Today, human physical fitness has far exceeded the limits of the old times. Even if Igor is not an Alpha known for his outstanding physical fitness, he can still use his naked eyes to look at that being hundreds of meters away... who is not sure whether it is human or not.
However, the clearer I see, the heavier the haze of fear that hangs over my heart becomes.
Azathoth did not care about the feelings of the human he rescued.
He felt that he could barely remember to change into a human appearance and try to reduce the other person's psychological shadow at the moment. He had reached the peak of his memory and empathy in recent times.
The tentacles that reached the ground fell silent for a moment before surging again like a wave towards the android army. The first few robots, advancing with such force one moment, were toppled to the ground helplessly like small boats in a storm, struggling futilely like tortoises. Their humanlike appearance and the fate they faced were enough to stir any onlooker with a pity.
After easily and smoothly curbing the attacker, Azathoth raised his hand, pulled the hood on his head, and jumped down from the roof.
Igor's pupils shrank, and in the blink of an eye, the owner of the tentacles landed on the ground, not even disturbing a single snowflake. The surroundings of Igor had become a dark ocean. He didn't dare to explore the face beneath the brim of the other person's hat. He cautiously slowed his movements and tried to push himself up to sit up, setting his saber aside as a sign of weakness.
It is obviously not wise to forcibly demonstrate your offensive capabilities in front of a stranger who is obviously unbeatable and not hostile.
Just as he tentatively stood up on his mechanical left leg, several tentacles suddenly sprang up from the ground, wrapping him tightly from head to toe. Igor: "..."
Is there really no hostility?
He was almost fixed in mid-air before he could react. A tentacle directly strangled his neck and clamped his jaw to lift him up, and another tentacle went around his limbs and pressed on the wound on his right leg. Although there was no intentional friction on the flesh to cause secondary damage, it still made him break out in a cold sweat and had difficulty breathing. He almost suspected that the other party did it on purpose. This action was actually a subtle warning.
Azathoth swore to heaven that he had never done it on purpose.
He was just a little... well, he was very resistant to close communication with any intelligent creature, so much so that when the young man in front of him put down the knife and prepared to stand up by holding the wall, Azathoth's heart beat faster when he caught a glimpse of this tiny movement. He imagined at the speed of light the scene of the other party walking up to him in a friendly manner, patting his shoulder with tears of gratitude, and the tentacles on the ground all got goosebumps and reacted immediately.
He stood there in silence for a long time, trying to calm down from the shock he had just received.
But in Igor's eyes, his silent, unmoving movement seemed even more enigmatic. The young man, suffering from excessive blood loss and oxygen deprivation, couldn't fathom what had angered the other man. Completely unable to move, he could only use his mouth, the only thing he could move freely, to save himself.
Whether begging for mercy or cursing, you can't just sit there and wait for death.
But before he could speak, Azathoth got straight to the point and said, "I can save you."
Azathoth wasn't sure if there was a language barrier between them. If the other person replied with "I don't understand," the situation would become very awkward. Fortunately, the gray-haired young man was only stunned for a moment before replying in a hoarse voice, "Yes."
Azathoth frowned. His height in anthropomorphic form was only about 1.78 meters, which was not considered strong and sturdy in any world. In addition, his tentacles directly lifted up the human in front of him. In fact, if Azathoth wanted to talk to the other party, he had to raise his head slightly.
In order to better observe the human's expression and to cover up their own extreme behavior after being frightened, the black tentacles on the ground rolled over to make room and put the young man down.
Igor half-knelt in the snow, barely able to breathe a sigh of relief, when the young man in the black cloak stepped forward. A slender tentacle, barely thicker than a finger, crawled up Igor's body and up his neck. The slippery, cold sensation made him shiver and tense his muscles. Then the tentacle lifted his chin, forcing him to look directly into its face.
"I can save you," the young man repeated in a soft, pleasant voice.
By this time, Igor could already see the other man's face clearly under his hood.
Individually, the facial features could only be described as delicate, yet for some reason, the whole held a strange charm—perhaps beauty wouldn't be an exaggeration. But Igor's focus wasn't on that. He forced his sweat-soaked eyelashes open. The closer he got, the clearer his view, and the more terrified he felt. It was like being immersed in a nightmare from which he would never wake up. Even the figure before him began to appear like a hallucinatory double.
This is probably what a drowning person feels like, entangled in seaweed and struggling in vain for life.
While feeling dizzy, Igor heard the young man continue to say:
"—In exchange, you must believe in me, just as you believe in the only God in your mind."
He opened his eyes wide, and sweat finally dripped from his eyelashes, wiping across his ruby-like eyes.
"Okay, I do."
The desperate human replied.
