Logout of Cthulhu: A Lovecraftian LitRPG novel (Cthulhu World Book 1)

by T. K. Kato

  Right now.

  I came to a t-intersection and took a left without even considering it. Wandering blindly was better than sitting in place and hoping to magically reorient myself. What I needed was to—

  The ground beneath me gave way and I fell, slipped on my ass, and landed on a slick surface. Before I could arrest my fall, I was shooting down a steep slope, one slippery with water like a slide at some amusement park. My flashlight had slipped from my hand and tumbled down the slope ahead of me, so I couldn’t see shit.

  The tunnel whooshed past me as I fell faster and faster.

  And then I was airborne.

  My stomach lurched and I plummeted, unable to make anything out except the flicker of my light falling under me. I slammed into water with enough force it felt like getting slapped in the face—slapped hard. Water shot up my nose and burned my sinuses.

  My flashlight tumbled down into the depths beneath me. Desperate not to lose it, I swam down and snatched for it. My fingers brushed it, but missed. I had to surge forward again. This time I caught it.

  A large shadow passed right in front of my vision. Reflexively I shouted, managing only to spew out a cloud of bubbles, further obscuring my vision. Scared almost shitless, I swam for the surface, then burst through, gasping.

  Even as I did so, I caught sight of another large form in the water, swimming below me.

  “Hell.”

  I swept my light around until I spotted land, and then swam for it for all I was worth. Sharks or gators or God knew what might be in the waters with me, and I wanted out. Now.

  Before I even reached the shore, a faint yellow gleam began to radiate from the distance, slightly illuminating the scene before me. An alien landscape unfolded around me. The ground seemed porous and maybe alive, but more rigid than the fleshy pinkness I had left behind. More like the carapace of some massive beetle. Sharp ridges jutted out of that ground like spines off some creature out of Starship Troopers.

  And they moved.

  -1 Sanity

  They twisted and flicked back and forth like insect legs. At the center of all this rose a towering black edifice culminating in a many-toothed maw forty feet above me. Dozens of black eyes ran up the edifice—or creature—recessed into the carapace, seeming to stare into my mind and soul as I climbed ashore.

  Much as I wanted to turn away, I couldn’t.

  It called me, pulled me forward and would not be denied.

  And set into the heart of this mighty structure lay the source of the gleam—a yellow gem awaiting my grasp. My final prize, locked inside an alien behemoth.

  Its call pulled me forward, one lurching step at a time.

  A cascade of images battered my exhausted mind, growing stronger with each step forward I took. The alien landscape around me faded away.

  I was back in high school, lounging around Elise’s living room.

  All of us, Sam, Michelle, Mike, and me, all fussing over character sheets for Call of Cthulhu, while Elise came up with one insane plot after another. Or maybe the plots weren’t insane, but they almost always ended with our characters dead or locked in asylums. Nature of the game … She loved it, reveled in the macabre twists and turns, in the unfolding cosmic horror.

  When we played D&D, Mike liked to run. But for Call of Cthulhu, yeah, that was always Elise. Staying up late, I watched her. Dreamed about her asking me to stay late, after the other players had gone home …

  I stumbled, banging my knee against the carapace-like ground. The memory had been so vivid it felt like I was back there again. Like I was sixteen and willing to try just about anything for the chance to be close to her. Yeah, I was a stupid kid. Most kids are, right?

  With a grunt, I rose and advanced for the gem once more. I had gotten no more than five steps when the world shifted around me again. It grew soft and warm, all the aches fading, the cold squelching of my socks a faint memory.

  I lay on a cozy couch in Elise’s living room, half-listening as she read one of Lovecraft’s works aloud.

  I mean, I caught bits of the story, sure, but mostly I watched her lips. Listened to the sound of her voice. She was curled up in this recliner. Too bad she didn’t join me on the couch. I could have sat close, with my arm around her …

  “Because, you know, some of this stuff isn’t really meant to be read aloud. I mean, that was kind of the point, that human mouths weren’t good at pronouncing these alien languages.”

