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A faint...
Yet undeniably real...
A sense of light began replacing the hopeless void from before.
"Hmm? What's going on?" Ian stopped, carefully sensing the sudden change.
It felt as though he had passed through an invisible membrane, stepping out of a realm filled with malice and into a new area, still unknown, but at least free from the corruption that had been constantly trying to erode him.
As time passed, the suffocating, absolute darkness slowly receded like a retreating tide. In its place spread a lifeless gray that filled every corner.
It wasn't actually brighter. It was more like moving from pitch-black darkness into an eternal twilight. The dim light came from nowhere, shining evenly across everything with no visible source and no shadows, leaving the entire world wrapped in a gloomy, lifeless gray haze.
"At least I'm standing on something solid now."
Ian looked down, realizing he was finally back on solid ground.
Beneath his feet was an extremely cold black rock with a slightly rough, grainy texture. It resembled the stone slabs he'd seen in the endless corridor earlier, but this stone was much darker, as though it carried endless ages of silence and death within it.
He stomped on it a few times. The rock didn't budge in the slightest; it was as solid as could be.
"So... is this some kind of sealed pocket world? Or a fragment of history?"
Ian looked up. There was no sky. No sun, moon, or stars. There was only an endless expanse overhead, a dead gray "vault." Or perhaps it wasn't a vault at all. Maybe it was simply the boundary of this strange space, and the gray light was seeping directly out of it.
His vision was no longer blocked by darkness, but the strange gray light still limited how far he could see.
Ian seemed to be standing on an incredibly vast plain. As far as the eye could see, the ground rose and fell in uneven waves, all made of the same black stone. Jagged rock formations twisted into bizarre shapes, as though some unimaginable force had molded them in an instant before freezing them forever.
The air carried a faint smell of dust mixed with ancient mold. It was dry, cold, and completely devoid of life.
"This is strange."
Ian was certain he'd reached the place where that mysterious creature was supposed to be, but things were very different from what he'd expected.
Most importantly, the corruption that had clung to him like a parasite, the countless prying gazes, the maddening whispers, and the hallucinations that had been attacking his mind had vanished completely. Logically speaking, shouldn't they have been even stronger here? After all, he was getting closer to the source.
Yet, not only had the constant feeling of being invaded disappeared, but it had been replaced by a deep, profound silence. It didn't feel dangerous, but it ran far deeper than that, a silence that seemed to come from the end of all things.
It was as if this place were where all noise and madness finally came to an end, and even corruption itself settled here, fading into nothingness.
"Is that thing really here?"
Ian didn't let his guard down. He tightened his grip on his elder wood wand and expanded his senses as far as he could. His mental force cautiously spread outward, carefully probing this unknown land of gray ash.
After a thorough search, he found nothing.
His mental force wasn't being corrupted here, but spreading it through this place was roughly ten thousand times harder than it was in the normal world. Yes, ten thousand times.
Maybe it was because this place didn't belong to reality, or maybe there was another reason entirely. Either way, his mental force simply couldn't spread very far, limited to only a few dozen meters.
That was practically useless.
"Damn it," Ian clicked his tongue.
With no other choice, he resorted to the oldest method of exploration: walking.
He picked a direction and moved forward, his footsteps producing faint echoes across the black stone ground. They were the only sounds in this silent world.
He walked for a long time, but the scenery never seemed to change. Endless black rock formations, dim gray light, and a dead, silent sky.
It wasn't as though he hadn't tried using magic to investigate. He released his Magic Sickle again, sending it out in every direction, but it ran into the exact same problem as his mental force.
Since these magical constructs were controlled through his mind, they were just as restricted here. Their range was slightly better, but only by a little, a few hundred meters at most.
And everything they reported back was just as monotonous. Rock. Nothing but rock. No energy fluctuations, no signs of life, and no distortions in space.
Even the corruption that had once been so dense it was almost tangible had become so thin here that it was nearly impossible to detect, as if the absolute stillness of this place had dissolved and assimilated it.
