"No hope again."
Liu Xing looked at the text message on his phone, sighed helplessly, then put it down, lay back on his bed, and said with emotion: "Studying medicine really ruins your life."
Liu Xing, male, 22 years old, graduated from Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and is unemployed.
Two weeks ago, Liu Xing had an argument with his department head. After all, Liu Xing was still young, so he resigned in anger.
In the past two weeks, Liu Xing has been applying for jobs at various hospitals. However, since he had just graduated and had few connections, the result was always "please go home and wait for news."
"Am I really going home?" Liu Xing found his father's number in his address book.
Liu Xing's family has been practicing medicine for three generations, and they own three clinics. When Liu Xing graduated, his father wanted him to stay home to help out, but Liu Xing declined. He didn't want to be stuck in one position at such a young age; he wanted to explore more.
"Okay, but I'll give you 5,000 yuan for living expenses. From now on, you'll have to earn your own living," Liu's father said at the time. "If you can't make it, just come back honestly. You can take over that clinic if you want."
"Forget it! Going back after just over two months is too embarrassing," Liu Xing thought, and turned off his phone. He knew his father's character; going back now would be ridiculed for the rest of his life.
"I only have 1,000 left. That means I'll be out of food in a month at most." Liu Xing pulled the last of his family's savings from his wallet and stared at the ceiling with melancholy.
"Oh, why think so much? Let's go League of Legends! Time to beat up some elementary school kids for a change of pace."
He immediately got to work, pushing himself up and turning on his computer.
An hour later, Liu Xing dropped his mouse with a look of displeasure, staring at his computer speechlessly.
"It's only Monday, and there are so many elementary school kids?!"
Speechless, Liu Xing closed League of Legends and decided to check out the latest anime on Bilibili, the country's largest website.
"Grandpa's playing the game again," Liu Xing rubbed his chin, coming to a sound conclusion.
"Forget it, I'd better go flirt with the girls in the group." Liu Xing opened QQ.
"Ding ding ding."
As soon as he logged in, a pop-up window took up most of Liu Xing's screen.
"Oh my god, Xun is so shameless! They've been making their ads this big for ages." Liu Xing was taken aback by the oversized pop-up window.
"Come play and get 100,000 RMB!" Liu Xing stared at the bright red words in the pop-up window, speechless.
Liu Xing had seen these kinds of online game ads before. After all, as a middle-aged man born in the 1990s, he had seen all sorts of online game slogans, but this was the first time he'd seen an ad that directly boasted a 100,000 RMB reward.
Thinking of this, Liu Xing couldn't help but mutter to himself, "That's pretty impressive! 100,000 RMB! Okay, just for this ad, I'll give it a try. It's not like I'm losing money anyway."
So, Liu Xing clicked "Join Game" under the slogan.
"Ding."
After a soft beep, Liu Xing's computer screen went black.
"Holy crap!" Liu Xing couldn't help but roar.
Just as Liu Xing, heartbroken about the torrent file, was about to restart his computer, it automatically restored itself. However, Liu Xing noticed a game icon on the desktop.
"That's not bad." Liu Xing quickly clicked on a hidden folder. The files inside were intact.
"So it seems the game just installed automatically?" Liu Xing looked at the strange game icon on his desktop, but it looked familiar to him. It was a portrait of Cthulhu.
Cthulhu is an evil being in the Cthulhu mythos, created by American novelist Howard Phillips Lovecraft (hereafter referred to as the "God of Lovecraft"). It has an octopus-like head, countless tentacles on its face, huge claws on its hands and feet, and bat-like leathery wings on its back. Warcraft players might be able to relate it to C'Thun, a boss in the game, which is a tribute to the Cthulhu mythos.
Liu Xing's first encounter with the Cthulhu mythos was when a good friend dragged him to a board game room to watch a Cthulhu role-playing game.
At this thought, Liu Xing raised an eyebrow and took a closer look at the title under the game icon. Sure enough, it was exactly what he had imagined.
"Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall?" Cthulhu is simply a popular board game in Europe and the United States. However, unlike popular Chinese games like Werewolf and Three Kingdoms, Cthulhu is a role-playing game. Its defining feature is the immersive role-playing experience. Within the rules, the story unfolds in a variety of open-ended ways based on the player's actions. For example, in other games, you encounter an enemy and can only defeat them to advance. In Cthulhu, you can avoid them, bribe them, persuade them, or even join them.
However, combat is never the main theme in Cthulhu, as it generally means total annihilation. The enemies the explorers face are all mythical creatures!
The Cthulhu role-playing game is naturally based on a series of novels by the great author Ai Shouyi, collectively known as the Cthulhu Mythos. After Ai Shouyi's death, many authors wrote fan fiction, ultimately giving rise to a whole new mythology system: the Cthulhu Mythos.
Cthulhu, the face of this mythology, is a prominent deity among the Great Old Ones, a major faction within the Cthulhu mythology. He symbolizes "water" within the "Fire, Wind, Earth, and Water" faction. Now sealed by the Old Gods, a powerful and hostile force, he slumbers in the underwater city of R'lyeh in the South Pacific. Influenced by cosmic events or other external factors, Cthulhu's seal will automatically break, and he will reappear at sea. However, because the seal is not completely broken, Cthulhu cannot escape R'lyeh. When the stars shift again and the seal's power is restored, Cthulhu will return to R'lyeh to continue his eternal sleep. When Cthulhu's seal is truly broken, he will surely destroy the world.
From the Cthulhu setting, it's clear that Cthulhu has the power to destroy the world, and Cthulhu isn't even the strongest within the Cthulhu Mythos. Furthermore, within the Cthulhu campaign, Cthulhu can unconditionally kill a random number of players, and his attack speed far surpasses the player's. Therefore, when a player encounters Cthulhu, they're essentially doomed.
Of course, Cthulhu is a boss-level entity and won't appear casually. However, below Cthulhu lie various mythical creatures. The weakest are the Ghouls and the Deep Ones (basically, murlocs, though some details differ). However, even the weakest of these, the Ghouls and the Deep Ones, are still comparable to world-class boxing champions and martial arts masters in terms of combat prowess.
Of course, Liu Xing, then a newbie, once asked the friend who introduced him to the game: even martial arts masters and boxing champions can still be defeated with a single shot.
Liu Xing's friend chuckled and told him he was overthinking it. Players in Cthulhu role-playing games mostly play ordinary characters, except for police officers and detectives, who at most possess a pistol. Furthermore, while Cthulhu role-playing games offer a high degree of freedom, all actions must remain within the rules. For example, as an ordinary person, you can't acquire weapons like submachine guns or carry them around freely. Furthermore, ghouls and deep-dwellers have all-around superior attributes to ordinary humans.
Therefore, under normal circumstances, humans have no chance of defeating these mythical creatures. Of course, there are some exceptions, because Cthulhu role-playing games are very free-form, and some groups choose to set their own rules, such as adding unusual skills...
Cthulhu role-playing games are categorized into online and offline groups. Online groups, on the other hand, involve players playing together in real-life gatherings, while online groups involve players playing online through messaging apps like QQ and related tools. Furthermore, Cthulhu role-playing games require significant time and effort, with a single session lasting from one or two hours to several years. Unlike Werewolf and Three Kingdoms, which can be played in just ten minutes, Cthulhu role-playing games are relatively rare in China.
Furthermore, unlike Werewolf and Three Kingdoms, Cthulhu role-playing games lack dedicated online platforms and mobile apps. This leads many Cthulhu role-playing enthusiasts to find themselves without a suitable place to play with their friends after successfully recommending them to the game. Liu Xing was like that initially. Although he longed to try Cthulhu role-playing games, he never had the opportunity to actually participate. Organizing a group session is challenging, as participants need to commit several hours simultaneously, and online groups also suffer from the lack of dedicated platforms.
And now, Liu Xing looked at the "Cthulhu Role-Playing Game Hall" on the computer desktop and couldn't help laughing. He didn't expect that he would encounter a platform dedicated to Cthulhu role-playing games. This was really beyond Liu Xing's expectations.