Cthulhu Gonfalon

There were about five legendary creatures that lived around the Ashes Wood and surrounding area.

Snow Elephant King in the far north of Mountains of Barrenness; the Arctic Tyrant of Dragon-roar Town; the Skeleton Devourer in Peace Swamp; Shadow Devil; and Greg the Death Knight.

The first three had a fixed territory, but the latter two didn’t. The Shadow Devil at least had a rough activity area, but the Death Knight had nothing; it went around the Ashes Wood without aim.

There was not only one adventurer that once got in touch with him, up close. Although the Death Knight was a death soul, it didn’t possess the violent and ferocious qualities of a normal death soul. He only held his head, rode on his skeleton horse that only had bones, and murmured, “Who am I?” He asked these sort of philosophical questions all day.

However, meeting him was definitely an unhappy experience because he would pester every person that he met. He asked confusing questions. Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going? What is life? What is true success? What is the value of a human? And so on…

His questions didn’t cause pain in one’s body, but they were questions that no one could answer. In addition, his whole body was bandaged with strong, death-divine light. If a commoner was touched by divine light, they would be terrified. Even those courageous adventurers would be frightened if they were to stay long enough in the death-divine light. Under such circumstances, who would have enough strength to think about such questions?

Hence, the outcome in the end was mostly these unlucky people who finally broke down under the double attack, mentally and physically. Every one of them fainted on the ground, foaming at the mouth. Many of them even lost part of their memories, and some even faced after effects: when they heard people asking similar questions later they would have epileptic fits.

Of course, some of those who had guts and weren’t afraid of death would be angry out of embarrassment due to those questions, and draw their swords at each other. In the end, needless to say, the death knight didn’t like to resolve problems with violence; but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t. Plus, there were not many stronger than him, at least in the main realm.

Sui Xiong was reminiscing on the information and couldn’t help but find it funny.

The Death Knight is such an interesting character!

He flew around in the air above the Ashes Woods to find the shadow that was wandering around alone. Not knowing if it was because that he was unlucky, he only found the Death Knight after almost half a month.

It was already a dark night with no moon and no stars, and the snow was falling. Sui Xiong noticed a pile of snow that shook and shattered. Out from it came a skeleton warhorse, and above on horseback, a knight wearing old armor.

It was empty above the knight’s neck but his left hand was carrying something round. Looking it carefully, Sui Xiong saw it was a helmet; a closer look revealed there was a skull inside.

“Could it be the large-sized skeleton soldier?”

Sui Xiong whispered curiously, and slowly shrunk its body into average human size. He then slowly descended onto the ground.

Death Knight, of course, noticed him and raised his head to look up at the sky.

It was weird to bring it out; he didn’t have a skull, but when he turned around with his chest out, Sui Xiong could clearly feel that he raised his head to look at him. It was a very weird feeling.

“Hello; I am Void Mask, who lives nearby.” Sui Xiong flew before him and introduced himself while he smiled. “I was busy earlier, so I didn’t manage to greet the neighbors. Now that I am finally free, of course I’d like to visit. Speaking of which, Brother Death Knight, you stay in quite a remote area! I have been looking for you for a very long time!”

Death Knight was silent for a while and then asked, “Who am I?”

“I am here to greet you, not to discuss philosophical questions.”

“Who are you?”

“I am your neighbor.”

“Who am I?”

“Bro, do you have problem with your brain? Why do you keep going back and forth between these two questions?”

“Why do humans need to think?”

“…I am only passing by. I haven’t even washed up and brushed my teeth. Why not wait for me to wash up, and then we can go get some drinks and have some barbecue together? When we have enough drinks and food, we can discuss these questions again,” Sui Xiong smiled. “With a full stomach, lying next to a warm bonfire, discussing philosophy is like a lullaby. Ain’t that a good idea?”

“Why do we eat? Why do we have to discuss these questions after we have enough food and drink? Why do we sleep?”

Sui Xiong dared not answer. He didn’t want to be pestered by the crazy guy!

“…It’s late. I have another business appointment,” He said. “Then, I shall make a move first. When I’m done with the meeting, I will come and chat with you again.”

Then, he leapt and meant to soar up into the sky. But the Death Knight suddenly extended his right hand and held his fist towards him.

A ray of black light trailed from his hand that was only bone, tying Sui Xiong down firmly before he could flee. It connected them closely.

“Why are you running away? You are not busy at all.”

