Days as a Spiritual Mentor in American Comics

"I am! I am! You maniac!! You..."

Old Sirteck's roar came to an abrupt halt; he looked as if he had seen a ghost, barely noticing the faint light from the status LED on the night vision goggles that Shiller was holding, seeing the priest robe he was wearing adorned with golden patterns.

"You... you're from the Court?" Fear trembled in his voice as he stuttered, "So were you sent to silence me? How on earth do you all know so much..."

Shiller became impatient with his nonsense, and flicked the crowbar in his hand, "Tell me everything you know, or else I'll throw you back into that cave where your wife is."

"Don't, don't, don't!" Old Sirteck bellowed, "You can't throw me back there, that monster will take my life!"

"But... but since you've already tracked me down here, what else is there that you don't know?" Old Sirteck continued speaking while drawing a sharp breath. The wound on his ankle was so painful it made him sweat all over, and from his reaction, Shiller could tell that he was indeed a pampered rich man who had never been trained to resist interrogation. His words were likely to hold considerable truth.

"I know many things, otherwise I wouldn't have found you here. But there are more things that interest me, and perhaps I might give you a chance if you satisfy me."

Old Sirteck made a wry smile and said, "Forget it, I've always thought this day would come. Ever since I knew about that thing, I never thought I could survive at your hands."

"Quit your yapping and start talking about what you know."

"I have some recollection of your outfit. Are you a member of the Pope's personal guard? This makes me somewhat puzzled; I don't think the Holy Father would send his personal guard to deal with a small fry like me, unless he actually knows... All right, put the crowbar down, will that not suffice?"

"You should be aware of that hotel, right?"

"Try to prod me again, and I'll break your other leg."

"All right, it looks like you do know, after all it's hardly a secret. The incident caused such a stir that very few are unaware of it. But what you may not know, is that the hotel's irregularity shocked the whole world, and many religions considered it to be a so-called divine punishment."

"And among the first batch of red cardinals dispatched to investigate the hotel's anomalies was a highly renowned figure, one of the Church's later Three Saints, Gad Barelton."

"Everyone else found nothing of use in the hotel, and upon returning, they merely reported the gruesome scene of the incident. But Barelton found something crucial in that hotel."

"What?"

"I am not sure what it is, but that is the very thing that led to the frequent occurrences of strange incidents. Barelton knew how to control it, and by acting at the right time, he could create massive panic, until the whole world was under the threat of these bizarre events."

"Why would he do that?"

"What else, but for power? If it weren't for these strange events that only the Church could handle, how could the Church have become the behemoth it is today?"

"That's just preposterous," Shiller commented. "It's impossible for one person's efforts to achieve such deeds."

"Of course it's not just the effort of one person. There are many who wish to profit from this. I saw the opportunity at that time and established an insurance company related to strange events, and so, I became wealthy. So, to be precise, I am also part of this conspiracy."

"You're quite frank."

"It's nothing. From your expression, you must not be surprised by such matters. Then you'll know it's actually an open scam, sacrificing some ordinary people for us to gain more power and money."

"If that's truly the case, then why have you fallen so low?"

Shiller clearly touched a nerve, and Old Sirteck sighed before saying, "Because no one knew that they had opened Pandora's box."

Shiller took out Sailor Pick's Diary from his bosom, and when Old Sirteck saw the book, he became agitated, even reaching out to grab it, but Shiller did not give him the opportunity. Shaking the book in his hand, he said, "How much do you know about this thing?"

Shiller noticed the change in Old Sirteck's expression; he knew he must have obtained a key item or else he would be unable to extract more information from him.

But the sight of the book made Old Sirteck unable to remain calm. After lying on the ground and catching his breath for a while, he said, "This is one of the reasons I came here."

"What?"

"It was not originally mine. Do you know the Jeff family?"

Shiller nodded and said, "I had the misfortune of meeting their corpses."

"It seems they were not spared in the end. Perhaps you have heard the story of Jeff's youth; he was a sailor, but he came to be regarded as unlucky following a bizarre maritime disaster. After that, almost no one wanted to hire him."

"But I saw his letters; you said you would employ him."

"That was the plan, but unfortunately, he died, so that was that."

"You were just deceiving him."

"No, not entirely. I truly wanted this book in his possession, but I was indeed looking to employ him, as I wanted to replicate that maritime disaster to see if what is recorded in this book is true."

"So what's in the book?"

"Let's talk about that maritime disaster first. For Jeff, it was a lifelong nightmare. He described it as a 'terrible storm,' but he told me that what really destroyed the fleet wasn't a storm at sea but rather a terrifying presence that descended upon the waters."

Shiller furrowed his brow, sensing what was coming, and asked, "What was that fleet transporting?"

"Artifacts," said Old Sirteck. "The ships were filled with looted artifacts, ancient scrolls, and texts. The ultimate destination of the fleet was England."

"Somebody touched those tomes, right?"

