Stepping into the puzzle room, Loki looked around and found everything arranged just as he'd left it.
Clearing away the altar and making himself presentable, Loki walked up to Salazar's begging bowl with the locket in his hand.
'Damn the locket's heavy.'
The locket had a see-through amber glass cover beneath which was a series of emerald stones set in the shape of an 'S' forming a snake, likely to represent Salazar himself.
There was something written around the snaking figure in the centre but Loki found it hard to read, it was as if it was written in an entirely different language. Loki guessed it was parseltongue and that only Salazar could read it.
'But why would snakes need a written language?'
'Is there a secret society of snakes in this world or something?'
'Lizard people?'
Glancing one last time at the locket and its several intricacies Loki let it slip from his hands and fall into the bowl.
The moments when the locket slid through Loki's fingers stretched in time as Loki's brain performed one last check, thinking about all the facts related to the matter and wondering if this was the right thing to do.
'I guess I've done everything I could. Now all that remains is to see the fruit of my labour.'
*CLINK*
The locket finally landed in the begging bowl and its chain slithered on top of it, collecting like a coiling snake forming a small pile.
Loki looked with bated breath as the crystal began to hum once again as soon as the locket fell into the bowl.
An ethereal wispy mist parted from it and crawled into the bowl, weaving through the air like a dog smelling its meal.
Suddenly the mist flinched, recoiling in what Loki thought was rejection but he couldn't have been more wrong.
As soon as Loki was about to write this try off as a failure and before he felt the frustration inside him explode, the mist grew thicker and denser.
It shot towards the locket and immediately crept into it, Loki saw a storm form within the locket's confines, while simultaneously, the entire room dimmed in brightness as if the spirituality being used to power the room was being directed elsewhere.
*CLINK* *CLINK* *CLINK*
Loki heard several cracks form in a glass but he couldn't find any cracks on the locket, the amber cover was perfectly alright from what he could see, except that was when his eyes landed on the crystal that contained Salazar Slytherin.
Cracks like spiderwebs had formed in multiple places on the crystal in which Salazar Slytherin lay.
Loki stepped back and shielded his face with his hands to protect himself from any stray glass pieces but a sudden wave of spirituality emerged from the Locket and burst forth throughout the room, knocking him off his feet.
Now on the floor, Loki dragged himself backwards and put some distance between himself and the crystal as the storm that had originally remained in the locket's confines was now bursting forth around the crystal, growing by the second.
Loki watched the storm grow to cover up the entire crystal in which Salazar Slytherin lay.
All Loki could hear now was the roar of the storm brewing inside the slowly darkening room.
It felt like the wind was roaring inside his ears.
'This is loud!!!'
'I'm quite sure everyone in the castle is up and awake right now!!!'
Loki wanted to get up and rush towards the exit, but that was when it happened.
From within the storm that had taken over the room, Loki felt a powerful force of suppression. It pushed him into the ground with pressure enough to make his bones groan under the weight.
Loki worked harder than ever to keep his eyes open to see what was going on while scraping the marble on the floor to drag himself away from the impromptu hurricane in the centre of the room.
It was hard but after what felt like a million years Loki reached a bookshelf and proceeded to take shelter behind it.
But he need not have, since as soon as Loki's back touched the bookshelf a sudden *BANG* caught his attention.
Leaning over to look at the crystal, Loki felt a sudden rush of wind blow past his face that forced his cheeks open and close his eyes.
When he opened them, everything in the room had returned to be perfectly normal.
Except the crystal containing Salazar Slytherin had vanished and looked like it never existed.
'...what?'
Loki stood up, albeit with some difficulty, and walked over to the centre of the room where only three blue crystals remained.
All the other crystals were still the same, with one of the crystals containing a woman while the other two remained empty.
But there was a short change where the fourth crystal with Salazar Slytherin used to be.
In its place, hovering without any support, now was the golden begging bowl that Loki had placed the Locket into. But instead of the locket, it now contained something else.
Puzzled about what the strange card-like object was, Loki bent over to get a closer look.
