HP: Azkaban's Outstanding Graduate

Chapter 408 The Past of Loctis

Sagres wandered aimlessly through the narrow streets of Brudel village, surveying the town that would later become nothing but ruins.

A biting wind, carrying fine snowflakes, swirled among the low eaves.

As he walked, he used his Mind Control technique to lightly scan the surface consciousness of those who were in a hurry or had ulterior motives, casually gathering fragmented information.

During this period, he not only figured out the camp layout of several church witch-hunting teams, but also identified several black wizard forces entrenched in the area.

Moreover, in the process, he also witnessed just how diverse and chaotic this border region was:

In a corner of the village square, an old witch, her body wrapped in dirty bandages, openly hawked her wares, relentlessly selling cursed artifacts woven from infants' finger bones to passersby.

Her two cloudy eyes were filled with greed and evil; she was clearly not a proper witch.

There was also a gloomy man who always hid in the dark corners of the hotel, exuding a faint stench of decay.

He was always accompanied by one or two "attendants" with blank stares and slightly stiff movements; Sagres could sense that they were lifeless.

This is clearly not a proper wizard.

He also caught a glimpse of a burly wizard, as big as a bear, in the woods. The wizard was roughly sewing the limbs of some magical creature onto the body of a giant wolf. The remains and bloodstains of the failed experiment were carelessly discarded on the snow, attracting a flock of crows to peck at them.

It's hard to tell if this person is a legitimate wizard, but they probably aren't.

There is also a wizard who looks very "normal," dressed in a respectable robe, but always tries to extract the secrets of ancient spells or magical relics from drunken female travelers in the tavern using love potions and confusion spells.

Such people also exist in the Muggle world; what they have in common is that neither of them is serious.

These diverse wizards were quite interesting, showing Sargeras a side of him that he had never seen before in his later years.

On a snowy afternoon, he was wandering aimlessly through the streets when a unique and discordant creaking sound caught his attention.

The voice was decaying and cold, carrying the twisted vitality unique to some evil alchemy, originating from a wooden house on the edge of the village that looked like it was about to collapse.

Sagres approached silently, and through a crack in the wooden wall, he saw what was inside—a tall, thin wizard wearing a stained robe was working with his back to him at a makeshift alchemy table made of broken wooden boxes and stones.

When the wizard turned to the side occasionally, Sagres saw his profile clearly, and even with his vast experience, he couldn't help but furrow his brow slightly.

The other person's appearance was simply terrifying.

The left side of his face still retained a roughly human shape, but his skin was so pale it was bloodless.

The right half of his face, from his cheekbone to his jaw, was completely replaced by a dull, unpolished metal. Fine, constantly flowing runes were etched on the surface of the metal, pulsating with an ominous glow with his breath.

His right eye was a complex, multifaceted crystal lens containing a liquid that emitted a pale green light and flowed slowly as if it were alive.

When he opened his mouth and bit down on a tool, you could see that his original teeth had been replaced by two rows of small, sharp, serrated fangs.

Most disturbingly, through the gaps in his hair, which was completely stuck together with sticky grease, one could vaguely see that parts of his skull had been replaced by a transparent material similar to reinforced glass.

Deeper still, on the surface of his exposed brain tissue gray matter, several extremely fine glass capillaries were clearly embedded, filled with fluorescent liquids of different colors, giving the impression of some kind of evil circuit board.

This is a wizard who used extreme alchemy to experiment on his own body, undergoing numerous inhuman modifications.

"That's really... insane," Sagrais muttered to himself.

In the following Legilimency attempts, Sargeras gradually pieced together a rather interesting fact—this wizard obsessed with alchemical transformations was none other than Lochtis, a member of the Wither School.

The other party's main research areas are alchemical poisons and modification magic, and in addition, he is also a raven Animagus.

But in Sagres's eyes, the other party's body, now covered with metal, glass, and magical implants, had become a solid cage.

His ability to transform his body still exists, but it's like a locked program, firmly blocked by the "parts" he forcibly implanted into his body.

If human transformation is forcibly performed, the result will likely not be an elegant transformation into a raven, but a bloody disaster—the forcibly implanted foreign objects will be cruelly expelled from the body during the transformation, or worse, they will be directly mixed with the twisted flesh and bones, causing unpredictable deformities.

“How interesting…” Sagres murmured to himself.

He himself did not spend any effort learning Animagus Transfiguration, not because of its difficulty, but because he felt that the practicality of this magic was limited for the path of magic he was pursuing.

Although he had never studied it, he had a deep understanding of this ancient self-magic and was well aware of its principles and risks.

Loctis's condition also gave him a more concrete understanding of the situation of the Animagus in this era.

At this time, the Animagus Transfiguration technique was far more widespread than in his later era.

Perhaps because the magic system is still in a period of vigorous exploration, or perhaps because the turbulent environment makes having more forms an advantage for survival or concealment, the number of wizards who have mastered this technique is obviously quite large.

However, widespread adoption is often accompanied by overuse and loss of control.

Sagrais knew that far too many wizards had paid a heavy price when they tried to cross this dangerous threshold.

Some people, due to the slightest mistake, fail to fully transform and are forever trapped in the pitiful state between human and beast forms, becoming monsters rejected by both sides.

