Naruto: Call of Cthulhu

In Kagami's mind, dozens of names suddenly appeared.

These had all been members Jashin cult, who had seen the presence of the King in Yellow and had successfully offered their loyalty.

Of course, some of them had been killed by the avatar because they had not knelt immediately upon seeing him. Or, their pitiful sanity had not been able to withstand the presence of the King in Yellow, leading them to lose all rationality and die instantly.

As a result, the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign consisted of only over twenty members, which was pitifully small compared to the Esoteric Order of cult that worshipped Cthulhu.

The followers of the cult, combined with the Deep Ones, could easily have drowned these twenty or so people with a single spit.

Fortunately, the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign was made up of relatively elite members; many ninjas from Yu had originally been part of the Jashin cult, and those who had survived under the sanity checks of the King in Yellow were all capable ninjas.

In this world, a person's sanity could usually be measured by the amount of chakra they possessed.

The stronger the chakra, the stronger the mind, which meant greater resistance to indescribable entities.

However, this was not absolute; for instance, someone like Guy, who was considered a fool, or Hidan, who was regarded as a madman.

Handing the Yellow Sign to Hidan and making him the leader of the Brotherhood of the Yellow Sign was also Kagami's intention.

The reason was not particularly special; at least Hidan possessed immortality. As a follower of the King in Yellow, not dying was the best attribute.

---

Itachi was walking alone.

Suddenly, a vague mocking laughter echoed in the phantom darkness ahead.

Itachi looked up but did not see the source of the laughter; however, the mocking sound continued to resonate in his ears.

Gigigigi.

The laughter was sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right, and with each chuckle, Itachi's inner anger grew.

Then, all of a sudden, a massive ancient stone city appeared before him.

This city, made of green stone pillars, emitted an unclean aura, and just standing outside the city and looking at its appearance made him feel a chill, as if he were submerged in the cold depths of the sea.

Suddenly, Itachi felt something wrapping around his waist, and his entire body was lifted into the air.

Looking up, he realized he was being grabbed by a huge shadow lurking above the city. In the shadow's hand, Itachi's body was smaller than the skewer for a dango; just a little pressure from the thumb could easily snap his body.

He was firmly held in the shadow's grip, and no matter how hard he struggled, he could not break free.

At that moment, he heard the laughter again.

Turning to look, he finally saw the person making the mocking sound.

It was a black man dressed in a flamboyant robe; his face could not be seen in the darkness, but Itachi could clearly see his bright white teeth revealed by his smile.

He stood beside Itachi, watching him being grasped by the giant shadow, continuously laughing as if mocking Itachi's predicament.

This only made Itachi angrier. Just as he raised his hand to strike the man close at hand, his body drifted away again.

This time, the shadow from the stone city directly grabbed his body and brought him face-to-face with a giant, tentacled face.

As the distance closed, the shadow in Itachi's vision diminished; what he could only see as a dark chin transformed into a clear image.

A huge, ugly green octopus head stared right at him.

Itachi jolted awake, his chest heaving, beads of sweat forming on his forehead. The same dream had haunted him every night since he had narrowly escaped death in the Land of Gods.

Walking alone in the darkness, he had first been captured by the shadow above the giant stone city, and then the black man had laughed at him nearby.

Each time his body had been drawn closer to that enormous face, the dream had abruptly ended.

Itachi knew exactly what he was seeing in his dream.

The stone city should have been the deep-sea city R'lyeh mentioned in the cult's doctrine, and hovering above it had been the deity they worshipped—Cthulhu.

The man who had continuously mocked him was the Black Pharaoh he had encountered on the night of his clan's extermination.

But what puzzled him was why these two seemingly unrelated figures appeared together in his dreams. Since the night of the extermination, Itachi had not dreamed of the Black Pharaoh.

Yet ever since he had seen Cthulhu and R'lyeh, these two elements had appeared together in his dreams.

Could there have been a connection between the two?

He could not figure out the relationship between them; he could only get out of bed and prepare to wash his face at the sink.

Bright sunlight poured into the room from outside; although it was daytime, Itachi still chose to sleep.

Recently, this dream had significantly affected the quality of his sleep, so he could only catch up on sleep during the day to feel better.

Cold water splashed on his face, waking Itachi's mind a bit.

He grabbed a towel from the nearby shelf and wiped his face a few times. When he pulled it away, the mirror revealed tentacles growing from his chin.

"What!"

In his terror, Itachi threw the towel onto the mirror and collapsed to the ground.

Was that me just now?

Why had my face changed to that?

Regulating his breathing, he stood up again and slowly looked into the mirror.

Although he had faint dark circles under his eyes and his complexion wasn't good, he still had distinct tear troughs and a cold expression along with a well-defined jawline; it was still his face.

He touched his chin with his hand, confirming through touch that there were no foreign objects on it, which finally reassured him.

"Maybe my mental state isn't so good."

At that moment, a voice reached his ears.

"Itachi."

"You currently have no partner; according to the rules of Akatsuki, you will be reassigned missions after finding a partner."

"So during this time, you will monitor Orochimaru's laboratory and the progress of his experiments."

"That is all."

"I understand," Itachi replied to Pain.

---

In a bright spot of a giant cave, Orochimaru stood in front of an operating table, rapidly switching between various surgical instruments in his hands.

Suddenly, his movements came to a halt. He turned to look into the darkness in the distance and said, "Come out."

From the darkness, a slightly shorter figure stepped out from behind a rock.

Upon seeing this person's face, a wicked smile immediately appeared on Orochimaru's face.

