Chapter 6224 - 5234: Pact of the Stars (Part 4)

Shiller felt that this proposal of his made a lot of sense. The logic here was: if a Superhero wants to escape the fate of the American Comic World, or at least gain some degree of autonomy, then staying only within those two worlds won’t work. An external transfer station is absolutely necessary.

But most worlds have their own rules, and the characters there also have their own destinies to follow. Jumping out of the fate of American Comics means stepping into some other fate, so you can only try your best to look for a world whose rules aren’t that strict—in blunt terms, a relatively chaotic world.

Or rather, not "chaotic," but "Chaos." The difference between the two is like that between the Warhammer Universe and the Cthulhu Universe. The Warhammer Universe really is relatively chaotic: all kinds of factions slaughter each other, Subspace Evil Gods are watching like hungry tigers. But the rules of the Warhammer Universe are relatively mature; all aspects of the setting are quite complete, and this chaos arises under a fully fleshed-out setting.

The Cthulhu Universe is different. Lovecraft’s lifetime output was relatively small, and his setting for the Cthulhu Mythos is far from complete. What he himself pursued was the unknowable, so he probably deliberately didn’t establish a Strength system or similar things. Subsequent creators also prefer cosmic mysticism; relatively concrete settings like natural elements aren’t popular in the circle—most people prefer a cosmos where everything remains in a state of chaotic unknown.

In such a cosmos, the rules aren’t complete, the settings aren’t finished, so there are lots of loopholes to exploit. Take Shuggos, the prototype of the Slime, for example: all we know is that it was created by the Ancient One, and everything else is completely unknown—no skill cards, no attribute values, and it only showed up once in the original work, with screen time totally unworthy of a novel’s big final boss. That gives other people plenty of room to expand the setting—for example, Shuggos can be Iron Man’s blood-cell computer.

The Race of Ancient Ones is the same. Beyond a rough outline of their history, how exactly they came to Earth, what the Ancient Ones in the cosmos are doing, whether anyone ever returned home—all of this is unknown, leaving enormous room to play.

Most importantly, the true creator of the Cthulhu Universe is never going to wake up. As Nya said: as long as someone keeps gazing into the Deep in the Stars, Asathos will never awaken. In other words, as long as there are still people who like the Cthulhu Mythos, as long as its popularity doesn’t die out, the cosmos will never perish, and Asathos will never wake up.

With popularity theory as a safeguard, the structural strength of the Cthulhu Universe is actually very high. If the American Comics Universe screws up and causes a drop in popularity, it might even lead to the company’s bankruptcy and everyone going down together. The Cthulhu Mythos Universe basically doesn’t face this risk, because its influence is so broad, its derivative works and crossovers are countless; it’s even become a symbol of the modern internet. To completely erase the Cthulhu Mythos System would be extremely difficult.

Besides, Nya already said before that the reason the Deep in the Stars can give birth to so many terrifying Outer Gods is that the environment there is way too harsh, the Dark Matter density is too high, and the cosmic parameters aren’t suitable for any normal life to survive. But for scientific research this is a good thing—especially for developing ultimate weapons, the harsher the environment, the better; the more inert, the better, so accidents are less likely.

The cosmic rules are relatively open, the structural strength of the cosmos is high, and the cosmic environment is very stable—there’s simply no better testing ground than this. As for the native Outer Gods deep among the Stars, you basically only have to consider Yog’s opinion.

The Black Goat is single-mindedly busy birthing kids and basically doesn’t care about administration; Nya spends all his attention on Human Society, logging on every day just to play The Sims. Only Yog actually cares about building his hometown. So logically, he shouldn’t permit anyone to carry out dangerous experiments in his house.

However, judging from Yog’s willingness to cooperate with Iron Man’s plan, he doesn’t mind this at all. He really wants to see what Iron Man can ultimately come up with; you could even say he very much hopes Iron Man will permanently station himself in the Deep in the Stars so that new knowledge will be generated endlessly and Yog’s collection will grow ever richer.

In that case, the two sides are practically perfect partners. You could straight-up call it a match made in heaven—a mutually beneficial win–win.

Especially since information-flow technology can directly reproduce objects through memory. For the Human race, on one hand our memory isn’t that good, so we need to think and revise repeatedly to reproduce something accurately; on the other hand, the resource consumption is too high, so if we want to put it into real use, the rate of return has to be taken into account.

But the Outer Gods don’t have this problem. Yog himself is a knowledge repository; the concept of "bad memory" doesn’t exist for him, and his memory of anything is very precise. In addition, the one thing the Deep in the Stars is not short on is resources, because absolutely no one is making use of them here. No Outer God is going to bust open a planet for mining or use a Star’s heat to boil water. Even in the Material World, advanced civilizations are rare; it’s basically an undeveloped blue ocean.

