As an expert in intimidation.
Voldemort did indeed successfully frighten the Death Eater.
Everyone present turned pale, their hearts filled with the dread of Voldemort's terrifying presence.
This was the effect Voldemort wanted. So, with his goal achieved, when Rowle's screams finally faded into intermittent, wheezing sounds like a broken bellows due to exhaustion and extreme pain, and his body ceased its violent struggles, only intermittently convulsing, Voldemort reluctantly withdrew his Magic Power. "Th-thank you, Master."
This might be the Trump most wants.
He was tortured so much that he still had to thank his boss for his kindness.
Rowle lay there like a completely melted lump of mud, his eyes vacant, saliva and blood dripping from the corners of his mouth, only the faint rise and fall of his chest proving that he was still alive.
"Take him away. Don't let him die," Voldemort ordered indifferently. This was one of his important experimental subjects. As soon as the order was given, two masked Death Eater stepped forward and dragged Rowle like a dead dog toward the shadowy passage on the side of the hall, which led to a deeper dungeon or "medical" treatment. After treating Rowle, Voldemort seemed to have lost interest in staying any longer.
He slowly rose from his high stone throne, his long black robes cascading down like flowing night. He glanced at the respectfully standing core servants below.
A glint flashed in his scarlet eyes.
"Increase vigilance. Be alert for any unusual Magic Power Fluctuation or reports of unfamiliar powerful figures," he hissed. "That guy who suddenly appeared... I need to know everything about him. Disperse."
He gave the order.
"Yes, Master!" everyone replied in unison, bowing as they took their leave.
Voldemort's figure vanished Silencio, as if blending into the shadows, through a hidden door behind the stone seat, to continue his dark research into immortality, power, and the capture of Prophecy.
The oppressive atmosphere in the hall eased slightly, but the tension remained. Yaxley straightened up and began to quietly assign investigation tasks to several of his capable subordinates.
Lucius Malfoy breathed a slight sigh of relief, nodded to Yaxley, and hurriedly left. He needed to go back and think about how to use his network of connections to investigate this suddenly appearing unknown threat without arousing suspicion. This was related to the Malfoy family's status in the Dark Lord's eyes and their own safety.
What about me?
Barty Crouch licked his lips, his eyes gleaming with anticipation, seemingly regarding the hunt for the "mysterious Wizard " as an exciting game.
That guy is a madman.
He's even crazier than Voldemort.
However, he remained utterly loyal to Voldemort. The dark lair returned to a blood-stained "order," and undercurrents of revenge and searching began to quietly surge in the underground world.
In the direction Voldemort was heading.
The hidden door behind the stone seat slid open and closed silently, completely shutting out the lingering smell of blood, the gasps of fear, and the whispers of the Death Eater, each with their own thoughts.
Voldemort had no interest in any of this.
Behind the door was a narrow, sloping stone staircase, barely wide enough for one person to pass, winding its way down into the ground. The rough stone walls on either side were devoid of any lighting, save for the ominous, eerie green glow emanating from the tip of Voldemort's wand, barely illuminating the distance ahead. The air was cold and damp, carrying the distinctive stench of earth and rock, and an even deeper, indescribable sense of antiquity and oppression, as if accumulated over countless years.
The stone steps seemed to have no end.
Only Voldemort's steady, light footsteps echoed in the absolute silence, their rhythm so regular it seemed inhuman, more like some cold-blooded creature gliding through a cave.
Because of dangerous magical Transfiguration.
Voldemort is indeed a far cry from humanity now.
And now.
Voldemort sought to seize even more dangerous powers—this was his most private and heavily guarded personal sanctuary and laboratory. Located deep beneath the Death Eater 'London stronghold, it was shrouded in layers upon layers of incredibly complex Dark Magic barriers, spatial manipulation, and powerful Muggle-Repelling Charm and Confundus Charm.
Even his most trusted servants, such as Yaxley or Bellatrix, were rarely allowed to enter.
The reason is simple.
This place contains his most precious collections, his most forbidden research findings, and is also where he conducts his darkest and most dangerous magical experiments, which must never be known to outsiders.
"Da da da, da da da~"
After descending countless steps, the view suddenly opened up before us. A huge, naturally formed underground cavern, crudely expanded by magic, appeared out of sight.