Some people, after successfully transforming into animals, become addicted to the pure senses and unrestrained instincts of wild beasts, their humanity gradually being eroded by their bestial nature, and ultimately assimilated.

They began to resist transforming back into complex, responsible, and troubled human forms.

One day, two days... As time went by, the memories and will belonging to "human beings" were washed away and diluted by the instinctive tide, like sandcastles.

Ultimately, they completely forgot how to return, and lost the desire to return.

Their magical bloodline may still be there, but their core has become that of true beasts, living out the rest of their lives in forests, skies, or swamps, following the most primal laws of nature.

Sagles's gaze fell once more on Loktis's dilapidated wooden hut, and a hypothesis formed in his mind.

Perhaps, Loctis in the future will be just such a lost soul.

He transformed into a raven, soaring through the sky for a long time, captivated by that freedom, to the point that he developed an insurmountable alienation and resistance towards human form.

He may have already been aware of this at this point, but he knew it was wrong, yet he couldn't help himself.

Therefore, his extreme alchemical modifications, besides the pursuit of power, may also have concealed a desperate attempt—to forcibly restrain the bestial nature that wanted to break free of its cage using cold metal and glowing conduits.

He wanted to use alchemical creations to replace his flesh and blood body, a form of almost self-punishment, to cut off the possibility of falling back into the raven form and forcibly anchor himself to the human form.

Even though this form is now somewhat fragmented...

Of course, this is just a guess, but Sagles thinks the possibility is not low.

Chapter 409 Return

Sagres has been a bit bored lately.

The observations and spying over the past few days were like forcibly pressing him in front of a dirty mirror, reflecting only the most corrupt and unbearable aspects of human nature.

The greed and malice of the curse dealers, the trampling of life by the undead servants, the madness and cruelty of the flesh-stitchers, the despicable hypocrisy of the wizard thieves...

And then there are the ordinary souls who struggle and twist between church fanaticism and the greed of dark wizards.

Through mind control, he touched upon too much tainted consciousness and sensed too much meaningless malice and chaos.

He felt somewhat bored.

It's not so much a moral judgment, but more like an aesthetic fatigue.

While these darknesses are certainly “real” and “bizarre” enough, they also seem so… monotonous.

They lack originality, consisting only of endless repetition and base desires.

Sagres is like a traveler who has been wading through the mud for a long time, beginning to yearn for clear air and clean scenery.

He wanted to go back.

Durmstrang's crisis?

He won't care.

That ancient castle has its own foundation for standing firm.

It has undergone even more severe tests; its walls are imbued with the magic of generations of wizards, and that barrier is by no means easily destroyed.

The professors and principals within the school, as well as the wizards who inherited the essence of Northern magic, were not mediocre at all.

They may be planning a counterattack, waiting for an opportunity, or they may have some hidden cards up their sleeve.

Forcibly intervening and playing the role of a "savior" who has fallen from the sky is not only reckless, but may also disrupt their own rhythm and even trigger more unpredictable chain reactions in the future.

As for sweeping away the rabble outside the city with swift and decisive action—whether it be the church's witch-hunting teams or the entrenched black wizards—it was indeed not a difficult task for him.

A powerful, all-encompassing spell might be able to temporarily "clean up" this area.

But then what?

That would be like throwing a boulder into a calm lake; the ripples it creates would far exceed the event itself.

The sudden appearance and disappearance of a wizard whose identity is unknown but whose power far exceeds common sense is enough to shake the church's higher-ups and attract more witch-hunting teams to this place.

This will also make the dark wizards in the shadows more vigilant, and may even prompt them to temporarily unite, or attract more hyenas to come and investigate.

This is tantamount to tying another knot in an already tangled ball of yarn; the traces of intervention left behind are too obvious and crude, running counter to the principle of avoiding impact on the future.

“It’s time to leave,” Sagres said to himself.

There was only a group of souls wallowing in the mud here, nothing worth lingering over.

He raised his left hand, and the rune formed by the ouroboros embracing the Möbius strip quietly appeared on the back of his hand, flowing with a tranquil and profound light.

He no longer looked at the forest shrouded in wind, snow, and malice, nor did he pay any attention to the petty squabbles in the village.

With a thought, magic surged in, the runes suddenly became brighter, the surrounding air began to hum, and space rippled and twisted around him like water.

The next moment, Sagres's figure vanished completely from this cold northern land, leaving no trace, as if he had never existed.

……

……

Hogwarts Castle has welcomed a new school year, but the atmosphere in the air this year is quite different from previous years.

All the students, including the professors, felt as if they had stepped into a campus bound by invisible shackles.

What should have been a spectacular competition at the end of last semester turned into a farce that started strong but ended weakly.

All of this is "thanks" to Dolores Jane Umbridge, the Ministry of Magic's newly appointed senior investigator, security supervisor, and professor of advanced spells theory and practice at Hogwarts.

Starting with the second event of the competition, Ms. Umbridge issued a series of absurd decrees in the name of "security".

She claimed she wanted to "ensure the safety of every young warrior," and thus she established extremely strict rules for the participants:

She restricted the types of magic the contestants could use and even required that all competition segments be designed only after undergoing her own "risk assessment."