Hogwarts Raven

Chapter 400, page 399: An Accident and the Centaur

In the city center, a particularly enormous palace-like complex, seemingly carved out of an entire mountain, stands majestically. Further away, a peculiar, towering structure catches the eye, its top seemingly topped with a huge, slowly rotating glass sphere, faintly radiating ominous energy fluctuations.

The entire city is like a precise and ruthless machine, with every part operating according to predetermined rules. This is the heart of the empire in this erroneous timeline.

A place that pushes totalitarianism, terror, and distorted technology to their extremes.

"Attention passengers, please fasten your seatbelts, we are preparing for landing."

The airship slowly descended from the high altitude, the hum of its propellers sounding dull and weary in the thin air, its massive shadow sweeping across the neatly laid-out streets below.

"I need to find what I'm looking for quickly."

Ian gazed through the porthole at the oppressive imperial capital, plotting how to infiltrate the king's treasury to find materials to repair the time machine and clues to the mystery of immortality.

He closed his eyes slightly, his magic quietly circulating as he sensed the energy field of the city.

He could sense the omnipresent anti-magic interference wave, like an invisible iron net, suppressing all supernatural forces. But he also sensed an extremely faint yet unusually ancient magical fluctuation deep within the black spire in the city center—something that technology could not simulate, more like… some kind of sealed wizard's relic.

"Perhaps that's where it is."

Ian was ready to disembark from the airship and begin his mission. However, just as the airship was about to dock with the airport tower and the passengers began packing their belongings, the situation changed.

"Boom!"

Without warning, a pale white bolt of lightning tore through the gloomy sky!
It didn't originate from the clouds, but rather seemed to erupt directly from the void, striking the airship's massive gasbag with unparalleled precision. The lightning, thick as an ancient serpent, instantly pierced through the airship's helium balloon and metal hull. In this sudden moment, there was no warning of an explosion, only the arrival of destruction.

boom! ! !
The deafening explosion almost ripped our eardrums apart.

It was not an ordinary fire explosion.

Instead, it's a bizarre explosion accompanied by spatial distortion!
In a fraction of a second, the balloon was torn apart, and high-pressure helium leaked out wildly, triggering a chain reaction. The metal frame twisted and broke, and the bulkhead was ripped apart like paper. The entire airship disintegrated in mid-air, turning into countless burning fragments that plummeted to the earth. The airship's metal frame twisted and broke with a piercing groan.

But what's even more terrifying is yet to come.

The lightning bolt did not dissipate; instead, it exploded in the air, tearing space into an ever-expanding spacetime vortex that flickered with chaotic colors!
It was like a wound in the universe, its edges shimmering with an unstable purplish-black light, its interior a distorted galaxy and fragmented pieces of time. An irresistible suction force erupted from it, pulling everything within a kilometer radius—the wreckage of the airship, the passengers, even the air itself—into it.

"Damn it!"

Ian only had time to gasp once.

An irresistible and terrifying suction force emanated from the vortex.

His pupils constricted, and he instinctively tried to use Apparition, but the force was too powerful, directly sealing off spatial magic. He could only watch helplessly as he was sucked into the depths of the vortex. The porthole shattered instantly, the air inside the cabin was frantically sucked out, and the passengers' screams were stretched and distorted into a bizarre, inhuman tone.

Ian felt as if he were being gripped by an invisible giant hand and violently pulled toward the source of destruction.

Just before his body was completely sucked into the vortex, he whirled around, his gaze piercing through the flames of the explosion and the distorted space, meeting a pair of eyes—a pair of enormous, cold eyes suspended in the void. There was no emotion, only a pure, indifferent scrutiny, as if looking at an insect that had inadvertently crawled into the wrong place.

Then, everything spun around, and color vanished. Ian was completely engulfed in a raging temporal turbulence. This was no longer a stable time tunnel, but a chaotic storm completely out of control. Color was no longer color, sound was no longer sound, and time and space were shattered and haphazardly mixed together.

"Entering the space-time tunnel directly into one's physical body without any protective equipment is no fun!" Ian could see the terrifying sights of the other passengers around him.

Around Ian.

The other passengers' bodies withered at a visible rate. A middle-aged man's skin instantly became wrinkled, his hair turned gray and fell out, his muscles atrophied, and his bones became brittle. In seconds, he turned into a handful of dust and was swept away by the turbulence. A young woman screamed, her face collapsed, and her eyes sunken.