The cave ceiling is high, with many strangely shaped stalactites hanging down, some of which are still slowly dripping water droplets containing faint Magic Power, which gather on the ground to form puddles that shimmer with an eerie phosphorescence.
The cave walls and floor had been roughly leveled and were covered with dense, dazzling runes and magic circles that exuded a strong sense of darkness and blasphemy.
These rune systems are extremely ancient and chaotic. Some are hybrid variations of Northern Europe Runes and Dark Magic, some seem to be forbidden parts stripped from Egypt or Mesopotamia necromancy, and others are completely unrecognizable, twisted and bizarre, as if they come from the mad babbling of a madman beyond human reason.
Speaking of knowledge level.
Voldemort was indeed quite knowledgeable.
Master of Dark Magic.
In the center of the cave was a circular altar about ten feet in diameter, made of black basalt.
The altar's surface is as smooth as a mirror, but upon closer inspection, countless extremely fine, dark red veins, resembling blood vessels, can be seen flowing subtly within the stone.
Around the altar, at specific locations and angles, were placed a number of unsettling objects: dried eyeballs of unknown Magical Creatures soaking in a viscous green liquid; rosaries strung together with human finger bones and obsidian fragments; several heavy ancient books with covers made of what appeared to be human skin, chained together; and crystal vessels containing strangely colored liquids that were either bubbling or writhing.
It looks very evil.
The air was thick with the pungent odor of sulfur, rotting flesh, aged blood, and a cloyingly sweet spice. The only light sources here, besides Voldemort's wand, were a few flames lit with Merpeople oil at the edge of the altar—eternal lamps with a ghostly blue hue. Their light, far from dispelling the darkness, instead cast an even more eerie and unreal glow over the entire space.
"I know, I'm almost there."
Voldemort walked to the altar, his crimson pupils sweeping over the familiar surroundings. His long, narrow snake-like face was expressionless, but deep within his eyes burned a light far more intense, purer, and more... greedy power than when he punished Rowle or ordered the hunt for the Wizard.
Eternal power.
Beyond the mundane, beyond life and death, beyond Dumbledore, beyond all known Wizarding World... the ultimate power. This is his eternal pursuit! It is the core driving force deep within his soul!
Dominating the Wizarding World, purging Muggle bloodlines, establishing a new Pure-blood order... these are certainly his goals, but in essence, they are all means and manifestations of acquiring and demonstrating that ultimate power.
Yes, he was no longer satisfied with ordinary Dark Magic, nor with the pseudo-immortality of a split soul brought about by Horcrux.
The Voldemort of today craves more, yearning to touch the true, chaotic, and primal roots of magic, yearning to become some kind of... higher-level being.
All this longing came about several years ago when he stumbled upon a batch of parchment scrolls written in a long-lost, eerie script in a looted ancient Mediterranean Sea Wizard's tomb. These scrolls contained fragmented records about "beyond the stars," " the Sleeping God," and "unspeakable blessings."
There is hope.
He found a dangerous yet alluring direction.
The text was distorted and difficult to decipher, containing bizarre and fantastical fragments of information, filled with contradictory and frantic whispers, yet it revealed a "cold truth about the universe" and a "power that transcends good and evil."
And the suggestion of "establishing contact with the ' Deep Space ' through a specific ritual to gain infinite knowledge" was like the sweetest poison, deeply attracting this second-generation Dark Lord.
He devoted tremendous effort, using his extensive knowledge of Dark Magic and the resources he had plundered, to decipher, verify, and experiment bit by bit. He discovered that the "power system" these records pointed to was completely different from any known school of magic; it was more ancient, more... inhuman, and full of subversion of order, logic, and common sense.
But it also seems to hold unimaginable potential.
The cold imprint in Rowle's soul, though seemingly different in nature from the chaotic madness of this " Deep Space " system, only fueled Voldemort's thirst for power—to see if such a power truly existed in this world, beyond the comprehension of ordinary Wizard! Whether it was the cold " Raven " or this chaotic " Deep Space."
he!
Voldemort!
You must master all of them!
We must conquer them all!
"I can! Of course I can! Only I can!" Voldemort murmured to himself. Tonight, he felt good; inspiration, or rather, that greedy throbbing of power from the depths of his soul, was particularly strong. In Voldemort's view, this was perhaps a reminder from Destiny. So, it was time to make another attempt, to try to establish a clearer, more stable connection with the " Echoes of Deep Space " described in those parchment scrolls.
