Chapter 107: The Slip, Hoverboard, Leader
If you want to read ahead, you can check out my Patreón @
[ https://www.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis.
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[The chapter is edited by my Editor: Alan_Loo/AlanL]
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"Were you the one who saved us in the Chamber of Secrets?"
Quinn, who was planning to brew a batch of muscle-protein nutrient potion and prepare an Essence of Dittany for his wounds, stilled for a split-second; he wasn't expecting this question, the thought that Ivy Potter would ask him this hadn't entered his mind.
There were still sometimes where Quinn didn't associate the decision and actions he had made last year with himself. So when Ivy threw this sudden bomb at him, he genuinely stopped for a moment.
But his acting skills came in clutch as there were no sudden actions from Quinn's side as he gained composure almost instantaneously and glanced up at Ivy, following the eye contact with a confused tilt of his head.
"Pardon me? Ms. Potter, I might have told you about the Chamber's location, but I haven't been to the actual Chamber of Secrets. I only know that its entrance is somewhere inside Myrtle's lavatory, so believe me when I say that I didn't save you," said Quinn before putting on an expression of curiosity. "I actually don't know what happened down in the mysterious Chamber of Secrets. Can you tell me what happened?"
He had no intention of ever telling anyone that he had been down in the Chamber of Secrets. It would raise many questions that Quinn currently didn't want to answer. Even now, there were glass vessels full of Basilisk venom and multiple Basilisk fangs, locked away in his suitcase, secured for the day when Quinn needed them.
Ivy didn't respond and continued to stare at Quinn for a solid few seconds before turning her back to Quinn and walking towards the office door.
"We're leaving," said Ivy to Hermione.
Quinn turned towards Hermione and nodded to her as a goodbye, who returned it before following Ivy to leave.
After they left, Quinn groaned as he got up from his barstool. "That was sudden. At least I handled it smoothly," sighed Quinn. He limped to the workshop and spoke as the door opened. "Now, let's get my body fixed."
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- (Scene Break) -
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Hermione and Ivy walked away from the A.I.D. office. As Quinn had said, there was still some time left in the dinner feast, and both were walking to the Great Hall.
"...Ivy?" probed Hermione, glancing at her silent and contemplative best friend. Hermione could guess it was about her question to Quinn but still asked. "What are you thinking?"
The question had been sudden as most of Ivy's abrupt actions when dealing with Quinn, but Hermione had to give it to Ivy because she asked questions that she was curious about or found useful.
Ivy didn't look at Hermione as she replied, "... He was the one who saved us. It was Quinn West who destroyed Riddle's diary."
"But West said he didn't."
"He did, and he was lying," spoke Ivy, still not looking at Hermione as she continued. "He mentioned something that only someone who has seen the Chamber's entrance would know."
"He did?" furrowed Hermione, trying to recall what Quinn said, but nothing popped out to her.
"Yes, West said that the Chamber's entrance was somewhere in Myrtle's lavatory, and that implies that he had never seen the entrance, but then he slipped up. He asked me what happened to us in the Chamber."
"Yes, but how is this him slipping?" asked Hermione, confused.
"It's the words he used; he didn't use something like 'inside' the Chamber but used 'down in' the Chamber," said Ivy, finally turning to Hermione. "West claims that he had never seen the entrance, so how does he know that the entrance is a tube that goes 'down' to the Chamber?"
Last year's event had led Ivy Potter to think a lot about her interactions with Quinn West. And one thing that she had perceived about Quinn West was his carefulness with words. He chose what to reveal carefully.
"Usually, he wouldn't make such a slip, but West was clearly hurt and uncomfortable. With those injuries, he unknowingly let that slip. From that, we not only know that he has seen the entrance but also has been inside there."
Ivy was convinced that her reason was correct.
"He was the one who saved us. I am sure of it."
And just as she thought last year, this made things complicated.
To Ivy Potter, Quinn West was a person who never did anything without a reason or some kind of self-interest. So why would he come down to Chamber of Secrets when he knew that there was a deadly monster like the Basilisk present there.
After thinking a lot about it, Ivy couldn't think of a reason Quinn would come down to a dangerous place. There was nothing inside there that would be worth it for Quinn to risk his life.
She didn't want to think that Quinn did it selflessly, without any profit, and that made things complicated.
Ivy Potter was conflicted.
