As the dragon blood was absorbed by the rock wall, the archway swung open, revealing a doorway that led into seemingly endless darkness.
Passing through the doorway, a profoundly bizarre scene presented itself before the two of them.
At this moment, they were standing on the shore of a vast, black lake whose surface was unimaginably wide and boundless.
Far off in the distance, seemingly at the center of the lake, a dim, greenish light flickered, casting its reflection in the dead, silent water below.
Aside from that single green light, everything else was shrouded in a thick, impenetrable darkness.
Kyle took two steps forward to the edge of the shore and tossed a glowing fireball ahead of him.
The roaring flames illuminated the lake surface, revealing the dense masses of corpses densely packed beneath the water.
"Those are..." Kyle gazed at the waterlogged, bleached bodies at the bottom of the lake, softly uttering a single word: "Inferi."
"Yes," Dumbledore stood beside Kyle with a solemn expression.
The corpses piled layer upon layer across the bottom of the lake, stretching endlessly beyond what the eye could see.
Looking past the army of Inferi before them, it wasn't hard to imagine just how many people Voldemort had slaughtered during the height of his reign.
Not everyone killed by Voldemort was turned into an Inferius.
Therefore, the victims before them were merely the tip of the iceberg among the souls lost to Voldemort.
"Should we destroy this lake?" Kyle's tone sounded as though he were consulting Dumbledore's opinion, but he took action without waiting for Dumbledore's reply.
He slowly squatted down and plunged his hand straight into the lake.
For a lake of this magnitude, trying to burn it away entirely using Fiendfyre wasn't very realistic.
Surging magical power rippled outward, and wherever the magic reached, the lake water transformed into highly flammable oil under the effect of Transfiguration.
Dumbledore did not reply, tacitly consenting to Kyle's approach.
The amount of magic power required to convert a barrel of water into a barrel of gasoline wasn't particularly large, but talking about toxicity while ignoring dosage was pure foolishness.
For a lake this vast, even an Obscurial like Kyle found it quite exhausting.
When roughly seventy to eighty percent of the lake water had been converted, Kyle drew a weapon resembling a banana fan from his pocket.
This was the first public appearance of the Bashōsen (Flame Fan) after its completion.
"Senpo!" Kyle raised the Flame Fan and swept it forward abruptly. "Goemon!"
A fiery vortex swept out from the Flame Fan, instantly igniting the entire surface of the lake.
Kyle did not use the Fiendfyre Curse; what he cast was merely an ordinary Fire-Making Spell.
The characteristic of Fiendfyre was that it would refuse to stop until it had reduced everything it consumed to ashes.
Left unmanaged, a tiny spark of Fiendfyre could spread, and given enough growth time, it could expand to a world-ending scale.
Under normal circumstances, it wouldn't be difficult for Kyle and Dumbledore to join forces to control Fiendfyre spanning an area equivalent to this lake.
As mentioned before, however, that applied to normal circumstances.
Now, seventy percent of the water in this lake basin had been converted into gasoline by Kyle's Transfiguration—if a burst of Fiendfyre went down here...
Tsk tsk tsk, it was unimaginable.
At that rate, Kyle could stand on the island in the middle of the lake and declare: I hate Earth.
Then he could Apparate away to pack up a sample of every single plant and animal on this world into his suitcase, before boarding a rocket-propelled flying broom with his friends and family to immigrate to the moon.
In short, the Earth was about to be destroyed.
Even without using the Fiendfyre Curse, the ignited oil lake was terrifyingly formidable.
The roaring fire-vortex blasted across the lake surface, leaving behind a long trail of fire that rapidly spread toward both sides, slamming fiercely against the cave walls like a tsunami wave.
Fanned by the whistling gale, the flames did not sweep back toward the direction where the two of them stood.
Even so, the rolling heat waves forced both of them to erect a magical shield just to stand safely on the shore.
The sea of fire chased away all the darkness in the cave. Before the dim, greenish light at the center of the lake was obscured by the flames, Kyle clearly saw its appearance.
It was a smooth, rocky island.
Utilizing the superior vision granted by the Eagle Eye skill, Kyle saw a stone basin at the center of the island, and that dim, fluorescent green light was emanating from right inside it.
If nothing unexpected happened, the Horcrux was inside that stone basin.
Kyle casually tossed a Blasting Curse backward, shattering the cave wall behind him to pieces.
At this point, Dumbledore finally stopped standing on the sidelines.
Drawing the Elder Wand, Dumbledore gently lifted the wand in his hand.
Instantly, the lake water before him seemed to come alive, dancing at his command in response to his movements.
The old man whipped his wand backward toward the exit of the cave, and the lake water coated in a layer of fierce flames transformed into a long, roaring fire-vortex, screaming past the two of them and rushing fiercely out of the cave.
As it flew at high speed, the fire-vortex rapidly shrank in scale, causing the lake water turned into gasoline to burn even more violently.
The temperature of the flames was driven almost to its limit, and the light they emitted shifted from deep red to blinding white.
The Inferi caught within it were turned to ash by the scorching heat without a single chance to struggle.
The fire-vortex formed by the extracted lake water extended over a thousand meters outward. As lake water was continuously pumped out, the sea level of the sea of fire before the two of them plummeted at a rapid pace.
When the final stream of fire was drawn out of the cave, darkness returned to the cavern.
The original underground lake and the Inferi within it had completely vanished, replaced by a huge depression whose bottom—normally thick with sludge—was baked firm by the flames.
As Dumbledore waved his wand, a rumbling sound echoed from the depression, and a mud-formed arch bridge rose straight out of the ground.
Moments later, the two arrived before the stone basin.
Only then did Kyle understand where the green light came from—a stone basin filled to the brim with emerald-green liquid emitting a shimmering phosphorescent glow.
At a single glance, Kyle recognized that the liquid was a potion, or more accurately—a poison.
"Do we have to drink it?"
"I believe..." Dumbledore nodded, "yes."
He fell silent, wishing to see what clever tricks his son might pull to avoid making the same blunder he had nearly made before entering the cave when he wanted to use his own blood to open the door.
Kyle pondered for a short moment and pressed his hand against the ground.
Summoning Jutsu!
A massive fire dragon burst through the white smoke, opening its mouth to roar and display its majesty before figuring out the situation, only to have its destiny-bound throat seized by a giant palm right as it began.
Wood Release: Wood Human Technique!
"Drink up, damn it!" Kyle manipulated the wooden figure to shove the fire dragon's head viciously down into the stone basin.
Dumbledore: "..."
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