Chapter 12: Tsathoggua

The bear toy, reeking of rotten flesh, charged forward with its massive arm smashing down Salser's head like an elephant standing up and falling down—with more horrifying dolls following behind.

With a muffled thud, the barrier shattered—the crude protective shield the Dark wizard had just created was no match for the bear's immense strength. It smashed through the gray-white magical barrier the Dark wizard had erected like a dragon crushing a brick wall; the arm only paused briefly on the spell blocking its path, and an instant later, the magical barrier exploded in its grasp just like the previous wall. In the blink of an eye, it grazed Salser's head with a punch, the sensation was almost like a cement pillar flying towards him, just a brush passing would cause his innermost protective shield to emit a mournful creaking sound, nearly collapsing completely. If he hadn't dodged in time and avoided a direct hit, he would definitely have become a headless knight—the kind that doesn't move.

Watching the Dark wizard crouch down—it's unclear how those two rubies eyes served as visual receptors—it still moved sluggishly and lifted its leg to kick again, like another cement pillar being swung. The piercing whistle made the air tremble, and the fluffy cylindrical limb, twice as thick as the arm, looked anything but cute.

Salser rolled on the ground in a very awkward manner, the protective shield pressing over the scattered stones and glass shards, emitting a crunching sound. In the next moment, Jeanne had thrust her sword, piercing deeply into the bear toy's waist, and instantly—black smoke, countless times denser than those from the transparent beings, boiled out from the wound like sludge, a mixture of rotten blood and flesh splashing down, piling into a heap on the ground, the strangely scented burning souls swirling in the room like evil spirits.

After that instant, its waist seemed to lose connection with its brain, and the upper body slammed to the ground with a thud, its arms flailing like in a seizure, while its legs dragged the broken upper body in a chaotic run.

"Inquisitor! This thing is filled up by a bunch of souls and a mess of corpses!" Salser shouted, "Burn the soul within any particular section, and it will be deprived of the ability to control that segment adequately!"

As he spoke, another loud bang sounded, and the pink rabbit toy smashed through the wall and squeezed in, the windows crushed, bricks clattering to the ground, dust flying everywhere, and even the plush toy's dress was snagged by broken glass.

This upright rabbit toy was also a deformed thing—its head was as long as its body, while the ears standing straight as long as its head, wearing a light green dress stained with spots of blood; its limbs were short without fingers, only embedded with a large pair of scissors with gleaming blades. Its eyes stared like a corpse, its mouth full of yellow and black canine teeth spewing a foul stench that made one want to vomit.

Just as it raised the scissor, longer than a person's height, and charged towards Jeanne who had just drawn her sword, a light gray magical ray shot out from Salser's fingertips. The ray crossed several meters and entered the rabbit toy's chest, and with a hissing sound—an ear-piercing corrosive noise. The magical ray spread inside the doll's chest like ink poured into water, a dozen twisted souls ignited and spewed out like a raging plague cloud, black smoke howling and swirling, spreading throughout the room with sharp and piercing screams.

Then—the rabbit toy's entire upper body drooped, leaving only its two legs aimlessly charging forward, passing Jeanne and smashing into the incoming tide of dolls from the other side, knocking over a pile of dirty monsters.

"Damn it!" Jeanne slashed through a three-headed werewolf toy with her sword, dense black smoke enveloping her face. She shouted harshly, "Are you sure we're heading that way!?"

"While the number of dolls on that path isn't minimal, I can at least confirm that there are no other messy things to be found there."

More dolls with lifeless expression stomped over with thudding footsteps—from every corridor, like a closing fishing net, and they were the carp in the pond.

"I shall clear the path using magic; you maintain proximity, and upon reaching a secluded corridor, we will switch to a concealment spell and secrete ourselves."

Watching the black smoke disperse along both sides of the room, Jeanne noticed that the Dark wizard was holding the black cat in his arms.

"Why are you still carrying this cat? Emergency rations?"

Salser took a deep breath, feeling his breath condense and compress in his chest, he opened the door inside his body connecting to the N’Kai Warren—the Warren of Tsathoggua the Sleeper—and carefully pushed it open a bit wider. A breath of darkness that devoured light spread along his soul and into his body. The Warrens of these Outer gods were extremely dangerous, and opening a gap wider than one's capacity was even more so—but he was well experienced in this.

The Dark wizard began to condense magic, and at the same time answered her question, "It has the capability to guide us through this damn maze, and it can also take us to the Master of this house."

"Are you sure?"

"At least according to its words,—the Master of this house has never left its room, correct?"

"Alright."

After another rabbit-shaped toy crossed the completely shattered wall and charged within a meter of them, the Dark wizard responded. He opened his mouth, and a black magical ray even more sinister and darker than the room pierced through the entire corridor.

Jeanne only saw the silent and invisible ray shoot out from the Dark wizard's mouth, and in the blink of an eye, it crossed the space visible to the eye, like a red-hot coal piercing through ice, shooting through the giant dolls lined up in a row, extending to tens of meters away, beyond clear vision. The lifeless walls and curtains were undamaged, and there was no damage visible on the dolls' bodies either. But Jeanne could feel—along the path the magical ray passed, the frenetic souls inside the dolls were devoured, completely falling into another world, as if an invisible tongue had swept away the snacks in a bag.

The ray vanished. Along the direction they had come from, the dolls' intact bodies fell to the ground like marionettes with broken strings, losing all sight of life. They were piled up in a messy heap, like a freshly harvested wheat stack.

The master of the N’Kai Warren, the Sleeper, the Toad God Tsathoggua. Although the offensive spells developed based on this Warren had the advantages of low consumption, countering specific beings, being silent, and not being particularly dangerous to the caster; however, dark wizards usually did not use such spells—the reason being that they were too wasteful. All the souls killed by spells borrowing the power of the N’Kai Warren would, without exception, be eaten by its master, leaving nothing for the dark wizards.

This was also a necessary tacit understanding; anyone who tried to break the rules would incur the hatred of its servants.

Of course, directly summoning a brood of Formless One—the servants of the Toad God—to devour life force was another matter.

However, even this not-so-dangerous spell was relative to dark wizards with higher degrees of body mutation. For Salser, who had just been reborn, it was still a significant burden.

In an instant, Salser felt as if he had lost connection with everything around him; a part of his soul seemed to have detached from his body, sinking into a blurry formless dark abyss, drifting away. In a daze, he saw clusters of black fungal filaments spreading across the vast, lightless black cavern, slowly writhing, curling, flowing like water, and extending countless slender wrinkled-baby-limb tentacles like a centipede.

This eerie scene was nauseating.

"Oi! Dark wizard! Wake up!"

After struggling to open his eyes, he found himself being dragged by the Inquisitor with his head down, she pulled his two legs and ran through the corridor, the black cat perched on her shoulder, the curtain cloth containing food tied around her waist—it seemed that dragging a living person was no more difficult for her than dragging a feather.

The protective shield on the back of his head knocked against the messy limbs, teeth, bizarre sharp and blunt weapons of the dolls, emitting a clanging echo. 

"You keep dragging for a brief period; I must catch my breath,"Salser said feebly to Jeanne, "I've only been reincarnated for less than a day, this time the door was opened too wide, nearly resulting in my consciousness falling into the Sleeper's Warren and not returning."

Translator's note:

Tsathoggua, also known as the Sleeper of N'kai, is an entity in the Cthulhu Mythos.

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