Volume 4: The Sea and the Ship Heading North Chapter 226 Doing Things and Dealing
Jon spoke slowly.
"It's nothing, sir. I just helped a little, and I want to give you something in return... If you think it's okay, could you give me the slate? I'm quite interested in the magic runes on it."
Sir Stock was quite generous in response to his request and said it readily.
"That's certainly no problem. If you want, you can always take the slate away."
Then he stood up from his chair and spoke politely.
"Because of this memory, I have some personal matters to confirm. Can I excuse myself for a moment, Professor? Of course, you and your students can still visit the tower at will."
"It's okay, go ahead and do your work."
Sir Stoke walked out of the study and disappeared from Jon's sight around the corner of the stairs.
Jon looked at his departing back, slowly reached into the inner pocket of his robe, and took out a corner of the invisibility cloak, but then he also touched the contract that he had hidden in advance.
Without much hesitation, Jon stuffed the invisibility cloak back into his pocket and quickly walked down the stairs.
He came to the reception room, where Neville and the other five were drinking afternoon tea and chatting. The house-elf Labill was not there.
"Come and help, Hermione."
Jon didn't say anything extra. He just put the contract on the coffee table.
"How much of it can you understand? Translate it all for me."
Everyone could see Jon's seriousness. Hermione did not stop. She looked at the old parchment seriously and read it quickly.
Soon she had a preliminary result.
"This is a contract. There are many professional terms on it, and I don't recognize many of them. But the general meaning of the contract is that it helps the signatory of the contract maintain a balance, a balance between beasts and humans... This word should mean blood curse..."
Jon's brain was working rapidly, and he soon thought of the information about the treatment of blood-cursed orcs that he had seen in Sir Stoke's study before.
"In other words, this contract is roughly a treatment plan for a certain blood curse?"
Hermione nodded .
"Yes, if you remove those technical terms that I don't understand, this does look like a treatment plan. However, this contract needs to be maintained by someone, and it must be a member of the Stoke family."
Jon's face became more solemn, and his expression changed. After thinking for a moment, he immediately put the contract back and said without any doubt.
"Get back to the ship right now! And drive the ship away from this sea area!"
Neville and the others looked at Jon with obvious confusion, but because they trusted him enough, they didn't ask why he did this, but asked.
"What about you?"
"I need to ask Lord Stoke for some clarification. You can rest assured that I have gained some small gains from this tower. I will not encounter the same danger as I did on Azkaban Island. But you cannot stay here. That will restrict my hands and feet."
Jon spoke quickly and in a serious tone, and Neville and the others could tell that this was not the time to joke.
The five of them immediately stood up and left the living room. When Hermione reached the corner of the stairs, her face turned pale and she pursed her lips as she looked at John and gave a final reminder.
"You must be careful."
Jon promised seriously without any perfunctory attitude.
"I'm sure I will."
Neville and the others did not stay and disappeared from Jon's sight as they went down the stairs.
Jon did not stay here, but went in the opposite direction of Neville and the others and went up to the top floor.
He climbed up the stairs in the study to the top of the tower. Sir Stoke was standing beside the gap covered by the stone slabs, his face was gloomier than ever.
After seeing Jon coming up, his gloomy expression gradually disappeared, and he looked at him calmly.
"You are not the professor who takes students out on a school trip at Durmstrang, am I correct?"
Jon also said calmly.
"You're not a knight who simply lives in seclusion and wants to study astronomy, right?"
Ser Stoker stared at Jon in silence for a moment, then he suddenly laughed.
"It's really ridiculous. We originally believed that the identity shown by the other party was real, and then we used these seemingly real identities to solve a mystery together. But when our goal was achieved and the mystery was solved, we found that you and I actually had other purposes."
Jon's voice gradually became cold. After figuring out part of the problem, he actually didn't have much energy to chat with the knight in front of him.
"You're helping the Dark Lord!"
"Not doing things." Sir Stoker shook his head. "I didn't lie to you, professor. You should be a professor at another magic school. Although I am of pure blood, I don't agree with the so-called theory of pure blood superiority. I don't like the man named Tom Riddle, but I had to make a deal with him."
He looked up and stared at Jon. The sky had become gloomy at some point, with dark clouds covering their heads. The sea breeze, which had been dampened by magic, also began to grow rapid, blowing up their robes and making a sound as if the cloth was being twitched.
"You took the contract?"
Jon's right hand was always hidden in his sleeve, and his hidden hand was tightly gripping the end of the wand.
"Such a powerful dark demon can't be a blood-cursed orc, right? He asked you to sign this contract. What is he trying to balance?"
…
Neville and the others didn't stop for a moment, they walked up the self-supporting stairs and quickly left the tower.
However, just when they had gone down to about the twentieth floor, the stairs that were originally moving suddenly stopped.
Not only did it stop, but it immediately began to move rapidly in the opposite direction, moving above the tower!
Neville reacted quickly, or rather, all five of them reacted quickly. They held hands together and stared at the gap between the floors as they went up the stairs.
"Jump!"
Neville yelled.
Five people jumped down from the urgent stairs together. The huge inertia threw them a long distance, and they finally stopped when they hit the wall.
"He wants to keep us?" Ron said in surprise.
Li rubbed his arm which was sore from the collision and said with a breath of cold air.
"It must be the problem that Jon discovered that attracted the attention of that knight. He wants to keep us here to contain Jon!"
