Chapter 81 Extraction of the Core Spider Silk
Cassius walked inward, stepping over rubble and the skeletal remains of unbroken spider silk.
Debris fell from the ceiling from time to time.
He maintained a thin layer of magic above his shoulders, deflecting the falling debris.
The interior of the nest was larger than it appeared from the outside.
Beneath the vaulted structure, cellars had been dug, layer upon layer, like an underground beehive.
Passages wrapped in spider silk extended in various directions; some were wide enough for two oxen to walk side-by-side, while others were so narrow that one could only pass through sideways.
The walls on both sides of the passages were hung with a large number of cocoons.
Most were food cocoons used for storing prey—inside were animal remains captured at unknown times.
Some had already dried out.
Some were still emitting an unpleasant odor.
Cassius had no interest in examining this inventory.
He was looking for a specific type of cocoon.
The deeper he went, the narrower the passages became, and the quality of the spider silk also changed.
The silk on the periphery was coarse, whitish in color, highly viscous, but only moderately tough.
The closer to the core area, the finer the silk became, with the color gradually transitioning from white to silver-gray, feeling smoother and having a tighter structure.
This made sense.
The silk glands of an Acromantula degenerate as it ages.
The silk secreted when young is abundant but of average quality, while the silk secreted when old is produced in sharply reduced quantities but is of extremely high quality.
The core silk cocoon that Aragog wove decades ago—when his physical strength and silk gland function were at their peak—must be stored in the deepest, safest part of the nest.
In the deepest corner of the ruins, he found his target.
A cocoon.
It was completely different from the messy white webs outside.
This cocoon displayed a strange silver-gray color, its surface smooth and dense, glowing with a subdued metallic luster under the magical shimmer emitted from Cassius's palm.
It was about 1.2 meters in diameter.
Its shape was so regular that it didn't look like a biological product—it looked more like something a perfectionist craftsman had spent three months meticulously polishing.
It was extremely old.
Judging by the oxidation of the silk and the mineral deposits formed on the surface, this cocoon was at least forty years old.
It was very likely one of the earliest works woven by Aragog—the core nest cocoon used to hatch his first generation of offspring.
This meant that the silk inside was of the highest quality.
The older it was, the more tightly packed the protein molecular chains of the spider silk would be.
The hydrogen bonds and van der Waals forces between molecules would slowly strengthen over time, significantly enhancing the toughness and heat resistance of the fibers. It was the natural aging-strengthening effect of biological materials.
It was the same principle as aged wine. The longer it was stored, the more valuable it became.
Cassius crouched down.
He hadn't brought any collection tools. He hadn't intended to bring any before setting out.
He didn't need them.
He switched the magical output mode of his hands from "Pulse Strike" to "Fine Manipulation."
These were two completely different operating logics. The strike mode pursued power and speed, while the fine mode pursued precision and resolution.
A thread of extremely fine magical energy extended from the tip of each of his ten fingers.
Each thread was less than one-tenth the diameter of a human hair.
The blue shimmer outlined ten almost invisible, slender traces in the darkness.
It looked like a pair of hands with blue light claws spread open.
He pierced the surface of the cocoon with the magical threads.
His movements were extremely light and steady. The contact surface was controlled at the micrometer level.
It was completely different from the violent style he had used to slaughter his way in earlier.
It was like a demolition worker who had been smashing walls with a sledgehammer suddenly switching to a scalpel to perform microsurgery.
The switch was so natural that one would doubt whether these two operations were truly performed by the same pair of hands.
The answer was—they were indeed the same pair of hands. It was just that the precision adjustment range of these hands was wider than most people could conceive.
The fiber structure of the cocoon was more complex than he had expected. Layer wrapped inside layer.
The orientation of each layer was different.
The outer layer was horizontal, the inner layer was vertical, and the middle layer was at a forty-five-degree angle.
Further inside, there was another reinforcing layer wrapped in a circular pattern.
It was a standard cross-weave structure. And it was a five-layer cross-weave.
This was exactly what he needed.
A cross-weave meant multi-directional mechanical load-bearing capacity.
After being made into inner armor, no matter from which angle magic impacted the fibers, the pressure could be evenly dispersed by the filaments in different layers, preventing breakage caused by single-directional overload.
Cassius used the magical threads to dissect the outer shell of the cocoon layer by layer.
He peeled away the impurity layers.
He removed the aged and brittle surface layer and kept the densest working layer in the middle.
The process was like peeling a particularly complex onion.
With every layer he peeled, he had to be careful to avoid damaging the effective fibers of the inner layers.
A little more force would snap the fibers.
A little less force would fail to peel away the adhesive proteins between the layers.
Fifteen minutes.
On the rubble-strewn ground in front of him, a large roll of silver-gray spider silk was laid out neatly.
The surface was smooth, and the edges were clean. The amount was enough to make two sets of fitted short-sleeved shirts and a pair of trousers.
Cassius picked up a small piece and pulled it between two fingers.
The toughness was excellent.
The elastic modulus was far higher than any fabric he had used before.
