From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 603 An Unsuccessful Time Travel
Quintor, the little elephant, had no idea what Planeswalkers were, but he, a graduate of the Stryker Academy, knew very well what time travel was.

Because the Ancient Exploration Spell, one of the signature spells of Hengjian Academy, utilizes the unique structure of the Akavievo spacetime itself to magically summon fragments of the past to help Hengjian students uncover the mysteries of the past.

However, figuring out the situation doesn't help his current situation at all.

Even his mentor Kmina's voice could not soothe his terrified heart; magic and intense light were tearing him apart from within.

Savage magic was tearing at his nerves, severing his muscles, and trying to cram boundless pain into every corner of his body. Besides feeling his nerves screaming, Kuntori also sensed an indescribable heat erupting from within him. He was like fluff used to start a fire, about to turn to ashes.

Lightning crackled and popped.

That was Kmina using magic to attack the elephant-like undead that were gradually surrounding them.

These decaying warriors had a terrifying appearance, with murky yellow bones emerging from their tattered armor, arriving at this almost empty excavation site accompanied by increasing ripples in spacetime.

Fortunately, the researchers had already moved all the artifacts away beforehand. If they had been destroyed by these undead or by my magic, I would have died of shame...

Kuntori tried to find a bittersweet humor in the situation, realizing that as long as he didn't focus on himself, being torn apart by magic didn't seem so unbearable.

At least……

he thinks.

At least I still have time to think about random things...

"Watch out!" Kuntoli tried to warn Kemina, who was standing behind her with a giant axe raised high.

A gust of wind lifted the hood of the graceful mentor, revealing long, honey-colored hair, and a deep blue light flickered in Kmina's eyes. With a mere two syllables of incantation, she waved her hand and sent a whirlwind ball that struck the undead that had ambushed her from behind squarely on the forehead.

Upon hitting the enemy, the wind ball immediately twisted and deformed, and seven or eight narrow, sharp spears burst forth from it, even severing the tusks of the elephant race undead adorned with metal rings.

Having temporarily dealt with the undead, Kmina turned back in astonishment to the little elephant whose body was crackling with countless sparks and currents: "How come you're still here? This... even Planeswalkers ignite sparks in an instant, I've never seen anyone as slow as you..."

“Since you’re Stryhaven’s mentor, you should have a way to save my little elephant, right?” The stone statue Arunst, with a missing arm, chimed in. “This was all my bad idea. We originally came here to find the lost city of Zantafa…”

“There’s no way to interfere with a Planeswalker’s time travel, at least I don’t know.” Kmina slammed her staff into the sand at her feet, and a pale blue barrier immediately formed around Kuntori. “I’ll hold them off until you leave this spacetime…”

"Leave?" Little Elephant's mentor, Dust Whisper, spoke indignantly. "What he needs is help!"

“I already said,” Kemina glanced at the crumbling statue beside her and emphasized, “He can only rely on himself now…”

“The undead…” The little elephant didn’t think arguing would solve anything. Forcing itself not to think about the increasingly bright firelight and lightning, it spoke in a trembling voice, “They’re appearing at a slower pace…”

"So is this a good thing or a bad thing?" Aaronster brandished his weapon, which could only be described as a stone bar.

“At least our pressure won’t continue to increase…” Kemina suddenly noticed the shadow hanging over the excavation site and looked up at the sky. “What’s that?”

"Dragon!" the statue Aaronster shouted, "A giant dragon!"

Who in Strelhaven doesn't know about dragons? This magic university was founded by five dragons, and even the names of the five colleges are derived from the dragons' surnames.

The academy's enforcement force is known as the Dragon Guard, tasked with guarding against and correcting spellcasters who use magic to cause greater harm to the world. While not all, at least most of the students and professors living in Strelhaven hold the five founding dragons in high esteem.

After all, the place where they lived and studied was thanks to the generosity of the five dragons.

Quintor tried to look up at the sky. He had been studying at Stryhaven for a year and a half, and he hadn't even seen any of the founding dragons yet! Of course, statues and murals didn't count.

"It's not the founding dragon!" Kemina's voice betrayed her wariness; she had already clearly seen the dragon launching its dive.

