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Ian was sitting inside a Feast Hall.
The off-white walls were covered in identical propaganda posters.
The Empire's president, dressed in black robes, stood on top of the tallest tower in Imperial City, gazing down upon the masses with blazing eyes. One poster showed a group of fair-haired, blue-eyed children holding wheat stalks, smiling innocently beneath the slogan, 'The Future of Pure Lineage'. Another poster depicted a sci-fi vision of extraterrestrial colonies with the banner of the Evil Empire flying proudly over Mars.
The president in the posters looked exactly the same as the one on television.
Young.
Far too young.
Ian's knowledge of history told him that this was the late 1990s. Logically, the president should be a centaurian by now, frail and on the verge of death.
But the man on the screen…
Although he still displayed the same fanatical fervor, his appearance suggested someone in their early fifties... vigorous and energetic, looking younger and stronger than in historical photographs taken near the end of the war.
Time itself seemed to pass far more slowly for him.
A cold, terrifying thought struck Ian instantly, nearly stopping his breath.
Why could the president live for so long?
And still remain so young?
Ian stared fixedly at the television screen, his heart pounding wildly in his chest. On the screen, the President was waving his arms passionately as he spoke with fiery enthusiasm about the Empire's grand future plans.
Every syllable reverberated through the restaurant speakers, hammering against the nerves of the diners.
At the same time, that overflowing vitality hammered at Ian's nerves, too.
Too young.
This was absolutely not the condition of a man nearing a hundred years old. That full vitality, that face almost untouched by wrinkles, that booming, strong voice… This was not normal aging.
Unable to hold himself back, Ian leaned slightly towards a relatively approachable elderly man at the neighboring table and lowered his voice.
"Excuse me, but don't you think His Excellency the President looks especially energetic? I mean, considering his age..."
Ian did not dare say anything disrespectful about the President. Who knew what might happen in such a volatile nation if someone spoke carelessly? He certainly did not want to attract the attention of those hawk-like police officers again.
When the guiding ideology itself was fundamentally flawed, the resulting social structure would inevitably become grotesquely distorted, far more twisted than the capitalist empires.
And sure enough...
Just look at what the people had become.
The old man turned his head. At first, confusion flashed through his cloudy eyes, only to be replaced almost instantly by a near-fanatical reverence.
"How could you even ask such a question?" His gaze gradually became wary as he sized Ian up from head to toe.
Clearly, he thought it was foolish of Ian to ask such a question.
Ian's heart sank. He immediately forced an expression of sudden realization onto his face and nodded repeatedly in agreement.
"Right, right, of course you're right! I was ignorant. Of course, His Excellency the President is in a different league from ordinary people! I was just astonished by his look."
As he spoke, he quickly turned back around and lowered his head to tackle the meager amount of food on his plate. He could still feel the old man's suspicious stare lingering on his back for quite some time.
No one else in the restaurant seemed to notice anything unusual.
As they listened to the speech, their faces radiated pride and absolute trust. From time to time, they burst into approving growls or applause during pauses in the president's speech.
Ian silently focused on eating.
In front of him sat a 'standard ration meal.'
It was a greyish-brown synthetic meat patty with two slices of wilted yellow vegetables and a bowl of murky bean soup. It tasted so bland that it felt like chewing wax, but he had to eat it to avoid attracting attention.
Everyone here was used to this kind of food.
If someone his apparent age still wasn't accustomed to it, wouldn't that expose him immediately?
"Ugh… this tastes awful."
Ian chewed mechanically, his thoughts already far away. There was no point in talking further with these deeply brainwashed citizens. They neither wanted nor dared to think about the abnormalities behind it all.
He forced himself to calm down. Pretending to watch the television attentively, he let his mind race.
An old-fashioned CRT television was broadcasting the news.
The screen flickered constantly with static, yet the image remained clear enough.
"Today, the great President delivered an important speech at the Empire Science Institute, announcing the official launch of Phase Three of the 'Millennium Plan'…"
The camera shifted. A stern, middle-aged man in a smart military uniform stood behind a podium. His hair was immaculately combed, his eyes were sharp, and his amplified voice was both powerful and inciting.
Ian suddenly stopped chewing.
"Destined to reign forever and ever? What a joke." Ian sneered inwardly.
"There's absolutely no way it's because he's 'great.' Even if this world's technology had developed in a bizarre way, the laws of biology shouldn't be completely different..."
He had already reached his own conclusion.