His right thumb released a high-temperature magical point, with a temperature roughly equivalent to the inner flame of a blacksmith's furnace.
The spider silk turned red.
But it did not break. It did not carbonize. It did not even deform.
He increased the temperature by another twenty percent.
The spider silk remained intact.
There was a slight color change on the surface, but the fiber structure was complete, and the elasticity was unaffected.
He increased it by another twenty percent.
This temperature was already sufficient to soften ordinary steel.
The edges curled slightly. But it still didn't break.
The material was qualified.
It even exceeded the expected values of his mathematical model.
The heat resistance limit of this batch of spider silk was at least fifteen to twenty percent higher than he had calculated.
Although that old spider Aragog had done plenty of bad things in his life, one had to admit—the silk he produced in his youth was truly good stuff.
Cassius gathered up the roll of spider silk and stuffed it into the leather pouch at his waist, which had an Undetectable Extension Charm applied to it. From the outside, the pouch looked only the size of a palm.
The space inside had been expanded by him to the volume of a small wardrobe.
He stood up and brushed the dust off his knees.
He checked his hands—there was a slight burning sensation in his fingertips, a normal fatigue reaction after prolonged operation in fine manipulation mode. It would not affect his subsequent activities.
He turned around and walked back in the direction he had come.
Outside the nest, Aragog was still lying in his original position. He didn't move at all.
The small spiders around him didn't move either. The entire hollow seemed to have been hit with a pause button.
When Cassius walked past Aragog, the old spider's eight legs trembled even more violently. His chelicerae were tightly closed. His heartbeat—if spiders had hearts—was as fast as a drum.
Cassius didn't even glance at him.
Mission accomplished. Material obtained. No extra interaction needed.
He walked back along the path he had come.
Under his feet was the battlefield he had created himself—scorched earth, shattered carapaces, solidified green body fluid, and tree trunk sections broken by magical pulses.
The surviving Acromantulas along the way retreated one after another, clearing a wide path. It was wide enough for two more rows of people to walk in the middle.
Their eight eyes were all lowered. It was not out of respect. It was their survival instinct telling them not to make eye contact with this two-legged creature.
Eye contact meant death.
Chapter 82: Hagrid's Cold Sweat
The next morning.
The thick fog had not yet dispersed.
In the Scottish Highlands in November, the sun would not burn off the fog until after eight o'clock.
At six-thirty in the morning, the air was damp and cold, and the breath exhaled turned completely white.
Hagrid stepped out at seven.
His routine was to take Fang for a patrol around the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest every day.
Checking if any creatures that shouldn't have escaped had gotten out, or if any students who shouldn't have gone in had entered.
Most of the time, nothing happened.
At most, there would occasionally be a mischievous Unicorn running to the lake to drink water, or a few Occamies nesting in the bushes at the edge of the forest.
Fang was his hound.
A large Great Dane with sleek, dark brown fur.
He was usually quite imposing.
Greedy and slobbery, but quite brave; he didn't really flinch when encountering various creatures in the Forbidden Forest.
Today, he wasn't very imposing.
From the moment they left the hut, Fang had been acting a bit off.
His tail was tucked between his legs, his body was crouched low as he walked, and his ears were pressed flat against his head.
His nose kept twitching, as if he had smelled something that made him extremely uneasy.
Hagrid didn't pay much attention to it.
He thought the cold morning air had irritated his nose.
When they reached the edge of the Centaur territory, Hagrid stopped.
On the trunk of a large oak tree in front of him, a symbol was drawn in white mineral powder.
A Centaur warning sign.
"Detour."
Hagrid recognized this symbol.
He had been dealing with the Centaurs for nearly forty years.
Such markers appeared occasionally, usually meaning there was a Unicorn in heat or a grumpy creature like a Hippogriff ahead, warning you not to go over and cause trouble.
But today's marker was different.
Two vertical lines had been drawn below the symbol.
Hagrid's footsteps faltered.
The two vertical lines meant "Extremely dangerous, complete avoidance advised."
He had been with this forest for over thirty years and had only seen two vertical lines once before.
That time, a Ukrainian Ironbelly dragon had wandered into the northern part of the Forbidden Forest, burning three square kilometers of forest to charcoal.
The entire Centaur tribe had migrated for two months before returning.
An Ironbelly dragon? Impossible.
There were no dragons in the Forbidden Forest.
Hagrid hesitated, but decided to walk in anyway. After all, he was the Gamekeeper; it wouldn't be right to ignore it if something happened.
Fang refused.
By the time they reached the third marked tree, Fang's tail was tucked between his belly, his four legs were digging into the ground, dragging backward, absolutely refusing to take another step forward. The iron rings on his leash were clanking from his pulling.
Hagrid pulled twice but couldn't budge him—the dog weighed over sixty kilograms, enough to be used as an anchor if turned sideways.
"You wait here for me."
He tied the leash to a tree and patted Fang on the head.
Fang let out a low whimper, lay down on the ground, and buried his head in his paws.
