Fudge left.
He departed carrying an immeasurable amount of resentment.
He could tell that Dawn had been dismissive. After thinking about everything he had gone through over the past half month, Fudge felt as though all his hard work had been thrown to the dogs.
He had worked tirelessly to search for clues, endured poor food and rough lodging, and incurred countless personal favors, only for his inhuman superior to treat the information as though it hardly mattered.
Then why had he given him the task in the first place?!
Wasn't this just making a fool of him?
Fudge gritted his teeth, feeling that this monster was becoming harder and harder to serve.
He had even begun using Dawn as a mirror to reflect on himself, lest one day he become something similar.
But...
Dawn did not care what the man thought.
All he needed was outward respect. Whatever was going on inside Fudge's head was merely icing on the cake.
After watching the still-useful Minister leave, Dawn followed the stairs toward the floor where he had created his private space.
After confirming that none of the protective spells he had arranged had been disturbed, he nodded in satisfaction and entered.
With a casual gesture, he activated one of the alchemical objects he had purchased in Diagon Alley, causing it to heat water and brew a cup of tea automatically.
As for himself, he stood before the wooden shelves specifically reserved for the books taken from the Ravenclaw common room and began choosing between them.
"It's time to read again..."
Dawn muttered.
His gaze swept across the shelves, and all kinds of titles entered his sight.
[The Wonders of Logic and Thought]
[An Analysis of Runes]
[A Social Study of Goblin Society]
[Psychology and Magic: The Treatment of the Self]
The books Ravenclaw had left behind covered an astonishing range of subjects. There was practically everything.
Yet Dawn stood there in silence for a long time without pulling out a single book.
He simply could not bring himself to care!
Although he had not paid much attention to the dream after waking and had remained calm ever since, the truth was that its contents had affected him to some degree.
Dawn was experiencing something akin to a period of deep philosophical reflection.
"Isn't there anything a little more relaxing?"
He began picking through the shelves.
And the result...
He actually found a Latin travelogue.
[The Travels of Segil to the End of the World!]
Dawn raised an eyebrow, his gaze lingering on the words "End of the World" for a moment.
He pulled out the book. Its outer cover was brownish-red, and it was roughly half a foot thick.
He carried it to the desk, took a sip of the freshly poured tea, and opened the pages.
There was no preface.
The book began directly with handwritten text.
[Today, a strange man around fifty years old arrived in the royal capital. His manner and clothing were both peculiar, and he claimed to be an extraordinary adventurer who had reached the end of the world and successfully returned.]
[He went around proclaiming his exploits everywhere: in taverns, in alleyways, and anywhere people gathered.]
[Eventually, the king heard of the matter and summoned him, asking what the end of the world looked like.]
[The adventurer said: The entire world is a vast, flat plane. There is much more ocean than land. At the outermost edge stands a wall of ice, cold and towering into the clouds, enclosing everything within it.]
[He continued: Somewhere along that wall, I discovered an enormous treasure, enough to purchase every piece of land in the world. There was simply too much of it to carry away. That is why I have come back this time. I hope to borrow some men from the king.]
[The king was extremely interested. He warmly entertained the adventurer and asked him where the treasure was located. After getting him drunk, he obtained a parchment map marked with a precise route.]
[The king then cruelly killed the man. From among his most loyal guards, he selected ten men and ordered them to follow the map all the way to the outer edge of the world and bring back the treasure.]
[And I was one of those ten.]
Oh.
It was an adventure story.
Dawn thoughtfully flipped through the spine and title page, but found neither the author's name nor the king's name. He had no way of knowing when the book had been written.
Then his attention returned to the book's description of the world, particularly the line claiming that "the entire world is a vast, flat plane."
Judging from the text, the author was a firm believer in a flat Earth.
That was not particularly strange.
As early as 1400 BC, the Old Testament had described the Earth as a vast flat plane.
It was not until somewhere between the sixth and fourth centuries BC that Pythagoras and Plato successively proposed that the Earth was probably spherical.
So if this book had been written before the sixth century BC, such a belief would have been perfectly normal.
Besides...
Even today, when the spherical shape of the Earth was essentially accepted by everyone, the flat-Earth theory had never completely disappeared.
In 1956, Samuel Shenton, a member of the British astronomical community, founded an organization known as the Flat Earth Society. By 2017, it had more than forty thousand members.
But what truly surprised Dawn was this...
How had this book ended up in the Ravenclaw common room?!