It was a dazzling, golden behemoth, as radiant as the sun. Unlike its elegant flight, its rapidly approaching form made the young Pengluoke instructor tense every nerve.

"Prepare for the impact!" Multifractal geometry appeared on the shield summoned by Kmina, adding a lot of mind-boggling mathematical beauty to the rigid circular shield. These regular geometric structures are complex and fragile, but they can also greatly reduce the impact of various spells by breaking and repairing the whole.

The baby elephant Kuntoli finally saw the true face of the dragon above its head. It was a majestic and sacred silhouette, with a huge mouth containing a mouthful of flames that revealed sharp teeth. Its target was the excavation site where they were standing.

Before they could even marvel, the golden dragon was obscured by the surging dragon breath.

A cone-shaped dragon's breath descended from the sky, spreading a scorching carpet across the not-so-large excavation site. The wildly leaping flames entangled every undead in the pit, igniting everything on their bodies that could be burned.

The bones, unable to withstand the intense heat, crumbled. The tattered cloak vanished without a trace, leaving not a wisp of smoke. Instead, the rotten, mangled metal weapons, under the golden dragon's breath, found a chance to be reforged. They slumped together, suddenly losing their original form, and crashed onto the scorched ground like mercury, shattering into countless splattering droplets of scorching liquid that sparked brilliantly against the equally intense air. Kmina's fractal shield produced few broken geometric patterns, not because of her superior magic, but because the surging dragon breath wasn't aimed at them at all.

As one undead warrior after another turned to ashes, the giant dragon with pure golden scales changed from a dive to an upward descent, spreading its wings, which were as large as a battle banner, to swirl the air below and slow its descent.

The powerful flapping of wings not only dispersed the flames in the excavation site, but also completely turned the few remaining undead into black ash that increased the fertility of the soil.

The golden dragon folded its wings that blotted out the sky, squatted on a boulder outside the excavation site, and stared intently at the tiny creature on the ground with its molten gold eyes.

The little elephant swore he heard someone swallow hard. He never imagined that making eye contact with a dragon could be so nerve-wracking, so nerve-wracking that he had no idea what he was there for.

Fortunately, the dragon was also unaware. The little elephant heard him ask in a majestic and uniquely rhythmic voice, "What happened here, Kmina?"

"Have we met before?" Kemina still gripped her staff tightly, shielding the crackling little elephant Kuntorli behind her. Unfortunately, the little elephant was only relative to his own kind; compared to Kemina, a human, Kuntorli was far too large to be concealed.

Jinlong snorted, his breath sending up a small spark. He seemed to be laughing: "You broke into my lab, but whether you actually saw this body, I don't know."

"Professor Doom?" Kemina asked tentatively. In her memory, the new professor, who was witty and humorous on the surface but secretly conducted all sorts of dangerous magical experiments, was a pure human, not some dragon.

A surge of golden light rose from beneath the dragon's feet amidst its deep laughter. Golden threads, intertwined and entwined, were drawn from the dragon's body and coalesced into another humanoid figure before Kmina.

The dark green robe and silver-trimmed cloak, along with the unforgettable serpent emblem—yes, this was indeed the Ivy Doom from Kemina's memories.

"How come you..." Kemina wanted to ask Ivy where he had been all this time and why he had returned to Streihaven in the form of a golden dragon, but when she thought of the embryos and magical creature tissues floating in his underground laboratory, she didn't ask.

However, Ivy's attention wasn't on her, but rather on the little elephant behind her enveloped in lightning and fire: "A new Planeswalker? What's going on with him?"

Kmina removed her fractal shield, looking at her comrades with concern: "I don't know... Usually, a Planeswalker igniting the Spark is a swift process... Events that trigger immense inner conflict, near-death experiences, or the awakening of one's own talents can all cause an Ember to ignite the Spark... and then quickly complete their first time travel. But he..."

“He’s stuck.” Ivy reached out a finger, only to be struck by the crackling arcs of electricity emanating from the baby elephant Kuntorli.

Ivy calmly extinguished the incense stick between his fingers and explained his point of view: "The way Planeswalkers use Sparks for time travel is more like creating a passage in the Aether. The Spark arrives before the person, and then uses the soul connection to pull the body along. His Spark is no longer in Stryhaven; he's stuck in this timeline."

