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The Fallen God's howl of despair and unwillingness seemed to linger faintly through the depths of the ruins. Yet its chaotic, corrupted presence had already vanished completely into that absolute darkness where even light could not escape, as if it had been erased by an invisible hand.
"Oh, for the love of my fabulous Dumbledore..."
Ian stood frozen in place, every muscle in his body tense. Fine beads of sweat covered the palm gripping his wand.
It wasn't as though he had never faced powerful beings before, but the force that had appeared out of nowhere, forcibly intervened, and taken away the Fallen God existed on a level completely beyond his understanding. It wasn't magic. It wasn't divine power. It didn't even feel like any known form of energy. It was more like the direct enforcement of a rule, cold, absolute, and undeniable.
"What the hell was that thing..."
A storm churned inside Ian's mind as a chill shot up his spine. He had originally thought his opponent was merely a Fallen God imprisoned by corruption. Now it seemed that whatever lurked beneath this abyss was far more terrifying than the god itself.
At this moment, Ian genuinely wanted to retreat. Go back. Leave well enough alone.
However, he suddenly turned around and looked toward the path he had used to enter. The spatial gateway that had connected this place to the prison level above, passing through the broken restriction barrier, had disappeared without a trace.
The door was gone.
The location where the breach should have been was now occupied by a seamless stone wall covered in ancient weathering marks. The wall blended perfectly with the surrounding ruins. There were no cracks, no magical fluctuations; it was as if the passage leading to the outside world had never existed at all.
"Damn it! I've been played!"
Ian's heart sank. He hurried over and pressed a hand against the wall. Cold, solid, real stone. He extended his magical senses, but all he received in return was chaos, as though the wall blocked not only physical space but the transmission of information itself.
"Has the space been altered? Or... has this entire region been moved somewhere else?"
His expression darkened. Immediately, he attempted the most straightforward spatial magic.
"Apparition!"
Magic power surged as he locked onto a location in the Ministry above, a coordinate he had previously passed through.
Nothing happened. The familiar sensation of space folding around him never came. He remained exactly where he stood. The spell had failed.
It wasn't because space itself was unstable. Although the battle had disrupted the surrounding spatial structure, Ian could still tell that the Ministry's space above remained stable. With the power of a legendary wizard, crossing a stretch of spatial turbulence should have been effortless.
Something else was stopping him, a force rooted in the fundamental laws of this place. An absolute restriction, a law that prohibited all forms of spatial transportation. An unbreakable rule.
"Damn it! Is that thing trying to trap me here?!"
Ian refused to give up. Drawing upon the Paradox Divine Authority that had grown stronger during the battle, he attempted to distort and deny the rule itself.
"Redefinition: Apparition is permitted in this place!"
His voice rang out as the divine light of Paradox spread from his body, crashing against the invisible law that bound the area. But the restriction was far stronger than he had imagined. The light of Paradox struck it like a stream hitting ten-thousand-year-old black ice. Not even a ripple appeared; instead, his own radiance dimmed slightly.
The rule seemed to be one of the very foundations of the ruins themselves. Its priority and weight of existence were so overwhelming that they inspired despair. Even with Ian's current mastery of Paradox Divine Authority, he couldn't budge it in the slightest.
"This is ridiculous..." he couldn't help muttering, his face filled with disbelief and concern. "The African Ministry of Magic is practically a forgotten little organization on the international stage. So what the hell have they been hiding down near the center of the Earth?!"
A restriction that even Divine Authority couldn't distort had already surpassed the limits of modern magical civilization's understanding. It was hard to imagine something like this existing in Africa, and not just any era of Africa, but Africa during Voldemort's time. Yet in later generations, no one had ever discovered it.
"If nobody found it, that means it probably didn't trigger some world-ending disaster. But something this evil doesn't look like the kind of thing that wouldn't cause a catastrophe. Or..." A troubling thought crossed Ian's mind. "Could it be that my current era is simply before the disaster begins?"
Countless possibilities flashed through his head. Refusing to give up, Ian immediately tried several other escape methods.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
Powerful Explosion Charms slammed into the stone wall one after another. The magical force was enough to level a small mountain, yet when it struck the wall, it left behind nothing more than a faint white mark. Not even a single stone chip broke off.
"Change!"
