Reincarnated In a Cthulhu World And Everyone Is Obsessed With Me - Chapter 35

Chapter 35: Pupil – Known to none.

Humans hope—to fear God, yet to become God.

This was a warning mantra.

Xia Mingyu extended the five fingers of his right hand. Facing a tide of monsters alone, this hand had never wavered; now, it trembled uncontrollably. This hand had drawn the laws of Yin-Yang with a charcoal pencil of dimensions and shattered cracks into the Shining Trapezohedron. It had been pierced by Facehuggers, bitten by human-faced bats, and had dragged a Cyclops from the seabed to the shore.

Countless black-and-white glass spheres hovered and rotated around his fingertips. Each represented a Domain he had harvested—a world under his Yin-Yang rule. The rotation of the sphere was the passage of eons for the creatures within.

Xia Mingyu stared at these worlds like God staring at ants. Yet, while he gazed into the infinite, a malevolent presence in the dark was desecrating his soul. He was the cause of everything, and the effect of everything.

He thought himself the King of the Nutshell, unaware he was already trapped within its shell.

The Monarch Butterfly fanned its wings, flying toward the pupil in the sky. Xia Mingyu turned his head. The “Onlooker’s Eye” behind the Yin-Yang had been waiting. That pupil looked down upon the world, and Xia Mingyu finally realized why it felt so familiar.

It was his own pupil.

…

Weapons forged from monster bone could not shake the stela of an Evil God. In this void, there was only the Xia Mingyu of the past, the present, and the future. As an S-class Guide, he was the only raw material—the best raw material.

Kill the demon by becoming the sacrifice.

He would become the rules himself, encompassing even the stela. His destruction would mean the others’ rebirth.

Would he die? Or would he be trapped here forever in an endless cycle?

The pupil in the sky was filled with rage and sorrow, followed by a self-loathing for its own impotence. Xia Mingyu doubled over, vomiting thick, metallic blood. His body was being pierced by unseen monsters—wounds inflicted by his past, present, and future selves.

He knelt, his long hair stained with blood. Time was running out. To maintain the Möbius loop of time, every link had to be perfect.

Xia Mingyu pulled out a short blade forged from a monster’s fang. Facing the Onlooker’s Eye, he raised the blade—

A clean flash of cold light. A spray of blood. A mangled… eyeball.

Refined by his mental power, the eye had the texture of glazed glass, colored in solemn, wicked black and white. The Monarch Butterfly flew back, taking the eyeball and smashing it against the stela. Again and again. Cracks spread. More butterflies erupted from his mental landscape, carrying the other eyeball toward the “Onlooker’s Eye” in the sky.

Their master—Xia Mingyu—collapsed.

The agony of bleeding from every orifice felt like being eaten alive. The vertigo was so intense he couldn’t distinguish life from death. His heart stuttered, slowing down. He was blind now, but he could hear the whole world.

He heard the eons of worship, the million years of waiting, the prayers of the fans of Cthulhu, and the screams of his teammates whose souls were being polluted. Their fear, regret, and anger flooded him like a tide of blades. Even the monsters were singing a dirge.

And Xia Mingyu? Those beautiful peach-blossom eyes were now empty pits, dark and wandering. He was bleeding, weeping blood from his hollow sockets. He was no longer just a man. He was the pulse of the Domain. He was the rules; he was the heart.

His hair was the dark sea; his blood was the rain; his bones were the earth. His sorrow was the earthquake; his death was the genesis of a new world. He would gaze upon this land for eternity. Cold. Aloof. High above.

In his final moment, he understood the ultimate mental link. Butterflies surged out like a flood. Find them. Take them away. That was his final command.

As the stela turned to dust and the staircase collapsed, Xia Mingyu fell into the abyss of the cliff, sinking into the infinite cycle of life and death.

…

In the primordial chaos, an infant-like consciousness asked: Who am I? Where did I come from?

“I” seemed to have been a person once. But what is a “person”?

Until one day, “I” sensed a familiar aura. Someone climbed down the cliff, heading straight for “I.” He wielded twin blades tempered by ice and snow, with the last bullet chambered in his gun. He wanted to kill “I.”

“I” struggled, roared, and bit. “I” drove the blades into his body and left his corpse by the cliff. And that last bullet… it was the final straw that broke “I.”

He died. And so did “I.”

…

Thousands of butterflies flew across the sky, their mutated legs strong enough to carry grown men out of the Domain. The exit was shrouded in darkness, but the sounds of the outside world leaked through: the whirring of flight-ship rotors, base commands, and the rhythmic clicking of weapons being loaded.

Xia Mingyu had forced the Domain open. Or rather, the “Rule”—the Domain itself—had revealed a flaw. He was nowhere, yet he was everywhere.

Someone shouted, “We’re saved! God bless us, we’re saved!”

The Rule is dead. God is dead!

Where the butterflies passed, life flourished, and eternal sleep followed. He was destined to sink into the ancient undersea palace. The tide of metal was his home. He was destined to cross the Silver Key and kneel before the red-gold throne.

The souls of the saved began to dance; life became light and new.

Saved ones, please never forget your savior— No, no… you will never even know he existed.

His sorrow, his sacrifice, his holiness, and his sin will all sink into the dust and fall into the void.

Known to none.