September 30th, the third day since Hastur first touched the game.
He had already fallen into all sorts of addictive behaviors: staying up all night gaming, resisting the urge to go to work because of the game. He had even stared at the anti-addiction warnings for a long time, pondering whether to call in sick.
No. Hastur.
The voice in his heart, always loyal to instinct, spoke up to stop him. Its tone was firm and stern:
Taking sick leave for a game—that’s something only human kids do. Don’t do it, Hastur.
~~~
That would be way too embarrassing.
With an image to uphold that weighed a full ton, Hastur dawdled before logging off. He arrived at the meeting point with his usual elegant poise.
Once work began, he couldn’t help but start zoning out:
Nyarlathotep. He felt an instinctive familiarity with that name.
It surely belonged to one of his own kind, unlike those two pathetic losers who had attacked Officer Dustin.
~~~
Yes, because they were so utterly worthless, Hastur had unilaterally expelled those dubious creatures from his kind.
He then pondered further: Every time he encountered names like Nyarlathotep or Azathoth, a strange intuition told him, “These are your kind.”
But why had he never felt this intuition in the real world?
It was normal that no one shared his exact bloodline, since each test subject had different fused genes. But why was there no related intel at all?
In the real world, he had never seen terms like Satha-Hegla or Ithaqua until he entered the game Cyber Orphanage Simulator.
~~~
Perhaps the Company had subjected him to an information blackout.
The thought suddenly flashed through Hastur’s mind.
In this pure white world, the Company controlled everything.
Setting up an intelligence network around him to filter out information they didn’t want him to know was hardly difficult.
So why was the Company now allowing him to access this intel?
~~~
Or had the Company not approved it at all?
Maybe someone wanted him to know these truths about himself. They had found a way to circumvent the Company, using the game Cyber Orphanage Simulator to tell him something.
Could it be Lv Zhucao? Hastur recalled his guardian’s strong recommendation of the game and the hints about “atavistic awakening.”
We should find a chance to talk to him.
The voice said:
Just talk directly. It’s more efficient.
No.
Hastur refuted the impatient, irrational voice in his heart once more:
What if the person trying to tell him the truth wasn’t Lv Zhucao? What if his questions aroused suspicion and tipped off the enemy?
There was a reason he played by the rules at work in the real world. He couldn’t defeat the one sitting in the Boss’s office.
Though in most cases, the Boss treated him with indulgence bordering on favoritism—and that affection was genuine; he could smell the sincerity— what if the blackout order had come from the Boss himself?
…Maybe we should call in sick after all, Hastur.
The voice in his heart sincerely revised its opinion.
~~~
Afternoon five-thirty, and the operations division clocked out right on time for once.
Hastur raced back to H-1 District at his fastest speed while maintaining his image, donned his helmet.
After the familiar login PV played, the prompt he had ignored last logout popped up first:
【Hidden Character Profile unlocked!】
【View the character’s story?】
With his heart pounding and hands trembling, Hastur hiked up the hem of his robe—which had frayed into little ruffles—and selected confirm.
【??? · The Third Tale of the Lamp God】
【Time had finally reached the second millennium of the lamp spirit’s imprisonment.
Everything was improving. Everything was going so smoothly.
Finnian led the Zane Gang, always taking the right fork in the road.
He wielded violence but never drowned in it.
His balanced approach of carrot and stick allowed the Zane Gang to seize nearly two-fifths of Phoenix District’s gray-market trade chains in just its second year, earning them equal footing with the Nirvana Gang.
“We’re gonna make it big!”
On a September night in AF71, the Zane Gang’s base buzzed with revelry. A drunk gang member raised his glass excitedly, eyes gleaming. “Negotiating territory with the Nirvana Gang! Who’d have thought a gang only two years old could pull this off? You’re a legend, Finnian!”
The praised brown-haired young man lounged lazily on the black leather sofa, like a young brown lion basking in the sun.
“Easy there, Gavin. This is just the beginning. We’ll get even more legendary.”
Finnian made that promise, squinting contentedly to the cheerful strains of a Scottish jig as fine red wine filled him to the brim.
Until, at one moment, a dagger laced with neurotoxin plunged into his chest. Even as the blade pierced him, his eyes were still closed, his forehead bobbing relaxedly to the tune.
~~~
The music vanished. All sounds vanished.
The knife struck Finnian’s heart true. He opened his eyes in shock, meeting Gavin’s flushed face, red from drink.
Then he realized:
Gavin’s excitement wasn’t about “standing equal to the Nirvana Gang,” but about “I, Gavin, standing equal to the Nirvana Gang.”
~~~
He had been betrayed.
For the second time in his life.
“Bang!”
A gunshot. Right through his right wrist.
“Bang!”
Another. Right through his elbow.
