors right now.
But Dustin’s reaction genuinely caught him off guard.
“Ithaqua?? What Ithaqua?!”
Dustin had barely settled into the chair when he sprang back up, his clear light-blue eyes bulging wide as if Hastur had uttered something utterly preposterous.
“—You mean that child?? No, wait—why are you calling him ‘Ithaqua’??”
…?
Hastur keenly picked up on the subtle tell.
Dustin’s reaction made it sound like “Ithaqua” was some famous nickname or name. “What’s wrong with the name?”
Dustin drew a deep breath and sat back down, eyeing Hastur with shock and suspicion. “You’ve never heard of it? Ithaqua—also known as the ‘Wind Walker’ or ‘God of Icy Silence’—is one of the elder gods preached by the Cradle Cult. And he’s an offspring of the King in Yellow, Hastur.”
…
Hastur’s thoughts ground to a halt for an instant. Without thinking, he blurted, “What king?”
“The King in Yellow.” Dustin fished a folder from the pocket of his police jacket and flipped it open to the documents inside. “The Cradle Cult worships those gods, but they’re stingy about sharing details with the public. Only full initiates get access to the deeper lore.”
“From my—the police’s—investigation, we’ve only pieced together some names and a few connections between them.”
The documents unfurled before Hastur’s eyes.
He spotted many unfamiliar names, like “Azathoth” and “Cthulhu.” The Cradle Cult’s true name wasn’t nearly so childish and laughable; it was something far more obscure and tongue-twisting: the Satha-Hegla Cult.
Oh… the scent of lies.
That voice from the depths of his mind spoke up again, soft as a lullaby, sharp as a barb.
What are you doing, Hastur? Tricking yourself into thinking this is just your company colleagues venting their grudge—modeling you into the game as the grandson of some made-up ‘Lord of Chaos’?
No, no. You feel how familiar those names are. You feel the blood ties… They’re all real.
So who lied?
Hastur, which world reeks of lies? Which world never breathed a word of this?
…
Hastur stayed silent, ignoring the voice.
He recalled the reward from his last mission: the Cradle Cult’s Damaged Log.
Reading it right in front of Dustin was out of the question—it would only invite needless suspicion from the detective.
He could only commit the documents in front of him to memory as best he could, then approach the in-game case with renewed seriousness. “Ithaqua picked the name himself. His father might have mentioned it before abandoning him.”
—He couldn’t tell Dustin that he was the one who’d named Little Sick Ghost “Ithaqua.”
The name was too convoluted to pass off as a coincidence.
Dustin would suspect a link between him and the Cradle Cult, then wonder if Ithaqua had been brainwashed or controlled by someone tied to the cult.
If Dustin got wary and insisted on seeing Ithaqua to verify he was truly recovering from surgery—and not being hidden for some sinister reason—the whole talk would collapse.
Fortunately, Dustin bought the explanation. He sighed in relief and settled back into his chair. “I see…”
He didn’t seem to get the naming sense but was polite enough not to comment. Instead, he pressed on.
“Where was I? Right, the case.”
Dustin ruffled his hair. “Three days ago, the station got word on Philip Brown. Everyone thought he’d vanished three years back, but he’d actually been holed up with the Cradle Cult, ‘deepening his faith’ or whatever.”
“Three days ago, the boss of an apartment in Phoenix District called us in a panic—said her tenant got snatched by an ‘evil god’ and demanded we rescue him. That tenant? Philip Brown, the deadbeat dad who ditched his son to chase cult enlightenment.”
Hastur wasn’t even in the mood to snark that the boss’s real concern was probably the back rent, not the tenant.
“What’s that got to do with Ithaqua? He hasn’t seen his father in three years. Philip abandoned him ages ago.”
Dustin let out a long sigh, looking as if the case had taken a severe toll on his sanity.
“Because Philip Brown scrawled a bunch of messy ritual arrays all over his apartment—in dog blood, no less. And smack in the center of several were these three notes.”
He pulled a photo from the folder and handed it to Hastur.
The image showed three blood-smeared, fingerprint-riddled scraps of paper laid side by side, each covered in frantic scrawl:
[Please take my child, don’t take me! Great Hastur!]
[I am willing to build Carcosa for you in the human world. My child can serve in my stead at your side. He has snow-white hair, red eyes, born unlike the rest—surely to your tastes ███ (the rest unreadable, obscured by bloodstains)]
[Phoenix District Booth 4-234, Hali Orphanage, Phoenix District Booth 4-234, Hali Orphanage (repeated many times below)…
Byakhee! Carry my most devout offering to my lord, my god—the great King in Yellow, Hastur!]