His entire body withered into a mere skin, then shattered into dust. This was the ultimate punishment of the temporal turbulence for a mortal body—being forcibly accelerated to death in the torrent of time.

Their bodies aged rapidly under the drastic changes in the flow of time. Their skin was instantly covered with wrinkles and age spots, their hair turned snow-white and then fell out, their muscles atrophied, and their bones became fragile. In just a few seconds, one after another, living people turned into handfuls of scattered bones and dust before his eyes.

Ultimately, even the dust was swallowed up by the turbulent currents and annihilated. Inside the vortex, there was absolute chaos. Time no longer flowed linearly, but was fragmented, reversed, accelerated, and stagnant all at once.

"Damn it!" Ian roared, and the blessing of the Sun God within him erupted instantly. Golden flames surged from every pore of his body, forming a thin shield. This shield did not completely block the turbulence, but rather stabilized the flow of time for him, preventing him from instantly aging and dying like others.

"Iron armor protects you! Protect everyone!"

Ian frantically channeled his magic. This time, he entered the time tunnel without the protection of a time converter or a time machine, making it incredibly thrilling and dangerous.

With the magic combined with divine blessing, the golden blessing of the sun god automatically appeared, forming a solid halo around his body, barely resisting the direct erosion of the spacetime turbulence.

He could feel his power rapidly dwindling. The blessing of the sun god's power clashed violently with the destructive energy of spacetime, producing a hissing sound. A needle-like stinging pain shot through his skin, a sign that time was trying to accelerate or reverse its flow within him, but it was all forcibly neutralized by divine power.

This feeling was even more terrifying than when he faced the evil god Set-Appepp. It wasn't a tangible attack, but a shaking of the very foundation of his existence. He felt himself being stretched into an infinitely thin line at times, and compressed into a singularity at others. One second felt like an eternity, and the next it felt like only a moment had passed.

"We must... hold the line!"

Ian gritted his teeth and unleashed the full power of all the protective magic he had ever learned. He was like a small boat in a raging storm, on the verge of capsizing at any moment.

Yet they stubbornly persisted.

After an unknown amount of time—perhaps a moment, perhaps an eternity—the raging torrent finally began to subside. Ian felt as if he had been violently "spit out" by a tremendous force.

After experiencing another wave of nauseating falling sensation.

boom!
He crashed heavily onto a soft, humus-covered patch of ground, rolling several times before coming to a stop.

"Uh... Anyway, at least I landed safely and wasn't torn apart." Ian lay on the ground, coughing violently, every bone in his body protesting, his magic almost completely depleted. He struggled to lift his head, and what came into view was... dense, towering ancient trees that stretched as far as the eye could see.

"Merlin's beard..."

Ian collapsed back to the ground, letting out a painful groan. "Why is it a forest again?! Can't I just end up in a luxurious inn with soft beds, hot soup, and house-elves serving me?" He missed the four-poster bed in the Hogwarts Tower, the ever-abundant food in the Great Hall, and the adoring gazes and delicious treats served to him by the house-elves.

"Gurgle..." His stomach protested loudly at just the right moment, pulling him back to reality from his reverie. Hunger surged like a tide, reminding him of his current predicament.

He struggled to sit up and checked his condition. His robe was torn in several places, and he had many scrapes and bruises. His magic power was almost depleted, but fortunately, he wasn't seriously injured. His money pouch was still there, and the time machine parts and the fragments of the Eye of Ra were also safe and sound.

“Those eyes…” Ian recalled the scene he saw before being swept into the turbulence, still feeling lingering fear. “Was it the owner of those eyes who launched the attack? Was it to expel me? Or… was my falling into that erroneous timeline an accident, and that being was just there to correct me, this external factor?”

He shook his head, setting aside these unanswerable questions. His immediate priority was to restore his strength and magic. The forest was quiet, save for the rustling of the wind through the treetops and the calls of unknown birds. Ian took a deep breath; the magical aura in the air… was normal.

It was even more intense than in the era he was familiar with, which reassured him somewhat. Although he had suffered the ravages of the spacetime turbulence, the blessing of the Sun God had miraculously preserved his life and magic. He could feel the golden light flowing within him was still warm and powerful, though slightly disordered and needed time to recover.

"At least we need to get something to eat first."

He stood up, brushed the dirt off his clothes, and began searching for prey. As an experienced wizard, surviving in the wild was not a problem for him.

Ian looked around, using magic to sense life fluctuations.