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- (Scene Break) -
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"Come on, run faster; this pace isn't good enough. Show me some spirit. You want to play as soon as possible, right?" said Quinn as he moved behind a slightly panting and sweating Eddie.
"What... are you... doing? Why are you pushing me today?" asked Eddie as he huffed and puffed.
Eddie had attended the Ravenclaw Quidditch team tryouts for the Chaser position. With his daily workouts with Quinn, mixed with his own flying sessions, Eddie passed the tryouts with flying colors and was by far the best Chaser applicant from the lot that tried out.
It turned out that Eddie was like a game character who completed all the side-quests before attempting the main boss because the result from three months of persistent workouts, broom training, and the daily grind had allowed Eddie to breeze through anything that was put in front of him.
Eddie was innately tough and didn't seem to scare away from incoming Bludgers and didn't dodge too early, which could lead to missing opportunities and was one the biggest problem with new Chasers. During the tryouts, Eddie's Bludger dodges were so close yet so smooth that the people watching were in awe while sweating at the sheer fearlessness that he displayed.
It had prompted Quinn to yell out, "Mad Lad!" a ton of times from the stands.
But that wasn't even the crazy part about Eddie's tryouts. It was his Quaffle-throwing skills that had everybody in shock.
It turned out that Eddie had a way with the Quaffle. He was able to swing the Quaffle in every possible direction. Eddie was so damn good that none of the Ravenclaw Keeper applicants couldn't block a single throw from Eddie.
And it didn't get any better when the official Ravenclaw Keeper switched in to test him. Eddie, the Quaffle-bender, successfully scored every single time he threw the ball.
In fact, Eddie's performance was so good that he was already better than the three starting Chasers. And the only reason he wasn't on the team was that the Chaser position required teamwork.
Unlike Seeker and Keeper, Chasers and Beaters had to work together to keep the Quaffle and Bludgers moving.
Eddie needed to be inducted into the Chaser system to function on the team. The team was already planning to make Eddie the primary scorer because of his Quaffle throwing skills.
Eddie thought that now that he had joined the team, he could relax a little, but it seemed Quinn had different plans.
"You passed the tryouts, but if you want to be the best chaser, you need to be able to handle the beating from other chasers, who will try to fly into you to knock the Quaffle out of your grasp. You need stamina and strength to withstand those blows, so we are upping your training," replied Quinn while still following behind Eddie. "Don't think now that you have made the team, you can relax. Nope, to attract the ladies, you need to shine, and I am going to make you shine on that field."
Eddoe turned his head back towards Quinn and looked down at Quinn's feet. "And what the hell is that?!"
Quinn was 'following' behind Eddie, but he wasn't running like Eddie was. Beneath Quinn's feet was a dark-blue skateboard deck-shaped structure with bronze streaks, but without the other components like the truck and the wheels.
And Quinn was standing on a wheeless skateboard that hovered off the ground and gilded behind Eddie as he ran.
"Oh, this? This is a hoverboard," smiled Quinn, leaning forward that made his speed increase and overtook Eddie.
He rotated after he got past Eddie and faced him while moving and was now moving along the board's breadth instead of the length.
"It uses similar charms employed to make brooms. Though I have made changes to them. This baby isn't as fast as a broom and can only hover a few feet above the ground, but it has much better control with a silky smooth ride. And if you can hold onto it, you can scale any surface as it can grip onto surfaces while hovering over them. It is pretty easy to control it by shifting your weight to change speeds and brake."
Eddie looked at the hoverboard painted in Ravenclaw colors with fascination and wonder.
"Holy shit, this is amazing! Are you planning to sell these? I want to buy one," asked Eddie as he continued to run.
"You can have one," smiled Quinn before saying. "But, I am not going to sell these."
Eddie looked up at Quinn's face and spoke in surprise. "But why?! This will probably sell more than brooms. I think parents would buy these instead of toy brooms. You have to sell these."
"Don't you think I thought of that? I already know if I sell these, they will fly off the shelves. But I can't sell them," sighed Quinn before revealing his reasoning. "If they go out, people will stop walking. And that is how people get fat." He looked at his feet and declared. "This invention of mine is too dangerous for the magical kind. I'm doing this for the sake of the world."
Brooms were big and long, so people didn't use them in their daily lives. But Quinn's hoverboards were small and compact. If he sold them, Quinn was sure that obesity would increase among the magical kind. People would stop walking and literally stand on his invention to get places.
