Nyarlathotep (2)
Crack! The ground was splitting open.
Everything visible was crumbling.
"What the fuck... Hey, you whore, hurry up. We've got someone on our side about to reach the end. We can't let it end like this. Buy us some time!"
"Shut up! I know that already."
Gra'hthul and Aleister must have sensed something I couldn't, their black and green eyes flickering ominously as they sat cross-legged on the floor and began chanting madly.
"Kxaxkluth, fhtagn ng’gha Y’xhal t’yak, wgah’nagl th’l’mnah…! fhtagn ng’gha Y’xhal t’yak, wgah’nagl th’l’mnah!"
"Shub-Niggurath, Y’ha-nthlei k’yak na-ghath th’l’nag. Hrii fhtagn-ngha!"
Foul incantations.
Even I, blind to magic, could feel the utterly vile aura emanating from them. Black smoke poured from their mouths with the chants, and blood leaked from every orifice on their faces.
"Wh-what the hell is this!?"
Ku-ku-ku-KABOOM!!
My mind was about to shatter.
The scenery outside the window was pure pandemonium. Humans bursting out from somewhere, screaming and running wildly.
Monsters of Altered Common Sense unleashed once more.
Grotesque lifeforms and spiritual entities flying through the air.
Was a Richter 10.0 apocalyptic earthquake like this?
The earth split completely, revealing a pitch-black abyss like the pit of hell, and beyond it, crimson magma bubbled up and erupted.
"In...sane..."
Everything was being destroyed.
Reduced to dust.
Yet strangely, the house where I and the other four were remained untouched, like it existed in a separate space—aside from a slight tremor, no damage at all.
"Gra'hthul! What the hell is happening?! We're supposed to be cooperating!"
"..."
So it was thanks to those two that the house hadn't collapsed yet.
It was hard to pull myself together from the sheer panic.
Since waking up on August 1st, I'd faced death multiple times and prided myself on adapting to situations as best a normal human could with optimal choices... but in this hellish scenario, I was truly powerless.
I couldn't even grasp what was happening—just flailing around like a bug.
Goddamn it.
As frustration boiled over my helplessness, a final massive explosion roared out.
RUMBLE──────────!!!
It shattered.
It was destroyed.
The house, humans, land, sky, sea...
Everything— the tiny planet containing it all.
Whoooooooosh—
Nothing but pitch-black void, save for the sun.
Space.
Space stretched out before my eyes.
Like a scene from a kids' sci-fi movie, this single house had become the only shelter preserving life.
Thud— plink plink—
Rock dust and pebbles floated by and bumped against the window.
What was once a blue planet had been utterly pulverized and cast into the black sea, scattering rapidly somewhere.
An unreal sense of finality hit me, my heart sinking.
'It's... over...? Like this?'
Humans grieve when they lose just a house or their hometown.
But I'd lost a planet.
The beautiful world where billions like me, trillions, tens of trillions of lives had thrived, shattered like a bored kid smashing a toy and scattering into the cosmic void.
Urk!
"Blughhh!"
Thud!
As I clutched my head, lost in emotions beyond words, I heard Gra'hthul and Aleister vomiting blood and collapsing behind me.
"Hey!"
I rushed over, but they were unconscious, as if struck by some tremendous shock.
Gulp!
"O-O-Oppa!! Oppa! Wh-wh-what's this, wh-what, what!?"
Kang Jia ran to me with a face paler than I'd ever seen, throwing herself into my arms.
"...I don't know either."
"Th-the... the Earth... the Earth's gone!!"
Who'd ever think they'd hear "the Earth's gone" in their lifetime?
It was so absurd now that a hollow laugh escaped me.
"Pff... Yeah. What the hell is this... How am I supposed to stop something like this..."
Even in superhero movies, the Earth itself doesn't explode.
"Uu... Oppa hurting? I-I'll hug you!"
Squeeze—
Even with the whole planet blown to bits, she only worried about me.
Sniffle.
"Hic... We gotta make a baby with Oppa... B-but where do we raise it...?"
Absurdly nonchalant.
But Kang Jia's single-minded focus—her head filled only with bearing my seed and living happily with me—snapped my half-broken mind back to reality.
Pat pat.
"...You're really hopeless."
"Huh? What?"
"Nothing."
Even after the Earth exploded, stroking her head fully calmed her, and she grinned like an idiot again.
I sat her on the bed where Kim Su-hee lay and returned to the window to peer outside.
Whoooooooosh...
There was no grandeur of the universe.
Ridiculously, it lacked the beauty shown in space station feeds on smartphone screens.
Just black.
Pitch-black emptiness. The darkness of the abyss felt suffocating, like a shroud over my face.