  “Uh huh.” Was she wearing a bra under that sweater?

  “So I’m just gonna come as close as I can, you know.”

  “Yeah.”

  I blinked, all softness beneath me fading. I lay on the cold, hard ground and it pulsed faintly beneath me. For a moment, I’d forgotten I wasn’t that age again. Like the game itself, the memory felt as real as reality itself—a too-vivid dream. Almost painful to wake from, like I’d left a part of myself behind there and had to go back for it.

  Sleep deprivation was hell on your mind, right? I climbed up, made it a bit farther along. The carapace beneath me became asphalt.

  An empty road at night, beneath a full moon. My breath fogging the cold air.

  A car alarm sounding.

  A Toyota overturned beside the road. Crumpled like paper. A trail of glass and metal leading up to it.

  And inside …

  Inside …

  Shit. No. I wasn’t even there. I couldn’t see this.

  Screaming, I fell to my knees and pressed my palms into my eyes. I couldn’t see this. I refused to look at it, though it had haunted me, real as any memory. An imagined scene, pieced together from the facts they gave me.

  My wife and daughter.

  Had they suffered?

  No.

  We think they died almost instantly.

  Who did this?

  Hit and run. We’re still looking into it, but it was near a bar. All evidence points to a drunk driver …

  Random luck. An uncaring universe. Not so different from the Lovecraft-inspired horror I now found myself in. I looked up to find the gem still well out of reach. I was not going back there, not to those memories. This game was all I really had, so I was staying right here. Right now.

  Stumbling onward, I panted, choking, and shook my head to keep the rush of memories from coming back.

  And yet there I was, sitting on the floor, back against my bed.

  Gun in my hand. Thumb running over the handle. The barrel. Thinking … if I just put it in my mouth … If I just …

  I blinked away tears, unaware I had even been crying. A few steps more. Just a few more. I was almost to the gem now.

  I was in an empty street in Innsmouth. Wandering around the town aimlessly, talking to thin air like a madman. Waving my hands like some child playing make-believe. Any who saw me like that would think I’d gone nuts.

  Yeah, he’s straight up pistachios—off to the loony bin with ’em.

  Well, screw you, random observer. Get lost and leave me the hell alone with my games and my pain.

  My hand closed around the gem. Its light, faint before, flared until the yellow glare made me squint, even as a welcome wave of dizziness swept over me.

  -3 Sanity

  +3 Lore

  Eldritch Power Acquired

  Shaking the dizziness off, I did a quick check of the menu.

  Stats:

  HP 19/23

  Dex 26

  Might 28

  Cha 24

  Stealth 34

  Sanity 12

  Lore 16

  Currency 11

  Inventory:

  Flashlight

  Lock picks

  Crowbar

  Deep One book

  Jerky

  Bandage

  Eldritch Powers:

  Telekinetic Blast

  Telekinetic Lift

  Tongues

  Camouflage

  Spatial Warp

  Psychometry

  Sanity twelve? Holy hell. I’d started with 80, hadn’t I? Yea
h, this character was screwed. And power … psychometry. I’d heard of that. It was like getting psychic readings off stuff by touching it, right? That was a weird one. Interesting though.

  I stepped around behind the obelisk and touched the wall. A rush of images bombarded my mind—a path just away from here, leading to a secret door. Stairs escaping the warrens and exiting into the basement of the Mason hall. Cultists followed this path, coming for me earlier this same night. Well, now I knew the way they took.

  Following the route the rush of images had shown me, I came shortly to a tunnel leading out of this chamber. This led to another chamber, one with no obvious exit. I touched the wall here and got another flash: a stone I could touch to open a door.

  As expected, doing so opened up a path to stairs leading out.

  Yeah, maybe this power would turn out useful.

