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Chapter 776: Underground Mine
🕑 Added 2023-05-11 06:03:01 +0000 UTCEvan waved his wand, and with a deep creak, the stone door opened, revealing the darkness behind.
"Be careful!" said Sirius, taking the lead going in.
The entrance was a sloping downhill corridor, very spacious and built to the Cyclopes’ size.
Evan and Sirius turned down the light at the end of their wands to the minimum, only dimly illuminating their path ahead.
The air was cold and wet, but not stale.
They walked silently down the corridor, which was straight and precise, without any twists and turns.
This was definitely not something made by the giants or cyclopes. They weren’t meticulous creatures; they didn't have that kind of patience...
But like the statue of the Cyclops, this tunnel showed a very high level of craftsmanship, and the more the two went down, the more spacious it became.
Evan and Sirius walked down for more than two hours. It was already deep enough underground for them to feel the temperature gradually rising.
When they reached the end of the tunnel, they saw a huge cave with red light.
Evan took a deep breath. He expected that this place would lead to the depths of the rock core, but the sight in front of him shocked him.
The blazing heat was coming from a sea of flames inside the cave, a sea of magma!
It was flowing slowly, falling from a height, emerging from the core of the rock, and converging into a river.
This place was a bit similar to the underground of Gringotts, but not exactly the same.
All magma was not enclosed in a fixed space. The river it converged into was moving forward, and there were no islands on it.
Evan didn't know where it was going, as its end wasn’t in sight.
On the side of the river where the magma converged, there was a simple stone path, with its walls and ceiling inlaid with clear, yellowish crystals. The bright red light from the magma shone on them, making these crystals look as though they were fluorescent.
Although Evan knew it was just an illusion, the splendor and grandeur of this series of natural creations were truly breathtaking.
"These citrines have a strong magical power, the power of nature!" said Evan softly, as he touched a bare citrine on the rock wall next to him and sensed the strange magic.
The turquoise Owl Pendant on his left wrist glowed green, and seemed to be absorbing the magic from the crystal.
This was a magical reaction. The power in the pendant was stimulated by the magical power of the crystal. They were all natural forces.
"It's really strong magic, but what’s more concerning are these traces on the ground!" said Sirius, squatting on the ground to look carefully. "Someone has been here not too long ago, we’d better be careful."
"It should be someone from Raven’s Claw!" said Evan.
From the information obtained from Gryffindor’s consciousness, in the past thousand years, besides Gryffindor, Ravenclaw, Evan, and Sirius, the Dark wizards of Raven's Claw were the only humans that had been to this place.
"Hard to say… look at this… it's like the skeleton of a house-elf!"
Following Sirius's finger, Evan saw a small skeleton in front of a huge citrine in the corner, about the size of a house-elf. Next to it was a broken mining spade.
"A house-elf?!" Evan looked at the skeleton diligently. "It’s like he was trying to dig out these crystals."
"That's right. There’s a lot of magic in these citrines. Maybe those Dark wizards intend to use them for something,” Sirius extinguished the light at the end of his wand and continued, "Take out the Invisibility Cloak, Evan, we need to be more careful!"
Evan took out the Invisibility Cloak Dumbledore had given him and covered himself and Sirius.
Their bodies disappeared, and the two continued to move forward, holding their wands tightly under the cloak.
The magma nearby emitted bright red, and the flames flowed quietly in the river of lava, breaking the darkness in the cave.
The temperature gradually increased, but they could not use magic to lower the surface temperature. This was a difficult test, and Evan saw Sirius’s skin next to him glow with a strange red light.
He knew that the same was happening to him; he could feel the thirst in his body, and even his breath was hot. All the water in his body was evaporating rapidly, and his throat was feeling like dry wood that might burn at any moment...
Evan told himself to be patient, not to use magic, not to let the enemy feel abnormal magical reactions.
He could already hear a lot of clanging metal and rock wall collisions. Something was nearby.
They had to be careful. This place was very close to the location of the Dark Wizards of Raven's Claw.
Evan didn't know a lot about this mysterious heretic organization. He only read a few notes about them in a book.
He knew that they were searching all over the world for energy relics of ancient times, looking for the remaining information of the so-called ancient gods and the lost magic knowledge.
They wanted to destroy the current world and bring the ancient gods back to their former dominance.
This was undoubtedly an insane wizarding organization. Unlike cults in the Muggle world, they were not merely propagandizing eschatology to absorb believers, as they actually had the means to bring forth doomsday and to summon the ancient gods back to the world.
In Evan’s understanding, the so-called ancient gods of Raven's Claw were simply terrible evil creatures from ancient times.
He didn’t know what clues the cult found from Ravenclaw's relics that made them believe the evil gods should return to this world.
Gryffindor's thoughts told Evan that they intended to use the power of the Cyclops to summon some evil that should not exist in this world. What was this terrible monster?!! What did it have to do with the control of the lighthouse outside the town?!!
There were too many secrets in the nearby waters, whether from what Ravenclaw was looking for in the ancient ruins in the whirlpool of Charybdis, to what Gryffindor said about the ghost ship controlled by the dead and the magical city sinking in the bottom of the sea.
Evan knew; something big was about to happen!
Along the river of lava, he and Sirius turned around a corner, and the two stopped again.
Evan could see that at the end was another huge stone gate in an enclosed space surrounded by rock walls.
The stone gate was open, and the magma slowly poured out. That was the source of the river of lava.
Through the stone gate, Evan saw the huge body of the Cyclops soaked in a deep lava pool. Most of its body was immersed in the hot lava, leaving only its head and shoulders exposed, just like what Evan had seen in his dream. This was their destination!
Evan had already known about this, but what really surprised him was what was on the outer rock walls...
