How a Top-Tier Investigator Goes Mad

Elias was an utterly ordinary thirty-eight-year-old war photographer. After injuring his left arm on the battlefield and witnessing a supernatural phenomenon firsthand, he developed post-traumatic stress disorder, became addicted to alcohol, and started having hallucinations. He had no choice but to temporarily retire and devote himself to searching for the truth.

It all began that day...

At first, he had merely stepped into an ordinary little tavern. But the tavern concealed something strange. In truth, he had embarked on an irreversible path that would gradually lead him into madness.

He ate a jellyfish from the raging sea and tasted human fingernails. He even felt the jellyfish re-forming inside his stomach.

He grabbed jellyfish eggs and hurled them at the Deep One chasing him. The Deep One shrieked and wailed, its face badly injured as if it had been splashed with sulfuric acid.

He used an empty liquor bottle, sea salt, scales shed by a nonhuman creature, and jellyfish eggs to make a white mixture and foam, then smashed open the lock on a wooden box that twisted, shrieked, and bit people.

He kissed a Deep One's young and the moving, inscribed film left behind by his father, calling them “my darling little kitties” and “my good little baby.” Laughing, he cried, “So cute!” and spun around three and a half times on the spot.

The onlookers' scalps went numb. “You lunatic! Lunatic! Lunatic!” (They were promptly covered in slime by the jellyfish eggs and an adorable Deep One youngling chewing on them.) “Aaaah!”

Theme: Perseverance brings victory