If there were no other 'monsters and demons' secretly manipulating this world, a world completely controlled by the Evil Empire, where magic had nearly vanished, then the answer was obvious.
Although the president publicly claimed to have eradicated all wizards and destroyed magic, he himself had probably kept quite a few 'good things' plundered from the wizards!
For example… an Elixir of Life? Or a potion that could drastically slow down the aging process and preserve youth? What about combining it with sophisticated disguise magic or alchemical items that conceal one's true age?
After all, Grindelwald had once been his collaborator. For a Dark Wizard of that caliber, it would not be strange at all to possess several forbidden methods of immortality.
"Or perhaps…" Ian considered an even more astonishing possibility. "Could the Philosopher's Stone, something that no one in my world ever truly succeeded in creating, have actually been developed in this universe by Grindelwald or one of his potion prodigies? And then the President simply stole the fruits of their immortality research?"
The President had exterminated the wizards yet inherited their legacy.
The thought sent a chill through Ian's body. If that were true, then the President's longevity would have been built upon the corpses of countless wizards and the destruction of the entire magical civilization.
And if that were true, then that might also be one of the reasons why the President had sought to destroy the wizards in the first place.
A dictator... would never allow others to possess more time than ordinary people, let alone infinite years, just like himself. Otherwise, how could the world continue to believe in his greatness and invincibility?
His entire ideology was designed to create an unshakable, unquestionable, and unchallengeable king. If the President wanted to create a myth around himself, then the extermination of the Wizards was inevitable.
After all, wizards were people who feared neither heaven nor earth. While it might have been possible to make them believe in such an ideology, the object of their worship could only ever be another wizard.
Like Voldemort.
"So the Wizards never realized that from the very beginning, the path the president chose had no room for them."
After piecing everything together, Ian's eyes gradually lit up.
The fate of the Wizards in this distorted timeline was certainly tragic.
However...
For Ian, the fact that the president had probably seized all the Wizards' inheritances was not entirely a bad thing.
Originally, he had been wandering aimlessly, searching for materials and clues to repair the time machine. But now, a clear target had appeared:
The president's stronghold!
It might contain all the wealth of the wizard civilization!
This would save Ian a great deal of time searching for resources himself.
The logic was obvious.
If the President truly relied on Wizard methods to maintain immortality, he would inevitably centralize and control all Wizard resources. To Ian, the President's headquarters were the world's greatest treasure vault.
Even if the resources were merely stored as war trophies, the place would undoubtedly contain the finest in the world, rare magical materials, deeper secrets about this twisted timeline, and perhaps even clues relating to the 'mysterious will' that attacked the time machine!
Ian was convinced.
This timeline absolutely had something to do with the mysterious force interfering with him.
The risk was enormous, but the rewards might exceed imagination.
"I'm doing it."
Ian made his decision. He quickly finished his food, paid the bill, and left the restaurant.
Once outside, the oppressive atmosphere became even more tangible.
The roads were broad, and the buildings were arranged with almost mechanical uniformity; massive flags hung at regular intervals. Most pedestrians hurried along, looking cold and exhausted, rarely speaking to one another. Groups of uniformed youth corps members marched past in formation, singing military songs and glaring.
Loudspeakers mounted on street corners periodically broadcasted production quotas and propaganda slogans.
An invisible, suffocating sense of order blanketed everything.
Based on the information he had previously obtained from the police captain, Ian knew that he needed to travel to Imperial City, the central hub of the Empire and now the largest city in the world.
He could not simply Apparate there. Having never visited the world's Imperial City before, he knew nothing about the conditions at his destination, and the risk was too high. Moreover, the magical environment of this world was extremely weak and unstable. Any broomstick or flying carpet he carried could easily cause unpredictable magical disturbances.
He might literally be thrown out of the sky.
It was precisely because of that... Even as a legendary wizard, Ian had no choice but to use this world's 'Muggle' transport.
After making some inquiries, he arrived at the city's transport hub.
There was no train station like the ones he was used to. Instead, the place was a massive 'airship transit terminal' crowned with an enormous dome. The station was packed with people yet eerily quiet, except for the cold, female voice of the broadcast system announcing departures.
"What absurd technology…"
Ian looked up and beheld one of this world's wonders.
Huge, spindle-shaped airships floated beside towering docking berths, their gas envelopes adorned with iron crosses and swastikas. They bore no resemblance to airplanes; they were more like the Zeppelins he remembered, only vastly larger and somehow... stranger in their technical design.
