Slughorn's research had succeeded!
The moment Dawn received the news, he hurried to the stone house.
As soon as he pushed open the door, he saw Slughorn looking utterly exhausted, no longer possessing his usual refined appearance.
He had even begun to resemble Snape somewhat.
"This is it!"
The Potions Master was still in good spirits. He pointed at a bottle of gray-black potion on the table, his voice hoarse yet carrying a trace of pride.
"I added Mandrake and Billywig eggs, both of which can stimulate the mind, to the ingredients of the Draught of Living Death.
Then I altered the brewing process and finally created a potion that meets your requirements!"
"Well done!"
Dawn's spirits lifted, and he did not hesitate to praise him.
His expression softened.
The more he dealt with the Potions Master, the more he felt that Slughorn really was a precious treasure.
The man had helped him tremendously several times.
Unable to wait any longer, Dawn picked up the crystal bottle and shook the slightly viscous liquid inside.
To make absolutely certain, he asked again, "After drinking this, I'll be able to dream while remaining conscious, correct?"
"Er..."
Slughorn stammered. "M-More or less."
"More or less?"
Dawn was not satisfied with that answer. He frowned and set the potion down, a bad feeling rising in his heart.
"Then what exactly are you saying?"
"What is the actual effect of this potion?"
"Ahem. It's like this."
The Potions Master coughed awkwardly and cautiously glanced up at Dawn. He pinched two fingers together as though trying to defend himself.
"Mr. Ri... Richter! The time was simply too short!
I genuinely had no idea how to create a potion that would let someone sleep and remain awake at the same time.
So, in order not to delay your affairs, I took a slightly roundabout approach."
He explained quietly, "After drinking this potion, you will enter a state where sleep and wakefulness alternate rapidly."
"Each interval is less than half a second. I've already tested it myself. In theory, that should also count as being asleep while remaining awake..."
Right?
Slughorn grew less and less confident as he spoke.
Dawn's face twitched violently.
He needed to enter his dreams and investigate information from the past. If he was constantly falling asleep and waking up, would the dream even be able to continue?
"Slughorn, you really are..."
Dawn raised an eyelid. He had initially wanted to call him useless or incompetent, but after thinking about it, he forced the words back down.
Forget it. What good would saying those things do now?
Besides, the man had clearly done his best. At the very least, he had produced an attempt at a solution.
"Fine. We'll leave it at that for now."
Dawn sighed and tucked the potion into his robes.
"Keep researching from now on. I'll come back for it after some time. If you give me another defective product like this..."
He let out a cold snort.
Dawn did not bother looking at Slughorn's miserable expression. He conjured a flame and disappeared without a trace.
But after leaving the stone house, he did not go to Hogwarts Castle. Instead, he returned directly to the Vatican.
Tomorrow night would be the next time he could see the images within his dreams. He had no interest in searching through books for the remaining day.
Pop!
A rush of air rolled through the room.
Dawn reappeared inside the secret hut.
He did not do anything else. He immediately took out the crystal bottle, intending to test the potion's effects first.
But before drinking it...
He suddenly stopped.
After thinking for a moment, he took out a rope and firmly tied the Invisibility Cloak to himself, reinforcing it with magic.
That was to prevent Merlin from taking it away if he appeared during the process.
Actually...
Dawn could have waited.
He could have waited until the potion was properly perfected or until he found another solution before entering the dream to search for information.
But he had an inexplicable sense of urgency, as though time were running out and something was constantly urging him to prepare himself before certain things happened.
Coming back to himself, Dawn drew a slow breath.
Pop.
He pulled out the stopper.
Tilting his head back, he raised the crystal bottle and poured a tiny amount of the gray-black liquid down his throat.
Then, instantly...
His eyes widened.
It was spicy!
Extremely spicy!
An indescribably fierce burning sensation shot straight toward his brain.
Caught completely off guard, Dawn immediately began coughing violently, opening his mouth and hissing several times.
"Ha, ha... Damn it! What the hell is this flavor? Slughorn... just you wait!"
Dawn's face twisted into a grimace.
He decided that the Potions Master had deliberately messed with him and mentally added another offense to Slughorn's growing list.
But soon, Dawn no longer had the energy to think about that.
As the spicy sensation spread through his stomach, an overwhelming wave of sleepiness surged into his mind. Before he could resist, he instantly lost consciousness.