"Also, this looks almost exactly the same as the non-magical skateboard. I'm sure that most of the governments would ban it because if people bought these, one of them could easily get into the hands of a non-magical person."
"Then change the shape into something else, problem solved," shrugged Eddie, without realizing that Quinn was very slowly increasing his speed, and he was subconsciously trying to keep up with it.
"I know that, but as I'm not going to sell these, I don't need to. I will change the shape of the one I'll give you, so it won't cause you trouble."
The only reason Quinn had brought the hoverboard out was that he was injured and needed to act like nothing was out of place. The first thing he did in the morning was the workout with Eddie. And Quinn never skipped a workout, so to make sure that Eddie didn't notice anything was wrong with him, Quinn decided to sacrifice Eddie's comfort by pushing his workout intensity up a notch while pretending to be a trainer monitoring him.
"Now, come on. Move those legs. I want to see enough sweat to fill a glass, but remember to stay hydrated."
Eddie groaned as he picked up the pace. "This sucks!"
"Yeah, show me that spirit! Whine more if it helps, I don't care."
"You suck!"
"Aww, thank you for the compliment."
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- (Scene Break) -
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Rivers Lock returned from his low-level clerk job at the ministry to his humble home. He opened his letterbox to check to see if he had some mail waiting for him. Taking out the contents, Rivers shuffled through the various pamphlets, advertisements, subscriptions and some personal letters.
"Hmm?"
Rivers looked at a cheap envelope with nothing written on it, not even the sender's name or who it was addressed to.
He opened the envelope and retrieved a folded parchment with words written in untidy scribbles.
As Rivers read the parchment and his eyes widened in shock. He immediately folded the parchment, looked around the street, and hurriedly entered his home.
...
Inside his home, Rivers sat down on his dining table. And once again read the letter that was left in his letterbox.
"This is fascinating. I didn't know this existed," muttered Rivers to himself as he re-read the contents. "The Shrieking Shack has a secret passageway that opens up beneath the Whomping Willow!"
Rivers Lock, pureblood, was a man in his mid-twenties who worked at the ministry as a low-level clerk. His daily job was collecting the memos from his office area and charm them into airplanes, so they would reach their destination across different parts of the office. A job that caused him to face a lot of abuse when someone didn't get the memo or pretended to not get the charmed memos.
It was a menial and repetitive job that had no scope of future progress, and Rivers only did it because he needed to pay the bills.
On the personal side of his life, Rivers lived a lonely life, alone without a significant other or even a pet. He didn't have much contact with his family because they liked his older brother better because of his more noteworthy ministry job, while he was stuck as a lowly clerk.
That was the Rivers Lock, which was presented to the public for everyone to see. A person with low self-esteem, who didn't stand up for himself, let others walk all over him, let others take advantage of him, didn't know how to socially navigate a work environment... someone others wouldn't give a single look of significance.
He was just another face in the crowd, forgotten after a single glance.
In actuality, Rivers Lock was anything but how he showed himself to the world.
A person with low self-esteem? No, Rivers Lock was a person with overflowing confidence in himself and pride that he was better than others.
He wasn't a person who didn't stand up for himself. If you crossed Rivers Lock, he would make sure that things would come around to bite them back. He didn't forget easily and held grudges.
It would seem that others were taking advantage of Rivers, but it only was because Rivers did nothing about it. If he wanted, they would end up losing instead of taking advantage.
He wasn't a socially inept person. Rivers knew exactly what he was doing. He made sure that people wouldn't give him another glance, that they wouldn't think of him as competent. It was all just for show.
All of it was a façade so that people wouldn't find the real him. The real him that the world wouldn't accept because they couldn't understand him.
So Rivers Lock hid away and put on a mask, something that wouldn't gain him much attention, so that he wouldn't have to pretend much. He didn't make friends because that would be more pretending. He didn't get into relations because he wasn't interested. His family didn't seem to take an interest in him, and that was fine with Rivers.
But, unfortunately, or fortunately, Rivers found that he couldn't hide his authentic self. He needed an outlet that would let him vent the things that were locked away.
To achieve that, he created Novellus Accionites.
Somewhere he could be himself but at the same time remain in the shadows.
Rivers knew what he was doing, and because of that, some Aurors or even some members of Novellus Accionites knew who he was.
He was able to control an entire terrorist group without ever revealing his identity, not a single aspect that would point out that Rivers Lock was the one who started Novellus Accionites.
