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The environment under the lake was completely dark. Angor quickly constructed a hexagonal model in his mind space and triggered it using mana, bringing out a bright sphere inside the Purification Field to illuminate his surroundings.

Level-0 cantrip—Light.

During these two months, he learned many common cantrips, including this one, which he always considered useless before.

This only function of this cantrip was to create light. It wasn’t bright either. It only allowed people to see an area about two or three meters around, like a small torch. But while a torch couldn’t work underwater, Light could.

There was actually an advanced version of it called “Blaze” which could brighten up dozens of meters around its user. It was a level-1 cantrip that required certain knowledge and long-term effort, and Angor didn’t plan to learn it yet.

Using his cantrip, the cold and dull water under the surface finally became a little clearer.

When Angor looked around, he saw all kinds of unknown substances as well as black strings that looked like human hair floating around.

Even though he was protected by the Purification Field, when Angor looked at the hair that was clumped together along with dirt and filth, it still made him want to vomit.

The lake wasn’t deep, which was only about five meters. He soon reached the bottom and saw the lake bed covered under a layer of black, tar-like stuff. He thought it was a natural-occurring resource such as petroleum. But when he picked up a small lump of it and checked inside his Purification Field, his nose immediately twitched aggressively upon smelling the vomit-inducing stench.

At least it wasn’t oil. His experience couldn’t get him any answer, so he simply gave up on trying to figure it out.

The size of the lake convinced him again that the villager had to have some other ways to fetch water. It was very likely that the water in this lake used to be running, but now, it was “blocked” for some reason.

With this in mind, he searched around at the bottom of the lake, for a possible tunnel or pipe.

He would cast a small tornado every few steps to remove the blockage away. Many different things that were once hidden under the dirt and rubble were brought out.

Angor kept his Purification Field on so that the dirty water and objects didn’t reach him, and he saw many strange things that appeared in his view.

For example, there was a small, tattered iron chest that floated in front of him.

He quickly pulled the chest closer and into his Purification Field. He didn’t open it though. He was afraid that something inside might annoy him again, so he only reached the inside with his spirit feelers.

And he was quite surprised to notice what was inside the chest. The delicate design of it made him believe that it might be a jewelry casket or something. It turned out that there were medical devices, such as syringes, vials, and needles, that were almost in their perfect condition.

After some consideration, he used Cleanse and Purify to keep the chest free of filth and smell before he put it inside his space bracelet.

He didn’t discard the chest because he was interested in a special marking that was printed on every medial tool.

A serpent-entwined rod.

He believed this mark might tell him something about the village.

As more and more “small tornadoes” traveled through the water, one after one, they uncovered objects and secrets that were kept hidden under the still water for a thousand years, including several pale-white human skulls that still had hair on them.

Angor didn’t find any remains back in the village, so he thought the residents had all escaped from here. Now, something told him otherwise. He only cleared out a small portion of the lake bed, and he already discovered 8 corpses. He couldn’t imagine how many more were buried under the entire lake.

Were all the villagers down here?

He shivered at this terrible idea. This, however, explained the terrible smell of the lake. This would be natural if one considered how the water had concealed countless dead bodies for centuries.

He brought the eight corpses and leaped out of the water to inspect them carefully.

He was glad to find out that they were all human, not humanoids. Telling from the sizes of their bones, Angor was sure these were common folks living in the southern wizarding region.

Which meant he did not stray from the wizarding world.

There were humans living in the other planes, true. But only supernaturals. And these bones certainly belonged to mortals. Also, none of the traces and marks in the village indicated any supernatural being.

There was no mortal village in other foreign planes.

And one of his major concerns finally disappeared—as long as he was still inside the wizarding world, he could always seek a way back.

He dug a giant crater using Hand of Spell and placed the eight corpses inside. He would still pay respect to the deceased, even though he didn’t know who they were.

Instead of filling the crater up, he continued to search under the lake first.

As he expected, the entire lake was used as a mass graveyard. He found the bodies of men and women, old and young. There were even toddlers, who were still held by their mothers.

He felt different emotions in his mind when he looked at the pair of lovely, yet cold bones.

Of course a toddler wouldn’t commit suicide, which meant one thing—the people here were either murdered, or the majority of the adults killed themselves.

If the latter was the case, Angor couldn’t imagine how the mother decided to bring her child into her grave.

“Bless them...” He sighed helplessly. Whatever happened here was decayed with time, and no one could ever uncover the truth. Compared to wizards, mortals usually made their lives more passionate due to their shorter lifespan. Sometimes, wizards would envy them for this.

Maybe a great slaughter visited this place a thousand years ago, or...

Angor looked back toward one particular direction, where an ancient dragonfly nest was at. He wasn’t sure if the insects caused this.

And he had no way to find out now.

He gradually dug out all the corpses from the lake and piled them up. He then placed them all into the giant crater he created.

Unknown to him, a pair of golden eyes with slit-like pupils had been watching him from a concealed corner under the lake while he did his work.

...

He found about a hundred corpses in the end, which... wasn’t much, judging from the size of the village.

“Maybe the rest of them managed to get away?”

He managed to find the last corpse from the lake, but he still didn’t discover an “underwater tunnel” which would prove his theory.

“Am I wrong then? Is there another source of water somewhere around the village? Maybe the lake was just built for decoration?”

It didn’t make sense. An artificial lake that would turn dead later didn’t make a fine tourist spot.

Or... could it be meant to be the villagers’ grave? Did they choose to end their own lives in this way?

Without any answer or exit, he left the water and proceeded to fill up the giant grave outside.

There were too many bodies for his crater, so he asked Toby to slam the ground and make something bigger.

When the bodies were fully buried, Angor found a giant boulder nearby and used Thaw to forge it into a stone monument. He then used Hand of Spell to engrave several lines on it using the universal tongue.

[Here lie a hundred and more folks of a nameless and long-forgotten village. May they find peace in paradise and beyond.

[Monument caretaker: Angor Padt]

With the giant grave completed, he began to consider other options. He thought about digging his own way out, but he pushed that idea aside quickly. After all, he had no idea about the layout of the land around him. Causing a large-scale cave-in would be disastrous.

He suddenly heard bubble-breaking noises from the lake.

There was a vortex on the surface of the water!

What a vortex suggested was so obvious. He quickly called Toby back and dived into the water once again.

When he approached the base of the vortex, he was shocked to see a dark entrance toward deeper down.

This entrance had to have caused the vortex.

“Was this thing here a moment ago?” Angor was confused.

But he couldn’t remember every detail he went through since the lake bed was very dark even with his Light cantrip. All the black substances didn’t help him memorize the landscape at all.

“Maybe I cleared enough debris away, and water pressure slowly breached the cave?” He took a guess. There was nothing else around here, so he couldn’t think about anything in particular.

As for the possibility of a ghost or spirit... He was sure it wasn’t the case since he didn’t sense any of that. A soul of a mortal could not survive very well. And a thousand years had already passed.

When the water returned to being still again, he carefully stepped into the shadowy opening.

An unknown cave, an unknown future. The only thing he could do was to stay extremely cautious.

“You stay alert too, Toby,” Angor warned. But when he turned, he saw Toby displayed a serious attitude unlike any other times before.

“Toby?” he asked again.

Toby signaled using his wings. Tweet, tweet!

“You mean you want to check from outside?” Angor was pretty surprised. Toby was more or less obsessed with cleanliness. Why would the bird ask to go away from the Purification Field and touch the dirty water?