The eternal seawater flowed through the city, swirling around the massive stone pillars suspended above R'lyeh and occasionally giving off strange vibrations.
In R'lyeh, the rampaging seafood fought all over the city, battling day and night.
Ke Meng had watched this countless times already, and this time, he would have to watch for another few hours.
An ordinary person would probably have gone mad with boredom.
But Great Cthulhu had not reached that breaking point. With his enormous eyes, he watched the crazed seafood.
Their minds had descended into madness, their mental pathways scrambled, leaving them extremely slow to react to the outside world.
Still, Ke Meng could kill them if he wanted.
Although Great Cthulhu could not move his tentacles to attack physically, he had plenty of mental skills.
"Control Fear!"
Once the skill activated, one of the crazed seafood creatures that lived in constant terror suddenly froze.
An unimaginably terrifying being was staring into its mind. Its body was no longer under its own control, but that of a god whose face it could not clearly make out.
Ke Meng's eyes flashed. He controlled a Water Scorpion and made it unleash a skill, firing two red beams that instantly struck a crazed blue seahorse with purple skin.
The seahorse melted instantly, dissolving into a lump of unidentified purple matter.
Ke Meng tested several more skills, each killing in a single hit. Was this little creature's skill damage really that high?
Weren't they all level 999? How could a creature of the same level crush them?
Ke Meng stared at the Water Scorpion with an amethyst exterior whose fear he was controlling. The words "Level 999" floated above its head.
Ke Meng guessed that level 999 was probably the level cap.
Ke Meng himself had no level value. He did not know why. Perhaps the final boss did not need any so-called level restrictions.
To avoid killing off all the seafood, he stopped attacking after just ten tests.
Without seafood, R'lyeh would be far too dull and monotonous. Although Great Cthulhu did not fear madness, boredom was his greatest enemy.
Let's see how far I can make it run, Great Cthulhu thought.
With a thought, Ke Meng manipulated its fear and ordered it to keep moving forward, or else kill itself to atone.
The crystal scorpion was terrified. It had already gone mad, its awareness of outside horrors reduced to almost nothing. Yet terror had descended again, suppressing its madness until nothing remained throughout its body but fear.
The crystal scorpion fled frantically, moving even faster than it had in its maddened state. In less than a minute, it had slipped out of the enormous city of R'lyeh.
Ke Meng's sense of control over the crystal scorpion weakened too. There seemed to be a massive sealing barrier around R'lyeh's perimeter, weakening his power.
A little later, his control had thinned to a mere thread that could snap at any moment.
Great Cthulhu refused to accept it and controlled another crazed seafood creature, sending it charging out.
With a whoosh, the red lobster left the city, and his control vanished. Who knew where it had swum off to? In any case, it certainly would not come back to suffer.
Great Cthulhu shifted his gaze and sent another seafood creature out of the city. The result was unchanged: he lost control shortly after it left.
"How boring. Any creature I control goes out of control as soon as it leaves the city."
Ke Meng sighed inwardly. In this unchanging R'lyeh, life as a boss really was far too boring.
Just then, the ghost in the black cloak swam over from outside R'lyeh.
It bowed its head humbly and quietly reported its recent missionary accomplishments to Ke Meng.
It had spread the faith to eight new mountain villages, bringing the total number of settlements with fanatical believers to sixteen.
At present, only Kobold Mountain Village still had a little spacetime stone powder in stock, but not enough to hold another sacrifice.
The other mountain villages were poorer and were still gathering spacetime stone powder.
There was one piece of good news: Tomb Ghost Village was about to collect enough for its first offering.
Then the humble Ghost Apostle reported that they had discovered a large human town.
It contained many intelligent humans, far more intelligent than those in the small mountain villages. Such highly intelligent individuals often possessed precious things that might be useful to Great Cthulhu.
The Ghost Apostles were currently planning to infiltrate this city full of adventurers. However, half a day ago, all the human adventurers had vanished, their whereabouts unknown.
The Ghost Apostle was deeply puzzled and did not know what had happened. Some Ghost Apostles believed that every adventurer in the city had been sacrificed to a god, so the apostle had hurried back.
Sacrifices to Cthulhu and sacrifices to other gods involved completely different rituals, but either would inevitably leave a powerful ritual presence at the scene.
Yet they had sensed no ritual presence. This was a new form of sacrifice, and they had to report it to their great lord so he would know everything.
After finishing its report, the Ghost Apostle received no reply from Great Cthulhu, as always.
It waited in place, savoring the soul-tormenting gaze upon it and thrilling to its own suffering.
After more than ten minutes, the dark, decaying aura around it grew stronger still. Only then did it slowly bow and retreat, returning to investigate the disappearance of all the city's adventurers.
Great Cthulhu watched the Ghost Apostle leave. Not a muscle in his face twitched, but his thoughts were far from calm.
"All the players disappeared?"
"The game must be undergoing maintenance."
"Why didn't I receive a maintenance notice? Was it because I was asleep, so I happened to miss the system announcement?"
As Great Cthulhu's thoughts wandered, a faint summoning voice reached his ears.
New sacrificers!
According to the Ghost Apostle, Tomb Ghost Village was about to hold a sacrifice.
What would they send this time?
Judging by their village's name, they did not sound like neutral NPC mobs.
Could it be an NPC village belonging to an evil faction?
Ke Meng listened closely to the murmuring in his ears. The voices drew nearer, and the images gradually became clearer.
Great Cthulhu's thoughts grew hazy. His consciousness crossed the boundaries of time and space, revealing a sinister cavern far away. Figures in black robes stood sunken in wet earth, raising their hands high and praising his divine name.
"Ah, great Cthulhu... sleeping god of R'lyeh... Great Old One!"
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