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******
The sun was "setting" in the east.
When they had set off, it was not yet noon, but now the sky was gradually beginning to change.
At a speed of Mach 30, it would take only an hour to circle the Earth. Although Thor hadn't maintained that velocity for long, he had still been flying freely through the sky for quite some time.
After crossing multiple—perhaps even ten—time zones, they had witnessed the "setting" of the sun and the arrival of a starlit night.
"Where are we now?"
Fleur adjusted her descent uneasily, moving closer to Harry as she peered down into the pitch-black expanse below.
"No signal here—no magic network coverage. At least Muggles have satellites for positioning. But since there's land beneath us, and Thor hasn't dropped us, it means he's seen solid ground."
"But it's already dark, so we're either in East Asia, Southeast Asia… or Australia."
"I really hope it's not the last one. A land once used to exile prisoners—it's got bad vibes."
Harry's remark made Fleur giggle, though there was some truth to it—centuries ago, that had indeed been Australia's primary use.
"If we are there, do you think we'll run into pirates? Or maybe some primitive cannibal tribes?" Fleur teased, clutching Harry's arm and feigning fear.
"Huh?" Harry blinked, momentarily caught off guard. "Pirates, maybe. But cannibal tribes? The native population was wiped out by the descendants of those exiled prisoners long ago. If there's one thing we know about Anglo-Saxons, it's that they're pretty damn efficient at exterminating others. And it's not just Australia—North America's still at war. But at least the native wizards over there had stronger foundations and greater numbers."
He shrugged, though the darkness made it hard for Fleur to see. But she felt his mood shift. Harry quickly realized that he'd spoken too bluntly—too harshly. The truth of history was often drenched in blood, and he could tell his words had dampened the atmosphere.
"Don't dwell on it," he said, trying to lighten the mood. "Those exiled prisoners were mostly from my England. The Hundred Years' War and all that. No need to burden yourself with unnecessary guilt."
His diversion worked—Fleur huffed and playfully punched him before pursing her lips in mock irritation.
"Yes, when it comes to being absolute bastards, you English are leagues ahead of everyone else."
"Ha!" Harry scoffed dismissively. "What those Anglo-Saxon mutts did has nothing to do with me."
He smirked, tapping his own dark hair and eyes. "Roman blood runs through my veins. Back in the day, whether you were Germanic, Celtic, or Slavic—didn't matter. You barbarians were all plowing fields and laboring for my Roman ancestors."
!!!
Fleur's eyes flared with indignation. In a flash, she coiled around Harry in a bare-naked choke, her astonishing flexibility and core strength allowing her to wrap around him like a vengeful serpent. However…
No matter how much force she exerted, she couldn't so much as budge him. Harry's body, now weighing close to half a ton, was simply beyond her ability to restrain—even though he wasn't resisting.
And then, just as Harry was about to smugly revel in his little victory, a chillingly sweet voice whispered in his ear.
"Who's doing the dishes from now on?"
Harry's smirk vanished. "Me. Me. Definitely me."
"And who's cooking?"
"No question about it—me again."
"Good. From now on, you handle the housework." Fleur smirked triumphantly. "I'll be the one looking pretty."
Harry pounded his chest in mock sincerity. "Absolutely. I'll make the money, you be the beauty. Done dea—hey! Look down there! There's a city!"
Still clinging to his back, Fleur followed his gaze. Below them, the landscape was shrouded in darkness—there wasn't even a single flickering light in sight.
"Are you sure?" she asked, rubbing her eyes. While she wasn't capable of seeing in total darkness, her vision was still significantly better than an average human's. With the moon hanging high and the stars shining brightly, visibility wasn't too bad.
"A city that big…" Harry hesitated. "If it really is a city, shouldn't there be some lights?"
Despite his growing doubts, the image before his eyes remained unchanged. As they descended further, the eerie, lifeless town only became clearer.
"The architecture isn't modern. This isn't a Muggle city… Could it be some kind of wizarding market? Or maybe even a Ministry of Magic outpost? The scale is impressive—definitely bigger than Hogwarts by several times—but the aesthetics are lacking. At least Hogwarts has shiny windows. This place is just… pitch black. A fortress of black iron?"
