The New Variable About to Be Introduced
Deep inside the caverns outside Smith Castle, in the Fairies cavern that shimmered with starlight, Kate and Penelope were tiptoeing inside.
After passing sculptures of Care of Magical Creatures such as Thunderbird, Phoenix, and Niffler, and traversing a series of magnificent stalactites, a row of human-shaped stone statues appeared before them.
It was a row of humanoid sculptures that looked very strange to them.
They all stand on a high platform made of marble, each statue posing in a shameful manner, wearing different styles of armor that tightly cover their entire bodies.
Some of the armor resembled wizard robes, with a ruby-like headpiece.
Some armors look like two different things forcibly pieced together.
Some armors even give the impression of an external shell growing along the human body, filled with faintly visible, vein-like structures that can be somewhat unsettling at first glance.
But none of the statues were as interesting to Kate and Penelope as the one in the very center.
He was a handsome young man, with one hand on his waist and the other hand raised in front of his chest, as if he were performing some kind of hand gesture magic.
This statue is also the newest among the others, with a line of Arabic numerals engraved below it: 1992.
The protagonist who invited them here, Ryan, sat on an ornate white marble chair carved below the stone platform.
"Little rascal, how can you be so narcissistic? You put your statue at the very back of the cave and made us come over to see it." Kate strode around the stone platform with light steps, like a lively little deer, looking the statue up and down.
"1992, 1991, 1990, 1973."
"What do these numbers mean?" Penelope asked about the numbers.
What she was most curious about was why the number under Ryan's statue was 1992.
None of Ryan's memorable numbers match up.
"This is an experiment." Ryan waved his hand, and 19 newspapers appeared out of thin air, in order, in front of Kate and Penelope.
"How is that possible?" Penelope exclaimed, covering her mouth.
"Merlin's beard!" Kate was the same; she developed a fetish called Information Hunger when she was 7 years old.
This led her to spend all her time collecting gossip, and newspapers were one of the sources of that gossip.
She was certain that she had read every single issue of The Daily Prophet since 1983.
Now, unfamiliar reports are appearing before him.
In 1973, in the Pennine Mountains, Vincent Bouven, a renowned Curse-Breaker for Gringotts, and his team were excavating when they discovered an ancient corpse wearing Petrification Belt.
After the coffin was opened, the entire team was attacked and killed by an unknown life form that called itself Kuuga.
Kate looked down at the statue marked 1973, which looked exactly like the photograph in the newspaper—wearing a one-piece armor designed based on a stag beetle.
"Vincent Bouvin? Isn't he a notorious Dark Wizard who disappeared just a few years ago?"
"I've seen those wizards under him in Knockturn Alley too." Kate stroked her chin.
This doesn't match her memory at all.
Moreover, logically speaking, why use the term "unknown life form"?
Shouldn't it be an unknown, Care of Magical Creatures?
In 1975, a story circulated in Devon —that in the moment of thousands of mirrors shattering, there was a chance to open the door to the legendary Mirror World. Grey Devor, a wizard in the Muggle world who was the owner of a local newspaper and rode a fiery red knight of the Nether Dragon, died mysteriously in front of the mirror.
In the sketches he left behind before his death, he depicted a figure resembling a medieval knight.
And that story came to an abrupt end.
"Grey Devor? He was indeed a wizard from Devon, but he only died a few years ago, and after his death, his basement was found to contain the bodies of many missing Muggle." Penelope frowned.
The knight in the sketch in the photo is exactly the same as the statue on the stone platform marked with the number 1975 at the bottom.
"You little brat, I've discovered that the wizards you've mentioned in these newspapers are all Dark Wizard who died mysteriously in recent years."
"These statues of yours all appeared in the newspapers of the corresponding years, according to the numbers below them."
"But this is too outrageous! A weirdo who can command ghosts, the legendary vampire king, a mad scientist who accidentally wandered into the wizarding world, a mysterious detective with two personalities, and a photographer who claims to be the World Destroyer and has a new bizarre hairstyle every time he appears."
"These stories are all confined to a small town, and the characters in the stories, just like the stories themselves, mysteriously disappeared within a short year."
"The experiment you're referring to—I think you mean these counterfeit newspapers."
"You called Penelope and me here to help you, didn't you?"
"Let Penelope complete the story, and let me spread it."
"And you deliberately left these flaws. I understand!"
"In Muggle terms, this is called a social experiment—you want to see how many people will believe these absurd stories."
"You might have even deliberately left some deceptive relics at the locations where these stories took place," Kate said confidently to Ryan after browsing through all the newspapers.
Her little face was tilted back, her right index finger pointing at Ryan, as if she had seen through everything.
"Is it possible that these newspapers are all real?" Ryan said speechlessly.
"How could that be?" Penelope blurted out.
"This is not a social experiment."
"It is an experiment of time."
"In various small towns in Britain, I used a year as a unit of measurement. Over the past year, I acted out stories confined to those small towns, short-lived Dark Wizard that I had 'thought' over a thousand times to ensure would not affect the future."
"It turns out I succeeded."
"As long as I can ensure that the stories I insert don't cause any deviation in the future, which is now."
"In the Wizarding World, there are some strange and outrageous stories."
"Aren't there many like that in 'The Quibbler'?"
"As for the fact that your memories have not changed, or that you are unaware of these things, it is all because of my protection."
"Under my protection, your memories have not been altered." Ryan shrugged.
"So you brought us here just to show off your experiments?" Penelope, who was already an old married couple, felt that Ryan was definitely up to something.
"I just wanted to get your opinions."
"All of these stories are true in some sense."
"You can choose the power background of other Riders besides Zi-O (Kronos) from 1992 and push it to the entire Wizarding World."
"Mirror World, Game Disease, Nebula Gas. Which one would you like to choose?" Ryan said with a smile.
Why was only Zi-O's name changed? — What kind of king of time is the one whose time was stopped?!