Underwater at the Black Lake. Currently, I was staying in front of the entrance to what the merqueen assumed was the Sunken Vault, looking at the message that appeared in front of me after the merqueen left.

[Congratulations! You’ve completed a hidden quest! You’ve befriended the merpeople in the Black Lake. This is only the first step to establishing an alliance with them.]

[500pts have been earned]

[Congratulations! You’ve completed a hidden quest! You’ve established a friendly relationship with a demi-human community for the first time! Punch all those wizard supremacists in the face! Preferably with an army of demi-humans.]

[1000pts have been earned]

{Now this is interesting.} I smiled at the system’s messages. {Look at all these profits I’m getting each time I leave Hogwarts!}

[Yeah… Without a doubt, this is a broken system. Praise me more.]

{I wasn’t praising you.}

[You keep telling that to yourself until you believe it. You can’t live without me, and you know it.]

“Ha… Forget it...” I muttered as I turned to look at the rock wall. “I could break it somehow, but… Is it okay for me to seal this? I originally thought about just finding it and letting the guys know so they can finish this stuff...”

Coming all the way here was successful, I found the place that’s most likely to be the final vault.

{But once again… It’s just a place that may be… I’m still not certain it is.} I thought for a moment.

[...]

“What?”

[Nothing.]

“Oh no, you better tell me.”

[Sorry, I don’t speak stupid.]

“Why was that for?” I frowned.

[Ha… My life is so hard...]

“Oh, fuck it.” I rolled my eyes and took out my wand. “I won’t pay attention to you. I’ll just focus on confirming this place.”

[By all means.]

Ignoring the system, I took out a Disintegrate Rune that still had a couple of uses left. As the rune floated around me, I used to attack a spot on the face of the mountain. Light-purple light flew out of the rune and reached the rock wall.

After a slight tremble, the rock wall started to crack and soon crumbled.

“Damn rune is quite useful for this kind of thing...” I muttered as I looked at the crumbled rock wall. Right behind it, was a cave’s entrance. “That looks like the right way to follow.”

[Congratulations! You’ve completed a hidden quest! You’ve found a secret passage leading to a long-forgotten ruin containing the Sunken Vault. The ancestry of these ruins proves how old the cursed vaults really are.]

[500pts have been earned]

“Wow...” I looked at the system message. “This is ten times more than what I got for finding the RoR...”

[That’s to be expected. You already knew what the RoR was and where it was. It wasn’t a big secret either for others at Hogwarts.]

“That makes sense.” I nodded. “Well, this proves that this place holds the secret vault… Should I just go in? I already got 500pts for just finding the place, maybe I’ll be able to get more if I keep exploring.”

[No way! Really? I wouldn’t notice if you never told me!]

“... Oh come on! Shut up already!”

[Sure. Whatever for my genius user.]

“Ha...” As I let out a deep sigh, a sudden sound came from the underwater cave.

Holding my wand strongly, I prepared for whatever would come out of that cave.

{I hope it’s not some kind of huge monster ready to eat me alive...} I thought for a moment, and soon enough, my assumptions proved to be incorrect.

There was no giant monster. But a horde of grindylows.

{The heck are these ugly things doing in there!?} I thought to myself as I quickly flew back to evade one of the charging grindylows.

With a swing of my wand, a magic rope shot towards the grindylow I just evaded and trapped him. I quickly swung my wand again and an Exevo Tera Hur came bursting from the lake’s bed and aquatic plants and even vines started to trap the grindylows in front of me.

{Why are there so many of these things!?} I thought as I flew back down, evading a group of almost twenty of those things.

With another wave of my wand, an Exevo Vis Hur rushed to another group that was coming for me.

The energy wave electrocuted them and even spread towards the rest, if it wasn’t for my control on it, it might even hurt me.

After electrocuting half of the horde of more than fifty grindylows, I finally stopped the spell and focused on sending individual energy strikes towards the remaining ones, until all of them were finished.

Messages kept appearing at the corner of my eyes, but I simply ignored the new points. It was 4 points for each of these things I killed, so I ended up getting around 200 points for all of them.

{Ha… Damn things scared the hell out of me...} I thought for a moment, before looking at the death horde. {I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave the corpses behind...}

“Utevo Res Massive Water Elemental.” As I chanted, my magic power left my core and formed a big creature made of light in front of me.

The light had the form of a big humanoid creature without legs. Soon, the light dispersed and a giant, deep-blue-colored water elemental appeared. It had two bright eyes that shined on a deep ocean-blue color, deeper than its body, which despite mixing with the surrounding water, still showed a deep blue color.

“Take care of the bodies, move them inside the cave.” I said as I pointed at the cave.

The Massive Water Elemental nodded its head which I could barely see thanks to the bright eyes. Soon its amorphous body moved and with great expertise it grouped all the corpses and covered them in its body, taking them towards the cave.

