The instant his spiritual power spread onto the surface of that sphere of light, Avada heard a thunderous roar erupt from the depths of his mind, like distant heavenly thunder—low and heavy, yet enough to make his head spin and his consciousness reel, as if his spiritual body were about to be torn apart in the very next moment.
And then came the unimaginable agony, surging in all at once!
"Urgh!!"
Avada felt as though someone had brutally shoved a red-hot blade into his "head," or as though he were being dropped into a blender and shredded to pieces. He wanted to scream, but then realized that he could no longer sense a body at all. There was only a fragile clump of spiritual power, twitching and struggling in utter solitude within a deathly still void...
This was pain on the spiritual level.
It could not be blocked by unconsciousness, nor did it cause any physical injury. It would only drive a person completely mad through sheer agony—which was the basic principle behind the Cruciatus Curse, one of the three Unforgivable Curses.
Avada truly had not expected that, at the end of time itself—the most mysterious and sacred place imaginable—he would experience the Cruciatus Curse for the first time!
He wanted to pull his spiritual power back, to get as far away from that sphere of light as possible. But the overwhelming pain had nearly robbed him of both thought and movement. Even with a mental structure as tempered and resilient as his, far tougher than that of ordinary people, all it could do was help him endure for one or two extra minutes within that pain, stretching the torment into something even longer...
"No, this can't continue. My spiritual power..."
As the pain gradually intensified, it almost awakened a survival instinct within him. Through the all-consuming torment, he forcibly squeezed out the tiniest sliver of lucidity, regained control of his own spiritual power, and with all his might pulled it back away from that sphere—which now seemed terrifying beyond measure in his eyes.
The sphere itself had not trapped his spiritual power in place. Retracting it required only a single thought. It was just that the agony moments ago had been so intense that he had been unable to form even one thought at all.
But now that he had forcibly regained his reason, withdrawing his spiritual power truly was only a matter of a thought. After he exhausted nearly all his willpower just to force out that tiny mental impulse, the agony that had been torturing every thread of his consciousness vanished instantly. In its place came a cool sensation, like having narrowly escaped death after relentless torture, washing over him slowly but effectively and soothing the lingering aftershocks of pain.
"Fuck..."
The very first thing he did after regaining his senses was curse aloud.
If he had failed to summon that tiny scrap of will just now, then he would most likely have been trapped forever in this forgotten corner, tortured for eternity!
"This thing really can be influenced by external forces? It can even be manipulated by the Resurrection Stone?"
Avada stared at the majestic sphere with lingering fear. At this distance, "sphere" no longer felt right—it was more like a wall of light. He retreated a long way back, as if afraid it might actively lunge at him.
"So did the Peverell brothers go through this too? Then how did they ever manage to study this thing?"
"Wait, no..."
The moment he began trying to think through anything, he immediately felt as though some foreign object had been stuffed into his mind, obstructing the flow of thought and making him dull and sluggish.
"In my memory... there seems to be a lot of new stuff?"
"Did it get transmitted over together with the pain just now?"
He nervously began examining the state of his spiritual power. The last thing he wanted was to have something strange implanted into him for no reason.
However, as he patiently and cautiously dismantled and analyzed the complicated, seemingly meaningless information one piece at a time, and compared it with the knowledge he already possessed, the new information appearing in his mind left him with a feeling that, if he still had a body, his jaw would probably have dropped clean off from shock—
"This is... knowledge about the soul?!"
In disbelief, he interpreted the raw information all over again. And when the result remained exactly the same, he went blank.
At first, the information appearing in his mind had not taken the form of decipherable words or images at all. Instead, it was made of model-like transformations, the sort of thing that would only appear in the field of view of his magical senses.
That alone was thanks to the fact that he possessed magical senses at all, giving him at least the qualification to attempt to understand this information. If anyone else had come here—even Dumbledore—they probably would have been driven straight into mental collapse by things that had never existed even in their imagination.
And when he tried analyzing the information using similar things from his own memory, he immediately realized something was off.
The transformations described in that information looked astonishingly similar to the changes he had once observed when the Elder Wand influenced Dumbledore's soul!
"...This is knowledge about 'love'? It came from that touch just now?"
"I can directly obtain information about the soul by touching that sphere of light?!"
The instant he realized that, the great sphere in the distance abruptly changed in his eyes. It was no longer a terrifying static Cruciatus Curse. It became an unimaginably wonderful treasury of knowledge, one enough to drive anyone in the world mad with obsession.
Without even noticing it, he slowly drifted closer again...
Should I touch it again?
He let his spiritual power spread forward bit by bit, but when he remembered that previous burst of agony, he instinctively shrank back again.
It should be fine. That pain can be endured, and so far I haven't found any other side effects... To endure some pain in exchange for the most precious, hardest-to-study, and most urgently needed knowledge—what trade could be more worthwhile than that?
Besides, I still haven't found any way to return to reality. There's nothing else for me to do here. Maybe the way back is hidden inside the information contained in this sphere...
Under the constant temptation rising from the depths of his heart, he ultimately let his spiritual power touch the surface of the sphere once more. Then he immediately gritted his teeth, bracing himself to endure that violent pain all over again...
"Urgh!"
"...Hm?"
The familiar agony arrived right on time, sweeping over Avada's consciousness once again.
But just as he prepared himself to convulse and struggle, he realized that this time... the pain seemed to be weaker?
Although it was still horrifying torment, the kind that crushed the spirit and made thought nearly impossible, compared to the near-Cruciatus-level agony from last time, it suddenly felt much easier.
This time, he could actually barely keep thinking through it!
What's going on? Is its rejection of me weakening, or is my resistance getting stronger?
No, now's not the time to think about that. The information...
Once he focused his mind, he immediately and keenly sensed that a series of profound and mysterious transformations really were taking place within the sphere he was touching—and, through his perception, they were entering his memory!
"That's right! It really is the soul!"
The ecstasy almost washed away the torment caused by the pain.
"Love, the power of Death, remorse... it's all there!"
"And it all matches up with the phenomena I observed before!"
Avada could not even be bothered with that bit of pain anymore. It was already gradually subsiding as the contact continued. At this moment, all he wanted was for his mental energy to be as abundant as possible, so he could throw every last bit of it into analyzing and learning the soul-related information within the sphere of light!
(End of Chapter)