"Damn it! Just what is this place? A pocket world?"
Ian tried flying. He rose a hundred meters into the air, giving himself a much broader view, but no matter where he looked, all he saw was endless silence. The rolling plains of black stone stretched all the way to the gray horizon. There was nothing else.
For the first time, an overwhelming sense of loneliness crept over him. It was completely different from facing monsters or resisting the corruption in the darkness; at least those had been battles.
There had been conflict, and there had been something happening. Here, however, everything was slowly and silently worn away. It felt as though the entire universe contained only him and this endless, meaningless silence.
"There's got to be a way out. Is that thing trying to trap me here until I die? It should be hiding somewhere in here too. My instincts have never been wrong."
Unwilling to give up, Ian picked another direction and continued searching.
Hours passed, maybe even longer. In this place, where the passage of time had lost all meaning, he couldn't tell. But the result remained the same.
Just when he was about to conclude that this gray wasteland really was the end, nothing more than a featureless prison, he climbed over an especially massive black ridge that resembled the spine of some gigantic beast.
The scenery finally changed.
"This pocket world is bigger than I expected... but I knew it. There was no way I'd walked into a dead end."
Far off on the horizon, the outline of an unimaginably vast cluster of buildings slowly emerged. It was a city. A dead city.
"Ancient ruins? A piece of history that was swallowed up?"
Ian accelerated toward it. As he drew closer, the details gradually became clear.
Every building was constructed from the same cold black stone. Their style was ancient, bizarre, and unlike anything from any civilization Ian knew.
Their structures openly defied both physics and geometry; leaning towers looked as though they should have collapsed long ago, yet remained frozen at the very instant before they fell.
Massive archways twisted into spirals, and countless enormous blocks of sharply angled stone were stacked together in ways that appeared random, yet somehow followed a rhythm that hinted at madness, forming indescribably massive structures.
There were no windows, and no obvious doorways. Only impossibly deep black cracks were scattered across the buildings' surfaces like open wounds.
Just like the plains outside, the city was utterly silent. There wasn't the slightest sign of life, nor even the faintest breeze. It resembled the corpse of a dead giant god, lying cold and motionless across the gray wasteland, radiating an ancient stillness that was almost suffocating.
"Is that thing sealed somewhere in here?"
Ian landed at the edge of the city. He stood before a broad avenue wide enough for dozens of horse-drawn carriages to travel side by side, its surface paved with the same massive black stone.
The great road stretched straight into the heart of the city, flanked on both sides by those silent, bizarre black buildings. They stood like rows of tombstones for Obscuruses.
'Tap... tap... tap...'
Ian walked deeper into the city along the avenue. His footsteps echoed through the vast, silent streets, carrying far into the distance and making the place feel even eerier.
He tried entering several buildings, but the cracks that looked like entrances led only into chaotic darkness. Even his senses couldn't penetrate them, as though some unseen force had sealed off the interiors.
He struck one of the walls with all his strength.
'Boom! Boom! Boom!'
The result was the same as before. He couldn't leave even the faintest scratch. Like the stone outside, the entire city was indestructible, and it refused to be explored.
With no other option, Ian continued following the avenue deeper inside.
The city's layout grew even more complicated, with countless similar stone avenues crisscrossing one another like a giant maze.
He walked for a long time, passing even stranger buildings. Some resembled gigantic beasts covered in spikes, crouching against the ground.
Others looked like enormous rings of stone spiraling endlessly upward, only to fold back on themselves in an impossible bend at the top. Still others were nothing more than countless gigantic geometric blocks with mirror-smooth surfaces piled together in complete disorder.
Yet regardless of their shape, every single one remained completely silent and completely sealed.
Finally, after what felt like crossing the entire city, or perhaps only an insignificant corner of it, Ian arrived at an unusually vast plaza. At its center stood a structure unlike any other. It wasn't the tallest building in the city, but it was safely the most striking.
It was an awe-inspiring monument. No... rather than a building, it looked more like an enormous stone gateway, a colossal doorframe.
