Dice In The Darkness: Cthulhu Calls

Chapter 248: Fate, Ineffable Wonders

Back to reality.

Liu Xing stretched lazily and noticed a message from Yin En. The message roughly mentioned that in this module, they were caught off guard by fervent cultist players who possessed unexpectedly powerful items. They got thoroughly outwitted but thankfully, Yin En had an item that could put his "Yin En" character card into a near-death state during card tearing. If a player didn't revive the character card within three modules, it would permanently "die."

In simpler terms, Yin En's 500-point item was a three-module resurrection item. In the Shoggoth Region, players could opt to participate in a revival module called "Hell's Journey" at their own expense, costing 4444 points. However, it was a challenging module, and completing it only offered a revival reward.

For players, though, this revival module was a generous offer because the character card they wanted to revive was undoubtedly their initial character card. Initial character cards were crucial to players due to their excellent attributes, most of the primary items were stored on them, and they also held vital NPC contacts. Therefore, the initial character card was extremely valuable, even if it cost a total of 5000 points!

That said, Liu Xing was grateful for receiving an invitation to the Dark Party module, which only required 2000 points and had a lower difficulty level.

So, Liu Xing replied casually to Yin En's message, expressing anticipation for their future cooperation, and then closed the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall to watch videos on Bilibili.

On the Bilibili homepage, Liu Xing stumbled upon a news article.

Moreover, the video's creator dug up another piece of news: Cosmic Country had recently experienced a case of corpse theft. The identities of the two stolen corpses were confirmed to be cultists from the cult controlling the Cosmic Country's president. It was certain that the culprits who took the corpses were also cultists.

Surprisingly, the Cosmic Country authorities claimed ignorance of the incident and had no intention of wasting valuable resources investigating it.

In the end, the video's creator couldn't resist speculating from a conspiracy theory angle. They suggested that the stolen corpses must have held unspeakable secrets, such as an attempt to resurrect them. Therefore, these two corpses were likely high-ranking members of the cult.

After watching the video, Liu Xing couldn't help but comment that the uploader was rather naive, having not seen the real world. After all, Liu Xing had already interacted and laughed with the cultists.

After watching more videos for a while, Liu Xing decided it was time to rest. Although the recent death experience didn't faze him much, the lingering sense of melancholy still weighed on his heart.

So, Liu Xing believed that there was nothing a good night's sleep couldn't resolve. If there was something, then he would just sleep a little longer.

With that thought, Liu Xing drifted into slumber.

The next day, Liu Xing inexplicably found himself opening the Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall once more and clicking on "Start Game."

He felt a voice within him urging him to play the game.

Sitting at his computer desk, Liu Xing couldn't help but ponder if his personality had drastically changed after dying once. Had he developed a newfound love for learning?

At that moment, the game began.

First, it entered the "Interlude Growth" interface. Since Watanabe Ryusei's character card possessed such strong attributes, his "Interlude Growth" was limited to one option: "Infiltration."

"Infiltration" had a 5% chance of exposing Watanabe Ryusei's true identity while he floated as the leader of the "Worshipers of the Yellow Sect" within the Deep Sea Gospel Society's territory.

Seeing this "Interlude Growth," Liu Xing raised an eyebrow. If this "Interlude Growth" succeeded, it would spell trouble for his character card. After all, the Deep Sea Gospel Society was an arch-enemy cult, and they would undoubtedly send people to hunt him down if he were exposed.

Fortunately, the chance of exposure was only 5%, so unless Liu Xing was extremely unlucky, he shouldn't get caught.

6/5, failure.

Liu Xing looked at the result of the "Interlude Growth" and could only shake his head, realizing he had been overthinking it. This show's effects were quite explosive.

Scenario: "Mystery of School Suicides" Difficulty: Difficult Number of Players: 3 Background: In Morimoto High School, there was a campus legend about a red-clad female ghost that haunted the old school building. She used spells to induce hallucinations and thoughts of suicide in students who remained in the school after dark, ultimately leading them to take their own lives in the old school building.

Name: Watanabe Ryusei Occupation: High School Student (Leader of the Worshipers of the Yellow Sect) Gender: Male Age: 18 Traits: Leadership Qualities, Blessing of the Yellow King Relation to This Module: Due to Watanabe Ryusei's deliberate concealment, the world was unaware that he had thwarted the Yueshihao cult event. Therefore, Watanabe Ryusei, along with other classmates, had smoothly returned to Morimoto High School, preparing for their final year of high school.

Character Attributes: Strength: 60 Constitution: 60 Willpower: 75 Luck: 70 Agility: 50 Appearance: 85 Body Size: 60 Intelligence: 80 Inspiration: 70 Education: 70 Cthulhu Mythos Knowledge: 20 Sanity Points: 60/?? Hit Points: 12 Magic Points: 30 Damage Bonus: 1 Credit Rating: 30 Skills: Island Nation Language 80, Library Use 60, Investigation 50, Listening 40, Persuasion 70, Combat 40, Dodge 40, Occult 80.

Special Skills: Summoning/Dismissing Byakya, Ritual to Summon King Hastur in Yellow Robes Personal Items: Cellphone, English Translation of "Yellow King," "Worshipers of the Yellow Sect" Scriptures, Yellow Seal Pendant, Ritual Dagger

Followers: Jiro Oshima (Combat Type), Katsuya Maeda (Support Type), Masayoshi Takahashi (Average Type), Nobita Nobi (Average Type), Shizuka Minamoto (Support Type), Suneo Honekawa (Support Type), Takeshi Gouda (Combat Type)

Liu Xing was astonished when he saw Watanabe Ryusei's list of followers. Surprisingly, Watanabe Ryusei had gained four additional followers, and their names seemed strangely familiar in various ways.

