"Before the attack, what were you doing?" Jafari pondered for a mont, then spoke with so confusion. "There should be nothing special. I was just normally staying vigilant about my surroundings."
Speaking, he seed to suddenly think of sothing and glanced at Evans's palm.
There, brilliant starlight continued to shimr. The giant claw appeared to be no particularly difficult opponent for this young man, so much so that he hadn't even dispelled the Lumos Charm on his other hand.
Looking at that gleaming light, he hesitated sowhat. "At that mont, I think I got a bit distracted."
"Distracted?" Evans's gaze sharpened as he looked toward Charlie, standing not far away.
He rembered that before entering the pyramid, Charlie had also ntioned getting distracted. Fortunately, Bill had reminded him, allowing him to react quickly and dodge the attack.
Perhaps this wasn't a re coincidence.
Filing this away in his mind, Evans continued pressing. "Besides that? What exactly were you distracted thinking about?"
"That's a bit embarrassing to say." The bald man's darkened complexion seed to redden slightly as he scratched his head sheepishly. "I was thinking about how, after just two years, your Lumos Charm could reach such intensity. It's rather outrageous."
"If you ask , it is indeed quite outrageous," Charlie nodded seriously from the side. "But he already displayed so many outrageous things while still at school. I believe that no matter how many more outrageous things he displays, it's entirely reasonable and justified."
Speaking, Charlie began counting on his fingers. "For instance, inciting internal factional struggle within Slytherin, repeatedly battling Snape in the Forbidden Forest, frequently breaking into the library's restricted section without being caught, and most importantly, leading magical creatures in an attack on Hogwarts."
With each point Charlie made, fear grew more evident on the Aurors' faces. They stared at Evans with horror, and though Evans didn't know what they were thinking, it certainly wasn't anything good.
"You could shut up now," Evans said irritably, glancing at Charlie, who was naturally continuing to spread rumors. Shaking his head, he asked. "So what about you? What were you thinking about right before you were attacked last ti?"
"Huh? ?" Charlie was startled, pointing at himself as if he hadn't expected to be included in this.
anwhile, Bill, beside them, already understood Evans's aning, his eyes flashing with realization.
He naturally rembered clearly—Charlie had personally ntioned that he'd been distracted once before being attacked.
"Evans, do you an those creatures appear because of so specific thing?" he asked, glancing at the still sowhat confused Jafari. "Like distraction, for example?"
"No, I think it's more specific than that. Perhaps certain emotional fluctuations at that mont," Evans looked at Charlie, asking once more. "Think carefully and recall. What exactly were you thinking about at that ti?"
"Um, let think." Hearing the serious tone from both Bill and Evans, Charlie lowered his head and pondered for a long while before speaking uncertainly. "I rember it seed to be thinking about that batch of mother dragons in the reserve."
"They'd just finished laying eggs, and I was sowhat worried whether those hatchlings would receive proper care."
Worry.
Turning over Charlie's response in his mind, Evans rubbed his chin.
Perhaps negative emotional fluctuations were the ans by which these creatures manifested their appearance.
But they'd brought those Aurors along, and just looking at their eyes would show that fear had never left their faces throughout.
Why hadn't their presence attracted attacks from these creatures?
Did one's emotions have to change after entering this corridor, or was there another chanism at work?
And how did it even distinguish people's thoughts? Through so form of Legilincy-like magic, or simply through intuition?
But just as Evans was about to devise a thod to test his hypothesis, his gaze suddenly sharpened. Air currents surged behind him, a pair of semi-transparent, delicate wings flashing past.
Then his entire body transford into a silver-white arc, vanishing instantly from where he stood.
Boom!
A massive creature had appeared at the position where Evans had been standing monts before. Its arrival was utterly silent, but the force of its attack was trendously loud.
However, this ti, Evans finally got a complete view of what this creature looked like.
It was a creature with two giant claws and an enormous skull composed of bone.
Its body was wrapped densely in tattered fabric that had begun to rot, though one could still tell it had been treated with preservation spells—many, many tis.
Apparently not expecting its attack to miss, it was now having difficulty pulling its claws from the ground, slowly rising to its feet.
"This wrapping—it's wrapped with absolutely no skill whatsoever." Looking at the creature covered in tattered fabric, Bill slightly furrowed his brow.
As a seasoned Curse-Breaker, he'd seen thousands of mummies. It was easy to see that the fabric on this creature was wrapped haphazardly.
The cloth's pattern was extrely chaotic, lacking any aesthetic sensibility, and appearing quite bizarre.
But the creature they'd encountered last ti hadn't wrapped itself in such ssy cloth. Why did this one?
Was it cosplaying? Given the age of that fabric, it was at least thousands of years old. Were people around the Nile thousands of years ago cosplaying as mummies?
But mummification was only sothing the upper class of ancient Egypt could afford. Those people who'd written the parchnt—they definitely shouldn't have been the upper class of that era.
Having the ruling class run off to be buried with others would surely plunge the nation into chaos.
"I don't think now is the ti to contemplate whether the fabric wrapped around its body ets standards," Charlie's voice suddenly ca from the side, and that voice sounded sowhat trembling.
Confused, Bill moved his gaze away from the slowly rising creature, following Charlie's line of sight.
Then he imdiately drew a sharp breath.
Before them in the corridor, creatures had appeared one after another—so like the one they were currently dealing with, wrapped in countless bandages, while others resembled what they'd seen before: pitch-black bodies with exposed skeletal fraworks and desiccated, blackened flesh visible.
Those wrapped in bandages were similarly wrapped haphazardly to the one before them, the wrapping increasingly chaotic, making Bill, who'd seen many mummies, feel sowhat headachy.
But Charlie was absolutely right—this was definitely not the ti to concern themselves with such matters.
Swallowing hard, Bill spoke tremulously.
"Shouldn't we just run away first?"
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