Shadow trail of the beautiful world

Chapter 64 22. Letter from the Little Wizard

When Hermione told Merlin that there was a Ministry of Magic's detection barrier in London, which would stimulate his dark magic power, Merlin made up his mind to leave the city as quickly as possible.

That night in the restaurant, after the dark magic power broke through the limit, almost every hour, Merlin could feel that the rapidly expanding power was polluting his soul in a way of "sieging the city and looting the land".

This is the beginning stage of demonization, first the soul, like a piece of paper thrown into the ink, after it is completely soaked in the ink, it will become a part of the ink.

Wait until the soul is filled with darkness and twisted, and then the body changes.

Merlin didn't want to change from a normal person to a twisted half-demon within a month.

When saying goodbye to Hermione, Hermione took a drop of Merlin's blood as a magical beacon of some sort.

And that little girl's home was actually just down the street from the restaurant. Just from the apartment where Hermione's little girl lived, it could be seen that this little girl also belonged to the kind of wealthy family.

Merlin sent Hermione downstairs, then returned to the hotel as quickly as possible, packed his clothes briefly, and took the nearest train, leaving London.

His destination was Brighton, a seaside town an hour's drive away from London. It was a famous local tourist destination, where Merlin was better hidden.

And this is a perfect reason to take a vacation. During the phone conversation, Agent Garrett agreed to Merlin's vacation request without saying a word. Like a qualified senior, he told Merlin to take a good vacation and recuperate.

Unfortunately, Merlin still couldn't tell him his secret.

Day three from London.

At sunset, Merlin was wearing casual jeans and a shirt, leaning on a chair by the bed.After opening the door, the curtains blown by the wind kept swaying. In the wind that was almost winter in late autumn, the whole room felt a little cold, but Merlin's heart felt a little anxious.

An endless cloud of black smoke was like some kind of weird decoration, constantly beating on his fingers, making Merlin's fingers look like blown out candles.

It's not that he actively used his atomization power, that's not the case.

It was the rapidly growing dark magic power in his soul that was spreading, and the endless black smoke represented Merlin's rapidly falling soul.But the good news is that the spreading magic is not as uncontrollable as it was 2 years ago, it is now mild and does not cause the same bad luck as before.

The bad news is that the magic power escaping from Merlin's body is too great, causing the seashell pendant given to him by Vico, the seaman, to be overwhelmed. After the huge magic power dissipated, it seemed a little insignificant.

The originally shiny shell is now dull, and the surface is full of cracks.

If it goes on like this, Merlin doubts that the pendant will be completely broken in at most one more day.And once Merlin's only strange object that can resist magic infection is damaged, then Merlin's situation will be even worse.

"boom"

With a faint collision, Merlin, who was in deep thought, suddenly raised his head.In the perception of darkness, Merlin noticed that a small life was trying to enter Merlin's house from the other side.

That life...was a bit weird, with a faint aura of magic.

Merlin hurriedly got up and walked to another house, and then he saw...

a cat.

A cat lying on its back in the cold wind, its fluffy ginger fur constantly swaying in the wind.

On the cat's back was a small, delicate rucksack, which was buckled on the cat's body like a garment.To be honest, the cat was a bit ugly, almost the ugliest cat Merlin had ever seen.

Its face was flattened, as if it had bumped its head against something.And looking at it from the front, the cat always seems to be unhappy.

But this cat's eyes are very sharp, and in the yellow eyes, there is obviously a gleam of wisdom.

When it saw Merlin, the cat stretched out its paws, as if knocking on the door, and patted Merlin's window a few times.The latter hurried forward, opened the window, and the cat rushed into the house actively, then quickly found the warmest place, curled up in a ball, and let out a comfortable meowing sound.

It seems that its journey along the way is not too comfortable.

"Uh, are you Hermione's messenger?"

Merlin couldn't decide what to do with this clever cat. After a while, he walked back to the kitchen, and when he came out again, he already had a can of beef in his hand.

Merlin tore open the can, and the cat, smelling the scent, suddenly raised its head. With its front legs propped on the ground, it looked at Merlin with piercing eyes in a crouching posture, and its tail was still wagging.

