Chapter 1: The Outer Gods

“…”

My entire body was covered in wounds.

My face was swollen from all the bruises, while cuts covered my arms and legs from head to toe.

And in my hand, I held a single sheet of paper.

[F-Class Expulsion Warning.

You have ranked 32nd in the Academy’s F-Class, resulting in one additional warning.

You currently have two accumulated warnings, and upon receiving a third, you will be automatically expelled.]

The Academy was an institution dedicated to training heroes who fought monsters and villains.

It existed to efficiently cultivate the extremely small number of people who possessed awakened abilities.

And, to put it another way.

‘They have no hesitation about throwing away anything that isn’t worth the investment.’

F-Class, the lowest-ranked class in the Academy.

There were thirty-two students in it, and I was ranked thirty-second.

In other words, I was undeniably the absolute worst student in the entire Academy.

‘Fck.’

The reason I currently looked like a dog that had been beaten until it was covered in dust and bruises was related to this.

I had been beaten without being able to put up any resistance in the ranking match held to determine who would be expelled.

That didn’t mean I hadn’t put in any effort.

I thought I had worked at least as hard as anyone near the top of the rankings.

But the reason I was still stuck at the bottom was simple.

[Potential: Negligible]

[Contracted Constellation: None]

I could tell just by looking at part of my status window.

On the very first day of the entrance ceremony, I had failed to receive the favor of even a single constellation because of this miserable talent that was worse than that of a mere dullard.

It was like trying to beat elite students who spent all day receiving private tutoring in Daechi-dong while carrying around a torn textbook.

It had been a fight where the outcome was decided from the beginning.

One semester remained.

After four months, excluding vacation, I would be expelled.

Fck, I had worked my ss off.

I returned home feeling utterly miserable, but I didn’t even have the energy to wash myself before turning on my computer.

Besides, my wounds were too painful for me to wash anyway.

The computer booted up with its startup sound, and I immediately sent a message to a friend through That’s Code.

[Randolph Carter: Let’s play a game.]

At some point in life, everyone meets one or two people they naturally click with.

The same was true on the internet.

No, if anything, people were even easier to meet online because all spatial limitations disappeared.

Anyone who enjoyed online games probably had at least a dozen friends on their friends list.

It varied from person to person, but in my case, every single one of them was an internet friend I had never met in real life.

You might think that was a little pathetic, but there wasn’t much I could do about it.

I wasn’t particularly good at maintaining friendships in the real world, so I didn’t have many people I was close to.

But on the internet, where I could run wild without worrying about what other people thought, I had plenty of personality, so I had managed to accumulate quite a few friends.

So don’t look at me with those pitying eyes like I’m some miserable, lonely person.

I’m happy enough in my own way.

Anyway, there was one particularly unusual person among all my internet friends.

[Nyarlathotep: Fine.]

She used a strange English nickname, but I liked bringing her along when I played games because she was incredibly useful.

Useful for what, you ask?

–You fcking suck.

–XXXXXX

Whenever someone picked a fight with her in chat, she would spew out curses I’d never heard in my life, enough to make even the people watching marvel at her vocabulary.

There had once been an incident where a notorious troll from an online community had quit playing after getting verbally destroyed by her, so I often brought her along as a mercenary for online arguments.

Ding.

A video call came from her almost immediately, and I answered.

–You have come.

–I have been waiting.

One distinctive thing about her was the strange way she spoke, which was difficult to understand.

Still, plenty of people adopted characters online, so I didn’t pay much attention to it.

“Already turned it on, so hurry up.”

–Do not rush me.

While waiting for her in the game, I entered the training grounds and entertained myself by repeatedly firing off my characters’ skills.

This was why I liked games.

When I played, I could forget everything and focus solely on the moment.

I just didn’t particularly like the emptiness that sometimes came rushing in after I turned the game off.

–But your voice sounds unusually gloomy today.

–Did something happen?

“…You could tell?”

Well, she was skilled enough at reading people to make someone quit a game with a single sentence.

It was only natural that she could easily pick up on the emotions hidden in my voice, even through the terrible audio quality.

“It’s nothing.

“I just think I’m going to get expelled from the Academy.”

–Why?

“I’m just ridiculously weak.

“What other reason could there be?”

I had told the close friends around me that I was a student at the Academy.

However, I had never told them that I was ranked dead last even among the F-Class students, so this was the first time she had heard that I was on the verge of expulsion.

–I might be able to help you.

She said it calmly, without showing the slightest hint of agitation.

