Chapter 112: The Secret of the Slytherin Chamber (Edited)

As the basilisk writhed in pain on the ground, Tom, transformed into a phoenix, attacked again and again, wounding one after another, but the difference in size between the two was so great that it was like stabbing someone with a toothpick. Maybe a toothpick could blind a man, but no one could die stabbed with a toothpick.

The basilisk had lost its head after repeatedly suffering pain and losing its sight.

He wandered blindly through the Chamber of Secrets, spilling blood everywhere.

Tom hovered over him, shapeshifting into a three-headed dog.

"Boom!"

The huge three-headed dog swooped down from the sky and smashed into the basilisk's head with a thud, and Tom felt the head under its paws make an audible thud, a bit like cracking a cucumber.

Normally the basilisk was the natural enemy of a three-headed dog with many eyes, but now the basilisk was blind and to the three-headed dog it was just a ten-foot pole.

The snake and the dog fell hard to the ground, and in the spirit of taking advantage of their weakness, Tom added a few more claws until they were covered in white paste.

The basilisk stopped struggling and its vitality quickly faded.

Standing on its nearly crushed head, Tom transformed back into his human form and quickly placed his hand on the top of the basilisk's head, then engraved the basilisk's shape. Without hesitation, he turned into a phoenix and flew into the air, keeping a considerable distance from the basilisk.

Tom knew the life force of snakes, they are like cockroaches. Every year, some people are bitten by snakes whose heads are cut off and make the news. He had to be careful, as the basilisk is also known as the King of Snakes. So Tom stopped at the Slytherin's shoulder and watched as the basilisk below stopped making noise, finally letting only the basilisk's tail wag from time to time.

But Tom didn't go down either, instead looking carefully inside the Chamber of Secrets, trying to figure out if there was a light switch; there should be, after all, the Chamber of Secrets was originally meant to be a classroom, and it would be ridiculous for it to be with this light.

Tom's eyesight had improved since he became a phoenix, and he could see that the serpentine sculptures on the pillars appeared to be covered in a layer of black dirt. He had a vague idea, and then, combining it with the style of the camera, he turned into an Occamy and said, "Turn on the light!"

There was no response, and Tom changed the word.

"Light!"

This time the statue of Salazar Slytherin reacted, and a green flame erupted from his index finger. The flame floated down from his index finger and landed on the head of a snake carved in relief on a pillar.

Immediately, a flame emerged from the snake's open mouth and quickly rose up its body. Soon, the serpent coiled around the pillar became a serpent of fire: the pillar must have been saturated with oil between its scales. The serpentine reliefs of each pillar were hooked to the ceiling, so the tongues of flame spread rapidly, and within two minutes all the pillars in the room were alight, illuminating the entire Chamber of Secrets.

As if sensing the light and heat, the basilisk on the floor suddenly twisted again, raising its upper body reluctantly, its hammered head staring at the ceiling, its mouth wide open, a motion it held for a few seconds before falling hard on the floor, splattering flesh and blood.

This first-rate magical animal, were it not for Tom's ingenuity, would be a tyrant in the magical world, with almost no natural enemies. But because of his scant information, Tom had calculated from start to finish. If Tom had it to do over again, it would be even easier.

But the dangers involved are incalculable. If Tom had not recorded Fawkes' completed form, he would not have come alone.

The basilisk should be completely dead.

Tom looked around the Chamber of Secrets. The flames were burning, and the oil that Slytherin had prepared must have been of very high quality, because it didn't smell like oil or smoke as it burned, but smelled like scents. And with the flames, the temperature of the room was rising rapidly, and the feeling of unsettling dampness was completely gone; Slytherin thought he was the greatest of the founders, how could he make his Chamber of Secrets look like the villain's base of operations? He must have gone for the ultimate in extravagance and grandeur.

The brightness of the room before him was proof of this. Tom estimated that at least a hundred pounds of essential oil had been burned in this illumination, and as Tom smelled the delicious aroma, he sensed that it was not oil at all, but the scent of a golden galleon.

"The next step is to find out if Slytherin left anything here."

It was quite obvious, all the pillars were burning, only one wasn't on fire.

Tom landed in front of the pillar and stood for a few seconds before the floor tiles lit up, slowly rising and lifting Tom into the air, so he could see the ceiling.