Even in the era of the Four Founders, when people generally lacked a correct understanding of the Earth's shape, it still felt incredibly strange that Ravenclaw, who was renowned for her wisdom, would have any connection to the flat-Earth theory.
He continued reading.
The rest of the book consisted of "my" experiences and actions along the journey: fighting bandits, trading with merchants, traveling alongside minstrels...
It perfectly matched Dawn's stereotypical image of a travelogue!
And there was something else.
There seemed to be records of wizards as well.
[While passing through a village, I met a strange woman who liked to wear a pointed hat. From her, I purchased a magical bag with coins, a bag capable of pouring out an endless supply of food and water.]
Dawn had to admit it.
This kind of book was indeed much easier to become absorbed in than a collection of dry knowledge.
Before he realized it, Dawn had become immersed in the world within its pages.
[A fierce wind rose over the sea during the night. Before long, heavy rain began to fall. One of my companions knelt on the deck and loudly begged the gods for forgiveness.]
[But the ship beneath us continued rocking violently. Another companion lost his footing, fell from the deck, and disappeared into the raging ocean.]
[I was devastated. Nearly twenty years have passed since we left the royal capital. Of the ten men who originally set out, only five barely remain. One man's right leg has even become a wooden prosthetic.]
[But...]
[I believe everything will eventually come to an end! I will return to the royal capital with the treasure, and amid cheers and admiration, I will become a great hero whose name will be sung forever by minstrels!]
[...]
[Holding on to this belief, we drifted for nearly another month before finally... we saw the snow-covered outermost region described by the adventurer, the land surrounding the entire world!]
[...]
[And we set foot upon that eternal frozen earth ourselves!]
[But... I soon discovered that I had greatly underestimated the majesty of this land and the unfathomable power it possessed.]
[In only two nights, the cold claimed the lives of three of my companions, leaving only the friend closest to me.]
[The two of us supported one another as we trudged across the snow, each step producing a faint crunch beneath our feet.]
[After so many deaths, my lofty ambitions had long since vanished without a trace. All that remained was the instinctive fear and numbness at the very heart of survival.]
[The snow falling from above was heavy and cold. It pressed down upon my body until my limbs became numb, while my exposed hands had swollen and turned black.]
[One day, I was forced to knock off my third dead finger with a block of ice. Then, beneath a bone-cutting wind, I continued walking toward that unreachable end.]
[I want to go back.]
[But the wind and snow were too fierce. My vision was completely obscured, and I could no longer tell where the way back was. I could only continue forward.]
[I began to regret everything.]
[That foolish king! He should never have listened to that damned adventurer! I do not know whether there is treasure at the end of the world, but I suspect that even if the king himself died, he would never see a single extra coin of treasure!]
[Yes...]
[I began cursing the king bitterly. The loyalty I had once possessed as a knight had long since been worn away completely beneath this endless snow.]
[My companion said to me: Look, Segil! That handsome face the minstrels once praised has been slashed by the icy wind until it looks like a skinned pig. No one could possibly call you handsome anymore.]
[I managed to raise the corners of my mouth in response. I did not mind him joking about my appearance. In this pale land that seemed to lead straight toward death, having anything left that could make us laugh almost felt like a blessing.]
[I prayed constantly in my heart: God, please take me to your warm kingdom. Spare me the suffering of this snow and freezing wind!]
[And then...]
[On a night when yellow-green light flashed across the distant horizon, a miracle truly appeared before my eyes!]
[After a snowstorm, my companion and I suddenly saw... in the distance before us, there stood an enormous wall of crystal-clear ice, stretching straight into the clouds!]
A massive wall of ice?
Ah. So it really was a fictional tale rather than a realistic travelogue?
Dawn finally came to that conclusion.
Believing in a flat Earth before setting out was understandable enough. But after actually reaching the edge of the world, how could someone possibly record something as absurd as an ice wall?
Unless...
Could it be that because the flat-Earth theory had been the prevailing belief at the time, the influence of natural magic had actually caused the world to be a gigantic disk?
The thought flashed through Dawn's mind.
But immediately afterward, he startled himself with the idea.
"Could that actually be possible?"
His pupils contracted.
He murmured to himself, imagining the differences between a flat Earth and a spherical Earth in various phenomena.
Part of him felt that it was impossible.
Yet another part felt that magic should have no limits.
After spacing out for a moment, he continued reading.
