"You're right, Tom. That Nokto Gaunt really was a bit naïve," Wade agreed with Tom's remark.
Even if the real Salazar Slytherin wasn't as fanatical as people said, even if he never preached pure-blood supremacy, so what? For a thousand years, those fanatical pure-blood families had long since carved that ideology into their very bones.
Even if the family's so-called inheritance was a distortion of Slytherin's true beliefs, they would never change it.
Still, for such an extremist pure-blood family as the Gaunts, having a member like that was rare indeed.
Aside from his senior's close friend, she was the second such exception Wade had ever heard of.
"All right, let's keep going. Honestly, I'm getting curious about what the real Salazar Slytherin was like. I wonder if that naïve Gaunt ever found the answer she was looking for," Wade said with a small smile.
Tom gave a cold snort. "Whether she found her answer or not, her efforts were wasted. No one knows better than I do whether the Gaunt family changed because of her investigations."
"So in that case, perhaps Slytherin really was as obsessed as the legends claim. Once that Gaunt discovered the truth wasn't what she imagined, she would've found it even harder to change her family's thinking," Wade said with interest. "Come on, I hope we'll find more of her messages ahead."
With that, the two continued forward.
However, their smooth path suddenly came to an abrupt end.
Wade and Tom were forced to stop in front of an iron gate.
Unlike the ones before, this one was locked. And just like the others, there were two strange symbols carved into its surface.
"Looks like we'll have to solve a puzzle before we can open it," Wade said, rubbing his chin.
"That doesn't make sense. None of the previous ones needed solving. Why this one? Could it be that the people who came before us only made it this far? Or… did we take the wrong path?" Tom frowned, puzzled.
The earlier gates had all been opened already, so for this one to remain sealed was indeed strange.
"Maybe the mechanism here is different. It could reset itself after some time," Wade said while examining the surroundings carefully.
"Possibly… but do we really need to solve it? It's just an iron gate. Maybe all we need is a simple Bombarda…" Tom eyed the thin, rusty iron bars.
Honestly, this rickety old gate—forget Wade, even if Anne were here, she could blast it open easily.
"Oh? Then may I ask, my clever Mr. Riddle, why didn't anyone blast open the earlier gates and instead took the trouble to solve each one properly?"
Wade's Snape-like tone, with its deliberate drawl and rhythm, made Tom's scalp prickle.
"Could you not talk like that? It's incredibly irritating! Even if you do have a point…"
Wade chuckled but didn't stop. He found that Snape-like tone quite amusing.
"These iron gates may look fragile, but they're surrounded by dense traces of magic. Clearly, they're well protected. A few Bombarda spells won't be enough to blow them open."
Suddenly, Wade raised his wand and carefully examined the white mist coiling around it.
"Wait… I think I found something." Holding up his wand, he walked toward a nearby passage branching off to the side.
Tom followed closely behind.
In a strange place like this, it was definitely safer to stick with Wade.
This side passage wasn't as smooth as the previous corridors.
Many of the floor tiles were uneven and bulging upward, creating a bumpy surface.
Crossing it on foot would've been a hassle, requiring plenty of climbing and ducking.
Of course, that wasn't a problem for Wade and Tom—because they didn't walk.
"Whoosh…" Both of them used the Flight Charm, lifting effortlessly into the air and gliding over the uneven floor.
In no time, they reached the end of the passage.
After landing, Tom gave Wade a strange look. "Why was your mist white when you flew? Shouldn't it be black?"
"Black looks too evil. It doesn't fit my image, so I made a small adjustment and turned it into the righteous white," Wade said matter-of-factly.
Tom snorted but didn't reply.
In his eyes, the color black suited Wade perfectly.
The man was darker than a cauldron's bottom, yet he always acted like some pure-hearted saint. Didn't that contradiction bother him at all?
"Look, there's a serpent carving over there. It might be the mechanism for the iron gate," Wade said, pointing to a stone sculpture on the wall ahead.
At the mention of a serpent, Tom immediately walked forward.
However, just as he was about to speak Parseltongue to open it, he noticed that the base of the stone carving was made of two rotating disks.
Along the edges of the disks were strange symbols, and some were hidden behind the stone, invisible from the front.
"It seems we need to rotate the disks and align the correct symbols to open the gate… these markings must have special meanings," Tom muttered. "But how am I supposed to know which combination is right? I've never seen these symbols before… could it be some knowledge passed down through the Gaunt family?"
It was no wonder Tom thought that way. All the previous descendants of Slytherin had managed to solve the puzzles, yet he had no clue at all.
