Past the next iron door, the overall layout returned to something like the first two rooms, and the inside was dim and dark.
"Clang!"
"Roar!"
Two enormous sounds rang out one after another, instantly making everyone's heart leap.
Once the torches fully illuminated the space, several humanoid monsters were revealed inside the cages. One beastlike monster was clinging to the iron bars, mouth open as it roared. For some reason, people could still make out faint traces of a human face on him. The one thing they all had in common was that every monster wore petricite shackles.
In the other cages, there were also several magical beasts, birds and animals of all kinds.
Jarvan III asked in a low voice, "What is this?"
Hesbeth glanced over and continued answering, "The second stage of human experimentation."
"Eldred discovered that mages possess magic, and that trait is similar to the innate magic carried by natural magical beasts. The two are alike."
"So he began to consider whether the magic of magical beasts could be fused with the magic of mages. What you see here is the result of combining the two. Through experimentation, they did indeed become somewhat stronger after being fused together, but they were extremely unstable and impossible to control."
His voice fell.
Everyone stared blankly at the monsters in the iron cages and realized that before all of this, these monsters had been living, breathing people.
Transplanting the bodies of magical beasts into human flesh and forcibly combining the two, just thinking about that kind of human experimentation was enough to make someone's skin crawl.
And all of this had actually happened in this corner outside the capital of Demacia.
"Roar!"
Now, listening to the roars of the monsters before them, everyone fell silent.
"Grant them release."
Jarvan III looked at these creatures that could no longer be called human and gave the order with a sigh.
In his heart, however, a towering fury had already begun to burn. He swore that someone would pay the price for this.
The group continued deeper in. Later, the path split left and right, clearly requiring them to divide their forces. Xin Zhao led a group away. With Luke and the others present, he believed he did not need to worry about Jarvan III's safety.
Luke and the others continued down the left path. Along the way, they saw storage rooms holding Mageseeker equipment, rooms filled with all kinds of potions, and even rooms containing large numbers of magical scrolls, catalogs, and books.
Then, past another iron door, they discovered several petricite pillars.
Bound to those pillars were one small figure after another. Judging by their features, they were clearly yordles.
The condition of these yordles was no better than that of the mages imprisoned here. In fact, everyone even saw one yordle whose skin had been completely flayed. Fresh red skin had only just grown back over his body.
By this point, Hesbeth no longer needed to be asked. He began explaining on his own, "These yordles were all secretly captured by the Mageseekers. Their innate magical gifts made them the best experimental subjects in Eldred's eyes."
At once, several people stepped forward and rescued the yordles.
Yordles were beloved by Runeterra itself. They were born with all kinds of talents and extraordinarily long lives.
Their constitutions were also stronger than humans', so after these yordles were rescued, given some water, and fed a little, they were soon able to walk and speak.
This time, there was no need for Hesbeth to say anything else. The yordles spoke one after another, recounting what they had endured.
"They captured us."
"They drew our blood every day. Bree was flayed alive."
"Because he was born with a strong healing ability, those Mageseekers peeled off his skin every once in a while. They wanted to test how long Bree's regeneration could hold out."
Just listening to those descriptions made goose bumps rise across everyone's skin.
They had seen too much cruelty along the way. By now, they were almost beginning to feel numb.
Seeing her own people humiliated like this, Poppy shook with rage. She gripped her hammer tightly, wishing she could smash this entire place to pieces.
Lux, Fiora, Sona, Kahina, and even Katarina, who had followed them later, had kept their brows furrowed the entire way and had never once relaxed.
Today, Katarina had truly had her eyes opened. She had never imagined that something this filthy and foul could exist inside glittering, radiant Demacia.
"This is basically the end of it..."
Hesbeth lowered his head and knelt on the floor as he spoke.
"The end..."
Jarvan III murmured to himself. All along this path, he had felt as though he had been walking for a very long time. Every step had been so heavy, so endless.
