Chapter 367: Fear Never Ends
Chapter 367: Fear Never Ends
Around the platform, countless clouds were rolling over, covering everything on the Temple of the Moon.
A dark cloud drifted through the bodies of Evan and Gryffindor, and their shadows loomed like dreams. The mist made everything surreal.
“It’s gone, you beat it!” Gryffindor said softly.
“But I’ve done nothing. My magic had no effect on it. I haven’t destroyed the wooden statue that summoned it.” Evan said puzzled.
“There’s no need to do anything. As long as you’ve come here, you have already passed the challenge.” Gryffindor smiled and took a bright red stone and handed it to Evan. “You are the best greatest wizard I have ever seen. Catch this Philosopher’s Stone, it’s yours now!”
Looking at the soft light of the Philosopher’s Stone, a trace of longing flashed across Evan’s face.
He stretched out his hand forward and stopped suddenly when his fingertips were about to touch the Philosopher’s Stone.
A sudden warning rose in his heart, making him restrain himself.
There seemed to be something wrong. He remembered that Gryffindor had told him before that Voldemort had left a magic on this Philosopher’s Stone.
But he didn’t even mention it now, and why would he give him the Philosopher’s Stone in the illusion instead of sending him back to the real world?!
In front of him, Gryffindor’s face was always smiling, and everything seemed extremely unnatural.
That smile was not so much an old man’s kind smile, but rather one of restrained mockery.
In the clouds and mists, the corners of his mouth rose exaggeratedly on both sides, becoming more and more uncoordinated; as if they just exceeded a human’s ability to …. smile!
Evan felt a sudden chill; he gulped and swallowed, his right hand subconsciously clenching his wand.
“What are you waiting for? Catch this Philosopher’s Stone, and you will gain unimaginable power. It will help you become the most powerful wizard. Trust me…” though he was close to him, Gryffindor’s voice seemed to come from a very remote place.
Evan listened clearly, and the voice echoed in his mind.
As soon as he brought up power, Evan became certain that this guy was a fake.
Gryffindor would never say that, he always stressed that power was not the most important thing to have.
The challenge was not over yet. He had to destroy the wooden statue of the evil spirit.
The evil spirit that had become Gryffindor was still laughing, but the mood was getting more and more depressed.
Its laughter was ringing in the deepest part of Evan’s heart, getting louder and louder, along with the frequency of his heartbeat. Thump, thump, thump…
Evan felt that his heart was about to burst with this tormenting sound, and he couldn’t help but tear up slightly.
His magic began to wander, and all his powers conflicted wildly.
Evan gasped, holding his wand hard and raising his right hand diagonally upwards. A pale green curse spurted out and passed through Gryffindor’s body in front of him.
He had no substance; it was nothing but an illusion.
“Young human wizard, you rejected me and made the most foolish of decisions.”
Gryffindor took a step forward, his face twisted and his mouth opened wider and wider.
Numerous green mucus and flesh fragments fell from the inside, his body was rapidly expanding, and rotten tentacles emerged, like the most terrifying nightmare.
The tentacles slowly moved forward, seemingly trying to touch Evan’s skin.
“EXPECTO PATRONUM!” Evan shouted.
The silver Patronus circled out, and the bright white mist blocked them.
“Young human wizard; you still don’t understand the true meaning of magic. You have never suffered the collapse of all walks of life. You are only the humblest existence in the world.”
Gryffindor’s face turned completely devilish, his tentacles shaking and clapping on the light screen, his mouth saying crazy, meaningless words, “Sad ant, you are just a puppet in the hands of a puppeteer; struggling uselessly in the face of what you cannot understand…”
Evan put more of his magic into the Patronus charm. Seconds, or perhaps centuries went by, before he realized that he should run!
Disregarding the evil spirit in front of him, he no longer cared about the surrounding environment, and continued along the narrow hollow stairs next to the platform, rushing ahead.
Through the thick mist and light, the sturdy tentacles of the evil spirit continued to clap, and with mad power, it became more and more ruthless and cruel, as if trying to split Evan’s body in two!
Evan gasped. On the top of a small table, he saw a dull wooden statue, which was a multi-fold reduction of the evil god, looking more like the roots of a plant at that scale.
Without thinking, he waved his wand, and the red spell flashed by.
Unexpectedly, the wooden statue broke up and scattered in the air as dots of starlight.
The crazy voice of the evil spirit gradually drifted away, but it was still very clear and terrifying; “Sad lamb, you have defeated me in the illusion, but you don’t know that you are entering another more frightening one! Fear is like a shadow; never disappears, never ends…”
The surroundings became gradually quiet, and when Evan looked up, he once again saw Gryffindor standing in front of him with a smile.
He took a step back in surprise and raised his wand with vigilance, but Gryffindor waved his hand carelessly, with a stronger smile on his face.
“Don’t do that, Evan!” he said with a smile. “That thing had disappeared. Now there are only the two of us here.”
“How can you prove that you are really Gryffindor, not the evil spirit?” Evan hesitated and asked, trembling to the extreme.
His heart beat so hard that he couldn’t clearly distinguish between illusion and reality. He felt that he was about to be driven crazy.
“I can’t prove anything, because I don’t really exist, it’s just a part of this magic illusion, the consciousness of my body staying here.” Gryffindor said with a smile, “You just did a wonderful job and got my approval. Believe it or not, I want to tell you that you have passed the challenge!”
This sentence was a surprise for the first time, and now it sounded completely frightening.
Gryffindor seemed not surprised by Evan’s performance. He waved. “I know you have a lot of doubts. In fact, the evil god you saw did not exist in real history. Okegiga had better luck than you. When he got to the top of the Temple, the evil ritual had not been completed, and he succeeded in stopping everything.”
“What happened just now?” asked Evan, breathing.
“As you can see, that’s what I imagined and reasoned about this creature, and that’s what I used my magic to create.” Gryffindor said with a smile, as if explaining a trivial matter, “In the real world, the so-called evil god did not come to the world in the end. At the last moment, just out of anger, it exhausted its power to break through the void, splitting the Philosopher’s Stone that I left into two halves, and doing nothing more.”