Merlin put the can in front of the clever cat.The latter meowed, turned around, and exposed the backpack on its back to Merlin's eyes, while it lowered its head and began to taste its own dinner.

In the backpack was a letter, and on the envelope, there was a sentence written by Hermione:

"Merlin, I ask Crookshanks to deliver the letter to you. Please take good care of my cat and help me bring it back when I return to London next time."

"PS: Don't feed it too much meat, it is losing weight recently, thank you."

"Oh, so your name is Crookshanks, what a strange name."

Merlin glanced at the fat cat, who was addicted to food, and ignored Merlin with the arrogance that a cat should have.And Merlin didn't disturb its enjoyment, he took the letter and returned to the balcony.

He opened the letter paper, and it was full of beautiful fonts, just like the elegant words in ancient books.

"Merlin:"

"I'm currently on vacation at the house of my friend Ron, whose family is one of the most famous pure-blood wizarding families. You should thank Ron's parents for their generosity. They allowed me to dig through their family's library, and I finally found a solution for you." The current method of magic."

"Please don't be in a hurry to turn to the end of the letter to find a way, and read this excerpt from me patiently, it should be very helpful to you."

Seeing this, Merlin finally breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, Hermione finally helped him find a way.

It's not easy.

Following Hermione's instructions, Merlin did not open the second letter immediately, but continued to read it patiently.

The following passage should have been excerpted by Hermione from a book, full of a serious tone like a textbook.

"In the Muggle world, ignorance is a common phenomenon, and the disasters caused by ignorance are countless."

"Muggles will reject all phenomena that are different from themselves, even if they are their real compatriots. From the persecution of witches in the Middle Ages, to the genocide in World War II, and even today's disputes, it is proved that One point, that is the hatred between Muggles and Muggles, which will never stop."

"Today, what we are going to discuss is a historically disastrous phenomenon caused by ignorance."

"At many times hundreds of years ago, when a child with magical talent was forced to suppress his magical talent due to physical or psychological abuse, these poor children would naturally have emotional Extremely painful emotions. And even young wizards who are just learning magic know that twisted pain combined with extraordinary talent will give birth to real monsters."

"Those abused and repressed children, in the long-term painful emotions, will self-create a dangerous parasitic force that belongs to dark magic."

"And when they reach the point of breakdown at the emotional or will level, they will lose control of their bodies and magic power, and that loss of control will cause them to release the dark power in their bodies in a destructive gesture. The released power, under normal conditions, will form a kind of invisible but extremely destructive wind to Muggles. Even in extreme cases, their bodies will directly merge into this dark storm."

"According to the research of Nick Mailer, the most famous great alchemist of our time, we call this phenomenon 'Obscurus', the hidden 'shadow of darkness', or in a more popular translation, obscurity."

After reading this, Merlin's expression became very serious, and he knew why Hermione asked him to finish reading this paragraph.

The dark power described in this article is exactly the same as some characteristics of the dark magic power on him.

Merlin breathed a sigh of relief, and he looked into the distance. Any fear comes from the unknown, and once the details are known, even the most terrifying things will not seem so frightening.

After his emotions subsided, he read on again.

"The shadow of darkness, or silence, is born out of strong self-repression and self-hatred. It is the product of the combination of pain and magic. It represents the most tragic side of human nature, that is, self-denial and hatred. According to According to ancient documents, children carrying the shadow of darkness cannot live beyond the age of 10, but I firmly believe that miracles will happen in any disaster."

"Maybe those miracles have already happened, hidden in history that we haven't discovered yet."

"Of course, the Muggle world and civilization are also developing and progressing. The psychological theory they invented can effectively treat the catastrophic phenomenon caused by this mental illness."

"At the same time, under the vigorous intervention of the Ministry of Magic, the obscurity in Europe has been extinct as early as the last century, and the last obscurity in North America was completely extinct around 1926. Although there is news that , until the 20s, there were still Obscures operating in Europe, but there is no official evidence to prove this statement.”

"Looking back at history can guide us the way forward. I hope that tragedies like the silent one will never appear again."

