The Shopkeeper of All Worlds in the British Wizarding World

Chapter 404 Arrival at the destination (Please subscribe, please collect, please vote)
The next morning, after the two got up and packed up, Ryan asked Hermione to wait for him in the hotel lobby, and then he went out alone. Twenty minutes later, a small white SUV with double doors arrived at the door of the hotel. The window rolled down, and Ryan's face appeared in the SUV. "Okay, let's go."

"Where did this car come from?" Hermione asked after getting in and fastening her seatbelt. "It looks so rough!"

"On the way here yesterday, I saw a used car dealership over there, so I just went there and bought this car for two thousand dollars. Even though this car is a bit crudely made, the Russian Lada Niva is a good car. Especially since we have to pass through a lot of places with bad road conditions this time, it would be quite difficult to get through without an off-road vehicle. At least this is better than walking on two legs." Ryan said, holding the steering wheel.

"You can take a nap for a while." Ryan said to Hermione. "It's about 300 kilometers from here to our destination. According to the information I had someone buy from Knockturn Alley, the giants are now hiding in a valley in the Ural Mountains. We will drive north along the road to Lower Tula, and then head west into the Ural Mountains from there."

"Is your information accurate?" Hermione asked curiously. "In theory, shouldn't the place where the giants are hiding be a secret?"

"Not really. We haven't heard of them before simply because many wizards don't bother where they are, as long as they know they're far away. Their exact location is considered general information in Diagon Alley, and I bought it for only thirty Galleons, mixed in with a dozen other pieces of information."

When they arrived on the road to the suburbs, Ryan looked around and saw that there was no one around, so he stopped the car, waved his hand, opened the space door and released two things.

"This is, us?" Hermione immediately recognized what the two things Ryan placed on the back seat were: 1:1 dolls of two people, so finely crafted that they couldn't be recognized as dummies at all.

"Yes, I will use them to create our alibi." Ryan introduced briefly, "This thing is very simple to make, because it does not require a thinking circuit, which saves a lot of trouble."

"Then how can you make them look like us? Do you control it remotely?" Hermione was a little curious about this thing she had never seen before.

"Of course not." A young girl's voice sounded, and Rose Crystal opened the space door and came out. "That's too complicated. In fact, I can just let Brother's puppet carry a bag and I can get in the bag and control it remotely. This way I can take the opportunity to play around here." After saying this, Rose Crystal raised the things in her hand and waved them. Ryan realized that the little puppet was holding a guide map and a camera, which were all prepared in advance. It seems that after telling Rose Crystal the plan more than a month ago, she had already prepared for this trip.

After saying goodbye to Rose Crystal, Ryan and the other two puppets got out of the car. In the car, they used the tricks of the Faceless Man to change their appearance through makeup. Before returning to Yekaterinburg, they would move around with the faces of local Tatars and Russians.

At noon, the two braved the snow and arrived at Xiatula, a beautiful town. They were lucky that the weather was good along the way, allowing them to arrive here smoothly along the road.

After getting off the bus, Ryan and Hermione went to a small restaurant. In winter in Russia, especially during the bad economic times, there was nothing to eat, so the two of them just ordered a large plate of Russian dumplings stuffed with beef. They also ordered a pot of beetroot soup.

After sitting down and looking around, they found that the store was very small and the decoration was very simple. It should be a residential building facing the street that just opened for business with a sign. Fortunately, it was very clean and the lady boss was very enthusiastic.

"Why do you young people from other places come here in this kind of weather?" the middle-aged woman asked after serving the dumplings.

"Compared to where we are, this place is quite warm." Ryan pretended that he and Hermione were a high school couple traveling from Yakutsk. "It's winter vacation over there, so we took the opportunity to visit the great Ural Mountains recorded in the book." Fortunately, Russia also has both yellow and white people, so when Ryan said he was from the Far East, the aunt naturally believed him.

"Yakutsk? No wonder!" The old lady showed a look of understanding. "My son went to Yakutsk on a business trip at this time last winter, and he told me that it was more than 20 degrees below zero there, and he didn't even dare to go out without a car."