When his lie was exposed straightforwardly, even Jellyfish God’s thick skin, which could withstand a huge crossbow used for city attacks, couldn’t help but blush with embarrassment. He laughed and sat in the air helplessly to chat with the Death Knight.

Chatting with Death Knight was not an interesting experience. The Death Knight’s way of thinking was quite dull, and held almost nothing valuable. And he quibbled over all those meaningless questions. From what Sui Xiong could see, questions such as “Who am I,””Where am I from,” and “Where should I go,” were only asked by people who wanted trouble. Why would any commoner ponder such questions?

But the Death Knight seemed to take these questions to heart. He was bothered by those few questions at all times. Even when Sui Xiong intentionally distracted him to other topics, he would return to these questions.

Sui Xiong answered vaguely with answers like “I come from where I came, I go to where I am going.” But because he wasn’t a monk, he couldn’t fully explain what “where I came from” and “where I am going” meant. The philosophical knowledge that he had learned in college he had returned to his teacher, with no traces left behind.

Er, maybe there weren’t any traces to leave anyway. In the subject of philosophy, he didn’t seem to pass. But the teacher had a kind heart, as he saw the average mark for the class was almost twenty. He then had no choice but to pass every student that came to class consistently, and that was how he passed the subject.

The conversation with Death Knight gave him a headache. Especially with his terrifying, tin-like, stubborn character. He would pester him if he didn’t get an answer; it wouldn’t even work if Sui Xiong pretended that he died.

Sui Xiong was bothered by him for three to four days, and finally couldn’t take it anymore. He swung his tentacles and pulled out a big tree next to him, and slammed him down using the tree as a club. Then he buried him under the tree that was covered in snow. He seized the chance to get out and flew away in a hurry.

These attacks were nothing to Death Knight. But the legendary death soul wasn’t known for his strength. By the time he climbed out from the pile of things, Sui Xiong had been long gone.

The huge jellyfish was speeding off in the air. He flew while he grumbled, “Mental patients have wide trains of thought, and children with learning disabilities have more happiness. What the heck was the guy thinking about! I got to stay far away from him in the future!”

He quickly returned to his residency and made a big wooden signboard at the entrance.

There was a row of words: Psychopaths, vandals, Death Knight, keep out!

After that, Sui Xiong let out a long sigh of relief and returned to the theme park.

He originally planned to resume work then, so that he would be able to launch the theme park at the beginning of spring. But he felt that he had forgotten something important.

“What is it?” The huge jellyfish touched his supposed brain body part with a tentacle and went deep in thought.

After a long while, he finally thought of what he left out.

Among the neighbors in the Ashes Woods, there was one more that he hadn’t visited.

Although the neighbor would most likely not welcome him, he had visited all other others but not him. It would seem like he had no manners and didn’t treat everyone fairly!

Sui Xiong was one that carried out what he said. He immediately prepared a generous gift. He made one of his clones cast magic to form a space barrier to pass through the main dimension. He brought the present to the destination.

It was a hidden valley in shadow realm. In the valley, there was a messy palace runin. In the ruins, there was a black, white and green striped human figure that was wriggling vigorously. It was struggling to eliminate that energy in conflict with “death” and “shadow.”

But looking at the complexity of its colors, its hard work seemed to have very little result.

“Hello! Shadow Devil! How have you been?” Sui Xiong flew over and took out his gift. He put it down near it carefully. “Bro, I have been well. Have some savings. Look at you being so down and out; I feel for you! So I brought a present for you. I believe you will like it!”

Then, he waved his tentacles and opened the present that was tightly wrapped while he vanished into thin air and ran away to the main dimension.

The gift was in a tightly wrapped box. The box opened and there was a solid voice recorder rock. The binding array suddenly dissolved and its power started to break out. The sound that was pre-recorded was then released.

It could only hear a happy voice singing, “…Dance and sing with grandpa and you will not turn old…”

Shadow Devil roared and kicked the voice recorder rock aside. It didn’t expect that it would trigger the mechanism within, and a portal was quickly opened. Then, Death Knight, riding on a skeleton horse, walked through the portal calmly.

“Who am I? Where am I from? Where am I going?” He looked at Shadow Devil and asked.

The Shadow Devil was stunned and immediately recognized the person from the appearance and even the familiar lines.

Wasn’t this the superbly long-winded person that forced him to move his home from Green Fog Forest to Shadow Plane?!

So, it finally wailed hopelessly.

“Why would I even meet you here!”