  The stairs lead me to another blank wall, and this I also touched. Another series of images came to mind: a cultist pushing against the wall just right, and it turned, opening up into a hall. I did so as well, grunting with the effort of turning the heavy wall on its axle.

  The hall beyond was just what I’d seen in the vision. Indeed, I had passed right by here on my first visit to the Mason hall. I stepped out and headed for the same storm cellar exit I’d used before.

  “Hey!”

  I had gone only a few steps when a cultist was croaking at me, rushing forward with a knife.

  I jerked my hand forward and a telekinetic blast struck him, larger and stronger than any I’d launched before.

  26 Damage

  The cultist splattered like he’d been hit with a missile, evaporating in midair and never even having time to hit the ground. Hell yeah. Enough damage to one-shot goons? I’ll take it, thank you very much.

  I snuck through the halls and back to the cellar, then climbed the stairs and crept back toward the green. A few cultists were still searching about—looked like four of them.

  Tapping my chest to activate my camouflage, I ventured out, creeping along the perimeter until I came to the Gilman House. There I paused, glanced around to make sure no one was watching me, and finally eased the door open and slipped inside.

  “What the hell?” the grouchy innkeeper mumbled.

  I rolled my eyes and launched a telekinetic blast at him before he could raise any kind of alarm.

  26 Damage

  The blast ripped through the wall as well, exposing a staff room behind it. The innkeeper vanished in a cloud of green particles.

  Yup. One dead innkeeper.

  Since using telekinesis had dropped my camo, I just made a beeline for the stairs down to that Cthulhu door. The secret passage remained open from before, and I hurried down the stairs. Almost there. Almost to the prize.

  I was winning this thing, and nothing could stop me now.

  The Escher-esque maze here that had once bothered me now seemed like child’s play compared to the insanity in the lighthouse. I scrambled along the path until I came to that mighty door engraved to look like Cthulhu. As I approached, stone grated on stone.

  All the gems were lit.

  A shower of dust rained down from above, and the door began to sink into the floor. The process took a good ten seconds. I stood there, shifting nervously from foot to foot, waiting to see what lay beyond.

  Finally, it revealed a tunnel, pitch black inside. I shone my flashlight down it. It ran a long distance, but it didn’t look carved so much as like the designers had built the door at the mouth of a cave. Water slicked the floor and glistened along the tunnel walls, and it seemed to be slowly descending.

  I stepped inside—careful of my footing given the water—and followed it as it wound deeper under the town.

  Honestly, I had seen about enough underground locations in the last level. But whatever. This had to be the final hurdle left.

  I was close to the end, I could feel it.

  The tunnel curved around to my right before finally opening out into a giant cavern. A burning brazier near the entrance failed to offer half enough light for such a massive chamber, and the ceiling and edges of the place stretched away into shadowed recesses I couldn’t make out.

  What was more interesting, some thirty feet from the entrance, the floor dropped away into an underground lake that vanished into the back of the cave. A single pier stretched out into the lake. Docked there, with a gangplank waiting, floated a submarine.

  Not like a giant navy one, but one of those small ones that could hold like four people, like you see on nature shows or whatever.

  And it was just waiting there. Waiting for me … for the one who solved the gems.

  Why a submarine … because it would take me to the Deep One city. To … whatever the hell it was called.

  Y’ha-nthlei. That was it.

  My goal all along.

  I’d have expected my heart to be pounding as I walked along the dock, feet echoing with dull thuds on the wet wood. I’d have expected to be scared shitless over what I’d find. Instead, I felt calm.

  This was all meant for me.

  The sub’s hatch lay open, allowing me easy access. I climbed aboard, then scrambled down the narrow confines of the ladder and into the cockpit—or whatever you call it on a sub. Two chairs sat before the control console, so I sat in one, then pulled a shoulder strap across my chest.

  I didn’t have a clue how to pilot this thing but …

  There was a wheel and a series of dials and buttons, all locked behind a glass case. All except for a big red button labeled in the Deep One language, “Begin Journey.”