Next, he tried advanced Transfiguration, attempting to turn the wall into air or water that he could pass through. But the light of the transfiguration spell vanished into the stone wall like a pebble sinking into the ocean. Nothing happened. The wall's very essence rejected alteration, which also explained why their earlier battle had failed to affect it. Its state had been permanently fixed.
"I refuse to believe this!"
Ian was stubborn by nature. He even tried one of the oldest and most unreliable methods available, creating a random Portkey. Using objects from the ruins, he infused them with magic. The resulting Portkeys, however, contained no spatial fluctuations whatsoever. They were no different from ordinary rocks.
Every attempt failed. Ian's expression darkened completely. He finally realized that he might truly be trapped within this strange and unpredictable ancient ruin buried deep beneath the earth.
"Calm down. This isn't the first dangerous situation I've faced. Before becoming a Legendary Wizard, I survived plenty of deadly situations. And every single time, I was the one who came out on top."
With all avenues of retreat cut off, the only option left seemed to be moving forward. Rebuilding his confidence, Ian took a deep breath and suppressed the unease and frustration inside him. He raised his wand before him and cautiously began walking deeper into the ruins, heading away from the abyss that had swallowed the Fallen God.
He walked along a massive roadway paved with giant stone slabs. On either side stood rough stone walls so tall their tops couldn't be seen. The strange carvings were still there, unfathomable symbols covering the walls, seemingly some kind of ancient artistic style unlike anything he had ever encountered.
Once again, he tried to decipher them. Focusing all his mental strength, he observed, analyzed, and probed.
The result was just as disappointing as before. The carvings seemed to possess some form of information shielding. Whenever his mental power touched them, all he sensed was emptiness, or random fragments of imagery that jumped between unrelated concepts with no logic whatsoever.
More unsettling still, when he stared at certain twisted patterns for too long, designs resembling countless tiny tentacles tangled together, he began to experience strange illusions. The carvings seemed to be moving, slowly writhing, constantly changing shape, and emanating something indescribable. It felt like whispers blending temptation and madness, directly tugging at the deepest parts of his consciousness.
"They're twisting... writhing... trying to lure me somehow?"
Ian forcibly looked away as a slight dizziness washed over him. That was the only conclusion he could draw: the carvings possessed a clear sense of active intent, yet he had no idea what that intent actually was. Even the clue itself felt deeply ominous.
"A few more looks and I might start glowing like a lighthouse."
He didn't dare keep staring at the walls. Instead, he focused on the road beneath his feet and the darkness ahead.
The light from his Lumos Charm illuminated only about twenty to thirty meters around him. Beyond that lay an endless darkness so dense it seemed capable of swallowing all light. And this wasn't an ordinary Lumos Charm; it was a version infused with Ian's Light of the Mind, practically a miniature sun. Under normal circumstances, it could illuminate an entire city without difficulty. Yet here, within this corridor, it could only provide a few dozen meters of visibility.
That was obviously wrong.
"That darkness isn't just the absence of light..."
He continued walking down the seemingly endless corridor. The silence was terrifying. Only his own footsteps and breathing echoed through the vast space, making them sound unnaturally loud.
After an unknown amount of time, he heard it again: the Fallen God's scream.
"AAAAAHHHH! NO!!!"
The sound came from somewhere ahead in the darkness. It was filled with unbearable pain and torment, enough to make anyone's skin crawl.
"That way?"
Ian's spirits lifted. He quickened his pace toward the source of the sound.
Then something strange happened. No matter how fast he moved, the scream always seemed to come from the same distance ahead, just a few dozen meters away. The gap never closed.
He ran for a full half hour, yet the screams still echoed from that fixed location "nearby." Meanwhile, nothing around him changed. There was only the endless stone road beneath his feet and the infinitely extending walls on either side.
"This place is seriously cursed. And it doesn't even feel like a Confundus Charm."
Ian stopped and frowned. Crouching down beside the wall, he used magic to carve a clear symbol into an inconspicuous spot. The mark carried his personal magical signature, making it impossible to mistake for anything else.
He continued onward. After walking for a long time, Ian stopped again and looked back. Behind him was nothing but darkness; the light of his Lumos Charm couldn't penetrate that far. However, he could still faintly sense the magical marker he had left behind. It was far away in the distance, and the connection was steadily weakening.
That meant he wasn't trapped in some kind of looping corridor or ghostly maze. He really was moving forward, toward entirely new territory.
"So it's just... really that big? But this is absurdly big..."