Yet his eyes had not even closed when another sensation, cool as mint, suddenly replaced it and jolted him awake.
The cycle continued.
In just ten minutes, he fell asleep and woke up nearly a hundred times, suffering through the process until he was utterly miserable.
But...
A delighted expression appeared on his face.
"The key to the Levitation Charm lies in the pauses in pronunciation. The stress falls on 'gar' and 'oh.' When moving the wand, the motion must emphasize gentleness and lightness."
He heard it!
Without completely losing consciousness, Dawn had heard those vague, hazy words!
He clenched his fist and swung it excitedly.
He still did not know what would happen once he could actually see the dream images, but this was undoubtedly a promising sign.
Soon.
Half an hour passed.
The effect of that tiny amount of potion disappeared, and both the drowsiness and wakefulness faded away.
Dawn checked himself and found that aside from being slightly mentally fatigued, there was nothing wrong with him. He was even more satisfied.
He stood up and wandered restlessly around the hut.
He had no desire to do anything else, so without removing the ropes around his body, he simply prepared to remain like this until tomorrow night.
The sun and moon continued their cycle.
Day gave way to night.
Then night returned to day.
In Dawn's anxious anticipation, the time finally reached sunset the following day.
That evening, he very seriously ate a sumptuous dinner using the Golden Cup. He then brought Slughorn over, knocked him unconscious, and tossed him to the side.
The Potions Master was the Secret-Keeper of the Fidelius Charm protecting the secret hut, so his involvement was directly connected to the hut's security.
Although the Unbreakable Vow prevented him from revealing the secret, when dealing with Merlin, Dawn thought it was better to be cautious.
In fact, just to be safe...
Dawn Apparated several times in succession and had Slughorn cast the Fidelius Charm on another house.
By the time everything was finished, Slughorn was no longer in the Vatican.
Once all of this was done, Dawn took a deep breath. He looked around at the empty surroundings.
Then, without hesitation, he took out the potion and drank it in one gulp.
The spicy sensation surged through him once again.
Sleep and wakefulness intertwined.
The darkness of the dream and the bright candlelight of the hut alternated before his eyes, visually resembling a television with a faulty connection that kept flickering between channels.
It was uncomfortable.
But Dawn could endure it.
He concentrated and desperately tried to distinguish that faint patch of white light amid the alternating darkness.
His spirits immediately lifted.
He gathered his consciousness toward it.
In an instant, five or six different colors appeared within his field of vision.
He could see the images!
The weight in Dawn's heart finally disappeared.
But before he could relax for long, his brows slowly furrowed.
He could not see clearly.
The vision before his eyes resembled a television frantically switching channels.
The colors from two separate scenes overlapped and intertwined, making it impossible to distinguish what was actually happening.
Dawn clicked his tongue softly.
But he did not panic.
He quickly thought of a solution.
In the real world, he used Transfiguration to create a completely black board and stared intently at it.
With one scene removed from the equation, the image within his dream finally became clear.
Endless yellow sand.
Broken stone carvings.
Pyramids faintly visible in the distance.
There was no doubt.
This was Egypt.
Dawn's spirits rose. He felt that he had finally caught a lucky break and hurriedly turned his head to search for Lai.
Then...
He saw several arms protruding halfway from the sand, desperately searching for something to push against as their owners struggled to crawl free.
"Ptui... ptui, ptui!"
Suddenly, a head emerged from the sand.
Golden hair.
Thin eyebrows.
The person spat sand from his mouth several times and braced himself against the ground, trying to pull himself free.
It was Harris Carter!
Dawn raised an eyebrow.
But his heart did not stir much. It was unexpected, yet perfectly reasonable.
After all, he had long suspected that Harris was connected to his former self. Running into him here in Egypt was hardly surprising.
Rustle...
The quicksand shifted.
Harris finally managed to crawl out.
One after another, he pulled out the woman wearing a golden ring, the dark-skinned Amir, and the red-eyed boy.
The four of them collapsed onto the sand, gasping for breath.
The familiar four-person group.
Dawn quietly observed them from the side, analyzing their expressions and movements as pieces of information flashed rapidly through his mind.
Judging from the surroundings, they were still within the area of Tutankhamun's tomb. That was consistent with what Dawn remembered.
Moreover, Lai had clearly already completed the expedition.
Unfortunately, Dawn would not be able to see what had happened to him inside the tomb.