Hagrid continued inward alone.
The deeper he went, the more wrong the smell in the air became.
First, there was a burnt smell.
Not the kind of burning wood smell.
It was sharper. More pungent.
Like something containing protein had been instantly carbonized under high heat.
Then, there was a fishy, sweet, nauseating odor.
Hagrid was all too familiar with it.
That was the peculiar stench left behind after Acromantulabodily fluids were evaporated by high heat.
He had raised Aragog for so many years and had been in and out of the nest hundreds of times.
He could recognize this smell with his eyes closed.
But it had never been this intense.
He walked faster and faster.
He didn't care about the branches hitting his face.
When he pushed aside the last cluster of bushes and saw the scene before him—
Hagrid froze in his tracks.
He stood rooted to the spot as if hit by Petrificus Totalus.
The clearing in the forest—or to be accurate, it could no longer be called a clearing.
It should be called ruins.
A scorched black strip about ten meters wide extended from in front of him to the end of his line of sight.
The fallen leaves and topsoil on the ground had all been burned away.
The exposed underlying soil appeared a dark red from the scorching, and in some places, there were even vitrified crystals.
The trees on both sides of the zone were either snapped at the waist or uprooted entirely.
The cross-sections were smooth. It wasn't caused by wind. Not chewed by beasts. Not an arc-shaped wound left by magic cutting.
It was directly pierced by some kind of extremely violent yet extremely precise force.
The ground was covered in shattered carapaces.
Black ones, brown ones, large and small.
Hagrid squatted down and picked up a palm-sized piece of carapace.
The edges of the fragment were charred black from high-temperature burning, and there were fine cracks on the cross-section. He had seen too many Acromantulacarapaces.
With this kind of hardness, a Reducto from an adult Wizard would only leave a white mark.
But the state of these fragments—they had been completely pulverized from the inside out.
The quantity—
He made a rough estimate.
Each pile of fragments, combined with the surrounding dried traces of green bodily fluids, could reconstruct the size of a complete Acromantula.
Such "reconstruction points" along this scorched black zone—he could see forty or fifty of them with the naked eye alone.
Hagrid's hands began to tremble. Not from the cold. It was a chill seeping out from the marrow of his bones.
He stood up and continued walking along this scorched black zone.
After walking about two hundred meters, he arrived at that bowl-shaped depression.
Hagrid saw Aragog's nest.
Or rather—he saw the half of the nest that remained.
The upper half of the dome had completely disappeared. In its original place was a giant, steaming crater.
The crater walls had that eerie, glazed texture.
He stood by the edge of the crater for a while, able to feel the residual heat rising from the bottom.
Blasted by one shot.
One shot.
Hagrid's Adam's apple bobbed twice.
He found Aragog in a corner of the nest.
The old spider was curled up under a pile of rubble.
Its body was covered in dust. Its eight legs were curled up, twitching intermittently.
Hagrid rushed over and knelt before his old friend.
"Aragog!"
He reached out to touch its head carapace.
The carapace was icy cold.
Not because of the cold weather.
It was because the blood circulation had malfunctioned after extreme stress.
A spider's open circulatory system would suffer from insufficient blood supply after experiencing extreme fear.
"Who did this? Tell me!"
Aragog's chelicerae trembled violently.
"The one who brings pure destruction..."
The old spider's voice was so hoarse it was almost inaudible.
"Monster."
Hagrid collapsed onto the rubble.
He turned his head, looking at the debris covering the ground.
Looking at the giant crater still steaming.
Looking at the surviving Acromantula lying motionless on the ground at the edge of the depression.
Eleven years old. Blonde hair. Gray-blue eyes.
In the ice cream parlor in Diagon Alley, just by the overflowing magic from his body, he had pinned him, a Half-giant, firmly against the corner.
He had instantly defeated a fifth-year student on the train. In class, he had smashed a Boggart with one slap.
He had stepped a full-grown Troll to death all by himself.
Lucius's youngest son.
Cassius Malfoy.
Hagrid's legs were still shaking when he stood up.
He stumbled all the way back to the Castle.
When passing the tree where he had tied Fang, he untied the leash. Man and dog hurried toward the hut with their heads down.
Back to the hut.
The door closed.
Hagrid plopped down onto his chair.
Fang crawled under the table, buried his head in his paws, and whimpered without making a sound.
He should go tell Dumbledore. This was his duty as the Gamekeeper of the Forbidden Forest.
But his legs wouldn't move.
An eleven-year-old child.
All alone. Entered the Forbidden Forest in the middle of the night.
Slaughtered more than half of the Acromantula colony.
Blasted a half-century-old nest into ruins.
Beat Aragog, who had lived for fifty years, into an old dog cowering in a corner, trembling.
And left unscathed.
If he went to report it—would that boy think he was snitching on him?
He remembered that day in Diagon Alley, the thing in those gray-blue eyes.
Not hatred. Not hostility.
It was pure, emotionless indifference.
Like looking at a stone on the ground. A stone that didn't need attention, didn't need to be cared about, didn't need to be remembered.
