Chapter 88: CH 88

Why were they all so obsessed with the idea that he was the avatar of Azathoth?

Zong Yan was lost in thought.

A frightening guess came to mind, but he immediately waved it away.

Zong Yan had clear memories of every part of his life since he was a child. There was absolutely no possibility of memory loss or forgery, and there weren’t any magical scenarios like turning into someone he didn’t know.

Besides, he still had human emotions. How could he be an evil god?

As these thoughts ran through his mind, his racing heart calmed down a little.

Zong Yan always felt that the biggest difference between evil gods and humans was that humans were bound by the emotional constraints of morality. They had a sense of right and wrong. Evil gods, on the other hand, didn’t have virtuous feelings, and they certainly weren’t restricted by morality or conscience.

Just like this time…

After Zong Yan became an evil god’s half-self, he began to think about things like an evil god. He instinctively approached problems from an evil god’s perspective.

For example, when Atlantis was destroyed, Zong Yan looked on with indifference and didn’t say a word. He thought Cthulhu’s behavior was appropriate. After all, the Atlanteans had offended a god’s authority. They deserved to pay the price.

For example, when R’lyeh and Carcosa went to war, the King in Yellow offended Zong Yan with just a few words. The part of Zong Yan’s mind that belonged to an evil god was immediately ready to fight. He loudly proclaimed his anger.

For example, when Zong Yan was fighting with Hastur, he didn’t even think about the consequences of displaying his true body, and the poisonous fog immediately spread to R’lyeh. Somewhere deep inside, he probably understood that even if R’lyeh sank, Cthulhu wouldn’t be angry with his half-self over the death of a few ants. After all, under Cthulhu’s rule, R’lyeh had been destroyed and rebuilt several times.

He’d changed so much, but while he wore the shell of Cthulhu’s half-self, he hadn’t even noticed. It was only now, after his mind was dazed and the two evil gods were clashing, that Zong Yan calmed down enough to think about things more carefully and broke out in a cold sweat.

‘If this continues… If I can’t use persona cards anymore, will I have to stay in this body?’

‘If I remain in this body, someday my mind and personality might be swallowed up by the mindset of an evil god.’

While he was thinking about this, the two forces within his body finally determined a winner and a loser.

Zong Yan’s hair changed from partially white to wholly dark green again, but the aura belonging to the King in Yellow didn’t fade.

The young evil god sat up inside the small dimension. He tentatively stretched out his hand to try to cut through.

But then, a second later, his fingers opened a long gap in space.

The gap didn’t display a view of the world outside. Instead there was a luminous riot of multi-colored light that Zong Yan knew so well.

He began to tremble, then reached his hand into the gap. His fingers completely submerged into the cold space.

Several cards lay quietly in his hand.

The Astrologer, the Night Watchman, the King of Clouds, the Sun God, Azathoth… And an unknown, dark green card with the markings of an SS-rank daily disposable persona card.

Zong Yan picked out the dark green card and placed it at the front of the stack. The effects of the card were immediately relayed to his mind.

SS-rank daily disposable persona card: the Lord of R’lyeh

The young evil god depicted on the card was wearing a cold frown. He stood atop the majestic palace in the center of R’lyeh with his long, dark green long hair scattered behind him and an incomparably sinister black iron crown on his head.

At the Lord of R’lyeh’s feet, his numerous subjects bowed and knelt. The forbidden black tower of the evil god rose above the surface of R’lyeh, glowing with a deep green light. In the distance, Atlantis collapsed and sank, and volcanoes erupted, like the end of days.

Apart from the crown, everything else matched Zong Yan’s current appearance.

Sure enough, the daily disposable persona card confirmed Zong Yan’s suspicions. Everything agreed with his current identity as an evil god. As for the incident with Hastur, it might have happened because Zong Yan received the King in Yellow’s blessing in modern times. Or maybe it was because of Cthulhu’s kinship with Hastur.

The return of his ability gave Zong Yan a shot of energy. It also soothed the fear and tension he’d felt before.

He wasn’t completely powerless.

The young evil god clenched the card in his hand.

Even if his identity was no longer his own, even if he’d been suddenly transformed into someone else, his superpower had followed his soul. No matter if he was a human or an evil god, it was the one thing that would never change.

But why had this persona card brought Zong Yan 350 million years into the past?

He rubbed his fingertips against the card, then applied some force.

【Your SAN value is insufficient. Activation of this persona card has failed】

【Warning. Your SAN value is insufficient. Activation of this persona card has failed】

【Attention. When your SAN value is too low, the card may not work properly】

A mysterious, mystical consciousness fed this message back to Zong Yan through the vast psychic sea.

No wonder he couldn’t even open the space before. It was because of excessive San consumption.

Zong Yan wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry.

He did some calculations and figured that while he was using the Sun God persona, he’d accidentally crushed the card of the Lord of R’lyeh. The Lord of R’lyeh card was SS-rank. Zong Yan took a look at it and saw it cost 100 San points to use.

But that wasn’t all. After that, he used the Azathoth card whose San cost was a total mystery. That card had no obvious rule for its San consumption at all. 