All I saw was...
He walked to one side of the altar, where there was a cage forged from black iron, containing two Muggle —a man and a woman, who appeared to be a middle-aged couple, dressed in ordinary work clothes, and were unconscious, clearly under a powerful Stunning Spell and tranquilizing spell. These were two of the "sacrifices" that Voldemort had ordered his men to capture from remote Village.
The parchment scrolls vaguely mention that certain frequencies of pain, fear, and the wails of the soul can serve as "incense" to attract " Deep Space gaze" or to pry open some kind of "veil."
"Swish swish~"
Voldemort waved his wand, and the iron cage opened silently.
Two Muggle were lifted up by an invisible force, suspended in mid-air, and moved to the center of the black altar, where they lay down side by side. Their bodies twitched slightly, showing their strong resistance.
Clearly, even while unconscious, these two individuals seemed to instinctively sense the extreme danger.
"To sacrifice yourself for me is your filthy glory." Voldemort began to slowly walk around the altar, chanting an extremely difficult, broken incantation that defied all known linguistic rules.
The voice was sometimes deep and roaring like an abyss, sometimes sharp and piercing like the scraping of glass, creating eerie echoes in the empty cave, as if countless unseen beings were whispering to him in the darkness.
As the incantation continued, the tip of his wand stopped emitting a green light and instead flowed out a viscous substance, somewhere between a liquid and a gas, a dark material whose color could not be accurately described, as if it were a mixture of the deepest night sky, putrid blood, and some kind of irrational madness.
The dark substance dripped onto the dark red patterns on the altar's surface, and those patterns immediately swelled and pulsated like activated blood vessels, emitting a faint but unsettling gurgling sound.
"Coo coo coo~"
As Voldemort cast his spell, the ancient, blasphemous runes on the ground around the altar lit up one by one, emitting eerie green, dark purple, or murky yellow light, intertwining with the dark red pulsation of the central altar to form a bizarre and disorienting magical array. "Zzzzz!"
The temperature inside the cave plummeted, and tiny, salty-smelling ice crystals condensed in the air. The eerie blue flames of the eternal lamps flickered wildly, casting long, twisted, and pulsating shadows that projected Voldemort's figure onto the cave walls. The shadow swelled and Transfiguration, as if it had acquired an independent and ferocious life of its own, making it look extremely eerie.
"Respond to me!"
Voldemort was completely immersed in the dark ritual, his scarlet pupils contracting to the thinnest vertical lines, reflecting the wildly flowing magical light and an almost pilgrimage-like fanatical desire.
At this very moment.
He could sense a vast, cold, chaotic gaze, filled with boundless knowledge and... indescribable malice, being slowly drawn and pulled towards him from some incomprehensible, indescribable, and timeless "depth" by the ritual and the "energy" about to be released by the two vibrant lives on the altar.
perhaps.
Any other Wizard in this situation would realize something was terribly wrong and panic, but the one casting the spell is Voldemort, a mad Wizard who has ruined his own mind.
"Giggle giggle!!!"
Facing malicious stares.
Voldemort even let out his classic grotesque laugh.
ecstatic.
Then, as the chanting of the incantation reached a jarring climax, Voldemort suddenly raised his wand high, the tip pointing directly at the dark, invisible dome of the cave!
"With fear as the guide! With souls as the steps! With flesh as the key! Open! The gates to the Deep Space! Answer my call! Grant me eyes to see the truth! Grant me the power to control chaos!" The last syllable was uttered as if he had exhausted all the Magic Power and will he could muster at that moment. The dark substance gushing from the tip of his wand surged instantly!
They coiled around the bodies of the two Muggle in the center of the altar as if they were living creatures!
"Uh... Ah!"
The effects of the Stunning Spell were forcibly broken, and indescribable pain instantly overwhelmed the nerves of the two Muggle.
To be honest, it wasn't just simple physical pain; it felt as if countless cold, suction-cup-like tentacles had burrowed directly into their brains, stirring their consciousness, draining their Life Force, and simultaneously pouring the most extreme fear and despair into the depths of their souls!
Perhaps Saruman and others are very familiar with this.
pity.
They don't live in this day and age.