About fifty meters above the floor, the walls of the Chamber of Secrets plunged into the wall below, forming a corridor about two meters wide, the edges of which were decorated with ornate balustrades, though most of them had deteriorated over the millennia, leaving only a few gold and silver carvings intact.

Tom landed softly in the hallway and walked down it to the left of the Slytherin statue, where he found a silver door.

He looked out and found a panoramic view of the Chamber of Secrets. He figured that after Slytherin had finished taking care of things in the room, he walked out of the room and stood there, gazing at the view of the lower level of the secret chamber like a god.

"Ants." Those were the words that came to his mind. Being so high up, it was easy to have the illusion that everyone in the world was ants.

Tom turned to look at the silver door, smooth and unmarked, with nothing like a doorknob.

He dared not enter, he remembered that there was a magic at Gringotts that only allowed certain people in, anyone else who did would be sucked in and trapped inside the door.

If Tom was absorbed now, it would be months before anyone could free him, and then he would probably have no recourse but to become a basilisk and choose to sleep.

Thinking about this, Tom raised his hand and looked at his ring, the fire dragon was gone, replaced by a snake.

In doing so, Tom also made serious considerations. Although the ring has six sides, there are only five vacant. He is about to transform into five magical creatures and inherit some of their powers.

He had engraved the Occamy, Phoenix, Fire Dragon, Unicorn and Three-Headed Dog before. The Occamy had to take one of those places if he wanted to explore the Chamber of Secrets, the unicorn had a strong purifying effect on the soul, Tom needed a spiritual defense, and the three-headed dog had too much of an advantage in close combat to be replaced, so that left the phoenix and the fire dragon.

The phoenix is capable of nirvana! Tom wouldn't have replaced it even if he removed everything else, God knows if the re-etched phoenix has nirvana capability, and given the nature of the system, probably not. What's the difference between a phoenix without Nirvana and a flying turkey? There is a big difference.

The fire dragon, on the other hand, has the same flying ability as the phoenix, the same magic resistance as the three-headed dog, and the fire-breathing ability is very weak because Norbert was a child at the time of registration.... On second thought, Tom substituted the fire-breathing dragon for the basilisk.

That's the problem he had: as he grew older, he encountered more and more powerful magical creatures, and he always had to learn to choose.

Just like a game team, there are four positions, usually a main attacker, a nurse or a tank, a support and a ranged attacker, no one will take the lineup of four main attackers, must consider the coordination problem.

Tom walked a bit away from the silver door, circled around in the other direction and came to the other side of the Slytherin statue, where he found the same silver door.

Exploring the Chamber of Secrets lead to a dead end.

No, there was another place, and Tom looked into the black hole at the mouth of the stone sculpture.

Tom had always had a question: what had the basilisk been eating for over a thousand years?

A magical creature like the basilisk, though long-lived and able to hibernate, is not immortal and cannot seclude itself for a thousand years in the world. In a thousand years of hibernation, it has to wake up a few times to shed its skin, right? And what does it eat when it wakes up?

A snake over ten meters can't eat rats! It can't be that Slytherin left a thousand years of food for the basilisk, can it?

So Tom decided to enter the statue's mouth and find out.

The mouth of the statue had been carefully repaired, and the floor was covered with neatly laid slabs of green stone, on which there was a lot of mucus from the basilisk's body. The walls were lined with small fluorescent stones, which provided a faint source of light.

After a few dozen steps down the path, Tom came to a slightly larger room with remnants of snakeskin strewn about, but mostly broken into pieces.

It was clear that this was the place where the basilisk had lived before.

The hall had one entrance and two exits. One exit seemed to lead to the surface, the other to the underground.

Tom entered the exit upwards.

This time, the path is slightly inclined. The tunnel ascends slowly, and there is a door in the tunnel, which must be opened in Parseltongue. After going through the door, Tom walked for ten minutes and could not see the end of the tunnel. It took him a few minutes to see the light at the exit and finally he flew out of the tunnel and found himself in the middle of a dense forest. Tom took a moment to get his bearings and felt like he was in the mountains surrounding Hogwarts.

Tom seemed to understand what the snake monster fed on.

When it woke up hungry, it would crawl out of the tunnels, go outside to feed, eat its fill and then follow the orders left by Slytherin, return to the Chamber and wait for the Slytherin heir to wake up; most likely the basilisk would go down another tunnel.

As for the descending tunnel, Tom made a guess that it would probably lead to the Black Lake.