…
Hastur stared at the photo, speechless for a long moment.
A shiver unlike any he’d known crept over his body, thrilling him even as it filled him with suspicion.
The thrill was pure instinct. It felt as if he’d brushed against the truth behind the greatest secret he’d encountered yet—as if accepting such a sacrifice was his birthright.
A flicker of suspicion stirred in his mind, pulling up his earlier thoughts about the gift. He had once puzzled over the helmet Lv Zhucao had given him—if it wasn’t a gift, then what was it? And then there was his encounter with Ithaqua.
Regardless of whether those scraps of paper were the ravings of a madman, the fact remained: Philip Brown’s child had indeed become his adopted son.
Was this another trick from the plot designers? A deliberate attempt to build a chilling sense of dread, as if he might have unknowingly answered Philip’s prayers?
Dustin interpreted Hastur’s reaction as discomfort with the notes’ contents. He reached out and took back the photo.
“If he really meets Ithaqua, there’s no way I could show those notes to the kid. It’d be too cruel.”
In a way, Dustin was grateful that Hastur had stepped in. Perhaps he could beat around the bush on his behalf, handling some potentially hurtful questions.
“I’m not sure if Philip’s disappearance was deliberate. If it was, would that person set their sights on Ithaqua because of these notes too?”
“So… could I trouble you to keep an extra eye on the area around the Orphanage in the coming days? See if any suspicious people show up?”
Given Ithaqua’s disability, Dustin figured the boy didn’t get out much. Watching for nearby threats could be left entirely to Hastur—no need to alarm Ithaqua and risk causing the child further trauma.
Even so, duty tugged at him. Dustin hemmed and hawed for a moment before forcing out the words:
“If… I mean, if Ithaqua remembers anything that might help the case, feel free to contact me anytime.”
The game pinged. A side quest called [Cosmic Temple] popped up in the lower left corner.
The objective: “Help Detective Dustin crack the mystery of the missing cultist.”
It took Hastur a good long while to rein in the unprecedented tangle of intense emotions surging through him. After exchanging numbers with the gray-haired detective, he opened the quest to scan it for any hints.
The gray-haired detective, preparing to leave, stood up briskly—
Then thudded to the floor.
“—??”
Hastur nearly wondered if his emotional turmoil had accidentally corrupted his cyberpunk counterpart. “Detective?”
“Low…” Dustin struggled feebly, his eyes glazing over as he stared off. Hastur dropped straight down on the spot to avoid the detective sprawled on the ground noticing a wild egg yolk jellyfish floating out of nowhere. “Low blood sugar… skipped… breakfast…”
The sauce stain on his clothes was still from yesterday’s lunch.
“…”
Hastur fell silent for a beat, then hesitantly spoke up. “Would you like to join us for breakfast?”
Dustin wrestled his unruly tongue into submission. “Thanks… for the trouble…”
A system prompt floated up right on cue:
【Easter Egg Quest: Make a breakfast with a highly personal touch】
“…”
Hastur fell silent again.
He’d only asked out of politeness.
To be clear: Hastur wasn’t human. He didn’t need sleep or food.
Furthermore, Hastur wasn’t human. He had no need to cook for himself, let alone anyone else.
Hastur helped Dustin back into his seat, then drifted toward the kitchen on the first floor with considerable gravity. He wasn’t sure if he could whip up anything edible to save Detective Dustin’s life and keep this case he cared about from derailing midway.
But right now, the entire Orphanage held only three souls. Detective Dustin was in the middle of a crisis, Ithaqua couldn’t come out, and he had promised his new adopted son that he would strive to be a responsible father… A responsible father made breakfast for his child, rather than ordering the child to make it for him, right?
He approached the task with twelve times the seriousness, treating this little “Easter Egg Quest” with the gravity of fulfilling a vow. After a thorough surf through the internet, he figured he had this.
Hastur turned to the gas stove.
A small popup went “pop”: 【It doesn’t want to be used by you】
Hastur: “…?”
What did that mean?
He glanced puzzled at the other appliances nearby.
Microwave: 【It begs you not to touch its switch】
Juicer: 【It is shuddering. If necessary, it will self-destruct to resist your use】
Hastur: “…”
The appliances were staging a collective strike against their owner! Would he heed a juicer’s suicide threat?