Every traitor performed this “ritual,” swearing loyalty to Gavin and vowing never to flip back to Finnian.
Until the bullets ran dry, they dragged him into a pickup truck.
~~~
Thank goodness these idiots weren’t driving his “Arthur.”
In the hypothermic daze from rapid blood loss, that’s what he thought. His nerves no longer registered pain—only cold… endless, biting cold…
The lamp spirit waited through its second millennium. From brimming hope, it slipped into deepening despair.
Cold enveloped It. In desperation, It cried out: Anyone! Anyone at all! Save Me, and I will grant any wish!
The pickup carried him deep into the Desert Wasteland.
Gavin hauled him out roughly and flung him into the sands.
Before leaving, Gavin stood over him and said, in a tone laced with false pity, “Rest in peace, Finnian.”
“You’re capable, I know. But you have way too many ‘limits’—”
“No drugs. No human trafficking. No flesh trade either!”
“You shunned every big-money racket. So what if the Zane Gang splits territory with the Nirvana Gang? That cash never lines our brothers’ pockets!”
Gavin seemed to realize ranting at a lifeless corpse was beneath him. He forced himself to calm down.
“You can’t tie our hands anymore. You just can’t.”
Gavin’s voice turned almost sorrowful. “The Nirvana Gang’s deal was to hand over your body, but I didn’t agree. For old times’ sake, I wanted to give your remains some dignity…”
Warm sand sprinkled onto Finnian’s face. Gavin said, “May the quicksand swallow your body and preserve your honor.”
The crunch of footsteps faded, followed by the pickup’s engine roaring to life, abandoning him alone in the Desert Wasteland.
One second. Two seconds.
On the seventh, the mechanical heart he’d recently implanted whirred to life right on schedule, pumping a flood of medical agents into his veins.
He jerked awake with a gasp, like a drowning man breaking the surface. Propped up by the drugs, he struggled to dig out the bullets jamming his cybernetic joints, staggered to his feet, and lurched toward the desert’s edge.
The fire of vengeance drove him, hauling his near-dead body across the endless dunes.
He collapsed at the gates of a rundown orphanage and heard voices surging from within:
“Who’s there?”
“There’s a bloody mess slumped at the gate! What do we do?”
The final day of the second millennium. Footsteps approached. The spirit’s despairing heart beat again:
Save me! Save me! It pounded the lamp’s walls, howling. I can grant any wish! I am the mightiest spirit of the forest!
Hope flickered briefly in Finnian’s heart.
He struggled to lift his head and heard someone emerge from the gate. Rough hands seized his hair, yanking his face up.
“—Finnian of the Zane Gang? How the… Ha! Whatever. A deal delivered to our doorstep—looks like our hard times are over.”
“Hey! Fatty, grab some of our new ‘Bone Ash’ batch for the boss to try. Log his reaction—once he’s done being our guinea pig, we ship him to the Nirvana Gang. Waste not, want not!”
The second millennium ended.
The lamp spirit opened its eyes. Supreme rage and hatred made It stronger than ever. It shattered the lamp that imprisoned It.
It became a god—a god of hatred and fury. All who had disappointed It would pay the price.】
The storybook icon slowly closed, shifting to a rereadable selection state.
Hastur tapped the icon again and stared at the final passages for a moment.
“Bone Ash” seemed to be some new drug cooked up by those Hawk Gang thugs, right? In the story, when Finnian collapsed at the orphanage gate, the Hawk Gang was still around?
Was this storyline from a timeline without a player?
Hastur’s gaze swept toward the story’s title once more: Tale of the Lamp God, Part Three.
He had no idea if there were chapters beyond three, but there were definitely two stories before it—likely tales of Finnian’s… whatever mysterious hidden identity.
Hastur didn’t understand human emotions, so he couldn’t feel sympathy or anger toward the story. Reading through it, he latched onto only one key point:
Finnian was kind!
Kind people got bullied… no, exploited… or rather, easily bound by a sense of responsibility.
Hastur closed the story module, feeling as if he’d found the perfect way to make Clue-Man stay at the orphanage willingly.
He glanced around the room. The delayed system notification from reading the codex finally appeared:
【September 30th · 5:30 p.m. · Phoenix District · Orphanage】
Once again, the game’s time had synced with reality.
And at five-thirty in the afternoon, what was the most important thing to do?
Armed with his strategy, Hastur floated out of the office and up to the second-floor infirmary dorm.
To his surprise, Ithaqua wasn’t in his own room. Instead, he was clinging to the edge of Finnian’s bed.
Just before Hastur entered, it looked like Ithaqua had been whispering something to Finnian. Finnian’s expression hovered between annoyance—”Why are you talking to me?”—and pity—”Poor lonely kid.”
The moment Hastur saw Finnian wanting to shoo him away but not wanting to hurt the child’s feelings, he knew his strategy was solid.