And right now, the anonymous leader of Novellus Accionites was sitting on a vital piece of information that allowed him to get inside the castle, which was said to be the most secure place in the country.
Rivers rubbed his finger over the bottom of the parchment, and while he considered the information in the letter extremely useful, he didn't like the fact that this letter was delivered to his home.
The sender had somehow figured out his identity that he had been able to hide from hundreds of people and the authorities that were out to get him.
"Peter Pettigrew," muttered Rivers with a flat voice as he stared at the sender's name at the end of the letter, with not a single emotion on his face.
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Quinn West - MC - Rolling on a hoverboard with style.
Ivy Potter - Smarter of the Potter twins - Conflicted with the knowledge.
Eddie Carmichael - Passed the tryouts - "I hate moving!"
Rivers Lock - Leader of Novellus Accionites - Anonymous
AlanL - Editor - So Quinn doesn't want people to get fat, huh? He's soo noble…
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Chapter 108: Getting Better By Learning
If you want to read ahead, you can check out my Patreón @
[ https://www.patreón.com/fictiononlyreader ]
The link is also in the synopsis.
.
[The chapter is edited by my Editor: Alan_Loo/AlanL]
.
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Quinn stood in front of the full-size mirror in his, Eddie's, and Marcus's dorm room while twisting and turning his body. He was looking to the mirror to see the state of his body.
"Alright, no pain, no scarring, the coloration is consistent; everything seems to be back to normal," noted Quinn as he jumped, flexed, and moved his body to check if his body was functioning normally.
The Leviathan's Underpass incident had been three days ago, and it had taken Quinn this time to heal himself while pretending that nothing was wrong with him. With copious use of glamors and illusions, Quinn was able to hide the fact that he was walking around with a punctured lung and a ripped intestine amid healing.
After the Time-Turner events, Quinn had pulled an all-nighter to fix enough stuff that would allow him to function without arousing suspicion. For three days, Quinn had spent almost all his time in the Room of Requirements, fully concentrating on healing.
Quinn didn't have experience with healing humans. Sure he could heal minor wounds, but this level of injuries wasn't something he had tackled. So every step he took was planned with caution and executed with excess care, even if it meant that Quinn spent almost every waking second of his day casting Healing magic.
But that hard work and persistence were rewarded with a complete recovery. If someone were to look at Quinn, they wouldn't realize that he was stabbed, cut, and fractured just three days ago.
"Damn, I look good," smirked Quinn narcissistically, flexing poses in front of the mirror.
At that moment, Marcus walked out of the attached bathroom after having taken a bath to see Quinn making poses in front of the mirror while dressed only in his underwear.
"Don't be creepy, and drop that smirk; it's weird," said Marcus as he passed by Quinn towards his wardrobe. "Dress up quickly. I'm hungry; we need to go to breakfast."
"... yeah," said Quinn, clearing his throat as he stopped posing and walked towards his bed where he had laid down his clothes.
Then Marcus saw Eddie, lying face-side down on his bed, not really moving.
"What happened to him?"
"Hmm? Oh, it's nothing. I just put him through an anaerobic course. He is gassed out," replied Quinn, as he buttoned up his shirt.
Marcus lifted his leg and gently kicked Eddie on his bum. Eddie groaned.
"Come on, get in the shower. We need to get going," spoke Marcus as he too started to get ready for the day.
Eddie groaned for a solid ten seconds before pushing himself off the bed. He walked towards the bathroom. As he passed by Quinn, Eddie tried to kick him, but Quinn arched his back forward, making him miss.
Quinn chuckled as Eddie clicked his tongue and walked into the bathroom.
After getting dressed, Quinn and Marcus went down to the common room to wait for Eddie as he got ready.
"Good morning, Luna," greeted Quinn and sat beside his favorite Ravenclaw, excluding himself, of course.
Luna lifted her head from this week's copy of Quibbler to face Quinn. "Good morning..." She then stared at Quinn for a good few seconds before asking. "It seems you are feeling alright."
Quinn sat down beside Luna and raised a brow in inquiry. "What do you mean? I was always alright, Luna." Inside he was feeling a little worried.
"You weren't feeling well for the past three days, but today you seem fine," answered Luna.
"Why do you say that?"
Luna took out a package from her bookbag and turned to Quinn. "When talking to the clients in the office, you were less... Quinn-like, it wasn't that different, but I noticed it. Second, you were smiling and speaking less than usual, so I assumed you weren't feeling well."
