Cthulhu Gonfalon

On Earth, there was a literary quotation that said, “Children are flowers in the garden, and thrive in the sunshine and warmth of the motherland.”

In this bizarre world where it was not warm enough, the buds would not grow healthily. Some would wither, some would perish, some would put forth blossom but bear no fruit. There were a few who would bear fruit; but they were wonderful flowers (pronounced “Qi Pa” in Chinese, which means a total weirdo).

The Orc with the nickname “Bloody Hands,” for example, was a typical weirdo.

“He wants us to hand the legendary treasured object to him, otherwise he is going to kill the innocent villagers… Gerrard, what was this guy thinking? Was there something wrong with his mind?” Sui Xiong thought for a while, but still failed to understand how could his brain progressed in such a peculiar way. He had no option but to ask his follower Gerrard.

However, Gerrard could not give a reasonable explanation either. He was also very puzzled.

Being kind did not mean being silly. Trying to threaten them by randomly picking some villagers they did not even know and making them hostages? This was just treating Sui Xiong and Gerrard like fools!

“What on earth do you want to say?” Gerrard could not help asking. “‘Why do I need to exchange my treasured object for you not to kill these villagers when I could just kill you?’ Am I right?”

Ruhr had already known he would say this, and proudly sneered, “You could just kill me, but I have already dispersed my subordinates. If you do not give me your bracelet, they will immediately kill every villager they can possibly see! Which will you choose, a treasured object or an innocent villager’s life?”

He was smiling like a b*tch, his short nose almost bent upward and the sticky saliva—which was giving off a disgusting smell under the sun—dripping down from his sharp teeth.

Gerrard was so angry that he even began to laugh. He decided to give Ruhr a good punch right on his face and send him to back to him mother’s womb, so in his next life—if there was one—he would be a nice guy. Before he made his move, Sui Xiong stopped him.

“Interesting… I have never seen such a shameless person!” Sui Xiong sneered. His intention to kill Ruhr greatly intensified. “Since you cannot defeat me, you want to kill the green hand? Interesting. Very interesting. I can never regain my peace if I don’t teach you a lesson and make you suffer, so that you can do nothing but to delete your game account and never dare to log in again!”

“Your Majesty, what do you plan to do?”

“Give him the bracelet,” Sui Xiong said coldly. “I will inform you when things are done.”

Gerrard was shocked. “What?! Give the “Void Gaze” to him? To the shameless thug?”

“Yes. After you hand it to him, turn around and walk away. Do not turn back.”

From Sui Xiong’s cold tone, Gerrard had guessed what Sui Xiong had intended to do, and shivered.

Gerrard knew that what the extremely evil Orc bandit was going to face would be possibly the worst outcome, for he had successfully infuriated His Majesty of Void Faceless.

After infuriating a real God, this foolish guy even dared to take the holy object inside where the real God existed. What a stupid person. I wonder what is waiting for him?

Kind Gerrard did not want to think deeply on this subject anymore; he was afraid that doing so would only make him have nightmares.

He took off the bone bracelet from his right wrist, threw it to Ruhr, turned around, and left. He had no interest in seeing Ruhr’s ugly performance of deliriously and hurriedly catching the bracelet.

He walked very fast. He did not want to see the tragically terrible consequences that were going to befall Ruhr; however, he was also disgusted by Ruhr.

This Orc bandit’s behavior was too bad to be fully described in words like ‘evil’ or ‘ugly;’ in fact, his behavior was as disgusting as decaying meat. Gerrard thought himself neither a fly nor a dung beetle, and so was not able to force himself to be near a person like Ruhr.

Ruhr was too busy to care about a silly and extremely kind-hearted man as Gerrard. He was totally distracted by the bone bracelet he just received.

This treasured object was exactly as he had been told it would be. There was a powerful magic energy inside it. Looking from the outside, its magic aura was not too bright; as if it was just something an adventurer with a few years’ experience could afford to buy. But when Ruhr held it in his hand, he instantly felt the energy contained in it was rich, or even infinite!

He wanted to put on the bracelet, but found that it was a bracelet for a giant, and too big for him to wear on his wrist. He thought for while, and finally decided to wear it on his neck as a collar. Even then, it was still a bit too big for a collar.

Ruhr did not care if it was big or not anymore. As soon as he wore the ‘collar,’ he saw a white light flash, then felt an inexhaustible energy surging in him, as if he had become incredibly powerful or omnipotent. He became so bold and generous that he thought if heaven was against him, he would fight against heaven; if God was against him, he would also fight against God. Even the grass and trees around him seemed frightened by his boldness, and submitted themselves to his rule.

“What a treasured object!” he could not help laughing aloud.

Then he turned around to his subordinates and asked proudly, “What do you think of it?”

Immediately, his smile froze.