Hagrid picked up the copper kettle on the table and poured himself a cup of piping hot black tea.
The teacup clattered in his hands for a long time before it steadied.
He took three sips. Put down the cup. His hands were still shaking.
"No." Hagrid said to himself. "This cannot be spoken of."
He picked up the quill. He wrote a line in the patrol log:
"Signs of large creature activity discovered in the eastern region of the Forbidden Forest; students and staff are advised to avoid the area for the time being."
As for what creature. What activity. Detailed circumstances.
Not writing it.
He put down the pen. Closed the logbook.
Hagrid wrapped his moleskin coat tighter and huddled in front of the fireplace. The fire in the fireplace was burning brightly.
But he felt cold.
He didn't go out all morning.
Fang turned over under the table, belly up, and didn't move either.
Meanwhile.
Deep in the Forbidden Forest.
The Centaur messenger had already conveyed Firenze's order to the entire tribe.
"The eastern region of the Forbidden Forest is designated as a no-go zone effective immediately. Reason unknown. Duration indefinite."
No Centaur raised an objection.
Because after the five horses who participated in the interception last night returned, their muscles had spasmed for a full four hours before recovering.
The black Centaur named Bane—the one with the hottest temper and the hardest fists in the tribe—had locked himself in his tent without a word after returning.
He didn't come out until noon the next day.
The first thing he did upon coming out was to chop his longbow, which he had used for twelve years, into firewood.
Someone asked him why. He didn't speak.
For the first time in one hundred and twenty-seven years, the Forbidden Forest had a "no-go" restricted zone marker for the second time.
The protagonist of the last time was a twenty-meter-long fire-breathing dragon.
This time, it was a blonde boy who had just turned eleven not long ago.
Chapter 83: Armor Formed.
Weekend.
At the end of the corridor leading to the depths of the underground in the Slytherin Common Room, there was an abandoned storage room.
Cassius had requisitioned this room three weeks ago. A wooden sign reading "Do Not Disturb" hung on the door, and no one dared to remove it.
The day after the sign was hung, a clueless fourth-year student pushed the door open, looking for a storage cabinet.
When he came out, his face was as pale as a candle just pulled from a cauldron.
Since then, no one else had touched that door.
Cassius locked the door and applied a layer of sound-insulating magic film to the door frame.
From the Undetectable Extension Charm pocket at his waist, he took out the roll of silver-gray spider silk and spread it flat on the stone table.
Under the candlelight, the surface of the spider silk shimmered with a cold, metallic luster. It felt slick to the touch, and its resilience was astonishing.
But it wasn't enough.
The quality of the core spider silk retrieved from the Forbidden Forest far exceeded expectations, with a heat resistance limit over fifteen percent higher than the theoretical value.
However, there was still a crucial process between "high quality" and "wearable as inner armor."
Secondary refining.
Cassius switched the output mode of the [Dual-Soul Furnace] to fine control.
It was completely different from the violent output used when slaughtering the Acromantula in the Forbidden Forest.
Now, the magic threads extending from his ten fingertips were less than one-twentieth the diameter of a hair, with a very low frequency and constant temperature.
Every single fiber of spider silk had to be re-processed through his magic field.
High-temperature baking — cooling and setting — reheating — secondary cooling.
Four rounds in total.
The purpose of this process was to force out residual stress in the fiber molecular chains and allow the spider silk proteins to rearrange into a tighter lattice structure during the thermal cycling.
In layman's terms: refining good steel again to make it even better steel.
The refining lasted for nearly two hours.
A thin layer of sweat beaded on Cassius's forehead. The fine control mode consumed far more mental energy than violent output.
Violent output was like opening the floodgates—as long as there was more water, the stronger it was.
Fine control was like engraving on a grain of rice with an embroidery needle—a single tremor of the hand would ruin everything.
Two hours later, the color of the spider silk had changed from silver-gray to a deeper, gunmetal-gray tone.
The luster on the surface was no longer a cold metallic feel, but a restrained, matte texture.
He squeezed it with his fingers.
The resilience had increased by about thirty percent. The heat resistance limit had jumped up another notch.
Materials prepared. The next step was forming.
Cassius had no tailoring tools. He hadn't intended to use those things at all.
Scissors, needles and thread, patterns. To him, these were just like wands—superfluous intermediate links.
He only needed two things: spider silk and his own magic field.
The [Dual-Soul Furnace] switched modes again.
This time it was an intermediate state between fine and violent—the "Shaping Mode."
Magic power diffused evenly from his body, forming a spherical force field about one and a half meters in diameter.
The density of magic power inside the force field was not uniform. Some areas were dense, others sparse. The dense areas acted like clamps, while the sparse areas acted like tracks.
These alternating dense and sparse areas were his "loom."
Cassius threw the spider silk into the force field.
The silver-gray fibers slowly unfolded under the invisible force, separated, straightened, and arranged one by one.
First layer, dense horizontal laying.
Each strand of spider silk was precisely fixed in its position, with constant spacing and uniform tension.