She placed the package onto Quinn's lap and said, "This is your copy of the special issue of The Quibbler. It goes out next week, but daddy sent two in advance; one for me and this one for you."
Quinn stared at Luna in amazement as the blonde went back to reading the special issue of Quibbler while holding it sideways because of the sideways layout of one of the articles inside.
He had thought that he had successfully pulled acting normal, but it seemed like someone observant like Luna, who spent a lot of time with him, noticed that something was wrong.
'I still have a long way to go, it seems,' smiled Quinn, but then another thought entered his mind, and it made him think, 'Maybe it's a good thing.'
Quinn took out a chocolate from his pocket and held his hand in front of Luna. "This is for you, Luna. But don't eat it now, okay?"
Luna glanced at the chocolate, picked it up from Quinn's hand, pocketed the small chocolate before going back to reading.
Marcus came back from checking the in-house library to see if it was updated. "There are two new books: one on Arithmancy and the second on Astronomy... Why are you smiling?" asked Marcus when he noticed a broad smile on Quinn's face.
"It's nothing," replied Quinn as he put the special issue of The Quibbler into his book bag.
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Quinn stretched inside the Aquatic Vault's stone cave with a severe expression on his face.
He raised his eyes towards the triangular entrance and walked towards it to start the trials. As Quinn walked towards the entrance, he smoothly raised his hand to touch the orb of water, which provided him with the safety teleportation insignia.
The water orb was absorbed into his body, and the blue insignia appeared on his body.
"Let's do a speed run."
As Quinn stepped into the triangular entrance, he began transfiguring himself. The insides and outside of his body wriggled, and the underwater respiratory system began to form. By the time he was teleported, Quinn had already taken the first gulp of water, which activated the system.
...
Quinn opened his eyes. He felt the water around him disappear and saw the raging vortex beneath him.
Without using any magic to slow himself down, Quinn assumed a diving posture and plunged into Poseidon's Wrath with zero hesitation.
Inside the violent water, Quinn raised his hands wide and exerted water magic. Immediately the rampaging water started to curve around him, leaving behind a much gentler flow for him to stand in.
His eyes sharpened as he looked towards the center of the vortex, and even though he couldn't see the center because of the moving water, Quinn knew it was there, and he had to get there.
Out was the gradual path switch approach which Quinn had used when he had been helpless against the roaring currents.
But now?
Quinn looked at the gentle stream of water surrounding him.
Now, the angry maelstrom bent under his will, under his magic, under the control he was able to exert on anything water.
Quinn contorted his body slightly, and with that movement, the magic started to build inside him. It rushed, ready to perform supernatural feats, and with a command from Quinn, it released into the world.
He shot forward, and the arctic blue magic rushed ahead and around him, forcing the water to calm down for Quinn to cruise through the path as if he owned it.
Poseidon's Wrath, which required Quinn to go in circles around the vortex as he got close to the center, was conquered as Quinn paved a straight route directly to the center.
When he came out to the center with speed, Quinn dropped straight down, without bothering to slow himself down, and entered Tohem's Delight without an intermission.
...
Quinn enjoyed the calm embrace of the chasm of darkness.
But he instantly broke the calm by creating spherical waves of water to launch a search operation to the next trial.
Tehom's Delight shook as wave after wave of deepwater vibrations were sent out from Quinn, who stood straight in the water, already used to the unusual calmness of Tehom's Delight. He could shake the effects if he concentrated.
Within a few seconds, Quinn got back the vibrations, and using haptics and magical senses, he interpreted them to find the location of the next triangular entrance.
'Up,' thought Quinn as the entrance was above him.
A burst of arctic blue magic pushed Quinn up at a jet speed. He left behind shock waves of water in trail.
Quinn didn't slow down and directly entered the entrance, which teleported him out of Tehom's Delight.
...
The light from the crystal lattice assaulted Quinn's eyes, causing him to squint a little, but the moment his eyes adjusted, Quinn focused on his next target.
The well of Hadal Encumbrance that aimed to crush anyone who dared to venture inside. And it waited for Quinn to get inside and face the challenge.
Quinn stepped into the well, and despite it being a deep hole, Quinn walked to the center as if he was walking from the shallow end of the pool to the deeper side.
Ripples shook the water inside Hadal Encumbrance as Quinn sank down into the well.
