After hearing Helga's words, Rhys and Rowena both fell silent and hurried deeper into the dungeons.
However, the two of them, who were walking slightly behind Helga, both wore faint smiles.
Everything happening now was within their expectations.
Even if Loki had failed to break the seal, they would have helped him open it.
Because by now, both of them had realised that perhaps they should never have drawn such a clear boundary between the living and the dead in the first place.
When gods and monsters both vanished from the world, the existence of wizards and magic itself became an inconvenience.
Sometimes Rhys could not help wondering whether the Muggles would still have launched witch hunts if the Norse gods had continued looming over their skies like dark clouds.
Rhys did not know the answer.
But he believed that the reason any group was accepted was because they were needed.
Magic was no longer needed, so wizards had been forced into hiding, unable to show their true faces.
Now, he intended to make people need magic again.
To make magic necessary once more and bring about the return of the age of wizards.
Rhys felt that this was his destiny in this life.
'Thank you, Loki,' Rhys thought silently. 'But since you've already completed your mission, please leave my good friend's body behind.'
There was no chance he would allow Loki to escape.
That body alone was reason enough for Rhys to stop him with everything he had.
The three rushed into the dungeons and reached the deepest section in an extremely short time.
There, they encountered Loki, who had just finished destroying the seal.
The instant Loki saw Rhys, he was completely dumbfounded.
He froze in place, unable to speak.
"Surprised?" Rhys raised a hand and greeted him. "Mister who has a perfectly good name of his own but still prefers impersonating other people."
"Slytherin, you...?"
"Unexpected, isn't it?"
Rhys raised his hand and casually launched an attack at Loki, which Loki easily neutralised.
"Didn't I kill you with my own hands?!"
"You did kill me. But then I came back to life."
Loki: "???"
"No, this... huh?"
The God of Mischief could no longer form a coherent sentence.
He could not understand how someone could actually return after death.
Even the gods of old had been incapable of such a thing.
Could Salazar possess some secret that even he did not know about?
"Stop wasting words on him."
Helga's voice turned harsh.
"Loki, do you even understand the magnitude of the crime you've committed?! You destroyed the boundary between life and death. Once the evil spirits of the Underworld escape control, do you have any idea what kind of chaos they'll cause? For a crime this grave, death is too good for you! Killing you a thousand or ten thousand times wouldn't be enough to extinguish my hatred!"
Back then, the separation of life and death had been carried out by the four of them together, largely at the urging of Helga and Godric.
Now that she saw all their effort ruined, and considered the severe consequences that would follow, Helga was genuinely furious.
Rhys and Rowena exchanged a glance but said nothing.
They merely gathered their strength in secret, ready to act together with Helga the moment she made her move and take Loki down.
"Hufflepuff, there's no need to get so worked up. This is actually beneficial for everyone..."
Seeing that the wizards had the advantage in numbers, Loki began considering the possibility of striking a private deal with them.
With the eloquence of the God of Lies and Trickery, he was certain he could turn the situation around.
At worst, he could simply offer them the divine titles of God of Water, God of Wind, and Mother Earth.
Unfortunately for Loki, the one speaking for the three of them right now was Hufflepuff.
Before he could even finish, Helga could no longer suppress her urge to attack.
She raised one hand.
The earthen walls around them immediately pressed inward toward Loki, as though intending to crush and bury him beneath the soil.
Loki reacted extremely quickly. Flames immediately erupted around him, and he fled deeper into the dungeon.
Rhys and Rowena's attacks followed close behind. One extinguished the raging flames with water, while the other used opposing winds to slow his escape, leaving wound after wound across his body in the process.
"Be careful. Don't destroy the body," Rhys couldn't help reminding her when he saw that Rowena seemed intent on chopping Loki into minced meat.
"Salazar, you can't afford to hold back like that. Don't worry. Even if he gets turned into a pile of mush, I can restore him to his original state!" Rowena said confidently.
Helga said nothing and simply continued attacking.
With Loki's strength, facing any one of the three would already have been extremely dangerous, let alone being besieged by all three at once.
Before long, he was driven into a desperate situation, his body covered in wounds of all sizes.
In desperation, he pulled a skull from his robes and threw it forward.
The skull floated in midair, opened its mouth, and spewed out a large amount of water vapor.
Rhys almost laughed.
"You're using this against me? Are you serious?"
Rhys snapped his fingers.
The skull immediately began trembling, showing faint signs of breaking free from Loki's control.
The water vapor pouring from its mouth was swallowed up by Rhys's domain instead, becoming nourishment for him.
This skull might have caused Rowena and Helga some trouble, but using it in front of Rhys was practically delivering food straight to him.
Loki must truly have lost his head to try something like this.
Boom!
In the end, after Rhys instantly neutralized the skull's technique, Loki let his guard slip for a moment and was struck head-on by one of Rowena's wind blades.
His body was sliced cleanly in half.
The next instant, earthen spikes pierced through one half of his body completely, while the other half was wrapped inside a mass of clear water.
As for Loki's domain, it had long since been devoured by the domains of Rhys and the others.
Only his tremendous vitality was keeping him alive now.
"Don't kill him."
Just as Helga was preparing to deliver the final blow and extinguish the remaining life within Loki's body, Rhys stopped her.
"Why?"
Even though Helga was still filled with anger, she immediately halted her attack.
That was the trust built up over many years of friendship.
When Loki saw that Hufflepuff's attack had been stopped by Slytherin, a trace of despair immediately flashed in his eyes.
He had realized there was no hope of escaping, so he had chosen to let the three of them kill him.
But it seemed Slytherin had seen through his plan.
In fact, Slytherin was not the only one who had figured it out.
Rowena also gave Loki a thoughtful look.
Even with the three of them holding an overwhelming advantage, they had defeated him far too quickly.
Combined with the fact that the boundary between the Underworld and the living world had been broken, Rowena formed a bold guess.
"If we kill him now, I'm afraid we'd only be giving him exactly what he wants."
Rhys gave Loki a faint, knowing smile.
"Let's work together and seal him instead."
Helga looked at the expressions on her two old friends' faces and thought seriously for a moment.
Then realization dawned on her.
Times had changed.
They could no longer handle things the same way they had in the past.
When Loki realized that his plan had been exposed, his expression changed dramatically.
____
12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI