Chapter 4: One who writhes and struggles.

It was a scream.

It was a struggle to break free from the things that bound it.

Kieeeeeeeeeek—!!!

An ear-splitting roar began to come from my body.

The strange part was that I hadn’t said a single word, yet my body was screaming.

“Ah, aaaaaah…”

At the same time, the guy who had swung his sword at me looked up at me with a face steeped in horror.

“A-Avatar.”

Clatter.

He dropped his sword and fell to his knees at a speed reminiscent of light.

“O-O Nyarlathotep who pierces through the entire universe and knows every truth of the world! This foolish creature sincerely confesses its foolish mistake, so please, please forgive this ant’s rudeness just o-o-once, and take pity on this earthworm of the roadside whose life lasts only a season, and s-spare me! I sincerely beg…”

“Shut up.”

Crunch.

“Gyaaaaaaaaah!!”

Jelly-like tentacles burst out from my body and began chewing the man’s body.

“S-Spare me, kuaaaagh!”

Before a few seconds had passed, he had become daily bread.

[Avatar of Chaos : Consumes SAN value according to the level of the transformed avatar.]

[Avatar of Chaos (The One Who Wails and Writhes) : Consumes 5 SAN value per minute.]

An uncountable amount of time passed.

No, that was only from my perspective.

In reality it had only been a few minutes.

[SAN Value 87 / 100]

The consumption of mental strength was growing more extreme.

The feeling of my head going blank, just like earlier, began to intensify.

‘I killed him.’

That aside, as I swung my tentacles indiscriminately I suddenly trembled at the thought that entered my head.

A human who in his entire life had only ever killed bugs and insects had suddenly committed murder.

[SAN Value 83 / 100]

The moment I realized that fact, my mental strength began pouring out even more steeply.

The SAN value leaking out like a jar with a hole no longer seemed to have any hole left to plug.

“Kuaaaagh!”

“O Living Flame! Our god! Kuaagh!”

Even at this very moment people were dying like fruit flies.

Stories that had been piled up over at least twenty years without the slightest overlap were being simply smashed by me.

Still, I did not regret it.

In the end they were guys who were trying to kill me.

So I hoped they would just die on their own before my SAN value reached 0.

[Nyarlathotep : Of all things you went and picked an absurdly violent one.]

At that moment a chat arrived on my phone that had fallen on the ground.

But I was too far away to see the content.

[Nyarlathotep : Hold on for a moment. I’ll be right back.]

The flocking believers.

And me devouring them.

Only a god knew when this small war would end.

In the vast space of the cosmos, an object as small as a single speck of dust floated.

The place that speck was heading toward was a certain planet.

It was Cthugha’s residence.

Arriving there, the speck shouted loudly.

“Red piece of sht who spews fire, show your face.”

Hwaaaaaaah!!

And an unquenchable flame flew toward that speck.

Yet aside from a slight scorch the speck suffered no damage at all.

From the beginning the difference in power between an “Outer God” and a “Great Old One” was clear.

No matter how strong Cthugha was among them, she was no match for the Outer God Nyarlathotep.

“That piece-of-sht temper of yours never changes no matter when I meet you.”

“Shut up.”

A small flame rose above the cosmic space.

That flame slowly took shape and transformed into a form like a demon made of fire.

“Hyunseong will dislike that appearance.”

“…”

Hearing Nyarlathotep’s words, her body slowly changed and transformed into the form of a beautiful woman with impressive red hair.

“Get lost right now. I have nothing to say to y—”

“Shall I try guessing once why you’re acting like this right now?”

Nyarlathotep suddenly changed her tone of speech.

She was a being that no one could dare catch up to in the mental field to begin with.

That was why she deliberately chose the tone of speech that would make Cthugha the angriest.

“You made a huge fuss over a game marriage and caused this whole mess, didn’t you?”

“…Shut up.”

“Hyunseong didn’t think anything of it, but you got excited all by yourself and started spreading your imagination like ‘the kid’s last name should be Kim, right?’ and then got angry when I snatched him away.”

A massive flame burst from Cthugha’s body and covered Nyarlathotep.

“You don’t really have anything to refute, do you? Because it’s true. In all the time I’ve lived this is the first time I’ve shattered someone’s mental state this easily.”

“Hic… Shut up…!”

The paradoxical sight of water dripping from the eyes of the Living Flame entered Nyarlathotep’s view.

