American comics: From Hogwarts to God on Earth

After finishing their ice cream, Clark took the others to see a circus performance, which was quite entertaining. Zatanna, one of the four, was even chosen as the interaction subject, personally feeding the lion meat. Many people present longed for this opportunity to get up close to wild beasts, except for Rune. His guardian beast is a tiger, and barring any unforeseen circumstances, his Animagus form should also be a tiger.

After watching the circus performance, Rune immediately led the other three to a place far from town. The scenery here was beautiful, with lush green grass and a small grove of trees not far away. Rune waved his hand and cast a Muggle exorcism spell; his fingers emitted a faint green light, and the magic transformed into an invisible substance that seeped into the bodies of the nearby ordinary people.

The man next to him immediately looked enlightened and quickly left. The passerby lying on the chair suddenly woke up, muttering incoherently as he staggered away. To Rune's further dismay, screams echoed from the grove, followed by several couples emerging from it, some with their belts unfastened, leaving with embarrassed expressions.

Rune and Jason instinctively covered Clark's and Zatanna's eyes respectively.

"This is a very interesting banishment magic. Could you teach me?" Zatanna asked.

Rune nodded: "Okay." This Muggle banishment spell was one of the spells Rita had sent, but the spell Rune had requested first was the Unseen Stretching Spell, and now was the perfect time to use it.

Rune opened his briefcase and said to Jason and Zatanna, "Come in, or the First Fallen Ones will come and take us down one by one."

"Are there other spaces inside?" Jason asked.

Rune nodded. Seeing that the two men didn't quite trust him, he went inside first.

"What are you waiting for? Come on in!" Clark didn't think too much and followed him inside. Jason and Zatanna exchanged a glance and could only helplessly follow.

Upon entering, Zatanna was shocked. Even though she was used to seeing the spatial artifacts of mages and had personally experienced her own mysterious house, she was still taken aback by the dilapidated house before her.

This thing looks enough to make any architecture student's head explode—it's less like a house and more like a crumpled piece of paper by a mischievous child. The roof is crooked and uneven, higher on the left and lower on the right, with tiles scattered haphazardly, some even moving up and down. The windows are of different sizes, the door frames are crooked, and the colors are a jumbled mess, like a palette of colors.

"Welcome to my workshop." Rune blushed slightly, a rare occurrence for him. He hadn't been able to avoid it; he'd wanted his house to have a touch of magic, so he'd used transfiguration, spellcasting, and ancient runes to build it. Most of the construction had gone smoothly, until Rune, for aesthetic reasons, inscribed runes on the walls…

The once colorful and dreamy dwelling was instantly distorted into this blob of... a building.

However... at least it's quite sturdy, right?

"A very... well-designed building," Jason replied with great emotional intelligence, while the demon inside him laughed and shouted that he wished he could build such a house for his enemy so that one day he would lose face in front of other demons because the house was too ugly.

Even Zatanna wore a forced smile: "Indeed... this house is very... well-designed..." Rune opened the door and bowed: "Welcome to my humble abode."

Upon entering, Jason discovered that compared to its appalling exterior, the house was actually quite well-stocked inside. It contained various puppets, some in progress and others completed, many of whose limbs floated in the air, giving it a somewhat somber appearance. Moreover, due to the presence of Runeven, the house itself possessed a certain level of sentience; in other words, it was practically alive. Sometimes it would manipulate two of the floating puppet limbs to frighten Rune or Clark.

Although Rune also thought the thing was ugly, if he were asked to build a similar house again, he could only shrug – the thing was like the flying cars that were still running around in the Forbidden Forest, its creation was entirely accidental.

"Uh..." Zatanna's face turned ashen. She stared at the hand in front of her that seemed to have just moved, and all sorts of guesses flooded her mind, such as Rune being some kind of dark wizard who replaced human limbs with his own body parts, and that he had his eye on her this time...

However, upon closer inspection, she noticed that the hand seemed not to have moved. So she looked at Jason again and found that his expression was normal, which put her mind at ease.

She didn't notice that Clark had already turned around, his back to Zatanna, suppressing a laugh.

"I didn't expect your house to look so... well, the inside is quite gothic." Zatanna breathed a sigh of relief and then gave her assessment, like when she was comforting a heartbroken friend who had problems in many ways and finally discovered one of their good points, and then praised that good point to the skies.

Rune nodded expressionlessly, but he seemed to be looking away from himself, as if he were looking behind him...

Zatanna turned around abruptly and found that a faceless puppet had suddenly appeared behind her, where there had been nothing before.

"Hey! Something's not right, is it?" Zatanna's eyes widened as she looked around like a startled cat, trying to find something amiss... No, something's definitely wrong here! How could a mage like herself be wrong? That hand must have been there, right?

Just then, a cold hand patted her shoulder, startling her into letting out a short scream, which she then stifled.

Rune's face emerged from the darkness, and he said expressionlessly, "Why don't you look behind you anymore?"

Zatanna's pale face turned back to look, and she found that the faceless puppet that should have been dozens of steps away from her was now right in front of her. Moreover, its original standing posture had changed to that of a zombie, with its arms outstretched as if to strangle her.

"Aaaaaaahh ...

……

"Hahahaha..." Clark laughed so hard he could barely breathe, and could only cover his stomach with his hands. Jason and Rune also smiled as they watched Zatanna's face turn bright red.

"This is not funny at all!" Her pretty face turned red as she looked down and carefully searched for a crack to squeeze into, but unfortunately, there was no gap in this magically constructed room that could fit a little girl.