"You're indeed a member of the personal guard, you guys must also know about this, huh?" Old Sirteck said with a hint of mockery, "Yes, an ignorant sailor opened Pandora's magic box."

"Is it this Sailor Pick?"

"No, not him. This sailor is from a much earlier time, but they encountered the same thing; something descended upon them."

"What was it?"

"I don't know, even if I did, I couldn't tell. It all started because a sailor wasn't clean-handed and stole something. The first mate wanted to conduct a thorough search to find out exactly how much was missing, so they checked all the relics and tomes."

"One of the sailors responsible for checking the tomes, in order to make sure that no other items were mixed in, flipped through each of them and found a book containing terrible forbidden knowledge."

"He couldn't understand the contents but he accidentally memorized a small fragment of a spell written in Latin, which he could probably spell out."

"And then did he use this spell?"

"Exactly, he actually didn't intend to use it, but that damned thief pinned the theft on him. The first mate beat him half to death and chopped off two of his fingers. He harbored a grudge in his heart, wishing all those who bullied him were dead."

"He thought it was a black magic spell, so he simply used this spell to curse the first mate, stuffing the piece of paper with the spell written on it into the first mate's pocket and also carved it several times under his own bunk."

"And then what happened?"

"And then there was no 'then what.' This sailor suddenly went mad, and then they encountered an unprecedented storm. Every single person in the fleet died, except for Jeff who survived."

"He's the thief?"

"How did you know?"

"I know he was a gambler and that they often gambled on long voyages. In such no-return situations, not being able to pay up after losing could cost you your life, so it's natural for him to take desperate actions."

Old Sirteck nodded, "Right, he's the thieving scoundrel. The key is how he survived."

Shiller looked at him without speaking, and just as Old Sirteck was about to say something, Shiller shook the diary in his hand and said, "Is this the tome Jeff stole? Did he find a way to survive from this?"

"You really can't hide anything from you." Old Sirteck huffed and then said, "Yes, that guy stumbled upon it. He couldn't steal the big artifacts, and the oddly shaped ones had nowhere to hide, so he could only steal books and scrolls to pay off his debts to his creditor."

"After the storm hit, with no way out, he stumbled upon a method to survive in one of the books he had stolen."

"What is it?"

"I don't know either, the book was already incomplete when I got my hands on it. I guess Jeff didn't want anyone else to know the method."

Shiller raised the crowbar in his hand and said, "Don't make me say it a second time, tell me what the method is?"

Old Sirteck swallowed and said, "I really don't know."

"Alright, it seems like you want to die alongside your wife." After saying that, Shiller dragged Old Sirteck back the way they came. He let out an earth-shattering scream, but in the end, he gave in halfway there.

"He really tore those things out! I haven't seen them! But from the things he said, I inferred some clues..."

"Like?"

"He might not have done anything."

"Are you playing with me?"

"No, what I mean is, he might have knocked himself out before the disaster struck, or he might have been drunk, essentially unconscious."

Shiller understood in his heart. It was recorded in Sailor Pick's Diary that they too had encountered a storm at sea, but they were guided safely home by the lighthouse, meaning they survived the disaster.

All sections related to the disaster in the diary were torn out, but Pick kept complaining about the boredom of long-distance sailing and mentioned that they often drank, so it wasn't hard to guess that on the night of the disaster, Pick and a few good friends got dead drunk, and when they awoke, they found everyone else dead while they had escaped unscathed because of their drunken stupor.

This also fitted with the setting of the Cthulhu Mythos. Whether you're dealing with the Old Ones or the Outer Gods, they don't intentionally kill sailors; more often it's the sailors who bring madness onto the ship by coming into contact with forbidden knowledge.

Indeed, one way to deal with some monsters in the Cthulhu Mythos is not to listen, not to look, not to feel. As long as my Intelligence is low enough, I can't understand any text, I can't comprehend any forbidden knowledge, so naturally, my Sanity Points won't drop. Shiller was willing to name this approach "Ababa Stupid Flow."

The chronological order of the whole incident could be:

A sailor named Pick and his fleet unfortunately encountered a disaster related to the Cthulhu Mythos. Pick and his friends blundered their way through the disaster and recorded their experiences in this diary.

Later on, the diary was transported to England as an artifact by the team Jeff was part of, and coincidentally this fleet encountered a similar disaster. Jeff, blinded by gambling debts, planned to steal the ancient tomes to settle his debts and happened to get hold of this diary, inferring from it the method Pick used to survive the disaster and using it to make it out alive.

After his return, Jeff, as the only lucky survivor of the shipwreck, was thought by people to be either a resurrected monster or the source of misfortune. No one was willing to hire him again, leading to his poverty and destitution.

Old Sirteck, investigating this matter as the owner of his own fleet, contacted Jeff and offered to help him out of his hardship and reemploy him, thereby getting the diary from him.

Jeff wasn't stupid either; to keep enough chips in his hand, he tore out the crucial contents of the diary. However, he didn't anticipate that the cunning and shrewd Old Sirteck had long since inferred the key to surviving the disaster from their conversation.