Instead of just creating a small area of normalized pressure, Quinn normalized the entire well and all the water inside.
The entirety of the pressure that threatened to crush Quinn disappeared as his magic applied dynamic water force to push up against the downward pressure.
His magic overrode the oppressive nature of the trial and forced it to convert into something that Quinn desired.
Quinn stared down towards the entrance at the bottom of the well. The words etched above the entrance stared back at him, which made him recall the jets of razor sharp water that pierced holes in his body.
His eyes closed them as he slipped into the entrance and was taken away to the place that was named The Leviathan's Underpass.
...
The same tunnel greeted Quinn with its white marbled floor and the circular wall of water that encased Quinn inside in a tubular form.
His feet touched the white marble, which had a grainy surface, probably designed to prevent slippage since there was water there.
'I'm back again,' thought Quinn, as he stared straight ahead at the entrance that was fifty meters ahead of him.
Quinn closed his eyes, and water started to ripple around him.
He felt some rage bubble inside of him. Quinn had been channeling anger the entire way. His usual methods of passing the trials were injected with the emotion of anger. And that added an aspect of brute-forcing through his actions today.
Quinn wanted to get here as quickly as possible without wasting time in the trials he had already passed.
'You have caused me a lot of trouble in the last few days,' thought Quinn, staring at the Leviathan's Underpass. It was as if he was talking to the trial.
'I had to mess with time without knowing how it actually works. It could've gone wrong, and I could've lost my life.'
Just remembering the thought of asking someone else —even if that someone else was himself— made his blood boil. That, in consequence, made the rippling more and more pronounced.
'You made me use a debt that I wasn't planning to cash in. I had to reveal a part of my life that I didn't want to share.'
Ivy Potter and Hermione Granger's debt had been gained while under the influence of the sin curse. And it had been obtained through blackmail, which wasn't Quinn's preferred means of gaining favors.
He liked people to think that they were simply helping Quinn back when he helped them out. Quinn preferred when the other party thought they were doing things with their own free will and not because he held something to their heads.
Calling that debt not only meant that he had been backed into a corner but it also revealed something that he had been keeping under the wraps.
Last year, he had to reveal the second vault to his family, and while he didn't regret it, Quinn didn't want more people to know about the cursed vaults. But then, this happened; Ivy and Hermione ended up seeing him in his most prone state, and even though they never found about the vaults, it was too close for comfort.
It pissed him off.
"Let's get this started."
Quinn stepped forward, and the spherical waves rippled out from him, initiating his sonar vision. The waves went out, bounced off the water walls, and came back to him to whisper about the things around him.
Ten steps in, Quinn felt four chaotic swirls twisted into existence in the surrounding water; two behind him, one above him, and the last right in front of him.
Quinn did a lazy wave, and the water swirls flashed in arctic blue before fizzling into oblivion.
"More!"
From then on out, with each step Quinn took, more and more swirls started to appear at an increasingly fast rate.
'You get a boop, you get a boop, you get a boop, everyone gets a boop!' thought Quinn. He had his hands behind his back as he walked forward.
Quinn destroyed the water swirls that were supposed to shoot pressurized jets of water before they could get them out.
From outside of the water tunnel it looked like Quinn was walking on the white marble while several artic blue lights flashed all around him.
After passing the quarter mark, Quinn cancelled out thirty water swirls every few seconds. His Occlumency was working overtime to decipher the information from the sonar, and his magic casting skill was being pushed to the limit by targeting thirty randomly emerging targets.
'Hmm...'
Halfway through the second quarter, Quinn had to handle forty targets every couple of seconds. It was getting difficult to consistently destroy all targets.
'Need to change tactics,' decided Quinn; he was getting into the territory in which one miss would hit Quinn with a pressurized jet of water that would rip any part of his body.
So right after he stopped a wave of swirls to annihilate him, Quinn raised his arm up, and a dome of transparent arctic blue briefly flashed around him.
'Let's see how the defense works.'
Quinn stopped walking, and just when the arctic blue light disappeared, another forty swirls appeared, and for the first time today, forty spears of pressurized jets of water shot out.
All forty water spears collided against Quinn's dome, and every contact point glowed in arctic blue while ripples went out on impact.
'Alright, pretty stable integrity. Nothing seems to be getting past,' noted Quinn and once again started walking.
