Chapter 184: What Place Is This?
Chapter 184: What Place Is This? (Please subscribe, favorite, and recommend)
With a splash, a black shadow emerged from a pool of water in a cave. After dispatching his opponent, Liam finally surfaced.
Once he was above water, Liam quickly surveyed his surroundings. He found himself at the bottom of a Sky Pit. The blue-glowing moss on the stone walls provided a dim light, allowing him to see the area vaguely. After a quick look around, Liam noticed a figure lying motionless on the water's surface about five meters away.
"Hermione!" Liam exclaimed, immediately swimming over to the figure.
When he reached the black shadow, Liam discovered that Hermione had a Bubble-Head Charm on her head, which relieved him slightly. He then pulled both the attacker and Hermione to the only shallow area by the pool.
After a brief examination, Liam found that Hermione was unharmed, just unconscious. The attacker must have knocked her out at the beginning and placed the Bubble-Head Charm on her. He then left her aside to ambush Liam, hoping to capture both of them at once.
From this tactic, it was clear that the attacker was a seasoned veteran: he had disabled one hostage to avoid any interference and used his aquatic advantage to ambush the other. However, he hadn't anticipated that a low-grade student would have such strong close-combat skills and decent equipment. As a result, he ended up falling to Liam.
Since Hermione was fine, Liam set her aside. He planned to interrogate the attacker, and the methods he might use were not suitable for her to see.
Liam first tried to use his magic power to activate the leaf pin given by the Headmaster to contact him, but as expected, it failed. The pin was as unresponsive as a regular accessory, indicating that this area had some kind of magic suppression. However, he couldn't help but think that in the movies he had seen, it was always the case that communication failed at crucial moments. Perhaps this was an inevitable occurrence.
It seemed he would have to rely on himself. With this thought, Liam shook his head and walked over to the attacker. He noticed that the attacker no longer looked human: his body had turned a sickly green, and his exposed limbs were covered in scales. Shark-like gills had also grown on his neck. Most disturbingly, the wound on his waist had stopped bleeding, and flesh buds were growing over it, writhing and trying to seal the wound.
"God, what is this thing?" Liam thought as he pried open the attacker's mouth to administer a potion. To his surprise, the attacker's teeth had become razor-sharp.
The changes in the attacker's body gave Liam an ominous feeling. He put down the potion bottle and called out Little Qing from the emporium. After Little Qing secured the attacker, Liam administered the healing potion.
Within ten seconds of taking the potion, the attacker's eyes snapped open, and he began to struggle fiercely, emitting animal-like growls. Liam saw only madness and bloodlust in his eyes; all traces of human intelligence were gone.
Has he lost control? Liam wondered. The human transformation data left by Slytherin had repeatedly warned that adding parts of other creatures to a human body could easily lead to loss of control. The attacker's behavior perfectly matched the symptoms Slytherin had described.
It seemed there was no saving this man, and he would not be able to provide any useful information. Liam now had to resort to the backup plan. He drew Krinvi's Fang from the sheath on his thigh, infused his arms with Spiritual Energy, and with all his might, chopped off the head of the now-monstrous attacker.
The experience gained from the Radiation World had clearly been beneficial. At least he was more efficient and clean in beheading this guy compared to the executioner who had beheaded Nick years ago. While these thoughts raced through his mind, Liam cut a strip of cloth from the attacker's clothing, dipped it in the now-green blood, and drew a Magic Array on the ground.
After completing the Magic Array, Liam placed the head at its center and began channeling his magic power with both hands. This was a part of Life Magic that dealt with souls, allowing the extraction and reading of a recently deceased person's soul. However, this method of interrogation was one-time only and required the magic user to have sufficient soul strength to sift through the vast amount of memories and find the necessary information.
As magic was infused, a flood of memory fragments surged into Liam's mind through his arms. He quickly focused his mind using the Maoshan Daoist Techniques, maintaining his inner balance before gradually sorting through the memories. After about seven or eight minutes, Liam exhaled deeply and removed his hands from the Magic Array. A cluster of ghostly blue flames suddenly ignited from within, burning everything inside the array to ashes.
Due to the mutation, his soul had already suffered severe damage. When Liam used Life Magic to examine his memories, he only saw fragmented and mostly meaningless snippets of daily life. Fortunately, he eventually found some information related to the underground space among these scattered memories.
This underground space was not a recent excavation as Liam had initially thought but an ancient ruin. The Castrobrus School was built much later, long after the ruin had been abandoned, and none of the school's past students or faculty had ever discovered this place.
This was not surprising, given that the area was littered with anti-magic stone fragments. Unless one directly excavated a tunnel connecting to the ancient ruin, it would be impossible to detect it using magic power. Additionally, the ruin was buried deep underground, and the school's superficial searches and excavations naturally failed to uncover it.
The reason the school was built over the ruin was simple: even though wizards possessed magic, they were still human. When choosing a location for their community, they, like Muggles without magic, preferred places that were safe, had convenient transportation, and were rich in resources. Especially in the early days, before the Floo Network became widespread, wizards often chose to settle near rivers to facilitate the movement of goods and people.
For a place like the school, which housed a large population, it was essential to have access to basic supplies from the Muggle world, such as food, cloth, and furniture. Rivers naturally became their primary transportation routes.
Moreover, the school required ample space and absolute security. Finding a location that met all these criteria was easier in the plains, but in the remote depths of the Amazon Rainforest, such places were scarce. Thus, it made sense that the school was built over this forgotten ruin.
Much like how many cities with rich histories in Liam's previous life often unearthed various artifacts during construction, the school's failure to discover this hidden ruin while its enemies did was a significant oversight. According to the information Liam extracted from the fake Professor Ferdinand's memories, at least three tunnels connected the ruin directly to the underground network beneath the School Garden. It was likely that the monsters had entered the school through one of these tunnels. Unfortunately, as a member of the Chimera Society, the imposter knew little about the Blood God Cult's ancient ruin.
This situation reminded Liam of the story of Hogwarts Castle, which was first infiltrated by Sirius Black, then attacked by Death Eaters, and finally stormed by Voldemort and his followers. He felt that perhaps this was a curse: every place claimed to be the safest always ended up being successfully attacked. The Maginot Line and Iwo Jima in the Muggle world, and the various wizarding schools, all shared this fate.
(End of Chapter)
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