Cathulhu Online, MUNYA!

Chapter 187 – Cat Dad Hates Cold Wind

“Have you seen the news?”

“The game company is sus, right?”

“Is anyone in World Two?”

“Nah, I think all of us are in World Three. Hell, it’s not that safe either. Siren City got wrecked. Who knows how many players died for real.”

In front of a convenience store, a group of five men in their 20s gathered, discussing the recent game scandal while they were smoking.

Recently, many players had been found dead in their game capsules. The authority investigated this matter and issued an arrest warrant to Pangu Universe Incorporate’s employees and its executives. Strangely, within a day, the government canceled the warrant, claiming that they required further investigation. As a result, Pan Xian and Pan Mei were not charged with the crime.

Even though the government let them go, the people were not stupid. They could tell that something fishy was going on behind the scene.

Now, even introverts and shut-in gamers had no choice but to socialize and gather information. They couldn’t believe everything on the internet or the local news stations as some of the info might be the cover-ups of the government or the game company.

“So, World Three is not safe?”

“Obviously. Some idiot just freed a calamity fiend, right? There’s even a huge bounty on him. What was his name? Little cat?”

“Xiaomao, if I remember correctly.”

“Right. That guy. Is he the same guy that was in the news for selling a bunch of fruits for 50 million dollars?”

THUD

While they were chatting, a slender teenager in a hooded cloth and jeans stumbled when the men mentioned Xiaomao’s name. After a fake cough, she walked past them and entered the convenience store.

Wei Zhi gulped. She pulled her hoodie lower to cover her face. Then, she rushed into the store without looking at the men.

The men glanced at Wei Zhi. Seeing that she didn’t look at them, they didn’t pay attention to her. In fact, they didn’t even see her face or realize that she was a teenage girl.

Wei Zhi anxiously put instant lunch boxes and microwave food into the basket and rushed to the cashier to check out. She finished shopping in two minutes.

The shop’s employee stared at her, but Wei Zhi continued hiding her face.

“50 Yuan, please.”

Wei Zhi paid in full. She grabbed the plastic bag, full of food, and rushed out of the store.

“…”

The store’s employee frowned and rechecked the CCTV camera footage as Wei Zhi seemed suspicious. Then, he saw something unusual.

He didn’t see Wei Zhi in the CCTV record! She was an invisible person in the camera. Moreover, everything she touched vanished!

The store’s employee panicked, “HOLY SHIT! A GHOST?!”

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After leaving the store, Wei Zhi ran as fast as she could. While she was sprinting, she couldn’t stop shivering and trembling.

She didn’t have a cold or a fever.

She was afraid.

After Wei Zhi had lost her reflection and her shadow, she began seeing things that she was not supposed to see.

Whenever Wei Zhi looked at people, she saw colorful threads and knots that bound them with creepy beings behind them – The group of smokers in front of the store were stalked by floating smiley faces, and the formers had black strings around their necks. The threads were connected to the faces as if they were bound together as one.

As for the store clerk, the THING behind him was even creepier. It was a humanoid monster with a long limp with a claw as its head. Its back had four arms, but its fingers were branched into a hundred long hands, which ceaselessly wiggled around the cashier machine.

Wei Zhi felt like a certain female protagonist who could see ghosts. She liked the story, but she hated it when she experienced it herself.

‘This can’t be happening. Why?!’

Along the way, she ran past several humanoid silhouettes. However, she kept looking at the ground. After all, the shadows of these silhouettes were not humans!

Wei Zhi silently cried in fear, but her willpower forced her legs to keep running.

After an hour, Wei Zhi looked up. She found herself on a bridge.

She looked at the water, hoping to see her reflection. Unfortunately, it was already 8 PM, and the sky was already dark.

Instead of seeing her reflection, she saw a one-meter-diameter eyeball in the river, looking straight at her.

“!!!”

Wei Zhi fell on her butt. Her legs turned into jelly, and she lost the ability to scream.

A minute later, nothing happened.

Wei Zhi mustered her willpower again and stood up. She was relieved that the GHOST didn’t attack her when their eyes met.

‘Thank god ghosts don’t really attack people. If it’s the same as that story, I would have been dead-‘

When she turned around, the massive eyeball was already in front of her. It glared into her eyes and slowly split in half, vertically, revealing a hundred small fangs, four long tongues, and countless parasite-like worms inside the mouth.

‘N-NO! NO WAY!’