Soon, he spotted a male deer grazing in a forest clearing. It was robust, with beautiful antlers, and completely unaware of the approaching danger.

Ian silently raised his wand.

He used mind control techniques.

A low-level illusion magic that can temporarily affect an animal's perception. At the same time, he used wind magic to create slight air currents around the deer, making it mistakenly believe that a predator was approaching.

The stag looked up alertly, its ears perked up, and a hint of panic flashed in its eyes.

"Disorientation." He chanted softly, and a glimmer of light shot toward the stag.

The stag, which was grazing, suddenly raised its head, its eyes becoming dazed. It turned its head in confusion, seemingly completely disoriented, and began to wander aimlessly.

"Vines grow." Ian waved his wand again, aiming at the branches of a large tree above the stag's head. Several sturdy vines that had been hanging down came to life, quickly extending and intertwining, cleverly forming a loop.

The disoriented stag, oblivious to its surroundings, continued to stroll, its graceful antlers slipping right into the vine noose.

“Tighten.” Ian snapped his fingers.

The vine noose suddenly tightened upwards, firmly securing the stag's antlers. Startled, the stag reared up and struggled, but this only made the noose tighten even further.

It thrashed about with its hooves, but was hoisted higher and higher until it finally suffocated to death. The whole process was quiet and swift.

Ian stepped forward, looked at the stag hanging in mid-air, and nodded without any hesitation: "Very self-sacrificing. He willingly hanged himself so I wouldn't starve. He deserves praise."

He perfectly portrayed the hypocrisy of Westerners.

"Rest in peace, valiant Mr. Deer," Ian said softly, beginning to skillfully process his prey. He used fire magic to scorch the hide, peeled off chunks of meat, and then used a purification spell to remove impurities.

Soon, a bonfire was lit, and golden venison skewers were placed on tree branches, dripping fat and making a sizzling sound, filling the air with a fragrant aroma.

Ian took a bite; it was crispy on the outside and tender on the inside, incredibly delicious.

"Hmm...it's far worse than Hogwarts, but it's better than starving to death." He chewed contentedly, gazing into the depths of the forest, and couldn't help but start thinking.

Whose eyes were those just now?
He recalled that glimpse in the vortex of time—those eyes, cold and indifferent, as if executing some predetermined program. Perhaps his expulsion wasn't out of malice, but rather a…precautionary mechanism.

"The way of heaven?"

Ian's imagination ran wild.

The campfire crackled, illuminating his pensive face. He had once again been thrown into an unknown space-time, and most likely, "manually" thrown out by some terrifying being.

That flawed universe.

The water was deeper than he had originally imagined.

The campfire crackled, and grease dripped from the roasting venison, sending tiny sparks flying. Ian Prince gnawed on a venison leg, his gaze wandering, his thoughts already drifting far away.

The flawed universe is too absurd.

All of this exudes a strange, artificial distortion. It's as if an invisible hand has forcibly steered history in an extreme and illogical direction.

“There might be more than one erroneous timeline…” A bold conjecture formed in his mind: “Is it possible that something—such as something that has disappeared or failed in the normal timeline—has used some unknown factor to try to go further, or simply to protect itself, so it forcibly created its own distorted timeline?”

"Some...lost gods?" Ian murmured, guessing as if he had touched the edge of some enormous conspiracy. Could those ancient gods, fallen and forgotten in mythology, be attempting to return in this way? Or are some beings trying to achieve godhood manipulating time?
Just as he was lost in thought, an unusual sound came from the distant forest. It was not the wind blowing through the treetops, nor small animals running through the bushes, but a steady, orderly sound of footsteps with a peculiar rhythm, interspersed with low hissing and the faint sound of metal gently clinking together.

Ian immediately became alert, quickly extinguished the campfire, cast an illusion spell to conceal himself, and gripped his wand tightly.

The sound grew closer. Through the gaps in the trees, Ian saw some moving figures—tall, well-built, with muscular human male bodies in the upper body.

The lower body is a glossy, strong, and powerful horse-like body.

“Centaur?” Ian breathed a slight sigh of relief. He had seen these creatures in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts and had even studied them in Grindelwald’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class.

But soon he noticed something different. These centaurs were more…ancient and primitive than any other centaurs he had ever seen. They were almost naked, with only rough animal hides draped over their shoulders, their bronze skin covered with mysterious white totem patterns, and their wild, long hair and beards flowing freely.

And each centaur was holding... an AK47?

(End of this chapter)