Ignoring Finnian’s glare—”What are you doing in my room? What do you want now?”—Hastur floated boldly into the room. The entire Egg Yolk Jellyfish flattened itself against Finnian’s bed, perfectly matching Ithaqua’s pose in a “side-by-side flattened-out hunger duo”:
“So hungry. No lunch. So hungry.”
Ithaqua actually felt fine. Ever since turning into a monster, his need for food had changed.
But if Father said he was hungry, he certainly wouldn’t contradict him!
Remembering how Finnian had tried to slip out the window just from him dropping by to chat, Ithaqua decisively joined the dinner-demand chorus: “Hungry. Me too.”
Finnian, who had been hard-locked in place by the fluffy monster’s poached-egg eyes on his first escape attempt: “…”
His gaze slowly swept over the bedside:
On the left clung a flattened Egg Yolk Jellyfish, its intimidating yellow eyes now morphed into a pair of teary cat eyes.
On the right huddled a large fluffy furball, its soft fuzz and poached-egg eyes quivering pitifully together.
The Egg Yolk Jellyfish flattened itself even more. The white furball whimpered, its airplane ears drooping…
“…” Finnian waged the Nth internal battle between sentiment and reason.
Snap out of it! These are monsters! You can’t even handle your own mess—a pile of disasters—and now you want to dive into new trouble? —Reason scolded harshly.
But they saved me. They haven’t done anything bad to me or asked for anything in return… There are good monsters too, right? Just like there are people who wear human skin but act worse than beasts.
…Fuck!
Finnian swore inwardly, letting sentiment triumph over reason once more. Propping himself up on the bed’s edge, he sat up:
“Just so we’re clear, this is only a short-term gig. I’ll stick around until I teach the Dean how to cook properly, or until we hire a suitable chef for the place.”
Hastur immediately decided to cancel the chef recruitment.
~~~
To Hastur’s surprise, Finnian’s cooking skills far exceeded the ordinary. Under decent conditions, he could even produce flavors rivaling high-end restaurants.
This allowed Hastur to pick up the detective’s call during the meal and say as his first words: “Eaten yet, Detective? Want to come to the orphanage and try the new chef’s handiwork?”
“You hired a new employee?” Detective Dustin sounded surprised, clearly not expecting Hastur’s efficiency. “—Congrats, but I’m afraid I don’t have time to indulge.”
“Listen, after we parted this morning, I went back to the station and checked the old case files. Guess what?”
Unlike Ithaqua, who had once been human, Hastur had no real reaction to even the finest cuisine beyond judging it good or bad. He lacked any sense of enjoyment.
Once he’d topped off his hunger bar in the game, he set down his knife and fork: “You found other similar cases?”
“More precisely, I didn’t find them,” Detective Dustin replied, his tone laced with worry. “In fact, shortly after I entered the records room, I spotted a stack on one of the shelves—organized quite…”
He seemed to search for the right word: “quite neatly.”
He described it briefly: “Printed on A4 paper, stacked together, pristine like freshly unsealed sheets. All the documents were triple-sorted by date, victim’s location, and type of worshipped eldritch god.”
“And it was right there on the most prominent shelf in the records room… like it had been deliberately placed for someone to find!”
“Who would do something like that? It couldn’t have been anyone from the station! No one there has OCD that obsessive!”
Uh… this sounds off.
An inner voice bubbled up, tinged with wariness:
An unknown person sneaks into the station to investigate eldritch worship disappearances?
Did Ta go for the truth of the case… or for the eldritch god?
Life had an innate survival instinct: the ability to sense if one had been marked as prey.
Thus, the moment Hastur heard the description, a chill ran down his nonexistent spine.
Fight-or-flight surged, sharpening his thoughts to an impossible clarity:
“They—that person—did they leave a signature?”
“Yes.” Detective Dustin said. “I didn’t think they would have… but they did sign the end of the documents.”
“G8273. Some weird code… Give me time, and I’ll try to look into it.”
Blech!
The inner voice sounded utterly repulsed, perfectly embodying Hastur’s sentiments:
Absolute order naming convention—I doubt we’d get along.*
Far from getting along—Hastur’s Yellow Robe began twisting into tentacles that yearned to shred numerical space.
The gut feeling of being watched, hunted, filled Hastur with revulsion and alarm.
If this G8273 stood before him, Hastur would shatter his “never strike first” principle, killing regardless of whether the man was truly after him.
The system suddenly chimed:
【Hidden Quest Triggered: [Two Ends of Evolution]】
【Who will break through the evolutionary bottleneck first? Ultimate Order, or Ultimate Chaos? That is the question.
Survival of the fittest—may the victor endure! In this competition where stagnation means elimination, be the one who survives!】
