Chapter 209 - Rude.

Stepping into the puzzle room, Loki looked around and found everything arranged just as he'd left it.

Clearing away the altar and making himself presentable, Loki walked up to Salazar's begging bowl with the locket in his hand.

'Damn the locket's heavy.'

The locket had a see-through amber glass cover beneath which was a series of emerald stones set in the shape of an 'S' forming a snake, likely to represent Salazar himself.

There was something written around the snaking figure in the centre but Loki found it hard to read, it was as if it was written in an entirely different language. Loki guessed it was parseltongue and that only Salazar could read it.

'But why would snakes need a written language?'

'Is there a secret society of snakes in this world or something?'

'Lizard people?'

Glancing one last time at the locket and its several intricacies Loki let it slip from his hands and fall into the bowl.

The moments when the locket slid through Loki's fingers stretched in time as Loki's brain performed one last check, thinking about all the facts related to the matter and wondering if this was the right thing to do.

'I guess I've done everything I could. Now all that remains is to see the fruit of my labour.'

*CLINK*

The locket finally landed in the begging bowl and its chain slithered on top of it, collecting like a coiling snake forming a small pile.

Loki looked with bated breath as the crystal began to hum once again as soon as the locket fell into the bowl.

An ethereal wispy mist parted from it and crawled into the bowl, weaving through the air like a dog smelling its meal.

Suddenly the mist flinched, recoiling in what Loki thought was rejection but he couldn't have been more wrong.

As soon as Loki was about to write this try off as a failure and before he felt the frustration inside him explode, the mist grew thicker and denser.

It shot towards the locket and immediately crept into it, Loki saw a storm form within the locket's confines, while simultaneously, the entire room dimmed in brightness as if the spirituality being used to power the room was being directed elsewhere.

*CLINK* *CLINK* *CLINK*

Loki heard several cracks form in a glass but he couldn't find any cracks on the locket, the amber cover was perfectly alright from what he could see, except that was when his eyes landed on the crystal that contained Salazar Slytherin.

Cracks like spiderwebs had formed in multiple places on the crystal in which Salazar Slytherin lay.

Loki stepped back and shielded his face with his hands to protect himself from any stray glass pieces but a sudden wave of spirituality emerged from the Locket and burst forth throughout the room, knocking him off his feet.

Now on the floor, Loki dragged himself backwards and put some distance between himself and the crystal as the storm that had originally remained in the locket's confines was now bursting forth around the crystal, growing by the second.

Loki watched the storm grow to cover up the entire crystal in which Salazar Slytherin lay.

All Loki could hear now was the roar of the storm brewing inside the slowly darkening room.

It felt like the wind was roaring inside his ears.

'This is loud!!!'

'I'm quite sure everyone in the castle is up and awake right now!!!'

Loki wanted to get up and rush towards the exit, but that was when it happened.

From within the storm that had taken over the room, Loki felt a powerful force of suppression. It pushed him into the ground with pressure enough to make his bones groan under the weight.

Loki worked harder than ever to keep his eyes open to see what was going on while scraping the marble on the floor to drag himself away from the impromptu hurricane in the centre of the room.

It was hard but after what felt like a million years Loki reached a bookshelf and proceeded to take shelter behind it.

But he need not have, since as soon as Loki's back touched the bookshelf a sudden *BANG* caught his attention.

Leaning over to look at the crystal, Loki felt a sudden rush of wind blow past his face that forced his cheeks open and close his eyes.

When he opened them, everything in the room had returned to be perfectly normal.

Except the crystal containing Salazar Slytherin had vanished and looked like it never existed.

'...what?'

Loki stood up, albeit with some difficulty, and walked over to the centre of the room where only three blue crystals remained.

All the other crystals were still the same, with one of the crystals containing a woman while the other two remained empty.

But there was a short change where the fourth crystal with Salazar Slytherin used to be.

In its place, hovering without any support, now was the golden begging bowl that Loki had placed the Locket into. But instead of the locket, it now contained something else.

Puzzled about what the strange card-like object was, Loki bent over to get a closer look.

The card was drifting in and out of view by becoming translucent and turning pitch black as if it existed but at the same time didn't.

Loki felt a sense of suppression from the item, it made him realise that it was a Beyonder item of the Error Pathway or one of its neighbouring sequences.

Yet he did not pick it up carelessly.

Loki stared at the card some more and felt a little confused by the familiar symbol on it.

'Where have I seen this before?'

The symbol was the drawing of a curling shell with four clocks with different times on the four cardinal directions around the shell.

'Time?'

'TIME!!!!'

Loki's brain clicked and he instantly performed the Celestial Worthy of Heaven and Earth ritual behind a few bookshelves to go back into the Sefirah Castle where he summoned the chair he used to sit on.

He immediately looked at the symbol behind his chair and it was exactly as he'd remembered it to be.

A snail's shell with clocks on the cardinal directions showing different times in them.

Loki became shocked.

He exited the Sefirah Castle and moved back to the begging bowl.

'Is this my reward?'

'An item from the Error Beyonder Pathway?'

'But what does this mean?'

'How did Salazar Slytherin have a Beyonder item of the Error Pathway?'

'Is it the same way he learnt to call me Mr. Error?'

But instead of joy for the first time since coming to this world, Loki felt a genuine sense of anger boiling in his chest.

'What does the idiot think!? That I can fend off the True Creator and whoever else is working with him with a charm!?'

'Seriously!?'

'The hell is wrong with this man!!!???'

'Fool used me to wake him up! And then I am given nothing but a charm in exchange!?'

'What does he think I am? His personal assistant who wakes him up like an alarm clock!?'

'I was naive!!! Too naive!!! Thinking that these idiots would've helped me in some way!!'

'Hmpf. Just let them wait until I become a True God…then I'll make sure they pay for everything…'

'Rude bastards didn't even thank me for waking him up…Rebirth epoch? I'll make sure it is changed to the Vengeance Epoch if they don't compensate me appropriately.'

'But what am I supposed to do with the True Creator and his sidekick now!?'

Loki was frowning. He didn't like what was happening one bit.

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