Silence reigned on the other end of the line.
Hastur frowned in confusion, about to repeat his question, when he noticed the breathing on the phone growing unnaturally rapid.
Rather than adhering to professional ethics and refusing to divulge case details, it seemed Detective Dustin had laid eyes on something terrifying—and that thing was now prowling right beside him.
Suddenly.
Thud!
Crash…
A dull thump echoed as flesh collided with wood. It sounded as if Detective Dustin had carelessly slammed into a desk or bookshelf, sending heavy tomes tumbling down.
—And that was bound to attract the attention of whatever unknown entity lurked nearby.
The next instant, Hastur heard Detective Dustin erupt into a near-roar of profanity from the other end of the line: “Fuck! Go to hell, you monster!!”
Bang! Bang! Bang!
If anything in this world could deliver death, it wasn’t hell—it was the bullets flying from Detective Dustin’s gun.
Yet whatever stalked Dustin had to be some kind of monster impervious to gunfire, or agile enough to dodge the shots.
Once the barrage of gunfire ceased, Detective Dustin was still on the run. His ragged breaths mingled with the sounds of him crashing through doors and obstacles, along with his bellows into the radio:
“JP20!! Phoenix District, Vanilla Street No. 1525! Requesting backup! I’ve been attacked by an unknown creature!!”
Clack! The phone hit the ground, followed by a sharp crackle like an electromagnetic short-circuit.
When Hastur glanced back at his phone, the call had ended. The incoming notification from Detective Dustin had gone dark, like some ominous portent.
What did he run into? One of our kind? Then he’s as good as dead.
The voice in his mind carried a hypocritical note of regret, but it quickly shifted tones as something occurred to it:
No! He can’t die! What about the truth we want? The path to awakening?? That human can’t die at a time like this!!
Hastur had already sprung into action before the voice could finish its wailing.
He swiftly instructed Ithaqua to stay at the orphanage and look after their new lead. Then he pulled out Dr. Raymond’s number book and dialed the hotline for that exorbitantly priced taxi service—one kitchen’s worth at 30,000 bucks, but damn if they weren’t fast.
“Thank you for calling the Babylon Company Express Line. Please state your exact location?” The AI customer service’s voice was familiar.
Hastur rattled off the orphanage’s address. Less than ten seconds later, twin beams of light swept across his window.
The hovercar arrived with blistering speed. When Hastur leaped from the parked vehicle and darted into Vanilla Street like a shadow, barely three minutes had passed.
The street was eerily quiet, as if some black hole had swallowed every sound and scrap of light—including Detective Dustin’s life.
Hastur’s yellow robe twisted and extended like tentacles, poised to convert Dustin the moment he confirmed the detective was truly dead.
But God had deigned to show Detective Dustin a sliver of mercy today. Hastur found him slumped against a wall in a dead-end alley, clothes disheveled but chest still rising and falling. Hastur’s services weren’t needed—for now.
Pathetic human.
The inner voice relaxed palpably, regaining its insidious leisure.
You should convert him into a follower, Hastur. Make sure your lead can never die without your permission.
This time, Hastur didn’t argue with the voice.
He had always been cold and unempathetic toward outsiders. Besides, the man before him was just a string of data.
Still, he had his principles—like never striking first.
So Hastur merely crouched down. Invisible tentacles slithered across Detective Dustin’s chest, imprinting a mental mark that ensured even lethal wounds couldn’t claim him without Hastur’s say-so. Then he withdrew the potentially fatal tendrils of psychic energy.
From the folds of his yellow robe, he produced an adrenaline injector and plunged it into Detective Dustin’s chest with a hiss.
…
In his stupor, Detective Dustin twitched. For a dazed moment, he felt ensnared by some gigantic octopus, its tentacles piercing his chest.
The horrifying sensation jolted him awake. His eyes snapped open to the sight of a familiar yellow robe: “…H.J?”
Hastur discarded the injector and considerately tugged his hood lower. The robe offered some insulation—as long as a human didn’t actively peer beneath it, they wouldn’t descend into mental chaos. It concealed his eyes:
“Where’s the monster? When will your backup arrive?”