[After our excitement, we continued walking along the base of the ice wall. The wind became weaker here, and compared with before, it even gave me the illusion of warmth.]
[Unfortunately, we had already lost our sense of direction, and we could not find the location of the treasure marked on the parchment map.]
[But we did not care. We simply spoke excitedly about whether this was a natural phenomenon or some great work of the gods.]
[...]
[After walking for an unknown length of time... suddenly! In the endless whiteness, I saw a particularly conspicuous patch of gray-black!]
[Looking closely...]
[It was an enormous gate embedded in the ice wall, made entirely of stone, plain and simple in design! Several translucent veils fluttered gently above it!]
[I was completely stunned!]
[Why would there be a mysterious stone gate at the end of the world?]
[And furthermore... looking at that gray-black material, I felt a bone-deep chill emanating from it, colder than the snow and ice themselves, as though it came from the depths of my soul!]
[I had a terrible premonition and immediately pulled my friend, intending to leave.]
[But my friend said: We've come all this way. Why not go inside and have a look? Perhaps a god who can grant our wishes lives beyond the gate.]
[With that, he ignored my attempts to stop him, passed through the veil, and slowly disappeared into the depths of the archway.]
["Hey! Are you all right?" I shouted toward the gate. But all around us, the wind and snow howled, and there was no response.]
[Everything was terrifyingly silent!]
[For three whole days, I never saw him return. I had no idea what to do or whether I should leave first when...]
[From within the archway before me...]
[A monster suddenly floated out!]
[It was an extremely terrifying monster! It had my friend's face, yet its entire body was milky white, and it could pass through my body like a phantom.]
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
A huge stone gate, translucent veils, and a ghostlike monster returning after entering...
Could this be referring to the Veil of the Death Chamber in the Department of Mysteries?
Combined with the witch mentioned earlier...
It seemed that whoever had fabricated this book was a wizard who had seen quite a lot of the world.
Although Dawn had an astonishing suspicion faintly forming in his mind, reason still told him that the descriptions in this travelogue could not possibly be completely true.
There were simply too many illogical elements.
Besides...
Given his current situation, where would he find the energy to speculate about unrelated matters?
It was better to simply treat the whole thing as a completely fictional tale.
Dawn withdrew his thoughts and continued reading.
[I asked the monster in terror: "My God! What have you done to my friend?"]
[But the monster told me that he was my friend! And that he felt wonderful now. After passing through the gate, he had seen the kingdom created by the great God.]
[He told me:]
[The land there was covered in white jade and glazed stone, and houses made from them rose straight into the heavens! The gods had even given life to metal, allowing it to take all kinds of forms and live alongside humans upon the same land.]
[He invited me to enter the kingdom of the gods with him. But when I looked at his hollow and rigid expression, I grew increasingly uneasy. Before I could answer, I fled back along the path in terror and panic.]
[I do not know how long I ran, nor where I went. I simply kept fleeing, as though that terrifying monster were always following behind me.]
[And when I finally managed to calm down, another miracle occurred! I actually saw... the deep blue surface of the sea in the distance, along with a tiny sailboat drifting among the broken ice!]
[It was wonderful! It was my boat!]
[That was the only thought I had time to form before I boarded the little boat and desperately sailed away from this place!]
[The cold seawater soaked through the fur I was wearing.]
[As I watched the snowstorm recede farther and farther behind me, I knew that from that day onward, I would never set foot in this place again.]
Snap!
The writing ended.
Dawn closed the book.
He instinctively lifted his tea, thinking about the things the phantom had described in the travelogue, and slowly furrowed his brow.
White jade and glazed stone...
Houses reaching into the heavens...
And living metal...
Dawn narrowed his eyes.
Perhaps it was because of his preconceived notions, but why did this description sound so much like modern architecture and machinery?
But how could that be?
It could not possibly mean that the wizard who had written this book was some kind of sociologist, or an exceptionally skilled seer capable of predicting the future, could it?
Dawn shook his head.
Then he suddenly remembered something else that connected death with the future: the story he had seen in the library during the previous school year, the one concerning a "portrait of a person from the future."
Were the two connected?
Dawn did not know.
Nor did he want to think about it.
Just as he had said before, he simply did not have the energy to concern himself with matters unrelated to him.
"I'll just treat it as an interesting fantasy story."
With that thought, Dawn savored the story for a moment, then returned the book to the shelf and left the space he had created, heading down to the first floor.
It was time for him to treat patients again.
___________
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