The sun's light was the only illumination in this lonely cosmos...
"Huh?"
But the fragments of Earth floating in space were drifting in a uniform direction, heading somewhere.
Strange.
For a spherical object exploding outward, fragments should scatter irregularly everywhere—but these rocks that were once Earth moved like water draining from a pool after pulling the plug.
Where were they going?
I couldn't see clearly.
"Cough cough, it's being devoured."
Gra'hthul must have come to.
"Devoured? By Nyarlathotep, you mean?"
Nod.
"Nyarlathotep's archbishops must have acted. They sensed an entity defying the causality of the end... Those bastards have no backsies. They don't send petty minions like fairy-tale villains. To put it in your terms, they're the kind of psychos who hit the nuke button the moment combat starts."
What?
"Wait... then those fuckers die too!"
"Not usually... They've long evolved beyond humans into higher alien races through their cult bullshit. But in this case... they'll pay a price worse than death."
"Worse than death?"
"Earth was marked as Nyarlathotep's snack. Same for Shub-Niggurath. What do you think those monsters do when their prey gets ruined? Those cultist fucks will be swallowed into Nyarlathotep's gut out of spite, writhing in eternal hell."
Sensing an entity defying the end's causality...
Meaning they sensed me, right?
One of my actions so far must have been the decisive trigger, making those archbishop or major shareholder psychos blow up the Earth.
"Something off about that. If the fragments get eaten anyway, why not explode it sooner and offer it up? Why the punishment?"
"This absorption satisfies neither Nyarlathotep nor Shub-Niggurath. This kind of 'meal' is just inorganic intake—no chaos or life exploitation. To your baby-brain level... like putting a candy in your mouth to suck, but someone rips out the sugar and blows the powder in your face."
Hm... yeah, that'd piss anyone off.
If ants dared ruin my snack like that, I'd be furious too.
"Keh heh... cough cough! Protecting this whole house is getting impossible. Starting to wear me out."
As expected, the house creaked.
Then Gra'hthul added, as if seeing right through everything.
"You're definitely time traveling, right? With some big restrictions, sure."
I'd excused it as memory loss, but he'd figured it out.
"Uh..."
I couldn't respond, and he smirked.
"Doesn't make sense for a worm like you to stay so calm in this. Obvious deduction. Fine... someone reaching the finale needs that much ability."
Crack—crack crack—
More cracks spread across the window, concrete dust falling from the ceiling.
Meaning this pathetic last ark of humanity would soon break too.
"Worm born to defy your station and reverse time. What do you want? To loop eternally?"
Gra'hthul suddenly pierced to the core.
What did I want?
My answer was one, from the day I first opened my eyes to now.
"I never wanted that shit and don't now. Honestly, you aliens... magic whatever, I wish you'd all fuck off from Earth. From my home."
A twinge of regret hit late—was this tone okay with this grumpy old fuck? But my true feelings burst out. Unexpectedly, he didn't care.
"You want all existences isolated. Even those Outer Gods?"
"Outer God or alien, who gives a shit."
"What? Heh, heh heh, keh-ke ke ke!! Treating Outer Gods like neighborhood stray dogs."
They were strays invading and trying to take everything.
"But can you really survive facing them head-on? Confident you can go to the very end?"
Why's this nasty old coot prying like this? Like he's... testing something.
I wasn't sure about my existence surviving, but I was certain I wouldn't give up till the end.
"Of course."
Gra'hthul didn't know one thing.
For a mage using time travel magic, hope dies when life ends—but my time regression triggered automatically on death. Meaning as long as I died, I could retry endlessly.
"Keh heh... If you keep your sanity facing an Outer God directly... then the me you'll meet next might bet fate on you. Fine... I'll awaken your third eye."
Third eye? What?
"Hold on, old man."
As Gra'hthul reached for my forehead, Aleister approached.
"If you can rewind time to the past... don't repeat the same mistake. Get it?"
Same mistake.
The unprecedented catastrophe of Earth exploding happened because Nyarlathotep's worshippers did something.
They hit that nuke button because they sensed I could defy causality.
That was my fatal screw-up this loop.
So how did they sense me?
"Sis, are you being watched by those squid-heads?"
"What? No way. Ah—you think they noticed you through me? Smarter than you look. But no. Certain."
Pretty solid hypothesis... but wrong.
Narrows to three possibilities.
One: Forming this master-disciple bond with them.
Two: Voicing that "Nest of Transcendence destroyed" thought aloud.
And three...
As I reviewed this loop's actions, Gra'hthul raised his pitch-black hand and touched my forehead.
Thud—
I could see it.
Nyarlathotep's true form.