"He offered the great Leviathan countless souls drowning in despair. In exchange, we simply gave him a little… insignificant help—"
Soren's eyes darkened as he listened to Pinhead's calm description.
He remembered the upper levels—those single-person cells, the people strapped tightly to chairs and forced to watch endless bloody footage.
He sneered. "So that 'help' of yours was just using the methods upstairs to filter out the right humans?"
"Only the ones who endured the mental torture without completely breaking were qualified to be sent down here… to enjoy your higher-level services?"
"Human souls are chaos. Joy, love, sorrow—they're nothing but foam floating on water, ready to burst at any second."
Pinhead slowly circled the giant mechanical brain device and finally stopped in front of one of the glass pods.
"Only pain is eternal and real. We never tortured them. We simply purified their souls."
"Then who's this apostle you keep talking about?"
Soren cut him off the moment the thing started spouting more twisted philosophy.
Pinhead opened its mouth, then closed it again. After a short pause it stared straight at Soren. "Your soul power… is filled with arrogance—"
The temperature in the air plummeted without warning.
"Whoosh—"
A cold wind slammed into Soren from behind.
He was already prepared. He spun hard and blocked the strike.
"CLANG!"
The impact echoed through the underground chamber. Soren slid back several steps.
The instant their bodies crossed, he swung. A sharp blade of light carved straight down at the black shadow.
"Bang!"
The slash cut through Valried's body like it was slicing water. The black shadow split cleanly in two, then immediately fused back together, drifted forward, and vanished again.
The residual force of the slash slammed into the wall behind it, leaving a deep scar.
Soren frowned as he watched Valried disappear into empty air once more.
This thing completely defied common sense. It had no physical body, wasn't an energy construct, and even demonic power couldn't affect it.
Neither pure physical attacks nor magic-infused slashes could do any real damage.
So how the hell was Pinhead controlling this ghost?
Soren's eyes swept the entire area at high speed and finally locked onto the giant human-brain machine in the center.
Valried had been forcibly condensed from the negative emotions this machine extracted from humans.
It had no real body, but it definitely needed a carrier to maintain its existence.
He looked at Pinhead and the other cenobites. From the moment they appeared they had been slowly, almost casually, moving closer to one particular glass pod.
Now they had completely surrounded it.
And inside that pod lay the only surviving man.
"They're controlling it indirectly through the human's consciousness?"
The thought flashed through Soren's mind like lightning.
For the cenobites, controlling a human whose mind had already been shattered by torture was far easier than controlling something this ethereal and formless.
Besides, their positioning felt extremely "the lady doth protest too much."
Trap or bait—he never cared either way.
Cut first, ask questions never.
Kill the man inside and even if he couldn't destroy Valried, he could at least sever Pinhead's control over it.
Target locked, Soren exploded forward, blade already leaving the sheath as he charged straight at Pinhead.
Pinhead's face stayed blank. Its fingers flew across the puzzle box, spinning and turning it rapidly.
"Clatter—"
Dozens of iron chains erupted in front of Soren, trying to block his path.
At the same time Valried reappeared in mid-air and dove at him.
Soren felt the attack coming from the side. He never slowed. He never even tried to defend.
His eyes turned ice-cold. He drew and slashed in one motion.
"Shhhk—"
Countless blades of light crossed space itself and completely surrounded Pinhead.
The cenobite never expected Soren still had a move like this left.
From its observations, this human hunter only knew how to charge in with brute force. Even when he faced that entire swarm of monsters earlier, he only used the dual blades as a last resort to clear the field.
Caught off guard, Pinhead didn't react at all. It made no defensive move whatsoever and simply let the razor-sharp blade lights carve across its body.
Its tight leather outfit split open. Deep wounds that went all the way to the bone opened across its skin. Blood poured out.
Yet instead of showing pain, Pinhead's eyes half-closed in pure enjoyment.
To it, this kind of suffering only brought pleasure to both body and mind.
"Pointless struggle."
A smile of pure bliss spread across Pinhead's face. "Even if you cut this shell of mine into a thousand pieces, countless more of me will still walk out of the labyrinth's depths."