It consisted of two black stone pillars hundreds of meters tall, carved from top to bottom with twisted reliefs that defied all understanding, supporting an equally massive lintel overhead that was likewise covered in grotesque carvings.
Beneath the stone gateway, there was no actual door, only an abyss of darkness so deep it seemed to lead into another dimension.
"Again? Another stone gate?"
Ian was starting to think he was cursed when it came to strange doors of every shape and size. If the world really were a novel, then the author must have had a personal grudge against doors.
Grumbling to himself, Ian continued looking around.
At the base of the gateway's right pillar was a relatively smooth slab of black stone. Carved into it were enormous, bizarre characters with an unmistakably non-human sense of beauty. It was the first time since entering these ruins that Ian had found a complete, clearly written system of text.
"Finally... something that might actually explain this place?"
His heartbeat quickened. He hurried over to the pillar and looked up at the inscription.
The writing looked nothing like any language he knew. Rather than letters, the characters resembled living things, a fusion of geometric patterns and biological organs that seemed to squirm ever so slightly. There was a strange, unsettling beauty to them.
Simply looking at the text sent a faint stab of pain through Ian's mind. It was as though the writing itself radiated a trace of corruption.
"They're similar to the writing in the corridor... but mixed in with something closer to magical script. Like parts of it were written by humans. Maybe I can use those differences to decipher it."
Taking a deep breath, Ian suppressed his discomfort. He focused completely, drawing upon his vast magical knowledge, his understanding of linguistics, and his perception of the Origin of rules as he poured everything into deciphering the inscription.
This wasn't ordinary translation; it was closer to unlocking a mental cipher, forcing a resonance with the underlying rules to extract their meaning. His magic flowed like an incredibly delicate carving knife, carefully probing the structure of each character. He searched for the thoughts, history, and concepts bound to the writing itself.
As long as the being who had written these words had possessed a mind, Ian's spell could establish a connection with the thoughts they had at the exact moment of writing. Through that connection, he could obtain the information he needed to decipher the text.
It was an extraordinarily advanced form of mind magic. Even Dumbledore might have struggled to perform it.
This had been one of the signature spells of the dark witch Morgan, and considering how she had died, it wasn't hard to see why she had invented it. She had loved exploring ancient ruins, and naturally, a spell like this made investigating them much more convenient.
As Morgan's prized student, Ian had inherited this magical legacy remarkably well.
He devoted himself to the deciphering as time slowly passed.
"This is harder than I thought..."
Fine beads of sweat appeared on Ian's forehead as his mental force drained away at an astonishing rate. The complexity of the script far exceeded anything he'd imagined. Every single stroke seemed connected to some ancient, maddening truth; one careless mistake, and the torrent of thoughts hidden within could overwhelm his mind.
Within the thoughts preserved in the writing, he saw a churning sea of chaos filled with colossal, terrifying figures... He sensed stars arranged in impossible patterns, pulsing with rhythms that drove the mind toward madness... He brushed against whispers from beyond time itself and an ancient malice sleeping since before history...
Finally, after countless attempts and breaking through layer upon layer of mental encryption, the name represented by those enormous, twisted, blasphemous characters finally shed its veil of secrecy.
It appeared in his mind with perfect clarity.
'R'lyeh.'
R'lyeh. The name of the place where Ian now stood.
The moment he deciphered it from the ancient script, the fearless young wizard's expression changed. Or rather, it turned deathly pale.
"What the hell?! Where the hell have I ended up?!"
How could Ian 'not' know what that name represented?
R'lyeh, the legendary city that was said to slumber beneath the deepest sea, existing outside normal reality. A mythical place found only in the oldest, most obscure, and least trustworthy forbidden legends. According to those tales, it was the resting place of the Great Old One, Cthulhu.
"Oh... my God."
Ian instinctively staggered back a step. The color drained from his face as a chill shot from the soles of his feet straight to the top of his head.
At last, he understood just what kind of horrifying place he had stumbled into.
'Why does the Harry Potter world have a place like this?!'
(End of Chapter)