Second layer, vertical crossing.
Third layer, forty-five-degree diagonal laying.
Fourth layer, reverse forty-five degrees.
Fifth layer, circular reinforcement.
Five-layer cross-weaving. It was exactly the same structure as Aragog's original nest cocoon.
But Cassius made one critical change—he added a set of special "heat dissipation patterns" to the weaving structure in the back area.
These patterns were composed of spider silk with larger spacing, forming multiple micro-channels radiating from the spine to the shoulder blades on both sides.
The principle was the same as the fin structure of a heat sink.
When the residual heat generated by high-frequency spellcasting was conducted from the chest and arms to the back, these channels would guide the heat to the surface of the spider silk like capillaries, accelerating heat exchange with the air.
A passive cooling system.
No magic consumption. No need to think. It ran automatically once worn.
The weaving process lasted for over four hours.
Cassius drank water twice during the process.
This was the longest single instance of fine control since he arrived at Hogwarts.
The burning sensation in his fingertips had upgraded from "slight" to "a bit painful."
He didn't care.
After six and a half hours of high-intensity work, a finished product lay on the stone table.
A piece of close-fitting inner armor.
Visually, it looked like an extremely thin black bodysuit. No decorations, no buttons, no zippers.
The entire inner armor was a seamless whole.
Putting it on and taking it off relied on the elasticity of the collar—the natural elastic modulus of the spider silk protein was enough for it to be pulled from head to foot and then return to its original shape.
Cassius took off his outer robe and shirt and put on the inner armor.
The moment the cold touch hit his skin, his pores all contracted.
The texture of the spider silk was smoother than silk and closer-fitting than cotton. It felt like a second skin.
He moved his joints. He did a few jumps and twists.
There was no sense of restriction.
The flexibility was almost the same as wearing nothing.
Material qualified. Fit qualified.
The next step was the most critical.
Pressure test.
Cassius stood in the center of the storage room, facing the reinforced area of the stone wall—that section of the wall had been reinforced with magic by him last week, capable of withstanding a considerable degree of impact.
He activated the Four-Channel Shunt inside his body.
Magic power began to circulate at high speed through his meridians.
The four channels charged, released, charged, and released in sequence.
Fifteen shots per second.
This was his current upper limit of fire rate.
Previously, because there was no cooling equipment, he could maintain it for at most five seconds before being forced to cease fire because the skin on his hands began to burn.
Now, he was wrapped in a cooling inner armor woven from Acromantula core spider silk.
In theory, the cooling bottleneck should have been solved.
Theory is just theory. Actual combat is the only standard for testing theory.
Cassius raised his hands, his ten fingers aimed at the reinforced stone wall.
Fire.
Blue magic pulses poured out like a rainstorm.
Each shot was a fist-sized ball of compressed magic power, exploding into a cluster of blue-white light upon hitting the stone wall.
The sound of explosions was so dense it merged into one.
Not "bang, bang, bang."
It was a "hum—"
One second. Five seconds. Ten seconds.
The surface of the stone wall had already been blasted into a crater half a meter in diameter. Gravel flew everywhere. Even the reinforced stone wall began to show cracks under this rate of fire.
Fifteen seconds. Thirty seconds.
The muscles in Cassius's arms trembled slightly under the reaction force of the high-frequency output. But the surface of his skin—no burning sensation.
None at all.
Heat was indeed being generated. When the four channels were running at full power, the heat generated by the friction of magic power in the meridians was about the same as a small boiler.
But as soon as this heat was conducted to the surface of his skin, it was captured by the spider silk fibers of the inner armor and dissipated smoothly into the air along those carefully designed heat dissipation patterns on his back.
He could even feel a continuous, warm but not hot current flowing across the surface of his skin on his back.
Like wearing clothes with automatic air conditioning.
Forty-five seconds.
Sixty seconds.
A full minute of full-power output at fifteen shots per second.
Nine hundred micro-Reducto spells.
Cassius lowered his hands.
The stone wall was already unrecognizable.
The depth of the crater exceeded one meter, and the inner wall showed vitrified crystallization.
If he hadn't reinforced it in advance, this wall would have been punched through long ago.
He looked down at his hands.
His palms were dry, his skin intact. No redness, no blisters, no signs of overheating at all.
He looked at the inner armor again.
There wasn't a trace of carbonization on the surface.
No discoloration. No deformation.
The weaving structure of the spider silk was intact.
The cooling system was operating normally.
After running at high load for one minute continuously, the surface temperature of the inner armor was only two to three degrees higher than body temperature.
Far below the heat resistance limit of the spider silk.
There was still a large margin.
Success.
Cassius stood in the debris-filled storage room, looking at his unscathed hands and the black inner armor that was as thin as a cicada's wing.
The corners of his mouth curved slightly.
Not a smile. It was the satisfaction of a hunter after cleaning his gun and loading it.
The cooling bottleneck had been solved. From today on, his Four-Channel Shunt could operate at full power and without restriction in the true sense.