  Heh. Subtle.

  I pushed the button and the sub whirred to life. A siren sounded behind me, and the hatch slammed shut.

  Yeah … I actually probably should have thought to do that myself.

  The sub drifted away from the dock on its own accord. The wheel began to turn, resisting any attempt I made to control it.

  The next thing I knew, the sub began to dive, carrying me under the lake.

  Stage 7

  The self-guided sub traveled through an underwater tunnel for maybe a hundred feet. This passage finally opened out into the bay, and the sub sailed forward toward what looked ahead like a great coral reef.

  The headlights illuminated that reef in shades of gray and green, casting it as an alien world coming ever closer as the sub lurched forward. Numerous sharp ridges jutted out around the reef, but despite the place seeming alive, only a handful of small schools of fish seemed to live in the area.

  As the sub drew closer, it banked to the right then made a gentle curve around the coral. Beyond the edge of the reef, the ground dropped away into a surprisingly deep cavern. The sub began to dive once more carrying me ever deeper into a virtual abyss. How the hell had the park designers made this?

  The sub descended at least another two hundred feet. My ears popped more than once as it went down. In the farthest depths I would’ve expected total darkness; however, a faint gleam came from numerous sources all around me. A greenish-yellow light emanated out of holes in a city made of coral. No, not coral, I realized. While parts of the reef had overgrown the structures here, they were actually carved from some slick stone that I couldn’t even identify.

  A shadow passed in front of the sub and I turned, trying to catch a glimpse of whatever had swarmed by me. Not a fish but a Deep One, at home in its natural environment—fast and surprisingly agile in the depths.

  As the sub continued on, I spotted more and more of the creatures swimming in and out of doorways, glancing out windows or casually passing by the sub. These creatures were everywhere.

  My ride turned again and headed for a large archway set into the base of a giant central pillar. Beyond the archway, the sub lurched to a sudden stop and then began to ascend. It went up maybe thirty feet or so and then splashed to a stop once more. From the window pane I could now see that we had come up into an air pocket inside a man-made chamber. Well, I mean, of course it was man-made, but it was meant to look like
it had been carved by those Deep Ones.

  The stone met at strange angles while the walls were carved with carved runes proclaiming this the great city of Y’ha-nthlei.

  The autopilot had guided me right up to a pier. From it, a platform stretched out to the top of the sub. The pier itself seemed carved from some strange, buoyant stone. Of its own accord the hatch popped open, letting in a fishy reek thick with the odor of brine and decay.

  It seemed I had arrived.

  Despite the noxious smell, I eagerly climbed from my seat, then made my way to the ladder. After scrambling up out of the sub, I gingerly placed a foot upon the strange floating stone. It bobbed just a little with my weight, but didn’t seem inclined to go under.

  Well, what the hell?

  Wary, I stepped out onto the floating pier. It bobbed a little but remained in place. Huh. So it did support me.

  Slightly giddy, I made my way from this floating dock to the boardwalk surrounding the room. A single archway led out of this chamber, one that lay around a bend in the walkway. This I followed to exit the chamber.

  The archway let out into a half-submerged cityscape, one featuring the now familiar non-Euclidean geometries I’d seen inside the lighthouse. Once those strange designs would’ve boggled my mind, but after all I had been through, it almost proved a welcome sight.

  Stone walkways led between giant buildings all rising at strange angles, such that gravity seemed relative to no particular point in space. Beneath these walkways lay pools of water and canals that encompassed the majority of the city. All of this was lit by faint light emanating from numerous windows throughout.

  It seemed I didn’t need my flashlight in here.

  From the look of it I stood in the center of this cyclopean city. Across a large gulf of water and at an almost perpendicular angle to me rose the greatest building I saw here—a momentous tower.

  There had to be a hundred if not a thousand ways to navigate the Deep One city. Unfortunately, not only did I not know which way would lead me to my destination, I wasn’t even sure what destination I should strive for.