Obviously, Iron Man had figured this out too. Setting aside how counterintuitive this whole thing is, the Outer Gods really are pretty good partners to work with. So he thought about it and said, "It might be a bit beyond your expectations, but the Outer Gods are actually full of curiosity. They have all kinds of wonderful fantasies about the colorful Material World, and they have a very good impression of carbon-based intelligent lifeforms like the Human race."

"If you insist on viewing them as some kind of terrifying God, you’ll never be able to understand them. I prefer to see them as a special type of Aliens, living in a special world where the environment is extremely harsh and perpetually detached from the Material World. They can see the scenes of the Material World through a pane of glass, yet can never truly touch them. They’ll try all sorts of methods to break through the barrier between the two—but that’s destined to create tragedies."

Nya rack his brains trying to insert countless clones into Human Society; once the clones experience something, it naturally counts as him having experienced it. Yog, on the other hand, wants to create a homeland identical to the Material World, with continuous spacetime rules and lifeforms just like Humans. The Black Goat goes even further and directly creates life, enriching the biosphere of the cosmos through reproduction.

Just like those creatures the cats saw in the Primitive Forest—there’s a good chance they were all nurtured by the Black Goat. "Mother of All Things" is not an empty title; the Black Goat doesn’t just give birth to little Black Goat kids or those terrifying Outer Gods, he can also propagate normal lifeforms very similar to those of the Material World, which proves that he also has pursuits in that direction."

From this perspective, the greatest horror of the Outer Gods lies in the enormous gap between their form of life and that of Humans. Some of their curious touches spell absolute annihilation for the Human race, and in the process of building their homeland, even the tiniest ripple that spills into the Material World will wipe out countless weak lifeforms.

Essentially, the Material World and the Deep in the Stars form a Binary Star System. One star is a beautiful greenhouse whose rich and bountiful environment makes its lifeforms extremely fragile, while the other is a brutal wilderness whose harsh environment makes its lifeforms extremely powerful.

When the two stars do not intersect, they can only peek at each other in very limited ways, yet both harbor curiosity about the other. And at the brief instant when they do intersect, it is terror descending for Humans, whereas for the Outer Gods, it is that beautiful, distant star flashing by and vanishing, leaving behind nothing but loneliness.

"I’ll try talking to him," Iron Man said, "but you still have to go there yourselves. We need a base in the Material World. If he agrees, we’ll move the relevant equipment over there."

They discussed the matters related to the Material World a bit more. Shiller said, "Don’t get your hopes up too high. Especially you, Brainiac. I know that as Electronic Life you probably haven’t watched horror movies, but if you let your guard down, Nya will definitely give you a nice close-up jump scare."

"I really can’t imagine a God actually writing code. I mean code invented by Humans," Brainiac said, one hand on his hip, his tone incredulous. "Could he really contaminate my programs?"

"Hard to say," Shiller replied. "The Nyarlathotep from your cosmos is just a clone; each clone has a different specialty, so maybe he really isn’t good at science and engineering. But this time we’re facing Nya’s true body, plus the top-notch staff he left in this realm. I’d wager it won’t be long before he figures out a way to lower your Sanity Points."

Brainiac was clearly hesitating. He said, "Electronic Life is actually more afraid of contamination than Humans are. You can think of it this way: the Souls of you Humans come with the creator’s firewall. As long as you don’t actively shut down that firewall, invasion and contamination are very difficult."

"But Electronic Life doesn’t have that firewall. Even if I neither listen nor watch nor touch, and don’t do anything related to him at all, as long as he sets his sights on me, he can attack me without restraint, and I’ll be forced to devote most of my attention to fending off his attacks."

"That’s why I say the ’humanized’ route is wrong," Mechanical Overlord Iron Man said. "An endless machine swarm is the only true correct path."

"First of all, there’s no guarantee you can even get in," Shiller said to Mechanical Overlord Iron Man. "Right now there are two ways to enter this cosmos: one is to be transformed into an Outer God, and the other is to go through the Thousand Cats Dream into the Kingdom of Dreams. I’m not at all sure it’d be willing to transform several hundred billion cats, and I have no clue what the local cat population would think about that."

"Tch." Mechanical Overlord Iron Man seemed to have expected this long ago. But Brainiac looked even more worried. He said, "Can you really protect me? I honestly don’t want to be fighting an Outer God inside my own network."

"You’ll have to talk to Iron Man about that, I’m totally clueless," Shiller said.

"Then I’ll have to bring another Iron Man," Brainiac was already making calculations. "The one from the Prime Universe will probably be busy communicating with the Outer Gods, so I’ll need someone for personal protection. How’s the one from your cosmos?"

"Ask him yourself," Shiller said. "Though I think that no matter how many Iron Men you bring, their top priority is never going to be protecting you."

"Exactly. Because as long as they bring you along, their top priority will definitely be stopping you."