It appeared that after the Yueshihao module, Watanabe Ryusei had successfully convinced Shizuka and the others to join his cult. Now, even if this module was labeled as difficult, Liu Xing felt much more confident with his seven followers. Wait a minute, the game's difficulty is labeled as "difficult"?

Liu Xing was somewhat surprised as he read the module description. He hadn't expected this three-player module to be classified as difficult. After all, both the Yueshihao and Dark Life modules were only of medium difficulty!

In the Cthulhu RPG Game, generally, the fewer players there were for the same difficulty level, the relatively higher the difficulty coefficient of the module. This was because the game demanded a higher level of information gathering. With more players, there was more information to gather, and during combat rounds, the adage "strength in numbers" often held true, unless they encountered powerful higher-tier mythical creatures.

So, even a three-player medium difficulty module could be more challenging than a six-player difficult one.

However, Liu Xing suddenly thought of a possibility. The reason this module was categorized as difficult might be because of him. After all, he had seven NPC followers, which equated to seven players in terms of information gathering and combat capabilities. So, Liu Xing felt like he might have put the other two players at a disadvantage.

As the game began, a pleasant female voice announced, "Hello, everyone. I'm the KP (Keeper) for this module, Hope Sister. You can also call me Sister Hope because I'll bring you hope. Now, let me announce the main quest directly. Investigate the truth behind the recent series of student suicides at Morimoto High School."

"Of course, Liu Xing, because you accepted a world mission, your main quest has an additional requirement. Investigate the true cause of death of Higashi Meizi, a friend of Juri Sonoda, from many years ago. Once you uncover the true cause of Higashi Meizi's death, the next world mission will be triggered."

"Alright, let's start immersing ourselves in the plot. By the way, each of you players can have two separate private room sessions, each lasting five minutes."

As soon as Sister Hope's words ended, Liu Xing found himself sitting in a classroom. His seat was the protagonist's spot in an Island Nation animean aisle seat near the window, second to last.

According to Watanabe Ryusei's memories, Liu Xing realized that Suneo Honekawa was sitting behind him, Shizuka Minamoto was in front, Nobita Nobi was on his right, Gian Gouda was to his right front, and Jiro Oshima, one of his followers, was still behind him.

The other two followers, Katsuya Maeda and Masayoshi Takahashi, were positioned near the front and back entrances of the classroom.

Apart from that, Liu Xing recalled some events that occurred after the Yueshihao module:

Firstly, the headteacher, who had been involved with the cult and attempted to perform a blood ritual on students, was dismissed from Morimoto High School. He was currently under investigation in the Cosmic Country. However, the headteacher's son, Yamamoto Nihyakugo, hadn't been influenced by his father's actions and was still working at Morimoto High School.

Honda Tetsuya, due to his "negligence in supervision, nearly leading to harm to students," was transferred to the archives room at the school and had broken up with Ms. Fujiwara.

With Honda Tetsuya's departure, a new teacher had naturally taken over as Watanabe Ryusei's homeroom teacher. The young man standing at the podium right now introduced himself as Ming Hanxing. Liu Xing was sure that this Ming Hanxing was a player because the name was so over-the-top and typical of what players would choose. Moreover, Ming Hanxing had transferred to Liu Xing's class just as this module began.

Standing beside Ming Hanxing was a transfer student named Ling Ishikawa. It was clear that Ling Ishikawa was another player.

Seeing this situation, Liu Xing breathed a sigh of relief. It seemed that all three players in this module were on the same side and had gathered together from the start, making things much more convenient.

After introducing himself, Ming Hanxing introduced Ling Ishikawa to the class, and then the bell rang to signal the end of class.

As Ming Hanxing was somewhat of a handsome young man, female students in the class flocked to flirt with their new homeroom teacher. On the other hand, Ling Ishikawa was surveying all the students in the class, as if searching for something. However, Liu Xing noticed that Ling Ishikawa had a furrowed brow and seemed disappointed, indicating that he hadn't found what he was looking for.

Wait a minute!

Liu Xing raised an eyebrow, thinking that this couldn't be just a coincidence. Liu Xing believed that Ling Ishikawa was most likely Yin En's new character card! The reason was simple: Ling Ishikawa was clearly searching for the last player in his eyes. He could also confirm that Ming Hanxing was a player.

Now, Ling Ishikawa's expression of disappointment clearly indicated that he thought the students in this class were not the final player because he "knew" that these players were all NPCs.

Most importantly, Liu Xing remembered Yin En mentioning in yesterday's message that he would create a new character card today to earn points because he didn't have enough to pay for the resurrection module.

With this in mind, Liu Xing was looking forward to the moment when Yin En realized he had "possessed" Watanabe Ryusei. He approached Ling Ishikawa, patted his shoulder, and smiled, saying, "Hello, new student."

Ling Ishikawa nodded and replied with a smile, "Hello, I'm Ling Ishikawa. Nice to meet you."

Liu Xing used his eyes to signal Ming Hanxing and subtly hinted to Ling Ishikawa, "Ishikawa, I didn't expect you to transfer to our school after the Yueshihao incident and join our class, which was almost disbanded. You're quite daring."

Ling Ishikawa raised an eyebrow and clearly understood the undertones of Liu Xing's words. He replied seriously, "I've heard of the Yueshihao incident, but so what? If I recall correctly from the reports, only two fanatical cultists died, right? There were also two brave Chinese students who tried to stop the cult ritual and are now in a coma, right?"

After hearing Ling Ishikawa's response, Liu Xing was certain that Ling Ishikawa was Yin En's "alt account"! Fate truly worked in mysterious ways.

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