Azathoth breathed a sigh of relief. The moment the other party agreed, the name 'Igor Lester Sullivan' appeared in his mind, corresponding to the human youth in front of him.
At the same time, the hunger that tormented him all the time subsided without any warning. The comfort brought by a full stomach made him relax, and he looked at Igor, the human, with more favor than ever before.
"I am Azathoth." His social phobia temporarily took a back seat, and he tried to speak in a tone that was not too stiff.
The gray-haired young man remained in a half-kneeling position, suppressing the instinctive trembling of his muscles, bowed his head and said respectfully, "Yes."
Azathoth had no awareness that he had almost scared someone to death. He had accomplished a great cause, overcome immense difficulties and obstacles (referring to communication barriers), and finally recruited the only human follower so far to fill his stomach. He then turned around happily and waved to the bionic people on the ground.
The head of a bionic man turned clockwise twice in a rather terrifying manner, and then the head rolled down from the neck. A helicopter-like propeller emerged from the center of the top of the head, and it took off from the spot and flew over while humming.
As it flew, it said in a fuzzy mechanical voice with an electric current: "Why did you save him?"
Without waiting for Azathoth to answer, the android's head circled around Igor: "Well, he's yours now."
Azathoth had known this android leader, or rather, the mechanical terminal, for a long time. What satisfied him most about it was that they could communicate normally without much explanation. "Yes, he belongs to me now, so you can't hurt him anymore."
Igor: "..." The human, who had not yet recovered from the series of ups and downs just now, vaguely felt that something was wrong, but wisely chose to remain silent.
The bionic man's head in the air moved up and down in a nod, and then it didn't utter any orders. The bionic army suppressed by the tentacles controlled by Azathoth stopped struggling and fell quietly in the pure white snow like a pile of old things abandoned by humans for a long time, with broken limbs lying aside and dim eyes looking into the invisible void.
This was also the scene Igor saw when he first stepped into the city. Everywhere were chaotic and silent corpses and rubble of stones and steel bones buried in the snow.
Abandoned, messy, and weathered.
Seeing this, the tentacles that were spreading like a black swamp also retracted and merged with the shadows in the blink of an eye and disappeared.
The city under the white fog became lonely and peaceful again, as if the previous battle had never happened.
However, the painful wound on Igor's right leg was a stark reminder of the horrible and unspeakable reality that had occurred under the warm sunlight.
There were too many questions in his mind to count, but after he committed himself to the stranger in the black feather cloak, his instinctive fear of the other party, which he had been unable to control, strangely disappeared.
——Maybe it really is a god?
In the rapid development of human technology and individual power, there are superior beings in the universe or in some unknown dimensions that are completely different from known life forms. Such speculation has never disappeared in the long river of history.
What's more, within the official religious system of the Federation, there is a firm belief that devout believers can communicate with God in person.
But as a beta who came from a grassroots background and graduated from a military academy, Igor himself did not really believe in the official propaganda slogans used to appease the troops and civilians in the war zone before the war.
Given his past experiences, Igor still didn't intend to let his guard down in the face of this strange situation. But the truth was, as he limped along with Azathoth in an unknown direction, the sense of security and the comforting feeling of returning home that rose in his heart overwhelmed the pain in his buttocks, nearly swallowing up his sanity.
—Do I really have such a thing as rationality now?
The little bit of vigilance he had left was sending out alarms frantically, trying to wake him up and prevent him from being sold out and not only helping him lose money.
Azathoth knew nothing about the inner struggles of the followers he had picked up for free.
He traversed the snow with ease, stopping every few steps to wait for Igor to catch up. The newly minted evil god possessed remarkable patience, yet his mindset and cognitive abilities differed from those of humans. The android terminal, still following closely behind them, finally couldn't help but speak, "Azathoth, his blood pressure is below the human average, his breathing is rapid, his pulse is weak, and his heart rate doesn't match the data. He's probably bleeding profusely from his legs and is going into hemorrhagic shock."
"Let me ask you something, but you don't want his body, do you?"
Yes.
Suddenly remembering how fragile the human body was, Azathoth suddenly realized it, and a tentacle suddenly emerged from the snow and pushed into Igor's hand.
"Hold on." The patient with communication disorder said concisely.
If someone else were to experience the same events and conversation here, the saber that Igor had stuck in his thigh would have already been thrust into the innocent octopus leg that had emerged, and it could have been stir-fried and served as a side dish.
But the person in front of him is his trading partner, object of faith, and savior (God).
The gray-haired young man then pinched the tip of the tentacle with his fingers covered in cold sweat, expressionless.
...Not to mention the feel is surprisingly good.
After that, the speed of advancement suddenly increased significantly. Three minutes later, Azathoth stopped in front of a building with an open door and said to Igor, who was pale and struggling to avoid fainting:
"Let me see the injuries on your body."
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