Meanwhile, the first eliminated contestants had already appeared.
Just as Rhys had expected, the unlucky people who had chosen to enter the lake near the place where the Dementors had been buried had already been pulled out by Dumbledore.
Only a few minutes after the four of them entered the water, a large stream of bubbles appeared on the surface of the lake.
Dumbledore, who had already been warned by Helga, acted decisively and pulled all four of them out from underwater.
All four were unconscious.
Clearly, they had no chance of continuing in the competition.
Although the Dementors suppressed beneath the lake could not escape, the effects naturally carried by their bodies still created a contaminated area in the surrounding water, negatively affecting anyone unfortunate enough to enter it.
None of that had anything to do with Rhys and the other three, however.
Their journey had been completely unobstructed, and they had already reached the centre of the lake.
At this point, the aquatic plants on the lakebed had disappeared, replaced by large stretches of black mud.
A massive rock appeared before them. Many merpeople had been carved onto its surface, wielding spears and chasing creatures that looked like enormous squid.
Faint mermaid singing could be heard in the distance.
"We're here. This is where the capital of the ancient merpeople kingdom once stood."
Rhys grinned and pointed towards the mud beneath them.
The merpeople kingdom?
This was the first time the three had ever heard that term.
Perhaps it had been mentioned in History of Magic, but it had very likely disappeared beneath Professor Binns's unbearably monotonous lectures.
After all, he could make even bloody goblin rebellions sound dull enough to put people to sleep.
It was perfectly normal for him to skim over something like the merpeople kingdom.
Seeing the confusion in their eyes, Rhys's urge to teach immediately surfaced.
"Back when Hogwarts was first founded, there were far more magical creatures living around the school than there are today. There were even quite a few settlements of intelligent magical creatures.
"The Forbidden Forest had dragon colonies, centaur tribes, and goblin settlements, while the Black Lake was ruled by the merpeople kingdom.
"The ancient merpeople kingdom was nothing like the weak merpeople tribe that exists today. They had their own language, writing, institutions, and culture. They even possessed things similar to Gillyweed and the Bubble-Head Charm that allowed them to come onto land and move around."
Seeing the shocked looks in their eyes, a trace of pride flashed through Rhys's gaze.
"Surprised? That's normal. Merpeople history goes back much further than you imagine. The earliest records of merpeople can be traced back to ancient Greece, where they were called Sirens. Personally, though, I believe they already existed during ancient Egyptian times."
Several bubbles escaped from Luna's mouth.
"You want to ask why the merpeople tribe now only lives at the bottom of the Black Lake, and why their civilisation didn't continue to develop, but instead regressed?"
Luna nodded repeatedly.
"That was because the ancient merpeople kingdom came into conflict with the founders. When Hogwarts had only just been established, the school was extremely poor. They had to find their own ways to obtain food, either by trading with Muggles outside, clearing farmland themselves, or hunting in the Forbidden Forest.
"Compared with the Forbidden Forest, which was full of dangerous magical creatures, the Black Lake was undoubtedly much safer.
"However, the merpeople strongly objected. They believed the wizards were plundering their grazing grounds. This led to several small-scale clashes and eventually escalated into a war."
Harry and the other two listened with complete concentration. If they had been on land, they definitely would have asked, "What happened next?"
"As for the outcome..." Rhys spread his hands and shrugged. "The merpeople were defeated on land by Hogwarts' teachers and students. The founders Rowena Ravenclaw and Salazar Slytherin then took the opportunity to enter the lake. With Slytherin's assistance, Ravenclaw destroyed the capital of the merpeople kingdom, while Slytherin wiped out all of its outer strongholds.
"While destroying the capital, Rowena Ravenclaw also erased the merpeople kingdom's writing system and institutions and exterminated its royal family. Slytherin, meanwhile, destroyed the herbs they relied on to come onto land.
"And so the once-powerful merpeople kingdom, which had ruled the entire Black Lake, was destroyed.
"The surviving merpeople tribe you see today consists of descendants of those who escaped that war. It seems they failed to inherit the culture of the old kingdom."
Harry blinked.
He wanted to ask what Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had been doing at the time, but since he could not speak underwater, he had no choice but to give up.
Neville and Luna were even more engrossed. The "bloody" war from a thousand years ago almost seemed to unfold before their eyes.
For a moment, they even had the illusion that the black mud beneath them was not mud at all, but the remains of a once-thriving underwater city.
"I read about this in letters written by ancient wizards. You may think it sounds cruel, but that was simply how things were in that era. Competition between species was a matter of life and death, and compromise was almost nonexistent. Even Godric Gryffindor had plenty of blood on his sword."
At the end, Rhys added an explanation for where his knowledge had come from.
Rhys turned his gaze towards the large stone nearby, a faint smile appearing on his face.
The water surged, flipping the boulder over and stirring up a cloud of mud.
Once the silt dispersed, the three were shocked to discover that the reverse side of the stone, whose front depicted merpeople hunting, was carved with a relief in a distinctly Greek style.
However, the mermaid depicted on the relief bore a terrifying wound across her body, as though something had cleaved through her. The crack was now filled with black mud.
Harry tried very hard not to imagine what such a strike would do to a human body.
Rhys manipulated the water and returned the stone to its original position, once again stirring up a large cloud of mud.
At that moment, a flash of gold appeared in the silt, immediately attracting Rhys's attention just as he was preparing to leave.
He beckoned towards the mud, and a gleaming golden object floated out.
Rhys caught it and examined it carefully.
It turned out to be part of a golden scabbard with a line of inscriptions carved into it.
The sword that had once rested inside was nowhere to be found, leaving only this broken section of scabbard buried in the mud.
If Rhys had not suddenly decided to lift that boulder today, it might have remained asleep at the bottom of the Black Lake forever.
"There are plenty of valuable things buried at the bottom of the lake. This was once the heart of the ancient merpeople kingdom, after all. They say the lost treasure of the merpeople king is still buried somewhere deep in the Black Lake!"
Rhys had little interest in the broken scabbard, but since it bore inscriptions, he could not simply leave it there.
So he casually tossed it to Neville.
The boy had helped him quite a bit last term.
Consider this a small reward.
Perhaps Neville might even use it to find the long-lost treasure of the merpeople king.
The fighting back then had been extremely intense, and the capital had been destroyed almost completely. Even after searching the ruins afterwards, they had never found the legendary secret treasury said to be piled high with gold, silver, and jewels.
After finishing the story of the merpeople kingdom, the four continued swimming towards the source of the singing.
Before long, numerous crude stone dwellings appeared across the lakebed, with aquatic plants growing over their surfaces.
Faces occasionally flashed past the dark windows.
These faces looked completely different from the beautiful mermaids described in wizarding and Muggle literature on land.
They were extremely ugly.
Their skin was iron-grey, their hair was a tangled mass of dark green, and every merperson had a mouth full of broken, crooked, malformed teeth, making their appearance even worse.
Looking at the merpeople and their dilapidated homes, Rhys could not help raising an eyebrow.
He knew that the merpeople had become impoverished and backward after the fall of their kingdom.
He had not expected them to have declined this far.
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI