The reeking teddy bear, stinking of rotting flesh, charged forward—its massive arm swung down toward Cesar's head like an elephant rearing up and coming down with all its weight. More horrific dolls followed behind, their grotesque faces twisted with menace.
With a dull boom, the barrier shattered—
The teddy bear's brute strength was simply too much for the hasty gray-white shield Cesar had thrown up. It smashed through the sorcerer's protective spell like a dragon stomping through a brick wall. Its massive arm barely paused against the magic, and in the next instant, the shield exploded just like the wall before it. A single punch grazed Cesar's head—
It felt like a concrete pillar had flown past his face.
The blow didn't land directly, but it was enough to make his innermost protective enchantment groan and crackle. Had he been just a moment slower, he'd be a headless corpse right now—
The non-moving kind of headless corpse.
The teddy bear stared at him—if those ruby eyes could be called eyes. Still moving sluggishly, it raised a foot to stomp again, as if lifting a cement pillar for a second strike. The howling wind around its attack made the air vibrate. That thick, cylindrical, fur-covered limb was anything but cute.
Cesar rolled across the floor in a disheveled tumble. His ward scraped against the glass and debris strewn about, groaning under the pressure.
In the very next moment, Jeanne lunged—her blade piercing clean through the teddy bear's waist. Instantly, black smoke ten times thicker than what the transparent creatures had released burst from the wound, boiling out like molten sludge. Chunks of decaying, blood-soaked flesh splashed down in a mess, pooling on the floor. The smell was twisted. The burning souls inside the creature swirled in the air like evil spirits.
Then—
Its lower body seemed to lose connection with the brain. The upper half collapsed with a heavy thud, arms twitching wildly like they were having a seizure, while the legs—dragging the broken torso—stumbled around blindly.
"Inquisitor! These damn things are stuffed with a chaotic mess of corpses and souls!" Cesar shouted. "Burn out the soul in a specific part, and that part loses all control!"
Before he finished, there was another massive crash as the pink rabbit creature smashed through the wall and crawled inside. The window splintered to pieces, bricks clattered to the floor, dust clouded the air, and the creature's cheap dress tore on the shards.
This upright rabbit plush was a twisted abomination—
Its head was as long as its torso, with ears that stood straight up to the same length. It wore a pale green dress stained with blotches of dried blood. Its stubby limbs had no fingers—just embedded shears with blades that gleamed in the darkness. Its eyes stared like a corpse's, and its mouth was filled with jagged, yellow-black teeth, exhaling a stench so foul it could make someone retch.
As it raised its human-length scissors to strike Jeanne—who had just retrieved her sword—
A pale gray beam of magic lanced out from Cesar's fingertip.
The ray zipped across the room, drilling straight into the rabbit's chest. With a sizzling ssscccchhht—a sound that made one's teeth ache—the spell spread across the creature's torso like ink poured into water. Twisting, burning souls erupted like a plague cloud. Black smoke spun and screamed as it whirled through the room, shrieking with ear-piercing intensity.
The rabbit doll's upper body drooped limply, while its legs kept running blindly, charging past Jeanne and crashing into a wave of incoming dolls—knocking down a cluster of filthy monstrosities.
"Damn it!" Jeanne growled, slicing a chibi werewolf toy clean in half. A faceful of heavy black smoke surged toward her. "Are you sure we're going that way!?"
"There are plenty of dolls in that direction," Cesar admitted, "but at least I know there aren't any other freaks."
More blank-eyed dolls stormed in from all directions—
Their heavy steps echoing like war drums, closing in like a tightening fishing net. And Jeanne and Cesar were the koi flailing in its center.
"I'll blast us a path," Cesar snapped, "you stick close. Once we get to a quiet corridor, I'll activate concealment and we hide."
As the black smoke drifted down the walls, Jeanne noticed something—
The black sorcerer still had that black cat tucked under his arm.
"…Why are you still carrying that thing?" she asked, tone flat. "Planning to use it as emergency rations?"
Cesar took a deep breath, feeling his own breath compress and coil within his chest. He opened the inner gate that connected his soul to the Labyrinth of Enkai—the realm of the Sleeper, Tsathoggua—and carefully pushed it open just a bit wider. A dark aura that devoured light began seeping out, spreading along his soul and flooding into his body.
These Outer Gods' Labyrinths were perilous. Forcing open a crack wider than one's spiritual tolerance was even more so—but Cesar had experience.
He began weaving a spell and answered her question as an afterthought:
"It can lead us through this damned maze—and maybe even help us find the master of this house."
"You sure?"
"That's what it claims, at least. It did say the house's master never leaves their room, right?"
"…Fine."
When another rabbit-shaped doll crossed through the shattered wall and charged within a meter of them, the black sorcerer responded. He opened his mouth—
And from it, a black beam more sinister than even this house itself shot across the entire corridor.
Jeanne saw it emerge—soundless and formless—a thread of pitch black flowing from Cesar's mouth. In the blink of an eye, it pierced across the hall, like a burning coal melting through ice. It bored straight through the line of massive dolls, extending beyond the visible distance—dozens of meters away.
The walls and curtains were untouched. The dolls' bodies showed no wounds.
But Jeanne could feel it.
Every soul inside those abominations—writhing, shrieking—was devoured along the path of that beam. Pulled into another world, like snacks yanked from their bag by an unseen tongue.
Then the beam vanished.
And in its wake, the dolls—untouched in body—collapsed one after another like puppets with their strings cut. Their lifeless forms piled up in a heap, like freshly reaped sheaves of grain.
The Labyrinth of Enkai belonged to the Sleeper, the Toad-God Tsathoggua. Spells derived from this Labyrinth had several advantages: low energy cost, high efficiency against certain entities, silent execution, and relatively low risk for the caster.
And yet—black sorcerers rarely used them.
Why?
Because they were wasteful.
Any soul destroyed using power drawn from the Enkai Labyrinth was immediately devoured by its master. The caster didn't get to keep a single speck.
That was the unspoken agreement. Those who tried to cheat the system… were hunted down by Tsathoggua's servants.
Of course, summoning one of the Toad-God's spawn—those Invisible Spawn—to devour souls directly was another matter entirely.
Even so, what black sorcerers called "not dangerous" only applied to those with heavily mutated bodies. For Cesar, barely a day into his rebirth—
It was still a massive strain.
For a brief moment, he felt himself disconnect from reality. A part of his soul peeled away, sinking into a formless abyss of darkness. He drifted.
In that haze, he saw black filaments—mycelium—sprawled across a vast, lightless cavern. They writhed slowly, coiling, flowing like water. Like centipedes. Stretching out endless baby-like, shriveled limbs—grasping, groping tendrils.
The vision made him want to vomit.
"Hey! Black sorcerer! Snap out of it!"
With effort, Cesar peeled open his eyelids.
He realized he was being dragged—head down—by the Inquisitor. Jeanne had grabbed his legs and was sprinting down the hallway, that black cat draped over her shoulder, a curtain bundle of food tied at her waist.
Judging by how easily she dragged him, hauling a full-grown man was no harder than carrying a sack of feathers.
His head's ward clanked loudly as it bumped along the dismembered limbs, jagged teeth, and twisted weapons littering the corridor.
"You keep dragging me a bit longer—I just need to catch my breath," Cesar muttered weakly. "I'm barely a day into this rebirth… and I pushed the gate open too far this time. My mind almost didn't come back from the Sleeper's realm."