What started at four swirls had now become fifty swirls and thus fifty simultaneous hits against his dome of protection. Fifty hits every couple of seconds were so abundant that Quinn's dome of protection was fully glowing in arctic blue.
The color wouldn't even get to fade before another volley would light up the dome.
Quinn finally crossed twenty-five meters which marked the halfway point of the fifty-meter path. Then, the barrage of pressured water stopped.
'... What?'
He immediately became cautious and pushed magic into the dome of protection, making it glow a fluorescent arctic blue all around.
The sudden stop of attacks didn't fit well, and Quinn's hunch proved to be correct when ten bigger, more contorted swirls of magic appeared around him.
These new swirls looked more menacing, and looking at them closely, Quinn could see that water was being funneled and sucked into the swirls, making them wider and more contorted.
Then the attack came.
Ten beams of pressurized water came out of ten swirls.
'Ooh,' voice Quinn as he felt the push of the beams against his protection.
Unlike the previous swirl attacks, which shot spears of water before disappearing for new ones to appear, these were continuous sharp emissions of water endlessly assaulting Quinn's dome of protections.
The power of impact was much higher than the previous type.
'But... it's not enough.'
Quinn stood up straight and once again began confidently walking ahead.
For each step he took, five more water beams would be added to the tally, and within eight steps, Quinn was again back to fifty attacks, but this time, he was facing a continuous assault.
'This is still not enough,' thought Quinn.
Just as Quinn had predicted, with every passing trial, things got easier for him.
Not because of the trials getting easier. No. The trials were getting tough in their own way. It was because of Quinn's decision to apply water magic to solve the trials.
The second he entered, Quinn employed the sonar vision he developed for Tehom's Delight. He was able to tell when and where the attacks were coming and thus had an easier time defending against them.
Before deploying the shield to defend, Quinn had been on the offense, fizzling out the swirls before they could shoot out their attacks. He had learnt to manipulate water from Poseidon's Wrath. As he had to learn the art of controlling turbulent water, the spears of pressurized water became simply another form of that.
If Poseidon's Wrath was an application —where moving water was used to sweep everything in its path— then, the swirls in Leviathan's Underpass were applications where moving water was being used to cut through anything placed in front of them.
The dome of protection which Quinn used was also water magic. The swirls were a physical offense where water was being shot at high pressure to form concentrated beams of destruction.
Unlike ice, where the molecules were densely packed, water had an element of flexibility. Quinn's water magic dome, when assaulted, transferred the energy from the incoming water beam. It employed the flexibility of water to carry that incoming energy, divert it away across the dome's surface, and finally released it into the surroundings.
With every trial, Quinn had gotten better at using water magic. This year he had studied a lot of water magic, and because he had to go through different water terrains every time he entered the Aquatic Vault, Quinn had been able to gain tons of experience with water magic.
And all that experience was coming into play right now, which allowed him to stroll through Leviathan's Underpass.
Quinn couldn't see anything because the fifty water beams obstructed his view, but under his dome, Quinn felt safe, so he continued to walk.
Quinn noticed when he walked into the fourth quarter as the fifty water beams suddenly gained a ton of strength.
'Oh, my, if these hit me, my body won't be solid anymore,' thought Quinn, but continued to walk. 'What would it be? Instant gory mush.'
The first few shots at the start of the path, which were much weaker than the current attacks, had disabled Quinn. If he had stayed there for a few seconds more, he would've been dead.
It made Quinn think about how much magic could achieve.
Then suddenly, all attacks stopped, and Quinn found himself in front of the entrance at the end of the tunnel.
'So, it's done, huh,' thought Quinn.
He looked back to see the white marbled floor and the opposite end he had started at. If Quinn was honest, he expected more out of the trial that had almost killed him.
'I guess the element of surprise was the thing that doomed me.'
After thinking that, Quinn turned back to the triangular unnamed entrance. He took a big gulp of water and went through it.
He disappeared from Leviathan's Underpass.
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Quinn West - MC - I am gooood looking~!
Luna Lovegood - Observant - Knows her boss.
Eddie Carmichael - Chaser - Uuuuggggghhhhh.
FictionOnlyReader - Author - Next chapter is the end and the reward
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If you have any ideas regarding the magic you want to see in this fiction or want to offer some ideas regarding the progression. Move onto the DISCORD Server and blast those ideas.
The link is in the synopsis!
Link To Discord
https://discord.gg/w5dJ82SfMr
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