“Heh…” Kuntoli couldn’t help but laugh, seemingly completely unaware of how dangerous his situation was. “You make it sound like I’m stuck in the magic elevator of the Modian Pavilion… Is it that as long as the spacetime stability here is restored to normal, I can get out of here? Either go over or stay here?”

Kmina glanced at the second-year student from Hengjian Academy with surprise. Although she had been paying attention to the Embers studying in Stryhaven for some time, there were very few Planeswalkers like Kuntorli who could quickly grasp their situation: "You're right, it really is like being stuck in an elevator. Except our world isn't static in the Aether, but constantly in motion. Although this change in position is extremely rare compared to the scale of the world, I advise you not to be too optimistic."

“The ancient arts of Hengjian Academy are based on the unique spacetime structure of Akavivo. As long as you listen carefully in class, it’s not difficult to understand this point.” Ivy tried to cast a healing spell on the little elephant, but apart from slightly easing his expression, it did not change the crackling lightning and sparks. “The most important thing now is to figure out why he is stuck between two spacetimes.”

The statue of Aaronster, who had witnessed the golden dragon transform into a human, finally came to his senses: "A dragon turned into a human! My God! I never thought I would see something so amazing after I died!"

Ivy strolled around the grime-covered excavation site and casually asked, "Isn't it true that the Dust Whisper instructors from Hengjian Academy aren't allowed to leave the Portrait Gallery? Especially during a large event in Sturhaven? What are you looking for here?"

“It’s the lost city of Zantafa.” The little elephant felt a little guilty, but he could barely move his body right now, otherwise he would have stuffed his head into his breast pocket. He didn’t shirk responsibility, “I brought him here… just wanted to try my luck…”

Ivy gave a noncommittal "hmm," having absolutely no idea what "Zantafa" was. Although he had become a professor recruited by Stryhaven, he was, after all, a mage from another time and space, and knew almost nothing about the history of this region. Moreover, when reading books in the Mogden Pavilion, he only focused on magic books and didn't care much about the history of the local races of Akevivo.

"What did you do to find this lost city?" Ivy continued, "What did you do with magic?"

“Piecing together fragments of history, searching for clues in the hymns of the lost city…” Little Elephant becomes full of energy when archaeology and dossiers are mentioned. “My ancient research seems to have touched some of the defense mechanisms of the lost city, which is why those undead guards fell out of thin air.”

Then the little elephant sang the hymns it knew and recounted the revelations it had received from the Vanishing Curse.

“That’s not Stryking’s usual approach. Where did you learn that?” Ivy frowned. Hiding the city in the cracks of reality was quite like what wizards did. They were good at expanding an independent space several times over, and they were also good at making it a flat surface thinner than a sheet of paper. Almost all the hidden rooms in Hogwarts used similar magic.

"The newly introduced Defense Against the Dark Arts this year," the little elephant said without much hesitation. "Professor Voldemort explained it very well!"

"Ah, how could the Deans allow a dark magic creation, a broken-mouthed skull, to substitute for me?" Ivy raised an eyebrow at Kmina. As the only known Planeswalker in the faculty, the Deans were always very lenient with her; perhaps she knew something.

"It was Mr. Voldemort's own request." Kermina did know the whole story and had even attended the inter-house meeting. "Given that he protected the students with necromancy at the Ruins of Serston and that he is your familiar, the heads of the house decided to make him your teaching assistant and temporarily fill the position of professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts until you return."

“Alright.” Ivy had no objection to Tom the Skull’s initiative. As a Realm Explorer who could travel between realms, Ivy couldn’t always stay in the academy to teach. Going out for a stroll in his spare time was a good thing. In case he couldn’t come back before the start of the semester, having a substitute teacher was always a good thing.

Besides, Tom the Skull, who claims to possess all of Voldemort's memories, is actually just a souvenir, a monument to his achievements, created by Ivy with magic. Even Muggles can turn an enemy's skull into a goblet to demonstrate their power; what's so surprising about Ivy, a master of dark magic, turning the Voldemort cannon into a magical souvenir?

“I think I understand your idea…” Ivy conjured his mithril staff and thrust the staff head, reflecting the brilliant twin suns of Akavivo, into the air in front of him. “Let’s see if this method works.”

(End of this chapter)