"Your Majesty, we found this in Eldred's office."
At that moment, a voice came from the right side. Xin Zhao and the others entered from the passageway.
In his hands, he carried a silver-white iron box. The box was finely crafted, but it also looked somewhat ancient. It was covered in the marks of time, and the box itself seemed to be locked.
"What's inside?"
After glancing over the box, Luke looked at Hesbeth.
Hesbeth shook his head as well. "I don't know what's inside either. Even Eldred never opened this box. We found this iron box in an ancient ruin. Found alongside it was a feather."
"A feather..."
Everyone immediately thought of the feather of the Winged Protector that Eldred had taken out at Dawn Castle.
They had not expected it to have come from here.
Luke took the box from Xin Zhao and tried to force it open twice, but the iron box did not budge at all. He asked, "Can it not be broken?"
"This iron box is unusually sturdy. It uses a special magical lock, and it also has a layer of magical protection. It cannot be destroyed at all."
Hesbeth shook his head as he answered.
That piqued Luke's curiosity. He studied it thoughtfully. The box in his hands clearly had quite the background.
He handed it to Frey. After receiving it, Frey carefully studied it for a moment before shaking her head as well. "There does seem to be a layer of magical lock on it, but it's beyond the scope of my understanding."
In other words, the magic used to lock the box was far too advanced.
The box was passed from person to person. First it went to Lux, who peered through the keyhole, but she saw nothing.
Then it was handed to the exceptionally gifted yordles, but even they could not figure it out.
After that, it was given to Sylas. Sylas discovered that he could not absorb the magic inside the box, so he studied it with a group of mages.
After a long while, they still failed to work out anything useful, and in the end, the box returned to Luke's hands.
"If we can't open it, we'll bring it back and study it later."
Luke naturally had no solution either. However, just as he finished speaking, a flash of purple light suddenly flickered through the keyhole, followed by a soft click.
It was clearly the sound of a lock opening.
Everyone froze for a moment. Lux asked blankly, "What did you do?"
Luke was also completely confused. He looked at the box that had opened in his hands, his head full of question marks. "Nothing. It opened by itself."
"That's impossible!"
After seeing it, Hesbeth snapped out of his daze. "We found this box two years ago. We tried every possible method during that time and never opened it. Why would it suddenly open now?"
He tried to take the box from Luke's hands, but Luke kicked him away.
Lux urged, "Hurry up and see what's inside."
"Let me take a look."
Luke looked into the box and discovered that inside were only a few broken pieces that looked like stone tablets.
He crouched down and carefully poured the stone pieces out. He still felt that anything connected to the Winged Protector was bound to be anything but simple.
There were around a dozen pieces of stone tablet in total. Several types of murals were carved on them, and they seemed to form a single whole.
"Is this telling me to piece them together?"
Luke first spread out the puzzle-like stone tablets. After looking them over roughly, he soon had an idea.
His mind worked very quickly at that moment. As the edges of one stone piece after another connected together, before long, a complete mural appeared before everyone's eyes.
The crowd had not yet had time to clearly see the mural's contents before the neatly assembled stone tablet suddenly released a glow of magic.
Almost no one had time to avoid it. Then their vision blurred, and they felt many images appear in their minds.
These images slowly began to tell the truth that had been sealed away for centuries.
Long ago, the Rune Wars ravaged this land.
The so-called World Runes were at the center of it all, and every power fought an all-out war to seize them.
Some survivors who fled west discovered the famous petricite forest. These stone forests formed a natural refuge, isolating them from the threat of the Rune Wars.
These refugees founded Demacia here and used petricite to build walls, protecting themselves from the magic outside.
Among those who jointly built this homeland were mages who lived in harmony with ordinary people.
Mages and ordinary people coexisted peacefully during Demacia's earliest days, and the power of mages made their home even stronger.
At that time, two guardian deities were dearly loved and respected for using magic to protect the city.