…
Detective Dustin stared with wide, haunted eyes, panting heavily for a moment. Then he swallowed down his panic along with a glob of saliva and hauled himself up with agonizing slowness. “Thanks… I mean, thank you for coming to my rescue. And for the injector.”
Adrenaline injectors didn’t come cheap. In his mind, Detective Dustin had already upgraded Hastur from “that weird guy in the hooded cloak” to “super generous, super rare good Samaritan!!!”
He mentally tallied how much he owed Hastur and whether his paycheck could cover it, his face twisting into a grimace. “I’m afraid no colleagues are coming to help me…”
The gray-haired detective cleared his throat awkwardly. “You know how security is in Phoenix District… well, put it this way: my colleagues won’t respond to an ‘unknown creature attack.’ Hell, they might not even show for a ‘gang assault’ most of the time.”
The entire Phoenix District precinct operated in a state of deliberate inaction—mainly because action was impossible.
“I can’t blame them,” Dustin muttered while straightening his tie. “Before I joined the force, I dreamed of top-notch gear! Crack teams of gung-ho officers! What did I get instead?”
He glanced at the outdated pistol and stun gun on his belt, his smile turning bitter. “One uniform per cop, a few anti-assault gadgets marketed for women, and a boss who’s all inaction but plenty of troublemaking.”
Meanwhile, the gangs they faced?
Cybernetic enhancements, heavy weaponry, gangs unleashing unrestrained violence…
Any cop who chose to slack off was the rational one.
Some days, Dustin classified himself as a naive, idealistic mutt.
He rubbed his face and looked at Hastur. “But no matter what, handling vicious assaults and maintaining order is the precinct’s duty. We shouldn’t drag civilians into this—”
Hastur decided to break the news about the 30,000-buck cab fare later. “But I adopted Ithaqua.”
“Until this case is solved, his safety’s at risk every day. I can’t just sit this out.”
Being quiet didn’t mean he lacked eloquence.
When needed, Hastur could be plenty persuasive. His keen senses and innate talent for temptation let him wield coercion and enticement with subtle finesse, never feeling offensive:
“Look, a case this dangerous—you can’t handle it alone. You need backup. And I can’t drop the investigation either—”
“So why not team up? Together, we’re safer than going solo.”
…
Detective Dustin was left speechless, fuming yet helpless. After a long pause, he limped around and headed off in a certain direction:
“I guess I can’t convince you to value your life—here. This stun gun’s yours. Gear up; there might be more than one monster in that room.”
As the stun gun landed in Hastur’s hand, a translucent window popped up in the lower left of his vision:
【Accepted series task: [Silver Tongue].】
Hastur caught the weapon and lapsed into a subtle silence, hoping his impulse to cook last night hadn’t saddled Detective Dustin with crushing debt.
He trailed the gray-haired detective across the filthy, damp concrete and into the gloom of Vanilla Street.
His gaze swept over the silhouettes of squat, shadowy shacks, tangled clumps of exposed thick cables, and humming AC units:
“This place looks even rougher than the orphanage.”
“You think housing in Phoenix District is gonna be great?” Detective Dustin paused by a window, crouching low and whispering. “We’re here.”
No lights burned inside the shack. Pale moonlight streamed through the bars, casting long shadows across the floor and illuminating walls covered in bloody graffiti.
No voices stirred within, only the sizzle of frayed wiring.
Through the glass, Hastur could see the room filled with thin haze. Sparks occasionally burst forth, briefly lighting the empty interior.
“It’s gone? The thing’s gone?” Detective Dustin hauled himself up by the windowsill, racked a fresh round into his pistol with a click, and entered ahead of Hastur. “I remember when I bolted—one was hiding right here in this spot!”
Hastur followed Dustin’s pointing finger. No sign of any monster. No slime, no claw marks, no footprints… nothing.
Not a flesh blob. Has to be one of our kind.
The voice piped up again, its tone oddly excited.