Fifteen shots per second, for as long as he wanted.
Previously, he had always been operating at seventy percent power.
Not because he lacked magic—the Dual-Soul Furnace was almost inexhaustible.
It was because the heat from full-power output would burn through all his clothes in seconds, and start burning his skin within ten seconds. He had to limit his speed.
Now, the speed limit was lifted.
Cassius put his shirt and robe back on and locked the storage room door again.
Walking in the corridor back to the dormitory, he began to construct a new combat parameter table in his mind.
Full power, fifteen Reducto spells per second. Calculating five seconds per target, he could clear twelve effectively defended enemies in one minute.
If the opponent was at the Death Eater level—that is, the kind who only knew Expelliarmus and one or two Unforgivable Curses—one second was enough.
If the opponent was Lord Voldemort...
Cassius paused at the corner of the corridor.
Lord Voldemort. Lord Voldemort in his prime.
That guy's casting speed was around 0.3 seconds. His shield strength was said to be able to block the combined bombardment of three or four Aurors.
Fifteen shots per second.
Forty-five shots in three seconds.
Seventy-five shots in five seconds.
Even if Lord Voldemort's shield was at the legendary level, he didn't believe any shield could hold up under seventy-five high-density Reducto spells concentrated on the same point within five seconds.
Cassius continued walking forward.
His footsteps were steady, his breathing even.
He was now a loaded gun with the safety off.
Just waiting for a target worthy of him pulling the trigger.
Chapter 84 The Deviation of the Academic Star
Hogwarts in December was shrouded under a grey-white canopy.
Final exams were two weeks away.
The entire Castle was permeated with an atmosphere of anxiety.
The corridors were filled with students clutching textbooks and muttering spells, library seats had to be claimed an hour in advance, and even while eating in the Great Hall, some were secretly flipping through parchment notes under the tables.
The Gryffindor Common Room was no exception.
The good spots in front of the fireplace were hogged by sixth and seventh-year students, leaving the lower years to huddle in the corners.
Harry and Ron were not in the corners.
They were squeezed onto a windowsill at the stairwell, heads together, voices kept very low.
"Tonight," Harry said with certainty, "It has to be tonight."
Ron didn't look too good, but he still nodded.
"Snape—no, Quirrell. Whoever it is, someone is going after the Philosopher's Stone tonight. The flute by Cerberus has already been tampered with; I saw it with my own eyes when I passed the third floor last time."
"So what do we do?" Ron rubbed his hands together, "Dumbledore is away on business today, and McGonagalldoesn't believe us."
"We go ourselves," Harry looked into Ron's eyes, "Just you and me."
Ron swallowed hard.
He wanted to say "Fine," but the word circled in his mouth twice, eventually turning into a different sentence.
"We have to get Hermione."
Harry also felt they should get Hermione.
After all, although the two hadn't been very close to Hermione these past few days, since that night at Halloween, the three of them at least weren't rolling their eyes at each other anymore.
Besides, Hermione had a sharp mind.
When it came to puzzles and obstacles, they really couldn't do it without her.
The two hurried to the library.
Hermione was indeed there.
In the furthest corner, with six or seven books piled in front of her, she was head down, writing furiously.
Harry walked around a row of bookshelves and sat down in the chair opposite her.
"Hermione, we—"
Halfway through, he saw the titles of the books piled in front of Hermione.
"Thermodynamics and Magic Conduction."
"Decay Models of Aerodynamics in Wandless Magic."
"The Relationship Between Magic Pulse Frequency and Wand Core Load."
And one thick as a brick— "Higher-Order Magic Deconstruction and Destructive Reconstruction."
Harry's eyebrows shot up to his hairline.
"Hermione, these... aren't part of the final exams, are they?"
Hermione didn't even lift her head, her quill scratching furiously on the parchment.
"I am verifying a hypothesis."
Her voice was as flat as if she were discussing what to have for dinner.
Ron poked his head out from behind Harry, glanced at the book titles, and his expression was very subtle.
"Hermione, we have serious business," Harry lowered his voice and quickly recounted their deductions about the Philosopher's Stone.
Quirrell. Tonight. Third-floor restricted area. Cerberus. Trapdoor. Dumbledore is away.
"—So we have to go stop him tonight."
Hermione's quill stopped.
She looked up, glanced at Harry, then at Ron.
Then she looked down and continued writing.
"No."
Ron's mouth opened into a perfect 'O'.
"What did you say?"
"I said no," Hermione turned a page, her eyes scanning the dense formulas, "What does your plan consist of? Using first-year Levitation Charms and Shield Charms to fight an adult Dark Wizard?"
"We've practiced Expelliarmus—"
"Expelliarmus," Hermione repeated the word, her tone carrying a cold scrutiny, "Weasley, the core of your wand is exposed. Are you sure your Expelliarmus can fly three feet?"
Ron's face flushed instantly.
"You—"
"Hermione," Harry interrupted Ron, "If we don't go, the Philosopher's Stone will be stolen. Lord Voldemort will—"
"Then let the Professors handle it," Hermione put down her pen and looked at them directly for the first time.
