A Nexus Devil (Dxd x Multi Crossover)

Ch 20: Another Adventure and a Deal?

"Booooooooooooom!"

A massive explosion shook the chamber. Ron and Hermione, who had just left, ran back inside in panic, wondering what that giant explosion was? When they saw Jake standing next to the now completely destroyed giant statue of Salazar, they just deadpanned at him.

Jake gave them a friendly wave. "Hey, you two, welcome back. Guess what, the minor roadblock is cleared, and we're free to proceed."

Ron just left, gob-smacked, while Hermione put her hands on her hips and glared at Jake. "What the bloody hell, Jake? You just destroyed a priceless historical monument!"

Jake just rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. "Oh... sorry, I guess." What was he supposed to do? According to Luna, they were in some kind of time rush here, and Harry had forgotten the damn password. So the answer was simple: blow up the statue, and you gain entrance, as simple as that.

"I don't really see what the big deal is," Ron said. "It's just some stupid statue of Slytherin. I say the world's better off without it anyway." Ron gave Jake a thumbs up.

"Jake, we really should keep moving," Luna reminded him.

With that, the group reunited. The five of them headed into the dried mouth of the statue to see what the inside looked like. After they made it past a slightly gross tunnel that was absolutely full of snake skins and even more animal bones, they came to a surprisingly intricate wooden door covered in Gaelic writing that Jake was surprisingly able to understand.

"Wow," Hermione said inspecting the ancient door, "this door looks absolutely ancient, and the writing on it is ancient Gaelic. Amazing! Nobody uses that language anymore. I wonder what the writing says on here?" She pondered out loud as she gently traced her hand along the letters, not wanting to damage them.

"I hate to break it to you, Hermione," Jake said, "but the writing says, 'Private Office of Salazar Slytherin. All mudbloods need to keep out!' And that's all it says..."

Hermione just scoffed. "I know you're just messing with me, Jake. It obviously doesn't say that. A refined man like Salazar Slytherin, who helped found Hogwarts, obviously would have a deeper message left on his door than 'Mudbloods keep out!' Hermione absolutely did not believe Jake. Unfortunately, it was the truth. That is exactly what was on the door... Jake figured it was better just to let that go and not crush Hermione's fantasies about the founders too much.

They went through the door and entered what was a surprisingly large office. There were a few separate bookshelves, all packed with books and scrolls that looked remarkably well-preserved. Jake figured that must be due to some kind of stasis spell or the like. In the very center of the room, carved into the floor, was the thing that really shocked Jake, though. It was a summoning circle, specifically a devil summoning circle! Serafall had shown him her own summoning circle before so he could tell that the circle carved on the floor was similar, but had a lot of noticeable differences in the letterings and markings. There were supposedly 72 pillars at one point, Jake figured, so this circle could be for any of them.

"Argh, I can't believe this!" Jake's pondering was suddenly interrupted by Hermione's devastated shouts. Jake looked over and saw that Hermione had immediately dove towards the books on the shelves and was flipping through them rapidly. "Every single one of these books is just written in squiggly gibberish code! They're not readable at all. What kind of monster would do this?"

Ron just scoffed and pouted slightly at the fact that there was no treasure even in Salazar's office, just a bunch of stupid books and some weird circle on the floor. "What a complete waste of time," he thought to himself. Harry, meanwhile, just picked one of the books up off the floor.