It was a dark, depressing dream. Everywhere were black lines of shadow and flashing light, and an urgent feeling of defiance and powerlessness rose up in him.
From the moment he activated the Azathoth card, the personality of “Zong Yan” was suppressed to the deepest part of his soul. He fell into a profound and fathomless sleep.
The strangest thing about it was that although Azathoth indeed became Zong Yan, the blind idiot Lord was the loveable, brainless cutie type. There were no thoughts or consciousness in his head, which meant Zong Yan’s memories blanked out.
All in all it was a sensational experience. If you had to describe it, it was like taking a genius with a 140 IQ and abruptly reducing him to an IQ of 30, like a stupidity debuff had been slapped on him.
The dream went on for a long time, but it also seemed to only last a second. When Zong Yan woke up, he sensed that he’d regained control of his body.
The black-haired teen struggled to open his eyelids, but they felt heavier than a thousand kilos.
Consciousness didn’t return immediately. Zong Yan blinked his eyes a few times before everything came back, and then his memories flooded in like a tidal wave.
A young man standing on top of a skyscraper, the devastated earth below, the ink-black Tindalos Hounds descending from the sky, the ground covered with blood and torn flesh, the Huangpu River dyed blood-red by the setting sun, and the invisible odor of gunpowder smoke spreading all across Jiangzhou…
Unforgivable!
Unforgivable!
“!”
Without thinking, Zong Yan stood up, his face full of gloom and hidden anger.
But that wasn’t the best idea.
Boom—!
The black-haired teen in the school uniform jerked up from his seat. As he suddenly stood, his bent knee kicked the desk in front of him and knocked it over.
A thick stack of books piled on the desk crashed to the floor, together with the lid of a thermos. With a loud splash, hot water spilled all over the ground.
Everyone in the classroom froze. The teacher stopped lecturing. All the students who were listening to the lesson looked over in unison.
“Is something wrong, Zong Yan?”
This was his biology class. The teacher was a tall, attractive woman. She stood at the blackboard writing, but just now she turned back with a frown, holding a piece of chalk, and gazed at the source of the noise.
In the quiet of the classroom, the sound of the falling desk was thunderous and snatched everyone’s attention.
Zong Yan’s lips moved in a mumble. With blank confusion he looked back at the faces that stared at him.
These faces might be startled and bewildered, but they were also very much alive and well.
The classroom… Why was he in school? Clearly Jiangzhou had—
When the calamity struck, endless numbers of people died. Investigators dragged their exhausted bodies to fight otherworldly monsters. The sun sank into the horizon and the surface of the river was dyed with blood.
How was this possible? Did everything—?
Zong Yan couldn’t help but doubt his own memory.
Inside his skull was a pain so unbearable it felt like his head was about to explode, like an invisible hand was stirring the sea of his consciousness which had previously dried up from overuse. Just as if an ocean with boundless capacity had been emptied in an instant, exposing the barren, patchy ocean floor beneath.
While at the same time he felt like his head was covered with a layer of hazy glass.
“What’s wrong? Are you not feeling well?”
Zong Yan didn’t answer. He staggered out of his seat and rushed out of the classroom in a frenzy.
The black-haired teen knocked down several desks along the way, but like a terminally ill patient he seemed unaware of the dull pain it caused his body. Instead he crashed through the classroom door, running out into the hallway in the same stumbling attitude.
The biology teacher and students stared at his back, amazed.
“No way… How could he react so violently from falling asleep in class. That guy didn’t have a nightmare, right?”
As for the boy sitting next to Zong Yan, all he’d seen was Zong Yan nodding off with his head propped in his hand. He didn’t expect a big commotion a second later.
Anyway, the boys who sat in the back row had their own form of virtue. Sometimes they got sleepy and helped each other out. That’s why he didn’t say anything right now. He just helped straighten up Zong Yan’s messy desk to avoid disrupting his classmates.
""
“Ye JingMing, go and take a look. Classmate Zong might not be feeling well. Help him to the school infirmary.” The teacher thought of how pale that student was just now. She put down the chalk and sent one of the students to check on Zong Yan’s condition.
A moment ago, everyone was sitting quietly in class. Then Zong Yan suddenly made a weird face and caused a commotion. The biology teacher was a little worried.
Ye JingMing, the student who’d been named, made a tsking sound but obeyed the teacher’s instructions. He left immediately.
—
Zong Yan had no idea what he was doing.
He ran through the corridor as if he were mad, his chest heaving violently, cold sweat seeping from his hair and pouring down his face.
If he could have pulled up a game panel, he probably would have seen a flashing red message saying 【Temporarily Crazy】as the mission status.
Unfortunately, Zong Yan couldn’t see it. A crazy person wouldn’t think to check his remaining San value.
Correct, Zong Yan had used the Azathoth card with only 5 San points left. After the card was activated, his San value once again had the honor of going negative.
Zong Yan had tasted the consequence of a zero San value once before. Not only had it given him a painfully strong, lingering headache, he’d also had a dry, wringing feeling of being drained out of his own body.
This time it was a bit more serious.
“Hey—! What are you doing? Stop!” Ye JingMing ran behind him, shouting.
Almost the entire school building heard Ye JingMing’s yell. The sound of their running echoed in the hallways of the school.