"But I don't see anything at all, Harry!"
Fleur, thinking Harry was teasing her, pouted and lightly smacked his back. No matter how hard she tried to spot it, there was no sign of the city he described.
"Fleur, you really can't see it?"
As they closed in on the city, Harry couldn't hide his confusion.
But skill breeds courage, and youthful curiosity is hard to suppress. After a brief discussion, the two adjusted their descent, heading straight toward the darkened city below.
For Fleur's safety, Harry had her hold onto his back, using a Slowing Charm to soften their descent. What had originally been planned as a high-altitude skydive had to be slowed down—no rush, after all. With Thor around, they could always come back if needed.
At less than a kilometer away, Harry could see every detail of the city with startling clarity. His eyesight, sharper than a hawk's, cut through the darkness and distance with ease, revealing the intricate layout of the streets below.
"This place… might just be a ghost town!"
The eerie silence and desolation made Harry suck in a breath. "Something's wrong. This is definitely a wizard-built city, but there's not a single person here. No signs of life at all!"
"We're leaving. We should check the outskirts first—going in directly isn't safe."
If he had been alone, Harry might have charged in recklessly just to see what would happen. But with Fleur by his side, he wasn't willing to take the risk.
Fleur's grip on his shirt tightened slightly. But just as they were about to pull away from the city, a strange sensation washed over them—like stepping through a curtain of cool water. Harry shuddered involuntarily.
"What kind of filthy rich lunatic built this?!"" A magic barrier extending over eight hundred meters? Even Hogwarts isn't this loaded!"
Harry cursed under his breath. Maintaining a magical barrier wasn't difficult—but keeping one this massive was a whole other level of extravagance. This city spanned four or five times the area of Hogwarts, yet its protective barrier stretched far beyond its borders. Even with the Forbidden Forest acting as a high-quality magical reservoir, Hogwarts would struggle to sustain something on this scale.
Most magical barriers were spherical, extending deep underground. The further outward they stretched, the more exponentially magic was drained.
A large barrier didn't always mean a strong one—but it did mean it was expensive as hell.
And from the way it felt, Harry could tell this wasn't just some weak shell. The magic coursing through the barrier was nearly on par with Hogwarts' defenses. The only difference was that it hadn't activated any aggressive countermeasures yet. But if it did, Harry had no doubt it would be just as formidable.
Hogwarts wasn't some run-of-the-mill magic school. In terms of raw defensive strength, even Durmstrang's new campus couldn't match it. Its founders had been four Awakened Wizards, and even in ordinary magic, Awakened ones were leagues beyond normal wizards.
"Thor, take care of your mother!"
Harry called out before pushing off midair, separating from Fleur by about a meter. Twisting his body slightly, he attempted to Apparate—
Nothing.
Apparition failed.
"This is definitely an Awakened Wizard's ruin. There's interference—I can't teleport more than fifty meters. Whoever built this place was one of them."
Harry's gaze darkened as he continued analyzing the city's defenses. "The foundational defense network here is better than Hogwarts'. At the very least, the creator of this place was far more meticulous than Hogwarts' founders. No shortcuts, no half-measures."
Hogwarts had been designed as a "universal legacy" school, meaning it was built to allow future generations to modify and maintain it easily. The Four Founders had intentionally avoided using the deeper, more complex magic of the Awakened Wizards to keep it accessible for successors.
Thor, now in his four-winged thunder wyvern form, landed gracefully with Fleur on his back. Meanwhile, Harry touched down lightly, his fall hardly more impactful than jumping from a ten-story building. He had no real need to cushion his landing, but he humored the idea anyway.
From the sky, the city had seemed just dark. Nothing more.
But now, standing within its walls, they could feel it.
A suffocating, oppressive aura loomed over them—born from the sheer unknown of the pitch-black city.
Thor returned to Fleur's chest pouch, ready to bail out at a moment's notice, while Harry remained alert, pistols drawn and eyes sharp.
There was no sound—no voices, no background noise—not even the hum of insects. The silence of the city at night was broken only by the soft howling of the wind as it rushed through the streets, a hollow and desolate echo.