"Itachi."

"You're here."

Itachi slowly walked from the dark area into the light, exposing his body to the illumination.

Orochimaru maintained his smile as he looked up and down at Itachi's body, but when he noticed Itachi's dark circles under his eyes, the smile on Orochimaru's face faded slightly, as if he were a parent seeing their child staying up late.

"Itachi, you don't look so good."

Itachi didn't answer but turned his gaze to the operating table.

What lay on the table was not a human body but a corpse of a Deep One.

He recognized that this was the pureblood Deep One he had captured in the Land of Gods. The horrifying body had already been eviscerated under Orochimaru's scalpel.

Itachi had no interest in examining the structure inside, so he turned his head and said, "The leader sent me here to help."

"You're here to monitor me, aren't you?"

"…"

Itachi didn't answer, which was equivalent to an admission.

Orochimaru smiled slightly, not caring, and turned back to continue the dissection.

Standing behind Orochimaru and watching him, Itachi suddenly thought of the mission in the Land of Gods.

Guren had mentioned that part of the intelligence was something she had gathered over the years, and another part was provided by Orochimaru.

If that's the case, does Orochimaru know about the things that keep appearing in his dreams?

"Orochimaru."

"Hmm?"

"What is Cthulhu?"

Orochimaru's scalpel stopped at Itachi's question.

"Your interest in this is rather unexpected," he said. "You really have impressed me."

Itachi didn't bother with pleasantries and directly asked, "Do you know, or not?"

Orochimaru turned to look at Itachi and said nonchalantly, "I know a little. What part do you want to know?"

"All of it."

"Greedy, aren't you?"

Orochimaru put down his scalpel, indicating that this would be a longer discussion.

"Cthulhu is the god worshiped by the cult in the Land of Waves, now known as the Land of God. The Deep Ones are among his other worshipers. You should know this much, right?"

"Hmm." Itachi nodded.

"But actually, Cthulhu is not just the god of the cult. He is also one of the Great Old Ones, a being that stands alongside many other evil gods."

"Wait a minute." Itachi immediately interrupted Orochimaru and asked, "Are you saying there are many evil gods like Cthulhu?"

Orochimaru nodded and said in a serious yet slightly playful tone, "Among the many evil gods, I think he's just a rather mediocre one."

"In the face of certain beings, he is insignificant."

At this point, Itachi's face remained somewhat cold, but his heart was already stirred.

Great Old Ones? Cthulhu is just one of them? And he's just mediocre?  

All of this was difficult for him to imagine because, judging by the number of people who worshiped Cthulhu, if the so-called Great Old Ones had many followers, he would have never heard of this strange term.

Noticing Itachi's inner confusion, Orochimaru began to explain.

"The Great Old Ones, simply put, are the rulers from other worlds. They are composed of substances far beyond ordinary existence, hence their structure is not influenced by the laws of physics."

"What we can observe or imagine is merely their material shell; their essence has surpassed ordinary spatial limitations and cannot be easily measured."

"These Great Old Ones began to move across various places in the universe long before humanity was born."

"Their existence transcends time and space far beyond our present moment, so it's normal that we don't perceive their existence in our history."

"Upon reflection, the era of ninjas is only about a thousand years; how many people from a thousand years ago could know about them?"

Orochimaru's words once again shocked Itachi, as he originally thought that Cthulhu was merely an illusion among cultists, but in Orochimaru's words, everything seemed to transform into a real existence.

According to Orochimaru, the enormous, grotesque figure haunting his nightly dreams was no mere vision, but a true god.

Itachi shook his head, denying it: "Since you say the existence of the Great Old Ones has transcended our time and space, how do you know of their existence?"

"How do you know all this isn't just your delusion?"

Orochimaru smiled slightly.

"Alright then, let me prove it to you."

With that, he got up and walked into the darkness behind the operating table. He reached for a switch in a dark spot, and the lights on the stone wall immediately brightened, illuminating a series of liquid tanks placed in front of the stone wall.

Standing in front of one of the tanks, he began to introduce the creature inside to Itachi.

"This creature is called the Elder Thing; they descended into our world from outer space a billion years ago."

"At that time, most of our world was still ocean, but they possessed a mature amphibious biological system, capable of adapting to life in the sky, sea, and land, and thus settled here."

"They had intelligence comparable to that of humans and established large cities and a mature social system in the world at that time."

"However, their cities and civilization have almost all been lost, because three hundred million years ago, their race went to war with Cthulhu and his kin."

"The ultimate result was the extinction of the Elder Things; no one knows if any Elder Things still survive, but I can tell you that the ruins of their last city are located in the mountains of the northern ice plains in the Land of Snow."

That's when it hit Itachi.

The spindle-shaped creature before him stirred a memory—he had seen an Elder Thing before.

About some years ago, a newspaper had published news about the discovery of an ultra-ancient civilization in the Land of Snow, which was very popular at the time.

That newspaper had even published a blurry photo, where the spindle-shaped body and five-pointed star head could be vaguely seen.

Before he could organize his thoughts, Orochimaru walked over again and said, "When I defected from Konoha, what I actually took with me wasn't the sealing book claimed by the Third Hokage, but a statue of Cthulhu."

"That statue of Cthulhu possesses very magical abilities, allowing anyone who sees the statue to become immersed in a wonderful illusion and ultimately turning them into a faithful believer of Cthulhu."

These words made Itachi's heart suddenly startle, as he suddenly thought of the things he had been dreaming of in recent days.

Will I become a believer of Cthulhu too?