What he saw were not his subordinates who had been with him for many years, but some soft and sticky meat blocks that had numerous tentacles, and were making very strange sounds.

Ruhr exclaimed and stepped back a few steps spontaneously. He did not stop until he bumped to a tree. But instantly he felt something was wrong. The tree he bumped into was not as hard as a tree was supposed to be. Instead it was quite gummy, and he felt as if he were sticking to it.

He hurriedly struggled to get off, and managed to do so. But when he turned around, the trees he saw earlier had disappeared completely. What he saw were countless, crazily moving tentacles, big and small, and messy.

Looking carefully, he found that there was a face on each tentacle. The faces looked familiar. As he looked harder, the faces became clearer. The face was furry and ferociously ugly, the nose on it was short, the tusks pointed out against the thick lips, there were scars…

Suddenly, he realized those were the faces of the Cavalry of Orcs and Wolves!

At that moment, the faces that were a bit vague suddenly became very clear. He found that he knew each of them very well! However, he could not see the toughness and obedience from these faces, as usual; instead he saw terrified, lifeless faces with the bluish white colors of dead bodies.

Ruhr let out a big howl and pulled out his machete to defend himself.

“What… what are you!” he roared, while brandishing his machete. “How dare you play tricks on me. I will cut all of you to pieces!”

A peculiar laughing sound echoed in his ears. He brandished his machete in the direction he thought the sound came from, but he missed.

Turning back, he saw a monster that had no a physical shape, but the face of an Orc, with tentacles all over it. It was floating in the air and staring at him with its lifeless eyes. The piercing sound it made was like a cat scratching steel, and seemed to come from its neck.

“Come back. Come back to us.”

Suddenly the sound was echoing in all directions. “Come back, come back.” The sound was high-pitched and low-pitched, like an old man’s and a child’s, and all the sounds were lifeless.

If one listened carefully, one could tell the sound was filled with infinite happiness.

Ruhr cried out, brandished his machete and dashed toward the direction where there were not too many monsters.

As a habitual bandit, he wasn’t afraid of death; but if he was going to die, he thought he just couldn’t be killed by these peculiar monsters! He had a gut feeling that if he was caught by these monsters, he would not even be able to die, but instead ruthlessly tortured!

“Orc Deity, please bless me!” he prayed, and ran as fast as he could, hoping he could leave those monsters far behind.

Ruhr was running very fast, but he still felt he was not moving at all, since he saw everything around him did not change. When looking down, he found that he was not standing on hard soil, but something that was wriggling. There was even some icy sticky fluid flowing, and his instep was soaking in it.

Ruhr cried out as if he were crazy, and brandished his machete in all directions. Although he did not cut anything, doing so had indeed made him become bold and courageous again, and he stood a bit firmer.

“Come! I am not afraid of death!”

Those monsters that had his subordinates’ faces were approaching very quickly, with their peculiar tentacles waving frighteningly. Although they did not have too much strength, they were rather sticky and tenacious. When Ruhr cut one of them with his sharp magic machete, there was not even a scar left on them.

Ruhr thought he had been backed to a corner, but regardless he clenched his teeth and desperately cut the monsters. If one cut was not enough, he then cut two or three times; if that did not work, he punched and kicked them, or even bit them.

Ruhr was in a difficult situation, if he had ever been in this kind of situation before, he had forgotten when that was. His mind gradually fell into a chaotic state, as if his brain had been filled with semi-solid and sticky fat.

After a while, Ruhr realized that the machete was not in his hand. He had lost his strength and could not move his hands and feet anymore. Even the weapon he was born with—his teeth—were aching too hard to bite anything anymore.

The monster that had tentacles all over itself finally defeated him. It wound itself around Ruhr, and was getting tighter and tighter, until at last Ruhr found that he could not breathe anymore. He was gradually losing his eyesight too. He was so tired that every time he breathed, his heart and lungs ached severely. But compared with pain in the back of his brain, this was basically nothing. That pain was too itchy to bear; he almost wanted to smash his own skull with the machete, dig out his brain and step on it.

But now, he could do nothing but watch a huge tentacle, with a face he could not see clearly, approach slowly. He soon realized on the tentacle there was a big mouth with many tiny teeth inside. The teeth were rubbing against each other, making a piercing sound.

There was a moment when Ruhr thought he should pray, but his mind had been in such a chaotic state he could not respond or give a clear answer.

Pray to whom? How does one pray?

He had no idea.

The next moment, he had even forgotten he was supposed to pray at all.

When he was wound up by the tentacle, when he was about to be engulfed by that big mouth, he finally saw that face clearly.

It was his own face.

His nerve finally broke. The last shred of sanity in his mind disappeared completely. What had was left was only the infinitive stickiness and chaos.

The head of the bandit who had lost his essential spirit, leaving only the outer form, smiled peculiarly.

“Haha… hehe… hahahaha…”