Most likely, it was because he had grown up outside and never inherited certain knowledge that a true heir of Slytherin was meant to possess.
"Doesn't matter, let's just try them all! There are only two symbols to match—sooner or later, we'll get it right!" Tom said as he reached out to spin the disks.
"Wait—" Wade tried to stop him, but it was already too late.
Tom had already started turning them.
By the time he heard Wade's warning and froze, the two symbols on the disks had already been shifted.
He hadn't even finished saying, "What's wrong," when—Hiss~~<<
The serpent carving suddenly came to life! It raised its head and lunged straight at Tom with a vicious snap.
Wade flicked his wand, and Tom's body was yanked backward, slamming hard into a protruding stone block behind him.
The serpent's fangs snapped shut on empty air, leaving deep puncture marks in the stone floor.
Then, as if nothing had happened, the serpent stiffened again, turning back into an ordinary stone sculpture.
Tom stared at the bite marks in the ground, feeling his heart almost stop.
Even though Wade's spell had sent him crashing into solid rock hard enough to rattle his insides, he still felt overwhelmingly grateful.
Getting slammed into a wall was better than getting bitten by that thing any day.
"Don't be so reckless, Tommy boy!! How could a puzzle like this not have a punishment mechanism? Otherwise, you'd just brute-force the answer," Wade said calmly.
"But… that was way too much!" Tom exclaimed, staring at the fang marks on the floor, still shaken.
"Not at all," Wade said with a faint smile. "Slytherin probably thought that if his trials were this lenient and someone still failed, then they didn't deserve to be his heir. So he made the punishment severe enough to eliminate any unworthy descendant."
"You could just say I'm stupid. I'm used to it," Tom muttered, expression flat.
"You're not stupid—just impulsive, careless in your observations, lacking precision in thought, and not cautious enough in your actions," Wade replied lightly.
"In summary, not much different from stupid…" Tom sighed. "But since you're saying it's simple, that means you've already figured it out. So, do you recognize these symbols?"
Wade looked at the strange markings and said softly, "We don't need to know what they mean. Did you forget? The iron gate earlier had two unique symbols carved on it."
"You mean the answer is those same two symbols from the gate? But they're not here!" Tom's face twisted as if his intelligence had just been insulted.
"Most likely, yes," Wade said as he stepped forward and began rotating the two disks in quick succession. "Those symbols are probably hidden in the blind spots behind the disks—you just didn't notice. Can't really blame you for that."
Sure enough, as the disks turned, the two special symbols from the gate gradually came into view.
When Wade stopped, a distant "click" echoed through the corridor—clearly, the iron gate had been unlocked.
Tom stared at the two familiar symbols, utterly defeated. "Don't bother comforting me. I really am an idiot…"
No wonder Wade had said Slytherin had gone easy on them. The answer had been carved right there on the gate!
Easy? Strictly speaking, that wasn't just easy—it was like handing over the answers on a silver platter!
And yet, he'd actually tried to brute-force it with elimination and trial and error…
He almost wanted to cry from his own stupidity.
If he were Slytherin himself, facing such a moronic descendant, he'd probably have unleashed a snake bite too.
"I think from now on, you'll start being much more careful," Wade said cheerfully. "You can't teach people through words, but one good lesson from experience does the trick."
Tom's face flushed red. After a long silence, he muttered in humiliation, "Don't tell anyone about this… please."
"Hah! I could hold this over you for life!"
"Just kill me instead…"
…
The road ahead soon became smooth again.
Most of the iron gates they encountered were already open, and for the few that had closed again, they managed to unlock them easily using the same method.
They soon found the second and third letters left behind by that naïve member of the Gaunt family.
The second letter mentioned that she had been lost for quite some time and only managed to find the correct path after lighting a brazier.
From that alone, it was clear how difficult this maze was to navigate. If not for Wade's exceptional nightmare magic guiding their way, they too would have spent ages wandering around.
The third letter, however, lifted Tom's spirits considerably.
It recorded that the Gaunt woman had also made a mistake while turning the disks and had nearly been bitten to death by the stone serpent.
Realizing he wasn't the only fool made Tom feel much better.
But then Wade said casually, "Keep in mind, she merely made a mistake while operating it. Someone else, on the other hand, didn't even think of the answer at all."
Tom's smile vanished instantly.
"Just kill me already…"
Realizing he was still the only true fool, Tom felt utterly hopeless.
One careless moment—and he'd earned himself a lifetime of humiliation.
_________
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