But Hastur had a nagging feeling that the high-pitched cry wasn’t one of joy. It sounded more like a beast discovering another of its kind in the same territory—a friendly meeting was hardly the way such creatures would choose to interact.
Beneath his hood, Hastur’s pupils contracted into twisted vertical slits. “What did those monsters look like?”
Detective Dustin tried the light switch, but it didn’t work. Fumbling carefully in the dark, green around the gills, he recalled, “One… looked like an Egyptian pharaoh? Golden headdress, black skin. And another with a tentacle for a head.”
Kin!
The inner voice roared like thunder, snorting with excitement like a mammoth before a charge:
Kill them… kill them, eat them! Grow stronger!
Deep down, Hastur hoped that raucous voice wasn’t truly his instinct. Such childish, impoverished phrasing disgusted him. “I heard the sound of pages turning. What’s over there?”
His 3 points of Intelligence kicked in!
Hastur fixed his gaze on the only bare patch amid the rune-covered wall and said to Detective Dustin with clear intent, “It’s too dark. Can you read it for me?”
“Uh, sorry, I broke the lamp earlier…” Detective Dustin reflexively blamed himself first, then leaned in close, mimicking a point-and-read toy. “There’s a… membership invitation stuck here?”
The lingering shock of the monster attack still hadn’t worn off, so the gray-haired detective unconsciously lowered his voice.
“As expected, it’s from the Cradle Cult. It says the Father God has witnessed Lady Linda’s years of piety and effort, and permits her to formally join the cult…”
“The rest seems to be background material on one of the gods the Cradle Cult worships: Nyarlathotep.”
From Hastur’s perspective, Detective Dustin might as well have been rifling through thin air.
As he read on, the detective’s face grew pale. His body, propped up only by adrenaline, began to sway unsteadily.
“It describes… Nyarlathotep’s avatars. One of them is called the ‘Black Pharaoh,’ dressed like an Egyptian pharaoh. And another, known as the ‘Dark Roarer,’ whose form is… faceless, three-legged, with a head that’s a single blood-red tentacle?”
~~~That was exactly the appearance of the monsters he’d seen earlier!
A jolt like electricity shot through Hastur’s body. They really were his kin!
He immediately asked, “Does it mention Hastur?”
Detective Dustin’s eyes widened in disbelief. He couldn’t fathom how, after dropping such horrifying information, H.J’s priority was… Hastur.
But picking fights with his partner off the clock was Dustin’s standard social mode, so after shooting Hastur a glare, he suppressed his surging emotions and turned back to scan the page. “—Oh, there’s a simplified family tree here. According to the diagram’s labels… Nyarlathotep would be Hastur’s great-uncle.”
Hastur: “…”
The inner voice: …
That single short sentence dealt massive damage, extinguishing Hastur’s feverish excitement and the inner voice’s wailing tantrum in one fell swoop.
The inner voice muttered a single “No” before going silent.
After a moment of silence, Hastur regained his calm. “Think about it carefully. If those attackers were truly Nyarlathotep, how are you still alive?”
A scrawny little bean sprout like Detective Dustin was someone even Hastur couldn’t take down. There was no way he’d survive an encounter with Hastur’s “great-uncle.”
Detective Dustin: “? But they looked just like the descriptions.”
“Think rationally. No one’s ever actually seen this so-called ‘Nyarlathotep.’ What if it’s just some ordinary monster? Or a product of an illegal lab—fused with black human genes or octopus DNA or something…”
This is an insult! A complete and utter humiliation!
The inner voice began to shriek.
Hastur didn’t blame Dustin entirely. The real issue was that his great-uncle’s avatars were utterly incompetent.
Two of them against one Detective Dustin, and they still couldn’t finish him off. Hastur found the great-uncle even more embarrassing. “In any case, I don’t think your attackers were genuine Nyarlathotep.”
All the thrill of finding kin and the excitement of encountering rivals vanished.
Hastur began calmly sifting through the other documents in the room, ignoring Detective Dustin’s mutterings about the possibility of imposters.
The house’s owner was a mid-level employee at a small company. His salary was decent enough but not sufficient to move to a nicer district.