The two sisters were both honored as Winged Protectors, and their wings became the symbol of the Demacian nation.
Until, for reasons unknown, one day the two protectors suddenly turned their blades on each other and fought.
The mural did not depict that battle, but everyone knew it must have been extremely fierce, because an entire city had been razed to the ground.
The casualties were countless.
After that battle, the elder sister left in fury, completely breaking away from the mortal world as she spread her wings and departed.
The younger sister also vanished from public view. It was said that she wanted to cut off her wings, but because she could not find a weapon sharp enough, she bound them in chains instead and resolved to walk the mortal world with her own two feet.
No matter what, the two guardian deities disappeared overnight. Some mortals began to take control of power, while the story of the Winged Protector lived on.
The people of Demacia continued to revere the Winged Protector, but as time passed and story after story was passed down, people remembered only the glory and truth upheld by the elder sister.
The younger sister's grief, fury, and belief in personal redemption became the legend of the Veiled Lady.
And the chain reaction caused by the fight between the two sisters had only just begun.
After some high-ranking people in power discovered that the strength of mages far exceeded their own, they pinned the blame for the sisters' battle, and even the Rune Wars themselves, entirely on the mages.
They began inciting ordinary people's hatred toward mages. They began uniting more and more rulers against the mage rulers, and naturally, they won.
Later, things gradually developed into a situation where mages were no longer considered their own people, but enemies.
From then on, one group of mages was expelled from the country, while another hid in secret.
After centuries of twists and turns, that past had led to the present day.
This was the origin of Demacia's ban on magic, and the truth behind Demacia's ban on magic.
At this point, everyone came back to themselves one by one. It felt as if they had read through a story, and they were still immersed in it.
Frey was the first to speak. "This should be a special kind of message-transmission magic. It records and preserves what the caster saw and heard so that the person who opens it can view it."
Everyone looked at the stone tablet, which had already lost its light. The mural carved on it had disappeared as well. It seemed that after this magic was used once, it would not appear again.
Luke looked thoughtfully at the stone tablet. "So who left this stone tablet behind?"
Lux thought for a moment, then whispered, "Some D-list minor god?"
Luke glanced at her when he heard that. "Watch what you say. For all you know, she might be listening right now."
"She definitely can't be listening anymore."
Lux was completely unconcerned. She stared at the stone tablet for a while, then said, "Still, why do I feel like I've heard something like this before?"
She tilted her head and thought for a moment. Then, seeing Poppy blinking her big eyes, Lux's eyes suddenly lit up. She stepped forward and patted Poppy's head. "I didn't expect your story to turn out right. Back then, it really was because two people had a fight that things became like this."
Poppy emphasized with a serious face, "I didn't make it up!"
"All right, all right, let's say you didn't."
Lux sped up the head-patting, her tone extremely indulgent.
At that moment, she noticed that Jarvan III and the others looked very serious, so she quieted down and did not dare keep making a scene.
Luke was playing with the stone tablet in his hands at this point. He said, "The Mageseekers found the elder sister's feather in the same place they found the box. First of all, that proves both Winged Protectors were alive, regardless of whether they're dead now."
"The person who possessed a guardian deity's feather and left behind this box, I think it could only have been the Veiled Lady."
"The purpose behind leaving this box and feather behind seems to have been so that one day in the future, someone would discover the truth sealed inside."
Hearing his words, everyone present fell into thought.
Lux raised her hand. "I have a question."
"Ask."
"Why didn't the Veiled Lady tell everyone personally? She was also one of the Winged Protectors, after all. If she had stood up from the start and told everyone the truth, surely no one would have refused to believe her, right?"
"Clearly, there are still some special reasons behind all this."
To be honest, Luke was not too sure either. He only knew that ninety-nine point nine percent of what the stone tablet had shown was true.
But what exactly had happened back then, and why it had developed into what it was today, he did not know.
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