Human knowledge has limits. Even geniuses like Ian, or like Einstein, for that matter, were bound by them. No matter how prodigious, no one could devour the sum of wizarding knowledge overnight.
Even if one devoted their entire life, with no sleep or rest, it would still take an eternity. And that was assuming the knowledge still existed to be learned. Much of it had long since been lost to time, the paths to rediscovery buried beyond reach.
Because of that, Ian didn't let frustration eat away at him. If he didn't recognize something, he simply didn't. He was still young. There was time, plenty of time, to study, to learn, to explore.
Continuing deeper along the fissure, more and more runes came into sight. Some he knew, Runes of binding, cycle, and time. Others were utterly foreign, archaic magical scripts interwoven with strange markings that didn't even belong to this world's system of symbols.
"What a masterpiece…" A glimmer of awe passed through Ian's eyes. To reshape an entire valley into an Alchemical Artifact and to engrave such a vast, intricate sealing network, that level of alchemical mastery was far beyond his imagination. Even Nicolas Flamel himself might not be able to accomplish something of this scale.
Hmm… if the real old professor were here, he'd probably be delighted, after all, only true masters understood how lonely the life of a master could be.
And just as that thought crossed his mind…
"ROAR!"
A sudden, familiar dragon's roar thundered from behind him. Ian turned around. Within the bronze gate, the chaotic vortex churned once more. The massive head of the ancient Dragon suddenly thrust outward, its savage eyes blazing with a light that mixed madness and fear.
"Got a brain, but… not much of one, huh?"
Ian's gaze met the dragon's. The creature saw him too, but this time, instead of charging, it fled again, only in the opposite direction from before. Maybe, in its dim mind, it thought going the other way would change its fate.
Ian doubted that.
And sure enough, Ian was, by far, the most intelligent life form in this valley. The dragon's enormous body swept past the treetops, but only for a second. Then, just as before, it froze at the edge of an invisible boundary.
Its scales began to peel away, falling like dead leaves. Its flesh shriveled and rotted before his eyes. The wings kept beating furiously, but fractures were already spreading through the exposed bones.
With one final, agonized roar, the creature shattered completely, its body dissolving into a storm of gray ash, scattered into the night wind. The entire process lasted only seconds, yet looked like a millennia-long decay sped up to real time.
"As expected."
From his earlier observations, Ian had guessed there was an invisible force field around the bronze gate. Any living being that emerged from within it could only move inside that field; the moment they passed its boundary, they lost its protection.
"An immortal imprisoned… that's crueler than death itself." Ian sighed softly.
After a brief survey of the surroundings, he raised his wand again. With a light tap, thin threads of pale-blue magic streamed from the tip, weaving through the air like living things and attaching themselves to the runes carved into the rock walls. One by one, the glowing patterns imprinted themselves into his mind.
Every accomplished wizard had their own way of storing knowledge; Ian preferred the magical shortcut, 'Why waste brain cells when you can use magic? Self-torture's not my thing.'
As he organized the copied runes in his mind, Ian noticed something new, among them were symbols related to the God of Death.
A coincidence? Hardly.
"So… the Death God created this gate?" His imagination began to wander. It wasn't impossible. After all, the Death God had once forged the three Deathly Hallows. A being like that would surely know alchemy. And as a divine entity, it would be natural for their creations to surpass the boundaries of human alchemy.
Of course, that was still only Ian's theory. Runes associated with the Death God didn't necessarily mean they were the deity's own work. They might have been carved by followers of Death, or perhaps the bronze gate's mechanism required invoking the Death God's power to function.
"ROAR!"
Again.
Ian turned to look. The Dragon had reappeared, repeating the same hopeless cycle. This time, it tried a third direction. And, predictably, met the same end. Ian was starting to feel aesthetically tired of watching it die.
When he finished copying the final cluster of runes, he lowered his wand. He now had the entire inner valley's inscriptions committed to memory. Rising into the air, Ian flew back toward the bronze gate itself.
"Who built this thing? Could it really be something made by the Death God?" He stared at the symbols linked to Death, uncertainty flickering in his eyes.
Before him, the enormous bronze doors stood silent and immovable, the mist of chaos seeping slowly through their seams, as though mocking his ignorance without a sound.
Just as Ian was lost in thought, the vortex upon the bronze gate suddenly began to whirl violently. The chaotic mist behind it surged and boiled, as though something was struggling desperately to break free.
"Again?!" Ian let out a helpless sigh. His wand snapped up, the tip bursting into a dazzling blue light.
A second later, a massive dragon's head lunged out from within the vortex, its feral eyes locking onto him. But before the creature could fully emerge, Ian jammed his wand straight up its nostril.
"Get back in there!"
Without hesitation, he swung his wand. A torrent of violent magic erupted forth, blasting directly into the Dragon's skull. The dragon shrieked in agony and toppled backward, its colossal body, on the verge of breaking through, forcibly slammed back into the bronze gate.
The swirling vortex swallowed it whole.
For a moment, Ian thought he might've just found the quickest way to deal with the blasted beast, but then, BOOM, The vortex within the bronze gate accelerated without warning, and a terrifying force of suction exploded outward! It didn't pull in stones or debris. It pulled only him.
Perhaps it wasn't because he had been studying the door, but because his action of shoving the dragon back had disrupted its mechanism.
"Huh?!"
Ian's body lurched forward, his boots gouging deep furrows into the ground, yet he still couldn't resist the pull. He immediately whipped his wand through the air, trying to stabilize himself with magic.
"Gravity Anchor!"
The spell barely took shape, before the vortex tore it apart instantly.
Every spell that followed met the same fate, each one unraveled the moment it touched the suction's reach, devoured before it could even function.
"Tch…"
Ian's expression finally changed. His body was dragged forward by an irresistible force, inch by inch, toward the bronze gate. He barked out incantations one after another, bursts of magical light flared brilliantly around him, only to be snuffed out in the same instant.
"Damn it! I swear, never touching strange doors again!" Ian couldn't help a pang of regret.
Even with seven or eight enchanted flying cloaks layered over himself, he couldn't offset the pull. Inch by inch, he was drawn closer to the roaring vortex, and then, inevitably, swallowed whole.
"Please don't let it be the Jurassic Era…" He couldn't help but pray that one last thought before his figure vanished completely into the vortex.
The bronze gate slowly closed, the vortex subsiding back into stillness. Silence returned to the Forbidden Forest, broken only by the wreckage on the ground and the faint, lingering tremors of spent magic in the air.
In the end, it was as if nothing had ever happened.
(End of Chapter)
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