The card was drifting in and out of view by becoming translucent and turning pitch black as if it existed but at the same time didn't.
Loki felt a sense of suppression from the item, it made him realise that it was a Beyonder item of the Error Pathway or one of its neighbouring sequences.
Yet he did not pick it up carelessly.
Loki stared at the card some more and felt a little confused by the familiar symbol on it.
'Where have I seen this before?'
The symbol was the drawing of a curling shell with four clocks with different times on the four cardinal directions around the shell.
'Time?'
'TIME!!!!'
Loki's brain clicked and he instantly performed the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth ritual behind a few bookshelves to go back into the Sefirah Castle where he summoned the chair he used to sit on.
He immediately looked at the symbol behind his chair and it was exactly as he'd remembered it to be.
A snail's shell with clocks on the cardinal directions showing different times in them.
Loki became shocked.
He exited the Sefirah Castle and moved back to the begging bowl.
'Is this my reward?'
'An item from the Error Beyonder Pathway?'
'But what does this mean?'
'How did Salazar Slytherin have a Beyonder item of the Error Pathway?'
'Is it the same way he learnt to call me Mr. Error?'
But instead of joy for the first time since coming to this world, Loki felt a genuine sense of anger boiling in his chest.
'What does the idiot think!? That I can fend off the True Creator and whoever else is working with him with a charm!?'
'Seriously!?'
'The hell is wrong with this man!!!???'
'Fool used me to wake him up! And then I am given nothing but a charm in exchange!?'
'What does he think I am? His personal assistant who wakes him up like an alarm clock!?'
'I was naive!!! Too naive!!! Thinking that these idiots would've helped me in some way!!'
'Hmpf. Just let them wait until I become a True God…then I'll make sure they pay for everything…'
'Rude bastards didn't even thank me for waking him up…Rebirth epoch? I'll make sure it is changed to the Vengeance Epoch if they don't compensate me appropriately.'
'But what am I supposed to do with the True Creator and his sidekick now!?'
Loki was frowning. He didn't like what was happening one bit.
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After performing a multitude of divinations, Loki decided he would pick up the item and send it above the grey fog since that was the safest place for it.
'I also need to figure out what that charm does.'
'Was it made by a previous Angel or God of the Error pathway?'
'But how is it possible? Aren't there no other Beyonders of the Error pathway? I mean Walburga didn't even know about any of the Lord of the Mysteries pathways.'
'What exactly is going on?'
'Does it have something to do with Salazar Slytherin?'
Looking back at the charm in the begging bowl, Loki carefully picked it up.
As soon as Loki picked up the charm, the begging bowl melted away into a liquid. The golden liquid streaked across the marble floor until it reached the other crystals from where it climbed those crystals and merged with their begging bowls.
The room trembled a little and the crystals, as if having a mind of their own, buzzed as they realigned on the floor, crawling as they rearranged themselves into a triangular formation.
If before they looked like a pinwheel with four blades, they now looked like a pinwheel with three blades.
Loki stood confused, but he soon ignored it and pulled out the marauder's map.
'Huh?'
'Why's there no one outside? Well except for the one student that escaped from Finch, he seems to have returned, but its just him! No other students, no professors and not even the Headmaster.'
Everyone was still sleeping soundly inside their beds in their dormitories.
'Is the map broken?'
The sound produced by the entire fiasco after Loki dropped the Locket into Salazar's begging bowl was loud enough to make Loki feel like he would lose his sense of hearing.
Yet it looked like the sound hadn't been carried out of the room.
'I guess the room's just that good at keeping things that happen in it within its bounds?'
Loki looked at the student who was loitering outside the doors and shrugged.
'I guess, I'll just stay here for now and leave tomorrow morning when he has to go for classes.'
'But I wanted to take a shower…'
Suddenly, Loki felt the room around him shift.
The bookshelves slid across the room and in one of the corners, a fancy bathroom with a large tub in its centre was built.
'...oh?'
Putting his hands together behind his back, Loki began to examine everything about the new addition to the room.
'There's body wash and shampoo too? From where did it get all of this?'
