"Meow."
A cat's cry rang out in Ke Meng's mind again.
The big-faced cat looked dead, but it was actually alive. Its mouth simply did not move when it meowed.
Looking at the white cat, which neither spoke human language nor made a fuss, Ke Meng gave up playing with it.
During his voluntary home isolation, Ke Meng got through lunch and dinner by ordering takeout with contactless delivery.
After showering that evening, Ke Meng messaged Chen Momo on Penguin: "You there? Asleep yet?"
"Not yet." Chen Momo's profile picture was a sheet of white paper dotted with ink, and her screen name was simply Momo.
Two seconds later, she added, "Want to play some battle royale?"
Ke Meng mulled it over, unsure how to broach his question tactfully. He decided he might as well ask while they played.
"Sure!" Ke Meng replied with a single, succinct word.
Before long, Ke Meng and Chen Momo teamed up for a mobile battle royale shooter, tearing through their opponents.
He chatted while driving in the game, asking roundabout questions until he got the answers he wanted.
Chen Momo and her mother had no physical discomfort and felt fine.
After carrying her to two wins in a row, Chen Momo said in her soft voice, "Meng, I need to finish my homework."
"Go ahead, then. Study hard." Ke Meng checked the time. It was ten thirty at night.
"Okay, okay."
She logged off, and Ke Meng closed the game too. While he was at it, he logged into his Bilibili account to check his newly uploaded review video.
"[Unboxing and review] What's it like to use a 20,000-yuan camera?"
Views: 23.
Coins: 2.
Bullet comments: 1.
Favorites: 0.
After looking over those dismal numbers, Ke Meng sighed softly.
As a small-time video creator, having no viewers was perfectly normal.
"Whatever. I'm just doing it for fun anyway." Ke Meng took it in stride and soon regained his spirits.
He shut down his computer, then locked the big-faced cat in another room to keep it from suddenly rising from the dead and wandering around at night.
Once he had finished all that, Ke Meng went to bed.
He fell asleep quickly, his consciousness soon growing hazy.
In his dream, he once again heard seawater burbling as it flowed.
Once again, he dreamed of that gigantic tentacled monster with an octopus head. Like a soul returning to its body, he zipped straight into it.
When he opened his eyes again, a city of enormous green stones filled his vision.
The maddened sea creatures were still fighting everywhere, ramming, biting, and lashing their tails, their fish eyes bloodshot.
Ke Meng looked at the familiar viewpoint, the familiar green underwater city, and the familiar scene of sea creatures fighting. Even an idiot would have understood by now.
His body was connected to Cthulhu in the game world. Dreaming might be the trigger; otherwise, there was no explaining why he had turned into Big C both times he fell asleep.
"So now I have to sit here staring into space for another few hours?"
Ke Meng gazed at the unchanging, vast city of R'lyeh, dreading the hours ahead.
He silently called for the system, and its panel appeared, still displaying the ridiculously powerful stats of the ultimate boss of a second playthrough.
The Ancient God Seal debuff stood out glaringly. His body still could not move, leaving him able only to open his eyes and look at this boring underwater world.
As a second-playthrough boss, Big C had no idea what he ought to do now.
The game had only just launched. Who knew how many years it would take for players to reach this place?
And so Ke Meng stared blankly at the seafloor.
To while away the boring hours, he began studying what kinds of marine life these creatures were.
Biological classification had seven ranks: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species. Drawing on his meager knowledge, Ke Meng slowly tried to identify them one by one.
After watching for several hours, Big C sadly discovered that he had no idea how to classify marine creatures. Everything his middle and high school biology teachers had taught him had gone to waste.
Just then, low murmurs reached Big C's ears, rising and falling, their intonation gradually becoming clearer.
"Great Cthulhu... slumbering god of R'lyeh... Great Old One!"
It was a distant call. Someone was summoning him, reciting a long string of divine names.
As Big C listened to those voices, his consciousness grew hazy. He seemed to cross the distance of time and space and saw the distant summoning site.
It was another poor, backward mountain village.
Unlike the cat-faced people's village last time, this one held a crowd of black-robed figures wearing kobold masks.
They surrounded an old, dilapidated well. A magic circle had been drawn around it with some fluorescent substance, with eight candles lit at each of its eight corners, burning with an eerie green glow.
The masked kobolds circled the well as if holding a bonfire party, chanting Cthulhu's exceedingly long divine name.
This time it's a well, and last time it was a pool... Ke Meng wondered whether a ritual to summon him had to involve water.
The instant that thought stirred in Ke Meng's mind, every black-robed figure in a kobold mask shuddered. They immediately dropped to both knees and slammed their foreheads against the ground, trembling all over and not daring to look up at the well. Their voices shook:
"Great Cthulhu, we are the villagers of Kobold Mountain Village. The newly arrived adventurers have been invading our village again and again, carrying off a hundred kobold women right before our eyes. Our village has no women left to bear children. We beg you to descend into this world and wipe out those wretched adventurers!"
Hearing the kobolds' tearful complaint, Ke Meng mentally raised an eyebrow.
These players were something else, actually stealing the NPCs' wives. Just how desperate were they?
Or was it some special quest for the players?
Ke Meng cast a curious glance around Kobold Mountain Village. Every masked kobold wore a black robe and lay prostrate on the ground. He could not tell which were women, so he had no way to confirm how many women remained in the village.
Perhaps it really was as they said, and there were none left.
The prostrate kobolds trembled even harder. They could distinctly feel the mental pressure of a great terror sweep over them, making their bodies feel as though they had plunged into an ice cellar.
It was as if invisible tentacles were piercing their bodies, passing through their masks and reaching into their ears, nostrils, eyes, and mouths.
It was unbearable. Utterly unbearable!
Fortunately, that pressure merely swept past without lingering. Otherwise, they would have suffocated to death.
Just then, one of the slightly larger black-robed figures began squirming forward, holding a small basin in both hands. His head scraped along the ground as he shuffled on his knees, alternating left and right.
Ke Meng looked at the black-robed figure holding up the offering, and the figure began trembling violently.
Under that gaze, a line of white, otherworldly text appeared above the black-robed figure's head. Ke Meng's mind automatically read it as something he could understand:
"Kobold Priest"
So this is an elite monster?
Ke Meng then turned his gaze to the basin in the priest's hands. Inside was a palm-sized bundle, round, with no way to tell what was wrapped inside.
The Kobold Priest was already suffocating, his body shaking violently.
Even so, he continued resolutely forward on his knees.
A few seconds later, the Kobold Priest reached the edge of the well. He raised the small basin high and pressed his forehead against the ground, not daring to look up, then shouted in an anguished voice:
"This is a small token of our devotion."
"We humbly beg you to accept your servants' offering."
With that, the small basin fell into the well.
Ke Meng blinked, and the mountain village's ritual site vanished. Before his eyes was the ceiling of his own home.
He had returned to reality once again.
Before you continue