The pristine, dust-free streets creaked under their footsteps, the only noise the crisp sound of their shoes hitting the ground.
"It's iron."
Crouching down, Harry ran his fingers across the ground. The street wasn't paved with black stone slabs, but rather solid iron—seamlessly fitted with no visible gaps. Even where the road met the buildings, there wasn't the slightest crack.
If magic had been used, this kind of seamless construction would be easy to achieve. Transfiguration could reshape objects into any form, as long as the transformation didn't alter the material composition. Transfiguration wizards had impressive feats in shaping, but it wasn't their specialty—only those with a good understanding of the object's form could perform it with precision.
However, this only applied to non-magical materials. For magical materials, it was much more difficult, at least for ordinary wizards.
"Just ordinary iron?"
Australia was known for its rich iron deposits, so this made sense. The reddish-brown "sand" could easily contain high-quality iron ore. Building a city like this from iron using local resources would have been quite practical.
Harry furrowed his brow as he grabbed the side of a building and squeezed a section of the wall. His muscular arm bulged as he pried off a chunk of "clay."
A glimmer of silver flashed as he peeled back a layer of blackened iron oxide. Beneath it was pure iron. The outside layer had a dull, blackish coating, but the interior was silvery.
The subtle difference in texture between the layers caused Harry to examine the material closely. Pure iron wasn't particularly hard—he couldn't crush charcoal into diamonds, but he could easily squeeze pure iron, which was only slightly harder than gold.
"If it was infused with magic, the outer layer should be slightly harder, but it's reversed here."
The magical concentration in the air was slightly higher than outside, but not by much—it wasn't even close to the magical density found around places like the Chokidaros region. If this were a world wonder, it would barely qualify as a low-tier magical area. The small creatures from the bottom of the food chain could survive here, but creatures like goblin potatoes or fairies wouldn't thrive, and even magical beings like Gorgonbeasts wouldn't last. It was akin to a desert—but one less fertile than a real desert, where at least camels could live.
"The most likely explanation is that this iron city was built with refined magical iron ore. It's probably built atop a large magical vein, but after years of neglect, the internal magic has been drained to maintain the city's massive protective barrier. The wasteful use of the magical energy means the ore hasn't been fully depleted, showing the depth of the reserve."
Magical veins—whether underground or underwater—can expand with proper maintenance. Though their expansion isn't infinite, they do have some growth potential.
However, the magical zone here was weakening. Unless the giant protective barrier collapsed, there was no external interference to force the area to grow again.
"Harry..."
Fleur's trembling voice came from behind him. Being a girl, she was understandably scared—there were no people, no sound, and hardly any signs of life in the desolate city.
"Hiss~ hisses~"
A hoarse, eerie sound echoed in the stillness, and Harry turned around, grinning widely and casting a Lumos charm beneath his chin to illuminate his face with a ghostly, sickly green glow. His exaggerated grin made for a chilling image, and the moment Fleur turned to look, she—
Without thinking, Fleur threw a punch!
First move of women's self-defense: Liver strike!
"Ssssss~~~~"
Second move of women's self-defense: Crushing throat hit!
"Cough cough!"
Harry, clutching his stomach and throat, hunched over, grinning through the pain. It didn't actually hurt, but he certainly deserved it. He made sure to exaggerate his discomfort.
"You scared me half to death!"
When Fleur realized Harry was only messing with her, she was simultaneously annoyed, amused, and a bit tender. She ruffled his hair gently.
"Does it still hurt?"
"I deserved it. It doesn't hurt."
A pig grunted softly and nudged its head against Harry. He exchanged glances with little Thor before pushing the small creature's pouch to the side—ah, that familiar feeling.
"Ha~rry!!!"
Realizing Harry's little move couldn't be hidden, Fleur clenched her fists.
"I love girls with big chests, long legs, a gentle personality, and the special ability to be super considerate."
Harry spoke with the utmost sincerity.
"The ghost house—no, the ghost city adventure has just begun. Come on, let's go before the sun comes up."
Fleur, holding his hand, seemed to lose focus for a second. She had been about to…
"What was I about to do?"
(End of chapter)