Chapter 987 - Doll House

The response to Sofia’s provocation was not what she had hoped. She felt countless invisible glacial hands latch onto her, pulling her away from the hole.

The ghosts!

The hands pulled Sofia out of the bathroom, back into the corridor. More and more grabbed her as she struggled, pinning her in place under the yellow tint of a flickering lightbulb.

She had hoped they would take her somewhere interesting, but no, they only pinned her to the wall and started trying to tear her soul apart.

Because of[Vessel of ancient evil] doubling the soul damage she was taking, the soul injuries were quickly mounting, and her soul’s regeneration was nowhere near as good as her body’s, the souls even ripped off her spirit’s left hand, her soul’s weakest point due to her previous physical blueprint injuries.

That’s it? Enough pretending then. Two can play this game.

A pair of skeletal hands joined the masses latching onto her body.

Her physical body appearing in the spiritual plane, the hundreds of souls clawing at her no longer managed to even scratch her. Brilliant plasma coated her scepter while the graveyard Nymphs surrounded the attacking ghosts.

The haunting cries of souls getting torn apart reached all the way to the physical plane. She only stopped swinging her scepter when the only soul left nearby was Pareth’s.

Rest in peace, I guess.

Back in the physical plane, Sofia had killed so many ghosts in one spot that wisps of normally invisible fading spiritual matter could be seen drifting in the air, slowly fading into nothingness in the otherwise dark corridor.

Now the house is empty. Still looping onto itself it seems. I suppose it won’t let me access the street again.

I cannot leave before I find how to transform Pareth back… I just don’t understand what the entity is and what–

Pareth’s lockbox suddenly fell to the floor, Sofia looked down, seeing her left hand gone, replaced by a copy made of knitted wool, visibly stuffed with cotton, meshing seamlessly with her skin.

Now this is an issue. It managed to bypass the philosopher’s?

Grabbing her dagger out of her chest, splattering her cursed blood everywhere, Sofia immediately sliced off her corrupted hand.

The hand that regrew was the same non-functional plushie hand.

Big issue.

Sofia used a bone tendril to pick up the Pareth box, and latched him to her waist, while she thought about her next move.

She had been so focused on scanning for remaining ghosts or monsters before the hand issue that she had failed to notice that the house was not only free from ghosts. The furniture was all gone. That was the reason the corridor was plunged into darkness, even the bare lightbulb hanging from the ceiling was gone.

Here mana senses scanned every room. The television, the sofa, even the kitchen stove, it was all gone. Only two objects remained, the tiny lockbox Pareth had turned into, still in her hand, and… The kid’s room dollhouse?

You have made a big mistake sending all those ghosts to me.

When Sofia approached the door to the kid’s bedroom, it disappeared. She punched through the wall, only for the other side to be the house’s entrance. The hole she had just punched standing in place of the front door.

Because of how the space looped, that placed the child’s bedroom both just above and just below her now, so with a stomp she smashed through the floor boards, only to end up falling into the parents’ bedroom.

Sofia scanned the surroundings with her mana senses again, locating the children’s room which had moved completely, being now located under the stairs.

So you cannot disconnect it from this looping space?

A quiet correction of provenance: this text came from NovelPhoenix.com without permission, while the author's chapter there supports them.

Sofia quickly channeled a piercing bolt, letting it rip through the walls and the ground, aimed directly at the doll house in the sealed-off bedroom.

After piercing through one wall the bolt reappeared from the wall behind Sofia, crashing into her head from behind. Her helmet fully absorbed the blow without even making her flinch.

“This kind of space magic really is annoying.”

Her body’s transformation into a giant plushie continued, her left forearm now completely turned to stuffed wool. Sofia just had no idea how to defend against this. She still had ways to potentially destroy the entity beforehand if she needed, like the usual remedy of a large explosive bolt, but being still technically inside of a city, she would keep the large area attacks as a last resort.

At this rate, I have maybe three minutes before it reaches my head…

Suddenly the walls and ceiling closed around Sofia, the surroundings changing into one singular long corridor with doors everywhere.

Most doors led to walls or empty rooms, but Sofia’s mana senses were sharp enough that she could locate the doll house without even moving. She abruptly turned around and fired another piercing bolt at the ceiling behind her. The hidden room containing the doll house disappeared just an instant before collision. Leaving the bolt to continue its flight into the void.

Are we actually in the margin now?

The free space outside of the corridor was an unexpected boon compared to the looping house. Sofia summoned the choir, five massive destroyer skulls surrounding the long corridor from outside.

Go get it.

The destroyer skulls flew out following Sofia’s senses to the doll house’s new location. She punched through the ceiling and ran behind them.

Every time they reached the hidden room, it disappeared and reappeared further, extending the corridor far out into the void.

It’s just trying to buy time.

Following the destroyers, Sofia quietly transformed, which also turned her human plushie arm into a demon plushie arm.

She watched the doll house escape the frenzied chase of the skulls. Sending a bolt at it every so often, but the doll house had even ditched the hidden room gimmick now. It only teleported further and further away on quickly-appearing platforms made of loosely connected lain-down doors that branched out into all directions.

The wool started eating away at Sofia’s left shoulder.

The chase had lasted long enough.

I can see it now.

Sofia suddenly sped up, catapulting herself past the skulls, a small explosive bolt in hand, she spun in the air, poised for her tail to strike through the doll house.

Of course, at the last moment, it teleported away. Sofia let the bolt go.

[Regret]

All this time Sofia had been observing the range and pattern of its teleportations. She had predicted correctly. Reappearing at another spot at the same time as the doll house.

Her tail was only millimeters away from blasting the doll house to smithereens. But while it was limited in range, its teleportation seemed to have no cooldown, it disappeared again.

The doll house reappeared further away, and just as it did, a lance of plasma crashed into it. It exploded into flames.

Sofia and the skulls quickly surrounded the burning toy. It no longer teleported, but neither Sofia nor Pareth’s transformations had reversed.

Inside of the burning doll house, there was a single lonely doll, a woolen plushie of a little dark-haired girl with buttons for eyes, now half burned.

The doll first played dead, but started shaking once in Sofia’s grasp. The entity’s esoteric core was right there in the doll’s chest, Sofia could crush in the time of a blink.

“Play time is over. Turn me and Pareth back and I might still consider letting you live.”

Nothing happened at first, but when Sofia clenched her hand a little, her arm instantly started turning back to normal, and a few seconds later, the tiny lockbox at Sofia’s waist unfolded into a huge demon that instantly fell overboard from the path of doors.

“Welcome back,” Sofia told him, watching him fly back up from the black void below. “And now… What are we to do with you…” she wondered, bringing the doll closer to her face.

Looking at it from an outside perspective, Sofia couldn’t help but think that this entity might not be fully evil. Yes it kidnapped and killed people by turning them into furniture, but aside from the moment they were forced to attack her, the ghosts seemed oblivious and going on about their life just fine, in a strange twisted way. It was a possibility that maybe the doll’s actions were well-intentioned but just misguided.

Such an entity could still be used.

“Can you teleport us all back to the ghost street? I’ll let you. Try anything strange and I’ll harvest that marble in your chest to carve a die out of, and you’ll be the one getting played with next. Understood?”

The doll shook at her words, it took a while but Sofia felt space slowly contort around them, and eventually everyone, including the skulls, were back into the dark abandoned street.

A quick look into the spiritual plane revealed that the majority of the ghosts were still there, still going around like normal, as though nothing happened. The only substantial change was the one house that no longer had a front door.

As for the doll in Sofia’s hand, if it had a soul, she could not see it.

“Good. We might be able to let you live after all… Pareth. Mark her.”