Lesser Outer God
"Human cities grow more primitive every time I look at them."
Dragged out of the apartment without the faintest idea what was going on, I walked down the street hand in hand with Nyarlathotep, a blank expression plastered across my face.
To be fair, I hadn't eaten a thing since morning, and my stomach was starting to make itself known.
Thirty minutes of walking later—
"I cannot feed my contractor such wretched slop..."
We could have just walked into any random restaurant and eaten, but apparently that wouldn't satisfy her.
I felt like a princess being escorted around town.
"There's a good place nearby. We'll go there."
Just as she was still deliberating, Cthugha spoke up with her hands clasped behind her back.
"A famous restaurant? You're telling me human civilization can produce food that satisfies your palate?"
"As if."
"Ah."
At Cthugha's curt reply, Nyarlathotep seemed to grasp something and nodded.
"Then lead the way. Quickly."
"Okay~!"
Cthugha grabbed my hand and began pulling me toward somewhere or other.
As a result, Nyarlathotep—who'd had her hand stolen right out from under her—pulled a sour face, but apparently deciding it couldn't be helped, she just shoved her hands in her pockets.
And so we crossed the street, crossed a bridge, crossed some indescribably colossal road, and kept walking toward... somewhere.
...Was there a road like this around here?
I'd lived in this area for three years, and I had absolutely no idea this road existed.
No—more than that, nobody else seemed to know either. Apart from us, there wasn't a single person or shop along the entire route.
There wasn't even any asphalt. We were just trudging across a vast expanse of bare dirt.
"Huh?"
A chill crawled up my spine, and a question slipped out of my mouth.
How on earth had I gotten to a place like this?
I began slowly retracing my memories...
"Do not recall it."
But Nyarlathotep's firm command shook through my skull, and I had no choice but to stop thinking.
"This is for your own mental well-being."
"..."
"Do not ask until your SAN value is at least 300."
My body had gone rigid. I forced my neck to turn toward Cthugha, who was still leading the way with my hand in hers.
I understood now. Nyarlathotep had deliberately erased my memories of how we got here.
What kind of place was this, that the journey alone could drive me insane?
"Ah! We're almost there!"
Cthugha shouted, glancing back at my thoroughly bewildered face.
Outter Gott
The sign bore wobbly, crooked hangul that looked like it had been scrawled by a kindergartener.
The problem was that this lone shop sat abandoned in the middle of an endless dirt plain, and what I felt first and foremost was an incomprehensible dread.
"This place is amazing! You won't be disappointed!"
When I just stood there frozen, Cthugha hooked her arm through mine and forcibly dragged me toward the shop.
Befitting her title as the god of fire, the chest pressed against my arm radiated a warmth like a hot pack.
"..."
Nyarlatotep wore the expression of someone chewing dog waste as she followed us inside.
"Welcome in!!"
The moment we entered, a young-looking girl popped out to greet us.
Young as she was, her beauty was every bit the match of the two goddesses behind me.
"Hey, it's been a while. Business going well?"
"You betcha!! Mr. Yog-Sothoth stopped by just yesterday!"
"I suppose he must have nothing better to do."
"Hold up. Did you just say Yog-Sothoth?"
Yog-Sothoth was one of my gaming buddies.
My first impression of him was a friend who felt like a ghost story.
I distinctly remembered leaving on a hunt in a three-person party with Cthulhu and Cthugha, yet at some point this bizarre entity had joined up and forcibly turned it into a four-man party.
By the game's mechanics, once you formed a party and left for a hunt, adding new members was impossible. How exactly he'd slipped into our party remained a mystery to this day.
The way he talked gave off a bit of a stray-orphan vibe, kind of like me, but he was a decent enough guy.
The problem was—why was that name popping up here of all places?
"I have made a mistake unbecoming of me."
"No, I asked why his name came up."
"One serving of the menu best suited to this human, please!"
"Are you ignoring me?"
With no way to talk her way out of it, Nyarlathotep simply ignored me outright.
Right. It couldn't be. It won't be. No way, right?
I desperately denied the possibility and took my seat.
"What kind of place is this, anyway?"
Seated, I asked Cthugha, who had taken the chair across from me.
"Ahh, this place? It's run by a Lesser Outer God. She used to do music, but said it was a pain in the ass, quit, and opened this shop instead."
"A Lesser Outer God?"
"Just think of them as the music department."
Lesser Outer God... Was it just my imagination that that name was also sitting in my friends list?
I hate to admit it, but...
I had no choice anymore.
Every one of those punks in my friends list with a weird English username? They were all gods.
"Your suspicion is correct. Every one of them is a god."