But while it was lost in the ecstasy of pain, it completely failed to notice what was happening behind it.
The Dimensional Slash hadn't only cut Pinhead.
"Bang!"
A crisp crack rang out. The glass pod exploded. Nutrient fluid gushed out.
The man floating inside never even made a sound before the blade light diced him into bloody chunks of meat.
"Boom!"
The exact moment Soren finished the slash, Valried's attack landed.
It smashed into Soren's body with full force and sent him flying.
Soren forced himself to twist in mid-air, rolled once, and dropped to one knee. He skidded several meters before finally stopping.
He lifted his head and looked at Pinhead standing not far away—covered in deep cuts, drenched in its own blood, still eyes closed in pure bliss. The corner of Soren's mouth twitched.
"Peak masochist constitution."
"Gaaaaaahhh!"
High above, Valried—still hiding in the air—suddenly let out a piercing shriek the instant its host died.
Its previously blurry, formless shadow finally solidified in mid-air.
Only now could Soren clearly see what it looked like.
Its upper body was wrapped in a cloak made of some unknown material.
Beneath the cloak was a complete human skeleton. It had no lower body—only a spinal column dangling in the air, swaying with every movement.
This form was completely different from the formless black shadow that had attacked him earlier.
Before, Valried had no fixed shape at all. It could gather and scatter at will, leaving only a faint afterimage when it struck.
Soren stared at it, thinking fast.
Because the host body died, the residual subconscious of that human had fed back into this thing… and that was why it now looked like this half-human, half-ghost skeleton?
Freed from the body's restraints, Valried turned completely feral.
Its original host had been a severely tortured mental patient. Once the flesh was destroyed there was nothing left to hold it back. It went completely out of control.
A violent storm of raw emotion rampaged through the chamber. Valried began attacking every living thing it could see without discrimination.
Its body flickered. The shadow slammed toward Soren.
Even when Soren blocked, the raw force still forced him to give ground again and again.
After knocking Soren back, Valried didn't pursue. It simply went berserk, charging and smashing everything in sight like a creature that had lost its mind.
After venting for a while, it suddenly noticed Pinhead standing in front of the giant brain machine.
Right now Pinhead looked absolutely miserable—clothes in tatters, body covered in flowing blood.
Pinhead tried to reassert control under Valried's pure hostility.
Nothing happened.
Only then did it notice the glass pod behind it was shattered and the human body inside had been reduced to chunks of meat.
For the first time, genuine shock appeared on Pinhead's face.
"A defective product that has lost all order—"
It gripped the puzzle box and began turning it again. "Looks like I'll have to personally purify this chaotic mass of emotion myself."
Valried gave it zero chance.
In its chaotic subconscious, this nail-headed monster standing right in front of it was the one that had tortured it day after day—the true culprit that had turned it into this nightmare.
Pure hatred solidified into real force. Valried let out a furious roar and lunged straight at Pinhead on the ground.
Pinhead spun the box rapidly. Several chains shot out, trying to bind Valried—but they had zero effect.
Pinhead's body suddenly froze. It was yanked into the air by an invisible force. Its arms and legs twisted like pretzels and snapped.
Then every single long nail that had been embedded in its head was slammed deeper—like someone had slapped them all the way into its brain matter.
Watching the brutal scene from a distance, Soren's eyelids twitched. A phantom pain prickled across his own scalp.
Still… seeing every last one of those uneven nails get driven fully home gave him a strange, almost satisfying feeling.
A true gospel for people with OCD.
With its brain critically damaged, Pinhead's face—always so fond of pain—finally twisted into a genuine expression of agony.
Valried still wasn't finished.
It roared again, grabbed Pinhead, and slammed him straight into the giant human-brain machine.
"Crack!"
The bulletproof glass dome shattered.
A suppressed mass of energy deep inside the core began expanding at terrifying speed. Blue light flooded the entire underground space, turning everything bright as day.
Soren—who had been waiting to pick up the spoils like the classic fisherman—felt that energy and his face changed instantly.
He didn't hesitate for even a fraction of a second. Purple-black armor wrapped around his entire body as he shot toward the entrance.
On the way he casually scooped up the still-unconscious Ada.
"BOOM—"