Harris, meanwhile, had somehow escaped from the tomb this time instead of dying inside it. That was somewhat surprising.
Dawn also wondered whether they had managed to find the scarab.
"Hey! Stop spacing out! Let's divide the treasure!"
Amir's shout from the sand pulled Dawn's attention back.
The wizard, who had apparently graduated only to become unemployed, took out the gemstones and poured them onto the sand.
He carefully divided them into four piles, placing one gemstone here and another there.
After Harris and the woman made it clear that they did not want any, the four piles became two, and Amir and Lai began dividing the spoils between themselves.
This time, the process went exceptionally smoothly.
There was no ambush or robbery from anyone following them, and Amir did not even trigger the blood curse.
The blood curse was a type of curse connected to the collective consciousness. Perhaps Lai and Merlin had done something that had caused this difference.
Dawn came to that conclusion and did not pay much attention to it.
Even Harris, whom he had once been very interested in, received only a few glances.
The rest of his attention remained fixed on Lai.
He silently watched as the four of them spoke for a while before saying their farewells and going their separate ways, each heading in a different direction.
Dawn's perspective followed his former self.
After walking for some distance, Lai arrived at a hotel in Luxor.
Bang!
The door closed.
Lai's expression changed instantly.
The reluctance and emotion he had displayed during the farewell disappeared completely, replaced by a solemn expression.
Without even taking the time to catch his breath, he immediately began setting up defensive magic.
Then, carefully, he took a somewhat battered sheet of papyrus from inside his robes and slowly spread it across the table.
He stared at it intently for a long time.
Only then did Lai finally let out a breath and ask with a frown, "Grand Sorcerer... are you really certain this piece of junk is still useful? The way I see it, it's barely fit to wipe my ass with."
"Do not underestimate it, Lai."
Merlin's voice once again came from somewhere unseen.
But this time, it sounded exceptionally weary.
"Papyrus was used by the pharaohs of ancient Egypt to record their experiences, commands, and will. To a certain extent, it was a symbol of the pharaohs themselves."
"I used a certain method to strengthen that conceptual connection and manifest all of it upon this sheet of paper."
"Therefore, anything you write on this papyrus can be regarded as the will of the pharaohs.
It can draw upon the emotions and consciousness they accumulated and transform them into magic that brings those things into reality."
The Grand Sorcerer's tone was calm.
But Dawn's face was already twitching uncontrollably.
He stared at the battered sheet of papyrus in shock and disbelief.
Seriously?
It was that powerful?
He understood what Merlin meant.
To put it another way, papyrus was widely recognized within the collective consciousness as something closely associated with the pharaohs.
Merlin had therefore used some method to strengthen that perception, deeply binding the collective consciousness accumulated by the pharaohs to this particular kind of paper and concretely manifesting that connection upon the sheet in front of them.
As long as someone wrote a request on it, they could draw upon the collective consciousness accumulated by the pharaohs and make the request a reality.
It was astonishing.
But...
How exactly had Merlin managed to accomplish something like this?
Dawn was desperate to know. His curiosity practically clawed at him.
For the first time, he genuinely admitted that this legendary wizard really did have something extraordinary about him.
Lai, meanwhile, raised an eyebrow, looking equally astonished.
"You mean... a universal wish-granting book?"
Merlin denied it.
"Not quite. If you write something too outrageous, or something beyond its capabilities, there is still no hope of making it happen. But for our purposes, it is already more than sufficient."
The Grand Sorcerer paused.
"Lai, find a quill and write the first command on the papyrus."
"Connect the fates of Merlin Ambrosius and the individual who was once called Lai Ryan so deeply that they become inseparable."
Hearing this, Lai remained silent for a moment.
He picked up a quill from the table, but did not immediately begin writing.
"Connect our fates deeply... After I write that, will it allow me to escape the trouble of constantly losing my memories?"
"Probably not."
Merlin answered calmly and honestly.
Lai frowned, clearly dissatisfied with that answer, but he did not immediately voice his objections.
He merely lowered his eyes slightly, waiting to hear what Merlin had to say.
"Lai, in my view, the rejection of fate cannot be avoided, nor should it be avoided.
Only after experiencing this ordeal will you truly be accepted by the world.
So I believe the key issue has never been how to stop it. The real question is what we do afterward to make you appear again."
The Grand Sorcerer's voice remained calm.
Lai neither agreed nor disagreed.
