“Sss…”
Xi Ye took a sharp breath.
Although “Extraordinary Twins” looked like a powerful and practical skill no matter how she viewed it, she couldn’t bring herself to be happy about it.
It was like a survival horror game where you could originally only walk, but the moment you stepped into a room, you suddenly discovered you could sprint. Your first reaction wouldn’t be excitement, but rather, “Great, the monsters are about to spawn.”
It followed the same logic as “there must be supplies before a boss battle.”
But worrying was useless. Xi Ye put away her phone, stretched, and pushed the door open—only to feel a heavy impact against her stomach.
This wasn’t because someone was waiting at the door to ambush her with a swift, ruthless gut punch, but rather because the person standing there was quite short, causing them to collide full-force… stomach-to-stomach.
“Ugh…!”
Xi Ye clutched her stomach in pain and took two steps back. She looked down and saw a vision of fiery red—
Fiery red long hair was tied into spiral twin-tails that hung over her shoulders like two drills. In a pair of orange-red eyes that resembled fireballs, bright flame patterns flickered. She had tied her academy uniform jacket around her waist like a cape, and the collar of her white undershirt was open, revealing delicate, petite collarbones. On her lower half, she wore a pair of asymmetrical black stockings; the left side reached only her ankle, while the right side hugged the top of her thigh. Where the stocking met her skin, there was a small pair of devil-ear decorations.
The other party had also taken quite a hit. She let out a strange cry while clutching her head, her twin-tails swaying twice. Once she recovered, she glared at Xi Ye with those big, fiery red eyes and shouted:
“What are you doing!?”
“…That’s a question I should be asking you, classmate,” Xi Ye replied, looking at her with some confusion.
At that moment, her phone vibrated slightly. She took it out to see a message from the app:
“Tu Xiaoyan, Student No. 00199, Academy: Arkham, Code Name: 「Cthugha」.”
Upon seeing this name, Xi Ye’s confusion transformed into a light chuckle.
“Hey, what are you laughing at?”
The girl named Tu Xiaoyan was thrown off by the black-haired girl’s sudden, cold laugh and stared at her suspiciously.
“Nothing, I just suddenly remembered something happy,” Xi Ye said, waving it off.
Cthugha was a Great Old One on the same level as Cthulhu and Hastur. An extremely powerful evil god, she was regarded as the symbol of “Fire.” Her true form was a giant fireball surrounded by thousands of small light orbs, resembling a sun on the earth, possessing immense destructive power.
According to the Bureau of Investigation’s records, she had briefly descended upon a small town in the American West for a few seconds in 1999, which resulted in the entire town being engulfed in a sea of flames, with every building burned to ash.
So, how exactly was such a powerful evil god sealed?
The answer was that the Bureau had somehow obtained the Yokai Power Crystal of a Snow Woman. They used the crystal to hand-craft a giant refrigerator and set that refrigerator as Cthugha’s landing point. Consequently, as soon as Cthugha descended, she was frozen into an ice sculpture.
Although Cthugha could continuously melt the ice shell, the Bureau could infinitely supply energy to the crystal. The situation turned into a standoff where Cthugha couldn’t break containment, and the Bureau couldn’t safely contain her. A bizarre balance formed between the two, effectively becoming a perpetual motion machine.
Later on, some unethical individuals even used the heat generated by Cthugha to produce electricity. Since then, the Bureau had never paid another electricity bill.
Back then, Xi Ye had wondered how the Bureau could obtain a Yokai Power Crystal when they hadn’t contained a Snow Woman, but now she probably knew why.
Regarding Xi Ye’s attitude, the little red-haired girl was very displeased. She pouted and whispered:
“As expected, an annoying person…”
Xi Ye’s lip twitched, but she said gently:
“Student Tu Xiaoyan, it’s not right to attack someone to their face, you know?”
“You… you, you, how do you know my name!?”
Tu Xiaoyan jumped back as if the floor were burning hot and pointed at her.
Xi Ye tilted her head, resting a hand on her generous chest, and said:
“I am a teacher at this school, after all. More importantly, why is Student Xiaoyan at my office door?”
“None—none of your business!”
Without giving Xi Ye a chance to ask further, Tu Xiaoyan made a face at her and quickly ran away, soon disappearing around the corner of the corridor.
“Student Xiaoyan!?”
Like a tragic hero reaching out, Xi Ye’s hand hung suspended in mid-air as she watched the girl vanish, then shrugged.
Another strange one. As expected, the evil gods here all have their own particular brand of mental illness. Forget it, there are still two hours before the meeting with Huang Xiaoyi and the others.
Since things have come to this, I should eat first.
***
When she returned to the classroom, Ke Susu was still working diligently. Xi Ye was very gratified by this and rewarded her with a head pat, then declared a general amnesty: students who hadn’t finished their homework were allowed to finish it in the afternoon.
Following that, a group of seafood students, dizzy with hunger, rushed toward the cafeteria. The teacher and student duo followed behind them and entered as well.
The cafeteria was massive, with four floors in total, though only two were open. The decoration style was much the same as the cafeteria at Miskatonic University—a row of windows with food placed in small compartments. Students only needed to take a tray, and the lunch lady would begin performing her “trembling hand” divine skill, filling the plate with tomato and egg stir-fry that consisted only of tomatoes.
However, the cuisine at Arkham was clearly different from what Xi Ye had imagined. It was almost entirely seafood, ranging from steamed and braised to pan-seared and sashimi. As for the varieties, they seemed to be about the same as the students here…
It reached the point where a bizarre scene occurred: a trout was asking the cafeteria lady for salmon sashimi.
Born from the same root, why are we so eager to fry each other… Xi Ye sighed.
As for the taste—should she say that a cafeteria is truly a cafeteria? Even with high-end seafood ingredients, they could produce such a mediocre flavor. Xi Ye chewed on fish meat that was as dry as an old woman’s cotton slippers, watching Ke Susu beside her happily devouring a giant skewer of grilled squid.
“Gah-gah! Teacher Xi Ye!”
Just as Xi Ye’s jaw was getting sore from chewing, a slightly hoarse and sharp voice descended from above, crashing into her eardrums. Putting aside why someone was striking up a conversation with her now, what was with the “Gah-gah!”?
Xi Ye looked up but saw nothing.
“Gah-gah! Down here!” The voice came from below.
Xi Ye looked down and saw a penguin. The species should be an Emperor Penguin. The whole bird was short and chubby, wearing a pair of sunglasses with a cigar clamped in its beak. It even had a rolled-up newspaper tucked under its wing, giving off the vibe of a 20th-century American blue-collar worker.
“Hello there!”
Seeing her look over, the penguin raised a wing in greeting, then lifted its sunglasses to reveal round black eyes that looked exactly like the pearls in bubble tea.
“Hel… lo?”
Xi Ye thought she had encountered another evil god girl and subconsciously scanned her phone, but she quickly realized that the penguin before her was neither an evil god nor a girl.
The penguin slapped its hat onto the table, twisted its chubby body to climb onto a chair, and sat across from Xi Ye. Propping up its wings, it introduced itself:
“My name is Gao Song, the Encyclopedia teacher at Arkham Academy. It’s a pleasure to meet you.”