"Are there any other defensive magics on this tower?" Marcel couldn't help but wonder.
But it was clear that his guess was wrong.
As the group of dragons approached the tower again, diving towards it one by one, hundreds of slender red beams of light suddenly appeared from below the tower. They looked extremely dense and shot towards the dragons in the air in neat parabolic arcs, drawing red curves across the sky.
For a moment, the dragons began to dodge in a panic, but the number of magical beams was simply too great, and their density was extraordinary. It was impossible to avoid them. The dozen or so dragons fell one by one like dumplings, crashing heavily into the island's forest.
Before long, they flew up again, glanced at the red halo that had once again gathered around the tower, and then left dejectedly.
Marcel quickly stuck his head out to look down at the tower and immediately saw the small figures on the ground.
"Elves?" Marcel was truly astonished this time. "It's hard to imagine how grand the scene must have been when the ancient wizards conquered these elves... I remember some ancient texts mentioning that the number of elves back then was not small!"
For those intelligent magical creatures blessed by nature, using their innate abilities was almost as simple as eating. It was no wonder that every war initiated by those intelligent magical creatures caused a major upheaval in the magical world.
"Putting aside the current state of house-elves, the magical power of the ancient wizards who could completely conquer this species is truly something to aspire to! Compared to the more lifestyle-oriented spells of today, the gap is truly..."
Watching the elves below cheering, a desire for powerful ancient magic rose in Marcel's heart.
It wasn't for any other reason than to see for himself the mysteries of those ancient magics. This was purely the mindset of a theoretical researcher.
It had to be said that after Marcel obtained the Scroll of Truth, his desire to explore magical theory was rapidly increasing. Although he had always been interested in magic, this growing desire faintly hinted at something abnormal.
However, this abnormality was not obvious, and even with Marcel's vigilance, he had not noticed it at all.
After the elves had repelled the attacking dragons, they Apparated away with a series of pops. Marcel turned his head, looked at the cup of tea on the table, thought for a moment, and then took a sip.
The tea was warm and tasted quite good. Unfortunately, he had no expertise in tea and just drank it to quench his thirst. He finished it in no time.
"Want to try some? It's good," Marcel said, turning to look at Vylie, who was still standing by the window.
After a short rest, Marcel saw that the elves had no intention of returning, so he decided to continue searching the other rooms.
But it was no wonder that Muggle-born wizards always complained that wizarding architecture was mostly unreasonable.
The third floor had an unusually large number of rooms, and most of them were used as laboratories. Apart from a large number of bottles and jars, there was almost nothing useful inside. Even more than half of the potion bottles on the wall cabinets were empty, just neatly arranged there.
And some rooms were surprisingly empty. It seemed that spells like the Undetectable Extension Charm had been cast inside, and with nothing in them, they looked strangely vacant.
But on the entire third floor, there was one room that was particularly different.
It looked like a very ordinary small dining room, but as soon as Marcel entered, he immediately discovered its peculiarity—it was a room on which a strange spell had been cast.
Although he and Vylie could walk around freely inside, they could not touch anything. When they reached out, their hands would pass right through where a solid object should be, as if everything here were just an illusion.
This made Marcel have to ponder what the deep meaning behind it could be.
"It seems this is the place," Marcel thought to himself. "But what secret is hidden here?"
He and Vylie walked around for two laps but found nothing. Even if he saw something valuable, what was the use if he couldn't touch it?
"Huh?"
Suddenly, Marcel felt something was wrong.
The surrounding space... no, the surrounding objects were changing! Whether it was the dining table, the chairs, the surrounding cupboards and cabinets, or even the blank portraits hanging on the walls, they were all gradually becoming distorted. The distortion was not large, but everything had undergone a slight deformation.
Seeing this strange phenomenon, Marcel couldn't help but frown. Just as he was about to draw his wand to test it, the surroundings changed again.
This time, the commotion was not small.
All around them, with Marcel and Vylie at the center, a large number of characters and symbols suddenly appeared! They appeared out of thin air in various parts of the dining room, emitting a faint golden glow, and slowly revolved around them.
Putting aside the current situation, the scene looked extremely beautiful.
