While Tom and Hermione rested, the others arrived running to the city center.
The first to appear was a serious-looking Alyosha, his gun still slightly smoking, followed by old Yushadu. Upon arrival, both of them collapsed to the ground. Alyosha took a cigarette box out of his pocket, sat down there, and began to smoke.
Shortly after, Sara and Alan arrived with Professor Hunter in silence, but Will, who was carrying him in his arms, had disappeared.
After that, no one else appeared.
The air felt almost frozen.
The few who had broken through were in a state of emotional collapse. Some had just lost classmates, others had lost comrades, and only Yushadu, Tom, and Hermione were in a normal state of mind, merely sad but not shattered. Of these three, one had the desire to die and had earned it by surviving; the other two really had nothing to lose.
Tom thought of the days they had spent together, thought of the faces and smiles of those who had died: the frank yet erudite Will, the young and energetic Yegor, the very chivalrous Peter... Tom couldn't help but feel a certain bitterness, and his eyes welled up with tears along with Hermione's.
Alyosha, with red eyes, smoked one cigarette after another, often taking two or three puffs. Soon, cigarette butts were scattered all over the ground. When he had finished the last cigarette in the box, he looked at Tom and Hermione.
"What the hell was that?" he asked in a hoarse voice.
"A Lethifold."
"A Lethi... what?"
"A dark creature, against which physical Muggle attacks are ineffective." Tom looked at the half-dead and wounded expedition, and he couldn't hide anything from them anymore—he had to tell them what the attacking creature was! So, he told them everything.
Hermione, on the sidelines, realized with a start that they were now gravely violating the laws of confidentiality. But she couldn't do anything to stop Tom. She bowed her head, calculating her punishment.
"Probably Azkaban?" she thought, but upon further consideration, it didn't seem so terrible when she thought that even if she were thrown into Azkaban, she would have Tom with her.
"Muggles? Dark creatures?" Alan thought the terms were so strange, sounding like the fantasy he was reading.
"You could think of them as a special occult term, something that science can't explain." Tom didn't know exactly where to start, except to say in general terms that it was about the occult.
"Sukaburi!" Alyosha spat on the ground. They had just tried to defend themselves against the creatures, but neither bullets nor grenades could harm them. It was the great silver three-headed dog that was the most effective, but in the end, it also dissipated.
Without the great dog, Alyosha didn't believe he would have been able to escape if the monsters hadn't retreated.
Alyosha cursed and then looked up at the night sky. He wanted to ask a question but held back, not daring to delve deeply into whether these two children knew what was strange about the ancient city and what the fundamental purpose of this expedition was.
What Alyosha didn't know was that Tom was also confused. His fundamental purpose was to find the lost city, and now that he had found it, what was he supposed to do? Sign on the wall, "Here I stay," and go back?
"Peter... Yegor..." The faces of his comrades flashed before Alyosha's eyes—some of them young, just reaching adulthood, others mere children of a few days old, but they all died in this ancient city, with no intact bones.
"I'm tired," he said, brushing off the ashes from his body. "So let's rest here and discuss it in the morning when the Doctor wakes up."
Alan grimaced. Who else could take the night shift in this condition?
"You sleep well; there's no need to leave anyone on guard," Alyosha seemed to see the bright side of things. "Haven't you noticed that swarm of Lethifold... just stopped right here? That means there are even more formidable creatures around, like the beasts of the prairie, with their own territory. And now we're staying in the territory of the fiercest beasts."
The rest of the group shuddered. Those monsters had already been terrifying enough, and now there was something even more ferocious than them?
"But it might be safer. The lords here may not be interested in us. Lions hunt antelopes, but not so much rabbits since the wild dogs, who aren't as good as lions, will want to eat them." Alyosha saw the problem very clearly.
And he understood that it was a coincidence that they had just escaped the Lethifold, but what good would it do to be prepared for a stronger monster? It would be better for them to sleep well.
He looked at his watch and saw that the hands had stopped. When he looked at the others' watches, they were all broken too. Perhaps there was a strange magnetic field nearby that interfered with the functioning of watches and other devices.
But the problem was minor. Even without a watch, Alyosha could tell the time in other ways, and the first priority was to rest. Alyosha found a room that was still in good condition, entered it, cleaned it up a bit, lay down on the floor, and went back to sleep.
Tom and Hermione didn't go straight to bed but went to the side of Doctor Hunter. There was no point in hiding it now that he had escaped, so Tom took out his wand and aimed it at Doctor Hunter's arm, which was in a cast, and healed it with spells.
After using the spell, Tom removed the cast, and inside, the arm was flat and smooth, the broken bones healed. When the Doctor woke up in the morning, he would find himself completely unharmed. Thanks to the doctor, Tom had done a good job aligning the bones, which made the spell much less difficult.
Alan, who had seen everything from start to finish, looked at his teacher's arm and exclaimed, "My God, is this magic?"
"Yes, it's magic."
Alan hesitated but said what was on his mind, thinking it was a turning point in his destiny, and if he didn't say it, he would regret it for the rest of his life.
Tom shook his head. "If you don't receive the letter when you're eleven years old, magic is over."
Alan's disappointment was overwhelming.
"Why eleven?" Sara wondered. "Wouldn't seven and thirteen be more appropriate numbers for a wizard?"
"Because at an older age, magic is harder to control, and at eleven years old, a young wizard in the Muggle world is just out of primary school, having learned the basics." This question was answered by Hermione, who wasn't particularly eager to continue. "Now we should rest; we'll talk in the morning."