I followed behind, and once inside the cave, I quickly ordered it to follow me while carrying the grindylows. We both went through the tunnels inside the cave, and soon enough, the tunnels started going up.

We finally reached a bigger space that had a platform that wasn’t submerged in water. Going over the platform, I commanded the Massive Water Elemental to leave the grindylows on the platform.

I then used the fire wave spell to burn them to ashes. Thanks to having the bubble-head charm still active, I wasn’t worried about the lack of oxygen, and since I was using my magic power, I could still keep the fire alive as I burned the corpses to ashes.

“Ha… That’s a lot of work for simply taking care of these things.” I shook my head and then turned to look at the place I was in.

It was an amazing ruin. There were columns surrounding the platform I was standing on, and also engravings on the walls that had different images that I couldn’t understand. Some of them had images of a big octopus that was seemingly being worshiped by some kind of civilization.

At one side of the platform, there was an enormous statue of what seemed to be that same octopus, there was some rubble in the middle of it, right in front of what seemed to be the deteriorated head of the octopus, and right in front of that rubble, a broken path that connected the statue to the platform I was standing on.

After looking around for some clues on where the vault might be, I noticed that the only thing that stood out from the place was the statue. Whether it was for its unique design or the gaseous light that I could see behind the statue.

“If that thing is similar to the statue of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets, then there must be a passage where all that rubble is.” I muttered as I took out the Disintegrate Rune that still had one use left.

Pointing to the rubble, the rune shone in a light-purple light and shot a purple light that soon disintegrated the rubble, revealing another entrance as the rune turned to dust.

[Congratulations! You’ve completed a hidden quest! You’ve found the chamber where the last vault stood in wait. Be careful though, you never know what secrets or mysteries lay ahead in the chamber.]

[250pts have been earned]

“Only 250 points? Is it because there’s only the vault’s chamber that’s waiting in here?”

[Precisely.]

“Okay.” I shrugged as I walked towards the entrance of the chamber and entered. “Well… This sure is discouraging.”

Once inside, what I thought would be something amazing, ended up being a simple pillar that stood in the center of a normal-looking chamber. If there was something worth noting, it would be that the pillar looked to be some kind of tall chest that shone in amber light, while there were some statues surrounding it.

[Were you expecting something else?]

“Well… Yes? I mean, this thing here has been causing the students and even a teacher to get petrified. But it looks quite… unamusing?” I tiled my head.

[Reality sometimes likes to break our expectations, you know?]

“I know that.” I nodded as I looked at the pillar. I would normally try to touch it, but as I looked at it with my Arcane Eyes, I noticed that the thing was letting out a hideous dark-grey colored mist.

{It’s not as worrisome as the black mist that Rowena’s diadem let out, but I sure don’t want to touch that thing that reeks of dark magic with my hands.}

I took out another rune, the Destroy Field Rune.

“This thing usually helps me destroy elemental fields, but it technically can destroy any field made by magic. The question is, could I consider that pillar made of magic?”

{Only one way to find out!} With a thought, I activated the rune and a grey light shone from the rune, rushing towards the pillar, which started to tremble for a while. After a few seconds, the amber light faded, and the pillar crumbled outwards.

In the middle of the pillar, rested a dagger with a strange design. It had a tentacle-like handle and a curved blade with a length of 30 centímeters. There were also some gold coins surrounding the thing.

[Congratulations! You’ve completed a hidden quest! You’ve broken the curse of the Sunken Vault, now the petrified students and students will come back to normal. Retrieve your well-deserved treasure that’s hidden inside the vault.]

[1000pts have been earned]

“It was easier than I thought.” I muttered as I looked at the treasure inside. “And what I’m supposed to do with this?”

[Well, it’s gold. You can change it for any kind of currency, or points if you want. About that blade, Arcanists are great with weapons. Though you’ll have to learn how to use it by yourself.]

“Oh, right.” I nodded as I got close to the opened vault. Once in front of it, I sent the gold to my inventory and took the dagger. “It looks interesting...”

The dagger’s blade had a different color from normal steel, it looked more like aquamarine.

“What’s with this material? It’s certainly not steel, or well, it doesn’t look like the material I’ve seen in other weapons. And the magic...”

Smoke was coming out of the dagger, it had a light-blue color, which meant that it wasn’t dark magic.

“I would love to have some kind of appraisal...”

[Your best choice is to simply use the dagger and see if it has any visible effect.]

“Will have to do that...” I nodded. “Well, I better go back. But first, I’ll make sure to destroy the entrance to this place.”

I put the dagger into my inventory and started to walk out from the vault. Using an Explosion Rune a couple of times, I sealed the entrance under the octopus head.

Going out of the cave, I did the same with the entrance to the cave, sealing it again with rubbles and crumbles.

"This should do." I muttered as I looked at the now sealed entrance. "Well, time to go back. I hope that things are already solved back in Hogwarts."

I finally moved back to Hogwarts through the path the merqueen told me about.