Smaller balloon vessels resembling public buses moved through the lower airspace in steady streams.
"In terms of civilian aviation, they actually rely on these things?" Ian clicked his tongue inwardly. The technology tree in this world had certainly taken an unusual turn. Airplanes seemed to be used primarily for military purposes, while long-distance civilian transportation had been monopolised by these more fuel-efficient airships. Rumor even had it that the president of this universe had an actual flying saucer as his presidential aircraft.
"Balloon ships are slow, their routes are fixed, and they're easier to control."
Ian suspected this was also part of the high-pressure social system.
He joined the queue to buy a ticket.
The queue was long, and everyone waited in silence. The loudspeakers endlessly repeated:
"Please do not carry prohibited items. Cooperate with security inspections and help maintain Imperial order."
When it was his turn, Ian used his forged identity documents to purchase a 'third-class cabin' ticket. The inspector scanned his identification and suitcase before allowing him through.
After boarding, he found that the cabin interior was simple but clean.
The hard plastic seats were packed closely together. The passengers, dressed in standardized work clothes or uniforms, sat expressionlessly, like robots following pre-programmed routines.
The air carried the smell of machine oil mixed with something strange, almost like ether.
Ian took a window seat.
The vessel slowly rose into the air as the gas cells expanded and lifted the cabin from the ground.
"This is actually kind of fascinating."
During the long flight, Ian gazed down through the porthole.
The land below was divided into perfectly ordered squares. Farmland, factories, and residential areas were sharply separated, giving off a cold sense of efficiency. There was almost no trace of natural disorder or untamed scenery.
The square-shaped building complexes resembled gigantic beehives: orderly yet utterly lifeless.
Midway through the journey, the intercom sounded again:
"Dear passengers, you are currently aboard Imperial Sky Transport Bureau Flight 734, bound for the Imperial City. The estimated travel time is four hours. Please comply with the following regulations:
Discussion of politics, religion, and Old Era history is prohibited.
Photography of the exterior is prohibited.
If you observe any suspicious behavior, please report it to a crew member immediately.
Thank you for contributing to the Imperial order.
Ian sneered inwardly.
Even riding an airship meant being monitored from every angle.
In a world like this, the people here truly possessed wills of steel, stronger even than the Americans'.
They endured everything.
Ian pretended to rest with his eyes closed, secretly using magic to sense his surroundings. He soon discovered that the entire airship was enveloped in a faint energy field; it was not magic but rather an anti-magic interference wave capable of suppressing any supernatural activation.
No wonder not a single wizard remained in this world.
The moment one was discovered, they were eradicated.
During the flight, a flight attendant pushed a service cart down the aisle. She wore a perfectly pressed uniform and had a smile that looked as though it had been molded into place.
"Would you like a 'nutritional supplement', sir? It's a special Imperial formula that strengthens the body and prevents viral infections." She held out a vial of blue liquid while making her sales pitch.
"No, thank you."
Ian shook his head in refusal. There was no way he was going to drink some mysterious 'supplement' like that. For all he knew, it could be laced with poison and mind-control drugs.
As a Potions Master, he could already smell something was wrong with it.
Outside the window...
Several even larger military airships flew past in formation. Their hulls were covered in turrets and missile launchers as they patrolled the border.
Far away, a gigantic energy barrier stretched across the horizon like a transparent wall, enclosing the entire nation within it.
This was the ultimate defense system of the 'Iron Curtain Project,' capable of keeping out foreign enemies and escaping citizens alike.
Four hours later, the airship began its descent.
Through the clouds, Ian finally saw Lin City.
The sight of the imperial capital nearly stopped his breathing.
It looked less like a city and more like a colossal mechanical fortress.
At its center stood a black spire over a thousand meters tall, shaped like the salute gesture of the Evil Empire. Suspended above its peak was an enormous crystal sphere, radiating an eerie blue glow.
"The President's Eye."
Rumor had it that it was a super-device integrating surveillance, communications, and energy generation into one system.
Most astonishing of all... Several aerial fortresses floated above the city.
Resembling inverted mountain ranges, they hung in the sky with countless cables and pipelines descending from their undersides to connect with the ground below. Their surfaces were covered with artillery batteries and radar arrays, clearly serving as mobile military command centers.
"So this is it…"
Ian muttered softly.
For a moment, he felt as though he had crossed over into another world entirely.
It reminded him of a game that very few people had ever played.
(End of Chapter)