Her expression wasn't cold. It was a judgment based on meticulous calculation.
"Dumbledore has set up layers of obstacles in this Castleto protect the Philosopher's Stone. If those obstacles can't even stop an adult Dark Wizard, what do you think the three of us first-years can do? Throw ourselves into death?"
"But Dumbledore is away—"
"McGonagall is here. Snape is here. Flitwick is here," Hermione counted them off one by one, "There are at least four top-tier Wizards in this Castle. If they can't handle it, what makes you think you can?"
Harry was speechless.
Hermione lowered her head again and picked up her pen.
"If you're really worried, the correct thing to do is write a letter, put it in the owlery, and have Hedwig find Dumbledore. Not two first-years who only know Expelliarmus charging into the mouth of a Cerberus in the middle of the night."
"That—that's different!" Ron's voice couldn't be kept down; a few students nearby turned to look. He quickly hushed, but his teeth were chattering.
"Different? How is it different?"
"You weren't like this before! You used to—you used to be with us—"
"Before?" Hermione glanced at Ron.
That look was calm, but Ron inexplicably felt as though he had been pricked by something.
"Before, I didn't know what efficiency was."
Hermione's quill drew a long equation on the parchment.
"Before, I thought memorizing textbooks and strictly following standard casting procedures was the best way."
"Then Cassius Malfoy made a feather float with a snap of his fingers right in front of me."
"He didn't need to recite. Didn't need to wave a wand. Didn't need to chant. Something solved in one second, we spend two weeks practicing according to the textbook."
"Do you know what that means?"
Hermione pushed the stack of heavy reference books in front of her.
"It means the foundation of the system we're learning is flawed. It means there exists a more efficient, more fundamental logic of magic operation."
She turned the half-drawn formula on the parchment toward the two.
"The formula I'm verifying can explain why he can achieve zero-loss Wandless Magic. If it's correct, the entire framework of modern spellcasting needs to be torn down and rebuilt."
Ron didn't understand that pile of symbols. But he understood one thing.
Hermione wasn't planning on going.
Not because she was afraid. Because she thought their plan was stupid.
"You're crazy," Ron's voice was shaking—he wasn't sure if it was from anger or urgency, "Lord Voldemort is about to resurrect, and you're here researching some damn formula of that Malfoy's?"
Hermione didn't respond to him.
She turned to the next page and continued writing.
Ron stood up, his chair scraping harshly against the floor. Madam Pince shot a murderous glare from behind the counter.
"Let's go," Ron grabbed Harry's arm, "Forget her, we'll go ourselves."
Harry looked at Hermione.
Hermione never looked up.
She was writing a correction equation for the decay coefficient of magic pulses in the air. The handwriting was neat, fluid, without a hint of hesitation.
The girl who had been terrified by the Troll on Halloweenand huddled in the corner crying was now arming herself with cold logic and data.
Harry stood up.
"Hermione."
"Hmm."
"If we don't come back... help us tell Dumbledore."
Hermione's quill paused for half a second.
"You will come back," she said, "You'll just get a hundred points deducted by Snape."
Harry didn't say anything more. He turned and left the library with Ron.
Hermione sat alone in the corner, the candlelight in front of her reflecting two dancing lights on her lenses.
The pen in her hand resumed its writing rhythm.
She didn't look back at the direction they had left.
But the speed of her writing was a little faster than before.
Chapter 85: The Chess Player's Coercion
Night fell.
The Slytherin Dungeon.
The fire in the fireplace burned low, casting green light onto the stone walls like swaying seaweed.
Most students had already returned to their dorms. There was a Potion Class quiz tomorrow, so everyone was trying to get some sleep.
Cassius was not asleep.
He sat cross-legged in a corner of the Common Room, his back against the cold stone wall, eyes closed.
The Dual-Soul Furnace was running at extremely low power.
In this state, his sensory range could cover most of the Castle's basement level.
It was not precise enough to make out faces—it was more like a rough heat map. He could roughly sense where there were magical fluctuations and where there was biological activity.
Ten-forty at night.
From the direction of the Gryffindor tower, two faint magical signals moved from the Common Room into the corridor.
Harry Potter. Ron Weasley.
They had set off.
Cassius opened his eyes.
There were no ripples in his eyes.
He knew the script of the Philosopher's Stone too well.
The third-floor restricted area, the Cerberus, the trapdoor, the Devils Snare, the flying keys, the giant chessboard, the Troll, the logic puzzle, the Mirror of Erised.
Finally, Quirrell—and the thing parasitic on the back of his head.
In the original story, Harry relied on the protection mechanism of the Mirror of Erised to obtain the Philosopher's Stone, and then had a hand-to-hand fight with Lord Voldemort that ended in skin-burning.
Dumbledore returned at the last minute to clean up.
To put it bluntly: the old man set the trap, and the old man handled the aftermath. Harry was just a pawn.
A brave, unknowing pawn.