Help me?

How exactly was she going to help?

No matter how inhumanly persuasive she was, there was no way she could solve my expulsion problem at the Academy.

So I assumed she was joking and asked with a laugh.

“Really?

“How are you going to help me?”

–It’s a simple contract.

Ding.

At the same time as she answered, a strange image arrived in the chat.

“What is this?”

–Solve it.

I frowned as I looked at the image and examined it carefully.

[Contract Question.

What date did Randolph Carter and Nyarlathotep first meet?]

Randolph Carter was my nickname.

My original name was Kim Hyunseong, but she had given me the nickname because she thought it sounded more impressive.

“Why are you giving me such an easy question?

“It’s today, three years ago.”

Exactly three years ago today, I had met her while playing a game.

–You have some skill.

–You should duo with me.

Technically, it had been a one-sided encounter, but I remembered it as a pretty good first meeting.

–…Correct.

A faint laugh came from beyond the headset.

“You can laugh?

“This is the first time I’ve ever heard you laugh.”

Hissss.

Suddenly, an astonishingly clear voice came through the poor-quality audio.

–It is the first time.

It sounded as though she were speaking right beside me.

No, it felt as if she were speaking directly inside my brain.

–You are the first human I have ever liked.

Boom!

An explosion erupted as though the sky itself had collapsed.

At the same time, darkness swallowed everything around me.

Everything except the headset on my head disappeared, leaving me isolated in that pitch-black space.

But I knew what this phenomenon was.

This was what had happened during the entrance ceremony…

“A constellation contract?”

When entering into a contract with a constellation, the contractor directly conversed with the constellation in a specific space.

That space differed depending on the constellation, but evil-aligned constellations generally used dark spaces.

But this place was too black.

Even the Demon King in the Darkness, the constellation currently known to be the most evil, had a demonic castle with black as its primary color for its background.

It didn’t use complete, absolute darkness like this.

“What the hell is this…”

Then a small doubt occurred to me.

I had never entered into a constellation contract before.

So how did I know this?

“Huh?”

I had no talent whatsoever, so I had never been able to contract with a single constellation.

That meant I only knew about this phenomenon from things I had heard from others, and I had never experienced it firsthand.

So why had I immediately recognized this as a constellation contract without any basis for doing so?

Scraaape.

Something crawled across the floor.

My body stiffened, but I barely managed to lower my head and look at it.

It was chaos itself.

The word ‘chaos’ meant something mixed together, something impossible to comprehend or make sense of, and that description fit its form perfectly.

Its eyes were clearly looking up at me from below, yet I felt as though some transcendent being were looking down at me from the heavens.

No, it wasn’t an illusion.

It was an existence capable of making that possible.

For a moment, I wondered if the very reason I had been born was for this exact moment.

The mere fact that I could stand before a god as nothing more than a created being was practically proof of my own worth.

I…

“Dammit, I came to the wrong place.”

Swoosh.

The thing crawling across the floor suddenly rose into the air and transformed into the shape of a human.

“I inadvertently showed you my original form.

“You almost went mad.

“My apologies.”

“Haa… haa…

“That… just now…”

My mind was still hazy.

I tried to recall its form, but it was as though something were blocking my memories, preventing me from remembering what I had seen.

“Don’t try to remember it.

“I’ve already blocked the memory.”

The woman standing before me poked my forehead repeatedly as she smiled.

“Who… are you?”

The familiar voice.

The familiar manner of speaking.

I already knew who she was, but I couldn’t believe it, so I asked anyway.

“Do you truly wish to know?”

[The Outer God ‘Nyarlathotep’ requests a Divine Incarnation Contract with you.]

“Nyarlathotep…?”

An Outer God?

Not a constellation?

And what was a Divine Incarnation Contract?

A Divine Incarnation Contract was different from an ordinary contract.

It was something a constellation offered only to an extremely small number of contractors.

Simply put, it meant being treated as an absolute top-tier contractor.

And she wanted to make such a contract with me.

With me, of all people.

“Such a feeble human civilization.”

She began gently stroking my chin.

“After witnessing everything it has to offer, I am calling you the greatest.”

Her face wore a blissful smile, as though she were genuinely enjoying herself.

“I can give you everything you desire.

“I am saying that I will do things for you that I have never even done for my own followers.”

[The Outer God ‘Nyarlathotep’ is forcibly proceeding with the contract.]

“And there is no option to refuse.”

I felt something being inscribed into my body.

Then I lost consciousness.