But what surprised Marcel was that, unlike the rule-runes on the Scroll of Truth, he had seen most of these symbols before.
Previously, in order to decipher the rule-runes on the Scroll of Truth, he had browsed through almost all kinds of ancient writing dictionaries. Some were magical runes widely circulated in the wizarding world, and some were non-magical texts discovered through Muggle archaeology.
Now, he could even distinguish from the surrounding texts which were hieroglyphs from ancient Egypt, and which were cuneiform from Sumer...
And closest to him were undoubtedly the 22 Phoenician characters floating in front of him.
They were a symbolic script recorded in the Muggle world, said to be the origin of European alphabets. According to Muggle archaeologists, they were created by Phoenician merchants in 1000 BC.
"What does this mean?" Marcel looked around, at a loss.
But even without a clue, he gradually understood that this might be another riddle left by Rowena. The little bronze eagle had said that he was here to retrieve something, and the breakthrough was clearly right in front of him.
Time passed bit by bit. Marcel went from standing to sitting, a notebook and quill now in his hand. He was writing and drawing on the paper as if entranced. It was clear that he had entered a state of research.
Vylie, on the other hand, seemed very calm.
Although she had been attracted by the strange symbols for a while, it wasn't long before her gaze shifted to Marcel. She sat quietly on the floor to the side, staring at Marcel in a daze.
No one knew what she was thinking. Perhaps she wasn't thinking about anything, just sitting there in a daze.
In this dreamlike space, time seemed to have lost its meaning. For a moment, it was strangely quiet, and only the occasional rustle of Marcel's writing proved that there were still living people here.
The sky outside gradually darkened. An afternoon passed quietly. In the gradually dimming room, only the many symbols were left, slowly drifting in mid-air, emitting a faint glow.
Before long, Marcel stopped what he was doing. He took out a bottle of Light-Condensing Sand and shook it. A soft white light immediately erupted from the bottle, illuminating the entire room as if it were day.
This was an improved version of the Glimmer Sand he had used in the Whomping Willow tunnel. Although it was still just a slightly prepared material, its brightness and duration had been greatly increased. It was just that the additives for this thing were a bit expensive, and a miser like Marcel was unwilling to use it much, as its uses were limited.
He placed the bottle of Light-Condensing Sand aside, then turned to take some food out of his suitcase and handed it to Vylie beside him.
"Here, you must be hungry, right?" Marcel said with a smile. "Sorry, I tend to lose track of time when I start researching. If you're sleepy, I have a sleeping bag here."
Vylie took the food and looked at it. It was some rather exquisite-looking cakes he had bought in Italy. She silently unwrapped it and began to eat in small bites.
Seeing that she didn't seem to want to talk, Marcel took out the sleeping bag and laid it out neatly on the floor for her.
Vylie finished the cake in her hand, shook her head slightly to refuse the second one Marcel offered, then shifted her bottom to sit on the sleeping bag, seemingly preparing to continue her daze.
"Aren't you going to do something else?" Marcel asked. "You can continue reading the herbology notebook I gave you."
Vylie nodded slightly but did not move.
"What's wrong?" Marcel asked curiously.
"Mother said one needs to rest after a meal," Vylie said calmly.
Marcel looked at her with a subtle expression, sighing to himself that he was worrying for nothing.
He stuffed the cake in his hand into his mouth in a few bites, then clapped his hands and turned his attention back to his notebook.
As his research deepened, he finally found a clue in the arrangement of the large number of symbols around him. He discovered that the 22 Phoenician characters closest to him had various connections with the other ancient texts around them. But upon further investigation, the connections became ambiguous.
"According to Muggle research, Phoenician characters evolved from hieroglyphs and cuneiform. It's natural that there are connections. But..."
"Could it be that these 22 Phoenician characters are not the original version?" Marcel frowned tightly, the gears of thought spinning rapidly in his mind. "Since this is a riddle left by Rowena for the holder of the Scroll of Truth, that means..."
Marcel paused, then, as if in a sudden realization, slapped his forehead and picked up his quill again.
Comparing the various characters before him, he began to try to restore the 22 Phoenician characters in front of him according to his own understanding.
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