Cassius had no interest in the Philosopher's Stone.
The essence of that stone was a lure—Dumbledore had used it to bait Lord Voldemort for a whole year. The value of the stone itself was zero to Cassius.
But tonight's situation had another use.
Cassius stood up, brushed the dust off his robes, and walked towards the dormitory.
He pushed the door open.
Draco was slumped over the desk, his Potion Class notes spread out in front of him, drool about to drip onto the parchment.
Cassius walked over and tapped twice on the desk.
Draco sprang up, and before his eyes could focus, he reflexively shouted, "I finished it!"
"Wake up." Cassius hauled him away from the desk.
"What are you doing?" Draco rubbed his eyes, looking dazed, "What time is it?"
"Ten-fifty. Get up. Something has come up."
Draco finally sobered up a bit. He looked at his brother's expression, and a chill inexplicably ran down his back.
He was too familiar with this feeling. The last time Cassiushad called him in this tone late at night, he had been dragged to the abandoned dungeon to practice Wandless Magic for three hours.
"What is it?"
"Potter and Weasley just snuck out of the Gryffindortower." Cassius walked to the window, his voice unhurried, "They are going to the third-floor restricted area to stop Quirrell from stealing the Philosopher's Stone."
Draco was stunned.
"The Philosopher's Stone? Quirrell?" He repeated the two words twice, "Wait—you mean that stuttering guy with the turban? He wants to steal something the Principal hid?"
"It's not Snape. Snape is protecting that stone." Cassiusturned back, "Beneath the Cerberus in the third-floor restricted area, there are seven traps. Past the seven traps is the Philosopher's Stone. Quirrell is going to take it tonight. Potter is going to stop him."
Draco digested this for three seconds.
"Then—then we should go tell the Professor!"
He was already walking out as he said this.
Cassius didn't move.
"Tell who?"
"Snape! Or—"
"Snape knows. Dumbledore knows too. They both know what will happen tonight."
Draco stopped in his tracks.
"Then... then why don't they do anything about it?"
"Because Dumbledore wants to see if Harry Potter can pass the test." Cassius's voice was as flat as a stagnant pool, "Those traps aren't meant to stop thieves. They are meant to be an exam paper for Potter."
Draco opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"This—this is just too—"
He took a half-step back. The amount of information was too overwhelming.
"So what do you want to do?" Draco asked cautiously, "Are you going to the third floor?"
"I am not going."
"Then—"
"You are going."
The air froze between these two words.
Draco thought he had misheard.
"What did you say?"
"Follow Potter. Go and see what real danger is like."
Draco's face turned pale in the green light of the fireplace.
"You—are you crazy? You just said it yourself, seven traps! The Cerberus! And—and the thing behind Quirrell—that—"
"The remnant soul of the Dark Lord." Cassius finished the word for him.
Draco's lips were trembling.
"You want me to go up against the Dark Lord?"
"I want you to face your fear." Cassius's tone had no inflection, "How many days have you practiced Wandless Magic in the dungeon? What level has your Fire Charm reached? How many seconds can your Gravity Interference Charm last?"
"That's not the same! Practicing is one thing—"
"The head of Malfoy Family."
When these five words were spat out by Cassius, they hit the floor like five stones.
Draco shut his mouth.
"Father will grow old one day. I cannot stand behind you forever." Cassius walked up to Draco and looked down at him.
"You can choose to walk out that door right now and prove that you are not a loser who only knows how to hide in his younger brother's shadow."
"Or you can choose to go back to sleep."
Cassius paused.
"But if you choose the latter—don't call me brother ever again."
This sentence was crueler than any spell.
Draco's breathing quickened. His fists clenched and unclenched, and a faint stinging pain came from his fingers—it was the nails that had split during the last special training that hadn't fully grown back yet.
That remembered pain actually made his mind slowly clear up.
Those nights in the dungeon practicing until his fingers bled. Those days in the hallway when his self-esteem was crushed by Gryffindor mockery. The solid vibration that traveled through his hand bones when he punched Weasley in the nose.
I am not a loser.
Draco pressed his lips together, picked up the Hawthornwand on the nightstand, and gripped it in his hand.
"You're really not going?"
"I don't need this level of trial."
Draco stared at Cassius for three seconds.
Then he turned, pushed open the dormitory door.
He walked out three steps and then looked back.
"If I die—"
"You won't die." Cassius leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes, "Because you are a Malfoy."
Draco's mouth twitched. He didn't know if it was a wry smile or something else.
He walked into the corridor.
The footsteps were hesitant at first. After walking seven or eight steps, they gradually became steady and firm.
Cassius did not open his eyes.
The sensory network of the Dual-Soul Furnace continued to run. The distance between Draco's magical signal and Harry and Ron's signals was narrowing.
He did not follow.
But his sensory range always covered every inch of space in the third-floor restricted area.
If there was any anomaly in Draco's life signal...
Cassius's fingers curled slightly.
Then there would be no traps or chess games. The entire third-floor restricted area would turn into ruins in zero point three seconds.