Wei Zhi closed her eyes and trembled in fear.

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Several minutes later, nothing happened.

Wei Zhi slowly opened her eyes, peeking in front of her.

The eyeball was gone.

Instead, there was an orange cat, sitting and staring at her.

Mew!

It meowed like a kitten even though it was an adult cat.

Wei Zhi’s fear and anxiety vanished like smoke. She dryly laughed and reached out to pet the cat. Then, the orange kitty nudged her head to Wei Zhi’s palm.

The cuteness of the cat soothed her heart. She picked the cat up and hugged her.

“What are you doing here? The street is a scary place, you know? You might get run over by a car.”

Mew!

The cat licked her face.

Suddenly, Wei Zhi’s mind was clear. She felt like her sanity was restored.

Wei Zhi giggled. She continued carrying the cat and looked around.

The threads in the sky were no more. People and cars on the street were no longer followed by monsters.

Seeing the changes, Wei Zhi was overjoyed.

“You must be my lucky cat. What’s your name?”

Mew!

“Mew?”

Wei Zhi thought of Xiaomao. She tried to put herself in his shoes, imagining what name he might use to name this cat.

For an unknown reason, Wei Zhi’s idea strangely leaned toward the name “Mir”. Wei Zhi didn’t think much about it and treated it as her first-name instinct.

“How about Mir?”

Mew!

The cat smiled and licked her face again.

“Okay, Mir, it is.”

Mew!

“Haha! Where is your home? Are you stray?”

Mew!

The girl and the cat continued to chat in the middle of the night. Wei Zhi slowly forgot about the previous horror experience and brought the cat home. Of course, she didn’t forget her grocery bag.

However, Wei Zhi didn’t pay attention to Mir’s shadow. When the streetlamp’s light shone upon the orange cat, Mir’s shadow briefly revealed the massive figure of a giant Cathulhu, who was chewing and eating a round thing, which looked like the previous eyeball that had attempted to eat Wei Zhi.

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With 8,000 Qi strands, Xiaomao wasn’t afraid of running out of energy soon. He continued to test his limits, flying higher and higher into the sky.

When Xiaomao reached the altitude of 7,000 feet (2.13 km), he found himself above the clouds. The moonlight was brighter than before, and he could see the night stars, which were not blocked by gas, cloud, or smoke.

Looking at the starlight made Xiaomao forget about everything he had done in the game. He was entranced by the beauty and the mystery of the galaxy, wondering what it would look like in space.

‘If I end up becoming a god or an immortal, will I be able to go to space one day?’

When Xiaomao thought of the impossible dream, the name that he had been keeping at the back of his head resurfaced.

He thought of Mao Miaomiao, the mysterious father and the big shot of World Two. As soon as the name came into his mind, Xiaomao’s old memory of his previous life suddenly became clear.

During the cross-world PVP event, Mao Miaomiao’s name appeared as a participant in the immortal league. However, he never joined the tournament and vanished as if he had never existed.

Mao Miaomiao reappeared again after the PVP tournament. He roamed around the second world and made a lot of enemies as if he was a cultivation novel’s protagonist. Then, before the second tournament, he and the dominant country leader NPC met during a story event, and they caused something terrible.

That incident was remembered as the trigger of the Cultivator War and the First Invasion.

After the second event, World Two became inhabitable for players. Anyone who had entered that game world could never log out and got stuck in that world for good.

The only way to come back to Earth was to travel through space! That clue was the source of the long conflict between World Two and Earth, which led to the First Invasion, 12 months after the second PVP event.

Xiaomao bitterly looked at the stars and bit his lower lips. Even when he wanted to relax, the memory of the game ruined it for him.

“Damn Mao Miaomiao. Why do you keep haunting me, munya!?”

Xiaomao sighed and stopped looking at the stars. He looked around and checked his directions. Then, the flying sword jetted through the sky, beelining to South Korea.

On the way, Xiaomao noticed a commercial plane above. He immediately dove into the cloud to hide his presence.

It was a bad idea. Within a minute, he got instantly wet and heavy. Xiaomao ordered his flying sword up. His coat and leather gear were soaked.

“ACHOO!”

Flying 300 miles per hour (ca. 483 km/h) while being drenched was not healthy. Even if Xiaomao had a high resilience to status effects, the sudden drop in his body temperature and the freezing wind was still a torture.

“Dammit. Is my 2,000 water spiritual root for show-ACHOO!!”