Bring a fairy tale to Hogwarts!

By the time Victor returned to the North Tower, it was already quite late. He placed the gold coins containing Peeves on the empty desk and sat back down in his office chair.

When he threw the gold coin onto the table, it jingled and made a crisp sound.

If you look closely, you'll see that one side of the coin depicts a six-pointed star, while the other side features a strange skull, which is rather creepy.

As the gold coins tumbled, a gray glint would occasionally flash in the skull's eyes, only to vanish in the next instant, making one wonder if they were hallucinating.

However, there were no creatures in the room that could cause such an illusion.

The oil painting on the wall now depicts only a tall tower, its lettuce nowhere to be seen. The teapot lies motionless in the corner of the table, while the full-length mirror in the corner is spotless, as if it were empty.

"Go and get the bottle."

Victor snapped his fingers at the teapot on the corner of the table.

The teapot immediately shook its round body and tiptoed across Victor's messy desk, but accidentally tripped over a quill pen and fell into a pile of books and parchment with a soft "plop".

It seemed a little embarrassed, and humanely buried its whole body in the pile of books, disappearing from Victor's sight. After a few wriggles, it stood up again and started rummaging through things.

A moment later, it handed over a dark bottle.

The bottle, though made of glass, had become yellowed and weathered over time, obscuring anything inside. When Victor picked it up, he could clearly see a six-pointed star with an inscription on top—a symbol belonging to King Solomon.

In both worlds, King Solomon is recorded as a top-tier magician (Victor is surprised that King Solomon even exists in this world). The "History of Magic in the Ancient World" alone records that King Solomon made significant contributions to the study of dark magic creatures and participated in the development and creation of Patronus Charms, making him one of the most important and outstanding ancient magicians.

Those who know Arabic might also recognize a sentence next to the inscription on the bottle stopper:

Do not touch.

But the next second, Victor acted as if he hadn't seen it and pulled off the cork on his own.

A cloud of black mist suddenly surged out of the bottle, causing the raging white flames in the room to tremble violently, and the chandelier above began to sway, making way for the seemingly tangible mist...

Four scarlet eyes and a blurry, grotesque face that didn't look human quickly appeared in the mist.

That was a demon from an Arabian fairy tale.

When it first came out, it seemed dazed from being locked up, and let out a few hoarse laughs at the ceiling:

"How much time has passed?"

"Ah, when King Solomon sealed me in this bottle, I swore that if anyone released me, I would grant him riches and fulfill all his desires. But a hundred years passed, and no one came to rescue me; so I swore in my heart that if anyone released me, I would bestow upon him immeasurable wealth. Two hundred years passed, and still no one came—so I swore that if anyone released me, I would kill him, but allow him to choose his own way of dying."

"Your choice is..."

Upon seeing Victor, the devil's hoarse, sinister voice paused, and his four eyes widened slightly.

"...Why is it you again?"

"It's me, are you not satisfied?"

"How could I possibly be satisfied?" The devil's red eyes glared at Victor. "I didn't even ask you to release me, just throw me back into the lake... and you didn't even do that?"

"What's the rush?" Victor waved his hand. "You've only been here for three years. I'll throw you out in a few years. It won't waste much of your time."

"You make it sound so easy," the devil's voice sounded gritted through his teeth. "It's not you who's trapped in the bottle."

"Three years after three years, by the time I have the chance to come out again, my magic might have been sealed away and worn down. I won't even be able to beat an ordinary fisherman then, so how will I recover my power?"

"So, what do you want to do now that you've regained your strength?"

"Of course it's domination—damn it, you're trying to trick me."

"With your limited understanding, do you really need me to trick you into revealing information?"

"Alright, I didn't call you out here to chat," Victor picked up the gold coin on the table and waved it in front of the four red eyes. "You know what this is, right?"

"Solomon's Cursed Coins?"

The devil's mist lowered slightly so that its eyes were level with the height of the gold coins.

"Oh, but what else is inside... has something already been sucked in?"

"Aren't there greedy people again who want King Solomon's treasure? They always think that a wizard like Solomon would be a fool who wouldn't even guard against theft of his own treasure. In fact, they are the fools themselves—if they touch something that doesn't belong to them, they'll 'poof' and be trapped to death in a gold coin."

"Sigh, why can't I run into these dim-witted guys?"

"...I think a devil who could be tricked back into a bottle by a fisherman has no right to say such things."

Victor watched it silently for a while, causing the black mist in front of him to churn as if it were in great discomfort, and occasionally let out a roar that was hard to understand.

Those roars included, but were not limited to, "I'm very smart," "That's a despicable person," and "I've just been locked up for too long and haven't recovered yet," and so on. But under Victor's gaze, these originally self-righteous words grew softer and softer, and finally dissipated into the air.

The devil eventually changed the subject in annoyance:

"Enough! Just tell me straight, what's inside these gold coins?"

"ghost."

"ghost?"

"The ghosts are unique to this place. You might not realize it, but we've arrived in a new country. The magic here is quite different from ours, creating many interesting new species, and ghosts are one of them."

"They are wizards who have died once, possessing only obsession and a few remaining memories, nothing else."

"But the one locked up inside seems a bit different."

Victor picked up the gold coin and shook it, letting a little gray color seep out before stopping.

"It seems to have some connection to this castle. If you beat it up and make it tell you the truth, I'll agree to throw you back into the sea where you used to be. Of course, I don't mind if you vent your personal emotions."

"Is it...connected to the castle?"

The devil's mist lingered in the room for a while, as if pondering something.

In the short time it appeared in the room, a strong smell of sulfur permeated the entire room, but as the devil continued to think, the smell of sulfur grew stronger and stronger, almost becoming tangible.

A dozen seconds later, the devil suddenly revealed an evil smile.

"I understand."

"I understand. You still believe 'that rumor'..."

It said this with certainty for the first time.

"Oh?" Victor glanced at him casually.

But the devil's four eyes were still fixed on him.

"Yes... I remember..."

"Legend has it that there is an alchemy in the human world that can bring the souls of all living beings to their most perfect state, allowing them to transcend the ordinary world," the devil said coldly. "Ah, yes, even in the lands of King Solomon, I have indeed heard of it."

"I remember that one of the essential steps to completing alchemy is to gather the three elements that symbolize the complete 'cycle'... past, present, and future."

"This ghost sounds just like the 'past,' my friend."

The devil's voice was full of malice, and at this moment, it finally behaved like a real devil, hovering condescendingly in the air above the office.

It said ominously:

"After so many mermaids, wizards, and giants died pursuing it, do you want to be one of them?"