"——Excerpt from the famous wizard Horace Slughorn's 1985 book - "The Epic of Magic""

This is the end of the first page of letter paper. After Merlin finished reading this excerpt, he felt a lot of emotion in his heart.

He lowered his head and looked at his spread fingers in the night. He recalled his experiences over the past four years. After a while, he sighed and said softly:

"Self-hatred and self-denial."

"So the more I hate you, the more I deny you, the stronger you become?"

"No wonder..."

Merlin had a clear understanding of his deteriorating situation. Although his situation was quite different from that of the "obscure" described in the excerpted article, there should be similarities in the causes of this extremely similar magical phenomenon.

After Merlin got the dark magic power from Sangong Mo's coercion, there was not a single day that he didn't hate it.

He longs to return to an ordinary life, he longs to completely eliminate this power, but the more extreme his thinking is, the more it will lead to the growth of dark magic power.

That is a real monster, it feeds on hatred, and grows little by little in pain.

Merlin tried to stop it, but in the wrong way.

"However, if you want me to accept you calmly?"

Merlin shook his head, put the first letter aside, and picked up the second.

Compared with the large text on the first sheet, the information on the second sheet of letter paper is much less.

"Merlin, if you patiently read the knowledge I copied to you, I think you should have understood the source of your problem."

"What I want to tell you is that I have read many classics, but your situation is the most special. I can tell you with certainty that you are not a 'obscure person', you do not meet the criteria for judging magical phenomena, and even In the Encyclopedia of Magic, there are few records of your situation."

"Maybe official wizards with more wisdom and knowledge than me will know the cause of your current situation, but I think that if a method can cure the obscurant, then it should also help your current situation."

"So, listen to me, Merlin..."

"From now on, learn magic! It's not too late."

Hermione's suggestion made Merlin's eyes widen. He asked the little girl for advice on how to get rid of the influence of dark magic power, but he didn't expect that the little girl's suggestion to him was to ask him to take the initiative to accept it.

In other words, Hermione's advice to Merlin is the same as the advice given to Merlin by the undersea man Vico.

What he needs is not salvation, but to accept this cold reality!

They wanted him, from the bottom of his heart, to really start accepting the dark magic within himself.

"The best way to cure silent people is to let them learn the skills of manipulating magic, so that they can correctly control the release of magic power. I asked Uncle Arthur, Ron's father, he is a wise official wizard .”

"He told me that if a silent person keeps suppressing himself and doesn't use magic, he will soon be completely swallowed by silence. At present, this is the only way to save you."

"But the problem is, Merlin, I'm only a second-year wizard, and I'm not allowed to teach you magic, and I can't even lend you my own spellbook. But Ron helped me figure it out, and he told Me, magic textbooks should not be passed on to outsiders, but there is one exception."

"In the wizarding world, we call people who have no magical talent 'Muggles', which is a slur. Between wizards and Muggles, there is also a strange group of people called 'Squibs', It means those who are gifted with magic, but for various reasons, cannot release magic."

"Squibs are a group of pathetic people in the eyes of official wizards. They are between the magic world and the world, and they are not recognized by both sides."

"But some squibs are not reconciled to this. They will always sneak around and try to break through the shackles in various ways. It is not considered a crime to keep magic textbooks in the hands of these people... and even the Ministry of Magic will Turning a blind eye to such things is probably out of wizards' pity for Squibs."

"This is your chance, Merlin."

"I told Mr. Arthur about you, and I told him I had a Squib friend who wanted some textbooks, and Mr. Arthur wasn't very willing to help, but after I agreed to date Ron, that nasty The guy promised to help me persuade his father."

"Remember this address, Merlin. In 2 days, go look for Mr. Arthur here... Don't let it slip! Just treat yourself as an unlucky squib, okay?"

"Seize this opportunity and become a wizard, Mr. Merlin, I'm sure, you will become the best wizard!"

"Finally, I wish you all the best!"

"—Hermione Jane Granger, November 1992, 11, at The Burrow."

After Merlin finished reading the letter, he remembered the address Hermione told him. It was a somewhat weird address, just near Brighton, in a somewhat remote town.

"Um... The Prancing Horse."

"Thank you, little Hermione."

(End of this chapter)