Outside the iron cage.
Lucien's eyes had already transformed into bottomless black vortices — Arcane Sight operating at full power.
In his current vision, the giant snake's internal magic circuits were laid completely bare.
What should have been orderly, tree-like channels branching and flowing smoothly had become utterly twisted.
It wasn't simple misalignment or blockage. This was a complete, structural deformation — as if someone had forcibly wrenched the branches of a tree into the shape of twisted vines.
While observing Nagini's magic circuits, Lucien rapidly recalled the Dark Magic curse knowledge he had been cramming these past days.
Simply put, curse erosion operated on three dimensions: Body, Magic Circuits, and Soul.
Body-type curses were the most obvious and relatively easier to handle.
Curses like the blood malediction that ran in the veins inevitably corroded the body, though the degree and manifestations varied wildly. Nagini had been transformed into a beast, while some victims suffered accelerated aging or chronic frailty and illness...
Magic-type curses were far more troublesome.
They often caused elusive "magical complications" — certain spells becoming stronger or weaker, irregular magic surges, or even developing an allergy to magic itself...
Most curses of this type parasitized the victim's magic circuits, sustaining themselves using the victim's own magic power.
This meant the stronger the wizard's magic, the more stubborn the curse became.
Every spell cast, every flow of magic, was essentially feeding the curse.
And the most vicious of all were soul-type curses.
They eroded a person's very self — memories, emotions, personality, consciousness.
They were also the hardest to treat, because the soul was far too fragile.
Apply too much force and the victim could turn into an idiot or a madman. Apply too little, and you couldn't shake the deeply rooted curse.
Lucien's gaze swept carefully across the twisted magic circuits inside Nagini.
Compared to a normal wizard, this was practically a different species.
It also didn't match any of the magical creature circuits he had recorded so far — not snake, not bird, not any creature he had seen.
It was a grotesque circuit forcibly warped into existence by the curse.
The black vortex in his pupils slowly faded.
Lucien didn't stop there. He raised his hand and gently brushed a finger across his eyes.
Silver-white and emerald-green light seeped into his pupils, transforming into complex runes that slowly expanded and contracted deep within his irises.
"Spirit Sight."
This was the magic he had obtained from Slytherin's inheritance in the Chamber of Secrets, specifically for observing the soul.
His vision changed once again.
The outline of the giant snake inside the cage became semi-transparent. A thick gray-black fog could be seen coiled in what should have been the position of her head.
The fog was so dense it refused to dissipate — like years of accumulated grime, like rotting mold — burying something deep within.
Lucien looked closer.
The fog was not complete.
Deep inside that gray-black mass, faint glimmers of light occasionally flashed.
Like starlight struggling behind thick clouds. Like a candle flame on the verge of extinction — flickering, refusing to be completely extinguished.
Lucien exhaled softly.
The soul had indeed been heavily polluted by the curse — quite severely, in fact.
But — fortunately, it had not been completely devoured yet.
This matched the chaotic state Nagini had shown when trying to communicate with Liuguang earlier. She was not yet a pure, bloodthirsty beast.
Those erratic responses — sometimes begging, sometimes roaring — were exactly the struggles of a soul fighting against the curse's erosion.
Decades.
For Nagini to have kept her soul from completely sinking after decades of the curse's torment… those years must have been unimaginably painful.
Lucien rubbed his brow.
Why was removing Dark Magic curses so difficult?
Because you were rarely facing a pure evil spell left by a caster. Instead, you were dealing with a "symbiote" that had already fused with the victim.
The curse sustained itself using the victim's own magic power — a terrifying vicious cycle.
It would also actively "fight back." When external force tried to dispel it, the curse would contract, deform, and even detonate portions of its energy to harm the host in a final act of mutual destruction.
The longer it remained, the deeper it sank. At first it was like a poster stuck on the wall. Slowly it seeped in like an engraving. Eventually it became the wall itself — impossible to peel away.
Moreover, curses on all three dimensions tormented the victim while constantly intertwining with one another, gradually raising the difficulty of treatment.
It was like defusing a bomb with countless tangled, overlapping wires. Only by finding the correct sequence could it be dismantled. Otherwise—
Boom.
The complex runes in Lucien's eyes slowly faded away.
He had some ideas for the body and magic circuit aspects…
But the soul level…
He might need to make another trip back to the Chamber of Secrets.