He simply asked, "Then what is the method? What method do you believe can make me appear again?"
"Me."
Merlin did not conceal how he stood to benefit.
"You and I are both rejected by fate.
If we connect our fates to one another, then as long as I can escape this predicament, I will be able to bring you back into existence as well.
Moreover, because of what happened previously, by then you will already have been accepted by the world again.
Carrying this out will therefore be much easier, and there will be no lingering consequences."
Merlin explained his idea.
Lai rubbed his chin, neither accepting nor rejecting it.
"How will you escape it?"
"Follow the course of destiny and help Potter destroy the Horcruxes."
Merlin's answer came smoothly.
But Lai's brows drew together more tightly.
"That sounds simple enough. But don't you think your explanation contradicts itself?"
He raised his head, his gaze dark and sharp.
"You need my help to follow destiny, because aside from me, you have no interaction with reality whatsoever.
And given my current condition, something could happen to me at any time.
When that happens, whether I can see you or remember you will both become uncertain.
Unless I help you destroy all the Horcruxes before I am completely rejected by fate.
But you yourself said that, in order to be accepted by the world, I should experience this ordeal at least once."
Lai narrowed his eyes, his voice low and faintly ominous.
"So, legendary Grand Sorcerer, can you give me a more detailed explanation?"
Merlin was not troubled by the question.
His voice remained calm and relaxed.
"Lai, in truth, none of this is as difficult as you imagine."
"After observing you for these past few days, I can basically conclude that the way your rejection by fate manifests itself should be through the loss of your memories and your transformation into an entirely new individual.
But from a certain perspective, this is not necessarily a bad thing.
At the very least, it is much better than completely losing all interaction with the world.
After all, that new individual would still, in a sense, be you.
So all you need to do is add a second command to the papyrus.
Connect the individual who was once called Lai Ryan with Voldemort's fate, and make the two of them enemies.
That way, even if you become another person, various coincidences and circumstances will most likely push you onto the path of destroying his Horcruxes.
And because the first command already exists, his destruction of the Horcruxes will be equivalent to my destruction of the Horcruxes.
By following destiny, I will therefore be able to appear again."
The Grand Sorcerer spoke softly, revealing his thoughts and plans without reservation.
He sounded sincere and completely open.
Lai remained silent for a very long time.
In the end, perhaps Merlin had convinced him, or perhaps he simply had no other option.
He picked up the quill and carefully wrote the two commands onto the battered sheet of papyrus.
Afterward...
Looking at the two lines of tiny writing that occupied very little space, Lai pointed toward the remaining blank area.
"What should I write on the rest of the papyrus?"
"Two commands are enough."
Merlin replied, "The more things you write, the more scattered the accumulated emotions will become, and the greater the possibility that something will go wrong when they are manifested."
Lai did not put down the quill.
Instead, he tapped his fingers lightly against the table and asked tentatively, "Is the chance of something going wrong really that high if I continue writing?"
"Hard to say."
Merlin's voice disappeared for a moment, as though he too were thinking it over.
"However, in my opinion, if what you write is not too outrageous, adding one or two more commands should not cause much trouble."
Merlin sounded somewhat curious.
"What do you want to write?"
Lai said nothing.
He simply lowered the quill and wrote:
"If, after Lai Ryan disappears, a new consciousness emerges within this body, then that person must possess a cold, arrogant, and absolutely self-centered personality."
Only then did Lai set down the quill.
He blew gently on the ink to dry it before grinning as he explained, "Ambrosius, you are powerful. There is no doubt about that. But this world has never lacked powerful wizards."
"If you can think of a way to solve my predicament, then perhaps there are others who could see through everything and interfere with the plan you've prepared."
Lai suddenly smiled, narrowing his eyes.
His red pupils were filled with determination and ruthless resolve.
"So I want to give my other self coldness, arrogance, and an absolute sense of self.
I want him to have terrible relationships with other people, and I want to make certain that he never encounters a powerful wizard who would genuinely help him."
His words were utterly ruthless.
Even Merlin seemed to pause.
"Lai, you are very calm. Much calmer than I expected. I originally thought you would show some tenderness toward your other self."
"Tenderness? Hah."
Lai let out a cold laugh.
"Only consciousness, thought, and memory determine the most fundamental nature of a person."
The boy's expression was indifferent.
"So if all of those things are completely lost, then the self that is born afterward is, at best, nothing more than a thief occupying someone else's body."
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