"Yeah." Ryan agreed, "So we ran out to play. We'll go to the mountains in the next two days and then go to Yekaterinburg. By the way, where in the mountains nearby is more suitable for playing?" "Ah, places suitable for young couples to play." The aunt said after her eyes turned around Ryan and Hermione's faces. "You can go a little further into the mountains along the road to the west. There will be a lake. It is very beautiful after freezing in winter. From the lake, go south to a trail. Now when the snow is not too thick, you can go around. There are even a few cabins inside where you can stay overnight. But remember, you must not go north." The aunt enthusiastically introduced the places with better scenery around, but her face became very serious when she said that it was forbidden to go north.

Ryan recalled the information he had and found that the group of giants were in a valley more than 30 kilometers north of the lake. So he asked the aunt: "Why can't we go north?"

"It used to be no different from other places, but I don't know what happened more than ten years ago. No one can get through there anymore, and everyone who went there died. Later, someone told us that the geology there had changed dramatically, and the people who died were in mountaineering accidents. When we went to the lake to play a few months ago, we heard a loud noise coming from the north at night. So you two must not go there," the aunt warned sternly.

"In that case, we definitely won't go there," Ryan said. "We'll just go play by the lake and come back in two or three days."

After paying the bill in US dollars, Ryan and Hermione left the restaurant. After getting back in the car, Hermione asked, "Were you asking the owner where the giants were?"

"Yes." Ryan started the car. "Combining their information with what I know, I can now confirm that the giants are still there. We can just stop them there."

The road in the mountains was difficult to travel, especially now that the water was freezing. In some places Ryan and Hermione had to use magic to help the car get out of trouble. Of course, in order to minimize the possibility of being exposed, they chose magic from other worlds. For example, they manipulated shadows to pad under the wheels to get the car out of the pit. Fortunately, this section of the road was in good condition because many people usually walked on it. So it only took more than an hour to get to the lake.

"The car can only go so far, and now we have to walk. Let's go." Ryan drove the SUV into the radiation world, and then he and Hermione went into the woods by the lake and walked north on the snow in the forest.

Fortunately, it hasn't snowed too much recently, and the snow in the forest is only a dozen centimeters thick. With the sound of crunching on the snow, the two people walked forward in the silent woods, one hand leaning on a walking stick and the other holding a magic wand. During this journey, neither of them said a few words, and only white mist could be seen coming out of their mouths and noses.

"Okay, we're almost there." It was already night, and the sky was completely dark. The air in the Ural Mountains, which was free of industrial pollution, was very fresh. Looking up through the gaps between the branches, one could see the beautiful Milky Way and the stars in the sky. There was silence all around, with only the sound of the wind blowing the treetops and the sound of the snow falling from the trees. At this moment, Ryan stopped and said.

"Are we there yet?" Hermione said, panting lightly, holding on to her cane. Even though she had been exercising all the time in the past few years and her body had been strengthened, the ten-hour trek in the snow still made Hermione feel very tired, especially since she had only rested three or four times in these ten hours, which was less than an hour in total.

"Yes, I think there are traces of magic near this place. I think we should be there soon." Ryan nodded. Hermione saw Ryan summon Xiaoqing at this time. Xiaoqing quickly turned into a bunch of moving vines and scattered in the surrounding woods. "I asked Xiaoqing to go and investigate first. Hagrid told Harry and the others that the Death Eaters sent by the You-Know-Who are also in the giant tribe. I don't want to fall into a trap and be beaten by them."

"Three Death Eaters, not two." Ryan closed his eyes and possessed Xiaoqing to slowly scout the surroundings, then suddenly opened his eyes and said.

"What?" Hermione looked at Ryan.

"Hagrid said before that he saw two Death Eaters coming to the giant tribe, but there were actually three Death Eaters here. One of them was separate from the other two and had been hiding in the dark. It seemed that he was the Death Eaters' backup." Ryan explained. "Okay, let's go. Xiaoqing has already scouted out a safer road."

After that, under Xiaoqing's leadership, the two of them climbed the last ridge along a winding route.

(End of this chapter)