A sense of helplessness washed over Ian. The scale of this ruin was completely unreasonable. By his estimate, he had already traveled more than fifty kilometers at a respectable pace, yet ahead of him was still the same pitch-black corridor. There wasn't a single intersection, not a single side chamber, not even the slightest variation in the architecture.
What's more, he could vaguely feel the distance between the walls slowly increasing. The ceiling was becoming harder and harder to perceive. The scale of this "corridor" clearly wasn't designed for humans. It wasn't even designed for any known intelligent species.
Ian had seen ancient Titans before, but now, he felt that even Titans would walk into this place and immediately think they'd entered a giant's home. No, even that wasn't enough. This passage seemed more suited for some ancient existence as vast as a mountain, perhaps even many times larger than one, something whose form was completely different from any known creature.
"Damn it all. I should never have gotten curious about that Bronze Gate. If I hadn't gotten curious, I wouldn't have been dragged into the Super Ancient Era, and I definitely wouldn't be stuck here! Wouldn't it have been nice to just stay at Hogwarts and study like a normal student?"
Ian felt exhausted, not just physically, but mentally as well. This aimless exploration, combined with the constant vigilance required in such an unknown environment, was steadily draining him. He knew blindly walking forward wasn't a solution.
"People are made of iron, food is steel. Skip a meal and you won't grow taller!"
As always, Ian remained deeply committed to getting taller. He sat down on the spot, leaning against the cold stone wall, and pulled food and water from his magically expanded pocket.
Of course, with his current mastery of magic, he had long since invented and perfected spells like Bread Creation, Water Creation, Vitamin Generation, Pork Creation, and Beef Creation. To satisfy his appetite, he had even developed spells for creating Spicy Dry Pot and Butter Hot Pot. In theory, he could survive here on magic alone for a very long time.
"But I can't exactly spend the rest of my life living here."
Ian chewed on a magically created strip of braised beef jerky. The texture was realistic, but the flavor felt completely bland.
What he pursued was the mystery of magic, the truth of the world, and the joy of exploring the unknown, not spending the rest of eternity trapped in some cursed hole as a shut-in. Loneliness and the loss of freedom were more terrifying than any powerful enemy. He had to find a way out.
Ian pulled himself together. After a short rest, he recovered a bit of magic and mental energy before standing back up.
Normal exploration methods clearly weren't working. He needed something more efficient, something capable of covering a much larger area.
Closing his eyes, Ian began circulating the vast magical power within his body. He recalled a novel he had read in his previous life, Dragon Raja, and remembered the descriptions of the wind spirit Kamaitachi from Japanese fiction. Using those ideas as inspiration, he combined magical puppet techniques, energy perception, and information transmission into an entirely new detection spell.
What was talent? This was talent. The highest level of magical talent. As long as the situation wasn't too urgent, if Ian wanted a certain magical effect, he could simply create a spell that achieved it. He had already reached a truly legendary level, one worthy of founding an entire magical school of thought.
"Ear of a Thousand Winds, Eye of Myriad Phenomena. Heed my command and reveal the unknown."
Ian softly chanted the incantation he had created himself, his wand flicking lightly.
Instantly, countless tiny magical constructs appeared around him. Invisible to the naked eye, they were composed of pure magical power mixed with traces of his consciousness, each one no larger than a dust mite.
Magic Kamaitachi.
Like a disturbed swarm of bees, they poured out around him before silently blending into the air, shooting off in every direction, forward, backward, left, right, above, and below.
Bzzzzz...
Bzzzzz...
Bzzzzz...
Each Kamaitachi acted as one of Ian's sensory nodes. They continuously gathered information about spatial structures, magical fluctuations, sounds, scents, and anything else they encountered, transmitting everything directly back to his mind.
Naturally, this spell consumed an enormous amount of magic, especially when used across such a vast region filled with bizarre and incomprehensible laws. Fortunately, a Legendary Wizard knew how to endure.
Ian could feel his magical reserves pouring out of him like floodwaters released from a broken dam. Still, he gritted his teeth and persisted, continuously creating and releasing more Kamaitachi.
Minute after minute passed. Sweat formed on his forehead, and his face gradually paled. Just as he felt his magic approaching its limit and was preparing to abandon the method…
Suddenly, a crystal-clear signal appeared among the countless streams of feedback. It was distinct, unique, and impossible to mistake, like a lighthouse shining within endless darkness.
The information flowed directly into his consciousness.
(End of Chapter)