“Are you crying? Crying? A Great Old One is crying over a single human? Did you like Hyunseong that much?”

“I told you to shut up, kueup! I said so…!”

“You’re hundreds of billions of years old and you’re crying just because you got cursed at a bit? And you’re still a god after that? And you’re trying to kill Kim Hyunseong who was so happy about contracting with me? Looking at what you do, you’re worse than a seven-year-old brat by human standards.”

Nyarlathotep gradually began taking on a human form from the form of a speck of dust.

Black hair and blue eyes, and a mouth corner raised on only one side.

All of those things were more than enough to enrage Cthugha.

“If you wanted to kill him that badly you could have just gone yourself, so why did you leave it to your believers? You want to kill him but at the same time you feel it’s a waste to actually kill him, something like that?”

“…”

“Keuk, is crying hard now too?”

Cthugha hung her head deeply and began trembling.

“Shall I tell you the only way you can be together with Kim Hyunseong?”

“?”

Having crashed her self-esteem with all her strength, Nyarlathotep got to the main point.

“Right now Hyunseong is full of the power of fire from devouring a bunch of your believers. So you need to contract and relieve it.”

“…!!”

A dual contract.

A deformed form of contract where two constellations contracted with a single human’s body.

And it was a contract that could not be made without the permission of the first contracted constellation, so it was a contract that would never be formed between gods whose relationship was as extremely bad as Nyarlathotep and Cthugha.

Given the strong possessiveness of gods in the first place, cases where dual contracts were successfully formed were extremely rare.

“Huh, you’re giving permission?”

“Yeah. My ability is too extreme to begin with so I needed one decent guy.”

The ability Nyarlathotep possessed was so powerful that it rather became poison.

Oratory that turned people into slaves with simple words, plus the power to simply massacre villains of C~B rank level even from the bottom of F-rank.

And carrying those out consumed an unimaginable cost.

Truly extreme high risk, extreme high return with zero sustainability.

To compensate for this shortcoming, an ability that could be used moderately in ordinary times was necessary.

“That is exactly you.”

“C-can I really do it…”

“Whether you can or can’t, this is the only way for you to be connected with Hyunseong.”

“Even so…”

“You won’t? Then there’s no helping it. I’ll have to go ask Cthulhu instead. Someone like him would cool down fire of that level easily.”

Whoosh.

“Uwah!”

When Nyarlathotep turned her body, Cthugha hastily stretched out her hand.

“I-I’ll make it! I’ll make the contract! So don’t go!”

“…Then you have something you need to do, right?”

“Okay…”

Cthugha gathered her power and opened her mouth.

“…! An order has come down from the god! Retreat!!”

“R-Retreat!!”

Those who had charged even knowing they would die suddenly shouted and began to run away.

From my perspective it was a story that didn’t particularly matter.

Rather, I was glad the annoying guys had disappeared.

Hwarrrrrk!!

At that moment a massive blaze rose up around me.

But it was a blaze that had no effect on me at all, and rather seemed to be protecting me.

[Nyarlathotep shouts to cancel the transformation right away.]

“O-Okay…”

Hearing that message I immediately canceled the transformation and collapsed to the ground.

[SAN Value 68 / 100]

Negative thoughts filled my head.

I felt like I just wanted to die like this.

No, if I stayed like this I would actually just die.

[Nyarlathotep tells you to accept the contract and steps away for a moment.]

[Cthugha clasps both hands and approaches while flinching.]

[Cthugha begins typing chats while tears drip down.]

Ding!

A chat arrived from the phone with a broken screen next to me.

[Cthugha : I’m sorry for treating you so roughly until now]

[Cthugha : But I really like you a lot. Could you accept my contract?]

[Cthugha sends an incarnation contract.]

[Nyarlathotep approves.]

“…”

I looked at the system messages with hazy eyes.

[Will you accept?]

“…You idiot.”

[Cthugha flinches.]

I slowly stretched out my hand toward the message.

“If only you had done this from the beginning…”

[You have accepted.]

[Cthugha smiles brightly and purifies the power of fire in your body.]

[Fire attribute affinity maximized!]

[Nyarlathotep barely draws out power and recovers your SAN value.]

“Hah!”

Startled by the sudden clearing of my mind, I hurriedly stood up from my spot.

[Nyarlathotep shouts to run home.]

Hearing those words I quickly ran toward home.

I must never be discovered.