Eventually, Loki just sat down in the tub after filling it with water and just let himself soak in the water for a while.
He was tired and submerging his whole body into the water gave him a sense of relaxation he hadn't gotten in a long time.
Time passed and once Loki was satisfied he cleaned himself up using a bodywash and slipped out of the tub after wearing new clothes that seemed to have been conjured just to fit him.
'Why am I being treated like Royalty now?' Loki wondered but paid no attention and assumed it was his reward for helping Salazar.
He was currently very mad about helping Salazar, but he kept quiet for now so that he could first examine everything that had changed.
Once he was tidy, Loki finally embarked on a quest around the room to check the one other thing he was interested in.
The books on the shelves.
'Have any of them been unlocked for me to read through?'
Pulling on a book with a red cover titled, 'Stories of Valor, Courage and Sacrifice.' Loki found that it wouldn't budge like it was glued to the shelf it was on.
'Really? Still no? Maybe the green books are free since I helped Slytherin?'
Loki walked up to a different book titled, 'Horrors of the Dark.' and tugged on it lightly and to his happiness and surprise the book slid off the shelf like it was on butter and moved into his hand.
'Good.'
With giddiness in his heart and a wide smile on his face, Loki cracked the book's spine and began to read through it.
Except-
'The Abyss is but the seabed of Darkness.'
'Get lost in the darkness, and the Abyss will make you a demon.'
-there was a warning on the front page that creeped Loki out.
Turning the page, Loki began to read through the section titled, 'Note from the Author'.
'This book deals with my experiments to make a wand.'
'Based on Rowena's experiment in creating magic, I suspect that Beyonders will slowly shift towards using wands in favour of easily being able to manipulate their spirituality.'
"Hmm…? I'm probably just tired so I read that wrong…let's think about what Salazar wrote after that…so Salazar Slytherin was the one to delve into the art of wand-making? Surprising, I'd have expected Rowena to be the one to do it. So Ollivanders learnt the art of wand-making from him?"
A little confused Loki continued to read ahead since he had nothing else to practically do.
'There is still a little bit of time, about a hundred years before Rowena makes magic available to everyone, and so I want to perfect the art of wand making before then so that Beyonders and other spiritually sensitive people, that I've come to term Wizards and Witches, will be able to take part in this grand experiment of ours.'
"....what?"
'Helga has already started experimenting with Rowena's magic for cooking, while Godric has begun experimenting with it to make things explode, so this study will be my contribution. At least it is something more useful than what the two other bumbling idiots are doing.'
'....what?'
'Though…I must confess, using a wand will probably give me the edge to beat Godric and finally take control of the Sefi- never mind, I'm sure Mr. Error has something better planned for me.'
"....what the-"
'I think Mr. Error would be proud of me for doing this.'
"...."
Loki almost stumbled when his legs went limp.
He could no longer ignore what was staring him right in the face as Salazar Slytherin was trying to do his very best to slap him with the fact.
"Rowena made magic?"
"Not like a spell or a charm? The real magic that everyone uses today?"
Loki stared at the book expecting it to speak something or say something about the maddening information it just revealed but like any good book it remained inanimate.
'....'
Loki felt his mind spin as he turned to look towards the crystal that still remained.
He expected any of them to validate the information in the book or even burst out laughing and tell Loki that all of it was a joke.
But nothing of the sort happened.
With a soft *sigh* Loki covered his face and placed the book back on the shelf.
He thought about a faucet and a luxurious sink appeared in one corner of the room.
Walking to the sink, Loki did his best not to think about what he'd just read.
He washed his face but even the cold water droplets running down his face couldn't break him out of his shock.
Loki then requested the room for a bed and once it appeared in front of him, he sunk into it.
'...I need a break.'
'Maybe everything Salazar does won't end up disappointing me further after all…'
'He's a crazy old man.'
'But I'm still angry at him…'
'Did he take offence to me kicking his crystal earlier when I was mad at him and that's why he didn't give me a better reward or help?'
'Whatever…still rude.'
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A/N : Sorry for the delay! I forgot to upload here after I uploaded the chapter on my Patreon.
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