Zong Yan had always done well in physical education. In order to get moral education credits, Zong Yan basically won the 3,000 meter and 800 meter races in the school sports meet every year. Students in other classes used a specific idiom when describing their race with Zong Yan—the Tortoise and the Hare.
When running the 3,000 meters, he stretched for the finish line with countless schoolgirls running over to bring water, while the other boys had only just finished their third lap.
Ye JingMing was also good at sports. He was the vice captain of the high school basketball team, and when he had nothing to do, he liked to bring his friends to the basketball court to dominate the playground. It could get intense.
As part of their class’s strategy to get a higher score in the school sports meet, usually Zong Yan and Ye JingMing were assigned to participate in different events. Zong Yan didn’t play much basketball, so Ye JingMing hadn’t really competed with him before.
Now Ye JingMing understood why Zong Yan was called a long-distance runner. He couldn’t catch up at all.
“Don’t run, Teacher Liu wants you to go to the infirmary!”
Ye JingMing chased him to the playground but really couldn’t catch him. He shouted at the retreating boy, then stopped and gasped for breath.
“Damn, that kid must be nuts. If the teacher didn’t ask me, I wouldn’t bother to chase you.”
Zong Yan turned a deaf ear. Halfway through, while running, he suddenly took out his phone and looked at it.
The time on the display was exactly 3:00 p.m. The first class of the afternoon had just ended.
His jumbled brain finally began to turn.
In about an hour… He Yuan would come to get him.
Not too long ago Tawil, disguised as the seventh Monarch, told the Dragon Group headquarters that a calamity would happen soon. By now the Dragon Group would have swung into action, discussing countermeasures and informing the Spire Council.
He Yuan told him that because they couldn’t find another solution he took it on himself to go to Qingyang High School to get Zong Yan, the quasi-Monarch, in the hopes that he could help.
When Zong Yan got into He Yuan’s car he happened to glance at the time on the Lamborghini’s console.
There were less than three hours to go. He had to prevent all this!
The black-haired teen ran to the door of the school guard’s office.
When classes were in session at Qingyang High School, the school gate was closed and no one was allowed to enter.
The man in the guard room was listening to the radio. When he saw someone run over, he looked up and said, “Class is in session. You can’t just leave school.”
Zong Yan ignored him. He stood in the doorway and looked at the endless flow of vehicles outside. Without thinking about it, he picked up his phone and made a call to He Yuan.
Since the calamity was inevitable, Zong Yan had to take advantage of the next three hours to evacuate everyone in Jiangzhou.
There wasn’t a long wait before the call connected.
“Hello, Little Monarch? What can I do for you?”
At the other end, He Yuan had just finished a session in the training room. He grabbed a towel and hung it on his head, making a gesture to his teammate. “Wait, it’s three in the afternoon. Don’t you have class?”
Zong Yan was enduring an agony in his brain that felt like something was sawing away at his skull bit by bit. He quickly said, “I know you’ve just received a divination from the seventh Monarch and are trying to come up with countermeasures right now.
“Don’t come to Qingyang High School. Turn around and tell the commander that the disaster will happen in Dujiakou! You have to immediately announce the situation to the city and evacuate the citizens right away. Otherwise the consequences will be unimaginable.”
Even though he’d fallen into a state of madness, Zong Yan felt unexpectedly calm. “The creatures that are coming are Tindalos Hounds. Human beings have no chance of defeating them, and that includes investigators. We can’t take any chances. Even Monarchs have trouble dealing with them.
“Don’t ask me how I know. I’ll explain when this is over, but right now it’s almost too late. We have less than three hours remaining. Please believe me.”
Zong Yan anticipated their distrust to the point that he was mentally prepared to reveal the secret of his Astrologer persona card. He had to avert this catastrophe before it happened.
“Please believe me. Everything I say will happen in the future. But if we hurry, we can still avoid the worst.”
He quickly reeled off all these words, then stopped speaking, apprehensively waiting for the verdict.
The words that came through the phone made Zong Yan’s heart fall into the ice. His pupils constricted.
“Little Monarch… What are you talking about? ” He Yuan’s voice was perplexed. “We haven’t received a warning from the seventh Monarch at all.”
—
The author has something to say:
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Zong Yan: Everyone knows I just woke up, it was all a dream, I just woke up and I’m still confused, okay?
…
Thank you for your comforting words in the last chapter. YaYa feels super moved!! There’s no way to repay you but to offer even more updates~
Love you all!!!
TL Notes:
Here’s some Cthulhu art by artist Great_Old_One Fang Geng, please enjoy! If you have trouble viewing it let me know. (The depictions and titles listed are not necessarily canon for this story.)
Azathoth – The Blind Idiot God – The Primordial Chaos – King-of-All (A female depiction but I still think it’s cool)
Tawil At-Um’r – Yog-Sothoth’s Avatar of Kindness
Yog-Sothoth – the All-in-One, the One-in-All
Nyarlathotep – The Faceless God – Prostrate (Crawling) chaos (Modern)
Nyarlathotep (Modern)
Ada – Nyarlathotep – The Bloated Woman
Nyarlathotep – The Black Pharaoh
Shub-Niggurath – The Black Goat with a Thousand Young
The Three Pillars – Yog-Sothoth, Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep (Modern)
Hastur
Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter: