A heart-wrenching, lung-tearing scream echoed as the wooden door connecting to the corridor twisted and shattered like a filthy rag, sent flying by a lithe figure in black who charged into the room, a jet-black longsword in hand.
A round-cornered mahogany table, over a meter wide and five meters long, dominated the room. Its surface was a meticulously polished pane of glass, set with dinner plates. The plates held human limbs and animal limbs—cooked, grilled, or half-raw, all sizzling and steaming. Some sets of knives and forks hovered in mid-air. Some were in the process of cutting the meat on porcelain plates. And some were being delivered to unseen mouths.
Yes, the transparent things. They were eating.
Splintered wood flew through the air, sticking to the bodies of the transparent creatures, momentarily outlining their vaguely humanoid shapes.
Jeanne crouched low, then sprang up like a cat, the short black cape around her neck flying out as she jumped. For an instant, the world turned upside down—or rather, she did. In mid-air, the inquisitor could see the formless things drop their cutlery, shove their chairs back, and try to flee their seats. Disgusting things, Jeanne sneered internally. Her body carved a parabola through the air, and with the full force of her body weight and the impact of her rotation, she viciously stomped on the glass tabletop.
—K-CRACK!
A sharp, ear-piercing shatter.
In an instant, the spotless glass erupted with a deafening roar. A milky-white web of cracks spiderwebbed across its surface, bursting outward from the force of the impact.
The inquisitor landed hard on the wooden table. The glass pane exploded from the point of impact under her feet, the shards flying out like water from a boulder dropped into a lake. The candlelight reflected off thousands of glittering fragments, refracting a chaotic, dangerous, and brilliant light.
Sharp glass shards shot into the transparent things, some digging deep into their flesh. A few sliced across the inquisitor's skin as well, drawing bright red blood.
Step one, confirm the enemy's positions.
Step two, clean up the scene.
By the third beat of her heart, while glass fragments were still flying through the air, she had already cut through the dust and the steam rising from the cooked meat, thrusting her sword forward. With a soft squelch, it pierced the chest of one of the transparent people. Then, with a sharp upward flick of the blade, she split its head apart.
The sound was like slicing through cooked leather.
The double-edged longsword was long and thin and didn't look like it could cleave bone. But it was unexpectedly sturdy and sharp. The blade effortlessly reaped its target's life. Black smoke—a burning, acrid black smoke—poured from where its eyes and mouth should have been. It collapsed to the floor, becoming a mangled corpse.
The black smoke brought back many bad memories for Jeanne.
In the past, when facing black sorcerers, their weapon enchantments would allow the weapon to directly burn the soul upon piercing the flesh, killing not through fatal physical injury, but through spiritual annihilation.
And now I'm using their enchantments to destroy my enemies? Jeanne thought. The scene was too surreal. If it weren't for the stinging pain of the glass cutting her skin, she would have thought she was dreaming.
Just then, she saw a crossbow on the side of the wall lift up on its own—held by a transparent shadow with two glass shards stuck in it. The thing crouched, aimed, and fired with a thwang. An instant later, the inquisitor dropped to the floor like a mother cat. The four-pronged bolt grazed her shoulder, tearing a small flap of skin before embedding itself in the wall behind her.
It cautiously took a step back and began to reload.
"Go to hell—"
It was unclear who she was cursing, but Jeanne spat the words out and threw her sword. The blade carved a cold arc through the air like the wheel of a war chariot, spinning as it cleaved through the thing's chest. Billows of acrid black smoke—the smoke of a burning soul—erupted from it. The thing's scream died in its throat.
Then, she felt the table beneath her feet tremble slightly. A low, bestial growl came from behind her. Something was wrong. She guessed it had intentionally waited for her to throw her sword before pouncing.
As unseen claws tore through the air, she kicked a plate of cooked meat off the table. Scalding hot juices splashed across the thing's face, chest, and arms.
A low howl of pain.
Jeanne threw most of her strength into her right hand, gripping its furry wrist in a death grip. Her other hand shot out and clamped around its neck. In the next instant, she yanked down hard while simultaneously driving her knee up. The thing's soft cheek caved in against the hard metal plate of her knee-guard.
Her left hand still didn't let go. She simply swung the limp body with all her might, smashing it into several other transparent shadows that were climbing onto the table.
At the same time, the inquisitor used the momentum to leap toward the crossbow, landing lightly on the floor. With one hand, she pulled her sword from the invisible corpse and stabbed it into the ground. With the other, she grabbed the crossbow and took aim—
Wait... it seems I don't need to.
The glass shards stuck in the transparent things, the ones that had been moving with them, had all stopped.
She heard transparent 'blood' gushing out, splattering on the floor. At the same time, she heard the creatures sizzling like a hot frying pan as they collapsed one after another onto the floor, onto the sea of broken glass.
They were being boiled. Literally 'boiled'.
Jeanne smelled a sickeningly rich, meaty aroma. A long time ago, she had seen the same thing—not these transparent creatures, but this spell.
Silent, stealthy, its magical fluctuations deliberately erased, almost impossible to detect until it was fully activated.
"You don't need to be so on guard," Sassel said, walking in and stepping on the crackling glass shards. Jeanne noticed that for an instant, his pupils were vertical slits, like those of some demonic race, but they quickly returned to normal. The black sorcerer walked with interest toward the completely formless creature on the floor, adding as a casual reminder, "I aimed for the things that were focused on you. I didn't boil you along with them."
No response.
The inquisitor silently stood up, watching as the black sorcerer hissed, inhaling the creatures' souls like wisps of grayish-white mist.
"Don't tell me a friend of yours was killed by this spell—or was it your mentor? Or your secret lover?" Sassel glanced at her. "Now's not the time to get sentimental."
"I don't need you to tell me that. And I don't have a secret lover," Jeanne replied, her tone sharp.
"I had a girl I was quite fond of once," he said with a chuckle. "Before we had a chance to develop a wonderful physical relationship, she went mad from contact with an Outer God. Later, she peeled off her own skin and jumped into the laboratory's acid vat, said she wanted to merge with the great god."
"...Is that supposed to be a dark joke?"
"If you think it is, then it is."
Sassel crouched down. He used his sword to cut off a piece of a transparent creature's arm—one of the ones Jeanne had killed, not one he had boiled—and casually stuffed it into his coat.
This might be a good specimen for experimentation. Worth taking back for analysis.
He looked into Jeanne's eyes. "If you want to ease your hunger, find some cooked food that isn't covered in dust, pack it to go, and leave here with me as soon as possible. Until the master of this house is officially dead, this game of hide-and-seek won't be over."