Nyarlathotep saw straight through my thoughts yet again, speaking as she drank down whatever was in her cup... something truly staggering.
"So? Is that a problem? It doesn't interfere with grinding the ranked ladder, does it?"
"Well, no."
She had a point.
God or not, as long as it didn't get in the way of ranked matches, it didn't matter.
"The problem is when it bleeds into the real world."
"What are you talking about?"
"You popped out of nowhere looking like that, and nearly drove a man out of his mind."
"...!! Th-that was!"
Nyarlathotep's cheeks flushed crimson for an instant, her eyes going wide and round.
"That was a trivial mistake!"
"That trivial mistake nearly stopped my heart."
Thank goodness she'd sealed my memory. If she hadn't, wouldn't I still be rolling around on the floor screaming right now?
"I-I do apologize..."
"Pfft! Don't tell me you showed up in your true form?"
"You're worse, you little punk. She almost broke me, but you turned an entire city into a smoldering crater."
"..."
Cthugha's face fell gloomy, and her mouth clamped shut.
Because even on calm reflection, she couldn't deny that she'd done far worse.
"I'm scared now... What other gods are going to pop up, and what kind of catastrophe will they cause this time?"
"W-well... sorry, but this barely counts as a disaster. A real disaster would erase the Earth easy as—"
"Think by my standards."
"Think by human standards, you airheaded monster."
Cthugha's pathetic excuse was cut off mid-sentence, by me and Nyarlathotep both.
There was one unnecessary remark tacked onto the end of Nyarlathotep's, but I decided not to dwell on it.
"Here's your food!!!"
CLANG!
Slumped face-down over the table, drained of all will, I watched as the Lesser Outer God set down something that looked like a truly staggering plate of fried rice.
Its appearance was... just ordinary fried rice, actually.
Feeling vaguely cheated, I frowned and took a single bite.
...!
Oh. This is actually good? Just one more bite...
"Snap out of it!"
Jolt!
The shout from beside me snapped me back to my senses, and my whole body shuddered.
"You have already finished the entire dish. Cease your spoon-waving."
"What are you talking about? I just took one bit—...huh."
When I came to, I had already devoured the whole plate like a starving animal.
Unbelievable. How delicious does a meal have to be to make you black out eating it?
"I'm so glad you enjoyed it!!"
"...What exactly did you make this out of?"
This was beyond anything human cooking could achieve.
You could comb through the entire history of human cuisine and never find a single person who could reduce a man to this with food alone.
And the taste itself was something I had never once experienced before—a flavor entirely new.
Honestly, the ingredients were driving me half-mad with curiosity.
"Would you really like to know?"
"Silence, Lesser Outer God."
When the Lesser Outer God asked with an ominous smile, Nyarlathotep cut her off with a glare like a drawn blade.
"...Son of a bitch. Why is there so much I'm not supposed to know?"
Can't know how to get here. Can't know what I'm eating.
"My apologies. Once your SAN value rises, much more will become knowable. Bear with it a little longer."
"Sure. So I just have to hold out for, what, a hundred and thirty years or so."
Thinking it over quietly, Cthugha's empathy was definitely on a whole different level from Nyarlathotep's. A much lower one.
"A human lifespan is a hundred years..."
"Is that so?"
Cthugha answered with an enigmatic smile.
Is she planning to extend my lifespan too? When exactly am I supposed to be allowed to die?
"In any case, the meal is finished, so we shall take our leave. I thought a shop run by an Outer God might be acceptable, but this was far beyond what a human can withstand. As for that worthless bitch Cthugha, she may go out and drop dead on her way home."
"How did you even arrive at that conclusion, you bastard?"
"You were the one who recommended this place."
Frankly, the meal itself had been deeply satisfying... but the process and the ending left a lot to be desired.
If they asked whether I'd come again, I didn't really need to...
"Oh! And I tailored it to a human body—added a really good supplement, more or less. Did anything pop up for you??"
"Not really anyth—"
Skills: A Story That Makes Sense (A), Avatar of Chaos (S), Inextinguishable Flame (A)
"...!"
It went up. Every single stat, by a whole 7 points.
It took me a year of busting my ass to grind out a measly 3 points.
And a single meal had raised all my stats by 7.
"That was truly the finest meal of my life. I'll be back."
"Aww... you're making me blush."
I took the Lesser Outer God's hand, grinning from ear to ear.
So it was a hassle getting here. Who cared, when the food was this good?
"I did well, didn't I?! I won! Take that, you dunce of a foreign god!"
"..."
And so Nyarlathotep suffered the first defeat of her eternal existence.