Anyway, every time Zong Yan used that card he went through the fearsome side effects of his San value emptying out. After those two actions, his San value not only hit zero, it turned negative.

Counting with his fingers, Zong Yan had lived in R’lyeh for a few months. During that time, his San value recovered day by day. Maybe it wasn’t until today that his San value returned to a normal range and he was able to access his superpower space again.

The logic couldn’t be faulted. Zong Yan looked at the bright and shiny gauge that showed there were only seven points of San remaining. He was already convinced of his theory.

Wait… Seven points of San.

A flash of light went through his mind.

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According to logic, after using the card of the Lord of R’lyeh, Zong Yan should have been able to maintain that form for only a limited period of time. But obviously, for some reason, he’d maintained the persona for several months. Not only was the San cost not deducted, his San points even began to recover a little every day.

Combined with his previous theorizing, he came to a terrible realization.

Then… These persona cards all had their own separate bodies?

If that was the case, his other persona cards weren’t ordinary transformations either. The cards literally changed one body for another.

In fact, there was an easy way to test this theory.

Nothing could be simpler.

Zong Yan put down the dark green card and picked up a different one.

All of his persona cards changed his hair and clothes and gave him new abilities, with one exception.

The black-haired, dark-eyed teen was wearing the school uniform of Qingyang High School, and one hand was in his trouser pocket while the other held a mysterious crystal ball.

E-rank daily disposable persona card—the Astrologer.

This persona card was based entirely on “Zong Yan”. In other words, this card was the closest to Zong Yan himself. It didn’t change his clothes when it was used, nor did it affect his will or emotions.

Coincidentally, it was an E-rank persona card that only cost five San points to activate.

And he had seven points right now.

“Well, let’s find out. Does it work the way I think it does?

When he used this persona card, would he return to his ordinary high school student self?

Zong Yan muttered quietly. He crushed the persona card without hesitating.

Power couldn’t compensate for some things, like justice, like ties of blood that couldn’t be extinguished, or the lives of human beings he would always protect, even if it cost his life.

Maybe for an evil god, emotions were a weakness, so these higher-dimensional creatures didn’t hesitate to abandon their feelings.

But for humans, emotions were the most beautiful and sacred part of their species.

‘It’s true, compared to being an evil god, I’d rather be a flesh-and-blood human being.’

Before his vision plunged into darkness, Zong Yan revealed a reluctant smile.

But he had absolutely no idea he was about to crash into the lair of an evil god.

—

How many days did the battle between the Lord of R’lyeh and the Lord of Interstellar Spaces last? No one knew.

As a species, evil gods were unaffected by time. They had a long, long lifespan and would continue to exist as long as the universe itself was not destroyed. If something happened to them, they could only be sealed away, not killed, and even then, they could still make trouble. For example, when Cthulhu was sealed he still appeared in the dreams of humans with high insight ability, and Hastur continued spreading his faith and making waves in London after he was sealed away.

But they were eventually forced to stop their battle.

A far more terrifying being, one who transcended the realms of existence, intervened.

The Lord of Time and Space ripped through space-time from the distant future and emerged in prehistory.

The moment he arrived, a vast and terrifying evil force swept through the entire time node, forcing all of time to freeze.

Everything was comically suspended in place. Only the evil gods weren’t affected.

The two evil gods who were burning with anger were forced to stop fighting. They returned to human form.

This was fcking embarrassing.

The gray-haired, golden-eyed evil god was wearing a white robe. After calmly stepping through the spatial rift he lifted an eyebrow.

It was true that evil gods didn’t attach much importance to familial relationships, but… If only from the perspective of kinship, Cthulhu and Hastur really were related to Yog-Sothoth.

After all, when the universe was first created, only the three original primal gods existed, and just after they were born, their relationship was strained. They fought continually, and they occasionally scattered energy from their true bodies as a result. This energy gave birth to new evil gods. In addition to Shub-Niggurath, Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth also produced their own descendants through an asexual process of fission.

“Father God.”

Hastur was the first to speak. He put away the bone spike in his hand and nodded to the Lord of Time and Space to show his respect.

—

The author has something to say:

The evil god community is a mess!!!

According to the second version of August William Derleth’s setting, Hastur and Cthulhu are brothers. According to Clark A. Smith’s second setting, Mr. C is Bubbles’ son. Combining these two theories leads to an amazing result 233333

TL Notes:

233333 – Internet slang for laughter, refer to the note in Ch. 75

Transliterated names, titles, and places—new in this chapter:

August William Derleth – 奥古斯特·威廉·德雷斯 – Àogǔsītè Wēilián Déléisī – A writer best known as the first book publisher of H.P. Lovecraft, and for his own contributions to the Cthulhu Mythos and the cosmic horror genre. Sometimes criticized for introducing a good vs. evil dynamic to Lovecraft’s strictly amoral continuity

Clark A. Smith – 克拉克·A·史密斯 – Kèlākè A. Shǐmìsī – A writer, poet, and major contributor to Cthulhu Mythos stories

[ Project Page | Ko-Fi ✿ | Other translations by Confectioner ]

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