The three of them, like the other wizards, descended from the stands and walked slowly toward the castle.
As they walked, Capricornus spoke, "The reason Gryffindor was able to severely wound the God-King Odin, known as the Father of the Gods, plunging the immortal into eternal slumber, was because he used the cursed Sword of Gryffindor, which was enchanted by the Goblin King, Ragnuk I. Once we get our hands on this sword, we too can possess the power to rival the gods."
Rhys, overhearing Capricorn's words, could barely hold back his laughter.
He had no idea how such rumors spread over time, but from what he'd seen, Gryffindor's sword was just an ordinary goblin-forged sword… nothing more.
And seriously, the way they inflated the reputation of those Norse false gods! "Eternal slumber"? That was ridiculous. How had they even come up with that term? The God-King must have had excellent sleep quality—he didn't even wake up when his skull was used to craft a crown.
Rhys was baffled by how later generations always seemed to fantasize that an ordinary person wielding a particular weapon could suddenly become invincible.
Gryffindor's sword had become a myth, and the same thing had happened with the so-called Elder Wand.
One sword could supposedly slay gods the moment you picked it up, and the other was said to make its owner unbeatable forever. Rhys found both claims absurd.
And then there were things like the "Sword in the Stone," which was said to have done something earth-shattering at some point, just sitting in a stone, waiting for someone to pull it out and become king of the realm.
Isn't this all just nonsense?
It's like picking a support role in a game, then after winning, claiming the victory was only possible because you supported the carry.
What's the difference?
Legends always come first, and legendary items follow.
Capricornus of the Secret Order thought Voldemort was mentally unstable and didn't want him in the group. Rhys viewed the Cult members in a similar light—he thought all three of them were a bit unhinged.
He moved silently underground, quietly following the trio. He planned to strike when they reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest. By then, they would be far enough from both the stadium and the castle, so their confrontation wouldn't attract much attention.
Daphne should be resting by now, Rhys figured. She was probably already deep in sleep.
He had just pulled a little trick, using a transfigured fake version of himself to trick Daphne into returning to the Slytherin common room to rest. His intention was to keep her from getting involved in the fight with the Secret Order.
These three members of the Cult were still too dangerous for her.
Rhys sighed inwardly—villains like Quirrell, with his middling power, were hard to come by!
At the end of the previous school year, Rhys had actually wanted to spare Quirrell. Such a valuable teaching resource shouldn't have been wasted after just one use!
If he could have kept him around, it would have provided Daphne with a few years' worth of training.
Unfortunately, by the time Rhys found Quirrell, the man had already been drained dry by Voldemort. There was no saving him.
At this moment, Daphne wasn't obediently going back to sleep as Rhys had expected. She had a sharp sense that something was wrong.
So, she made a slightly silly but effective decision: to wait right outside the bathroom!
She wasn't going to leave until she caught Rhys coming out.
It turned out to be a good idea. Rhys had seemingly dissolved into the bath itself—he went in and never came back out.
After waiting a long time without seeing Rhys, Daphne finally gathered her courage and quickly dashed into the bathroom.
After looking around, she clenched her fists.
Just as she suspected, Rhys had ditched her and snuck away!
There was no trace of him anywhere in the bathroom.
...
Rhys, unaware that his trick had been seen through, focused on the three members of the Secret Order ahead of him. They were not the kind of small-time characters that could be easily dealt with. The old man known as Capricornus had actually mastered a domain!
But once Capricornus summoned his domain, Rhys suddenly smiled, feeling relieved.
Capricornus stood at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, gently waving his arms. As he did so, a thin mist began to form at the forest's border.
"Luck's on our side tonight, the air is very humid," Capricornus said, sounding particularly pleased. He was even in the mood to talk more than usual. "Perfect conditions for deploying the Fog domain. Vigo, Sagittarius, you two need to work harder and grasp your own domains soon. Without mastering a domain, you'll never truly be worth much."
Capricornus's words deeply stung Sagittarius. Though he felt annoyed and frustrated, he couldn't argue because Capricornus was speaking the harsh truth.
Vigo, on the other hand, nodded and said he would spend more time studying the divine remains, aiming to open his own domain as soon as possible.
Seeing the attitude of his teammates, Sagittarius could only shrug helplessly. "There's really nothing I can do about domains. If I can't figure it out, I can't figure it out."
"I've really been studying, though! Check the usage logs of the quiet room in the organization if you don't believe me!" he added defensively.
"Yeah, yeah, whatever.." Capricornus felt his good mood completely ruined by Sagittarius.
Feeling annoyed, he sped up the activation of his domain. Soon, the thin mist covered the grass outside the castle entirely.
Perhaps due to the rising moisture, delicate threads of rain began to fall from the sky, bringing a chilling sensation.
The mist started to gather around the trio.
According to Capricornus's plan, this mist would provide them with a convenient protective layer, making them undetectable by magical means. More importantly, their movement speed within the fog would become astonishingly fast, allowing them to escape quickly even if they were discovered by the school's teachers.
But just as the mist began to close in around Capricornus, he suddenly sensed something was off. Even in the rain, the speed at which the mist was gathering seemed unnaturally fast.
Something was wrong!
"Activate your divine remains fully, now!" Capricornus shouted urgently.
Sagittarius and Vigo, though unsure why Capricornus had suddenly panicked, respected his strength enough to immediately activate the divine remains fused into their bodies.
Sagittarius's eyes instantly lost their luster, and his sclera turned a murky, dull color, while the veins on his face became an eerie purplish-blue. Vigo's skin turned an ashen gray, like that of a corpse, and a faint stench of decay began to waft through the air.
"You're no different, living off the scraps of your ancestors. What's even more laughable is that those so-called false gods aren't even your ancestors. You're nothing more than grave robbers," a young voice echoed through the mist.
"What, who ar—!"
In the next moment, the mist in front of Capricornus's chest suddenly coalesced into an ice spike.
Spilch!
Before he could react, it pierced his heart, leaving him with an expression of utter disbelief.
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"Capricornus!" Vigo was stunned by the sudden turn of events. She panicked, shouting Capricornus' name as she lunged toward him. However, Sagittarius, with more battle experience, quickly grabbed her hand and yanked her aside.
Sa-Sa-Sa!
Dozens of ice spikes crashed into the spot where she had just stood and the path she had taken toward Capricornus. If Sagittarius hadn't intervened, she would have been skewered by now.
Thanks to Sagittarius' help, Vigo dodged Rhys' attack, but Sagittarius wasn't as fortunate.
"Ug.."
The rain falling from the sky turned into needle-like ice threads, striking one side of his body.
Though he reacted swiftly and cast a Shield Charm above him, some of the ice threads still slipped through the edges of the spell, embedding themselves into his arm.
Sagittarius felt a sudden chill in his arm, and then the entire limb went numb, becoming uncontrollable.
The attack didn't stop there.
The raindrops were continuously transforming into powerful ice needles, and the mist surrounding them had turned hostile, now causing them significant trouble.
In an instant, Sagittarius and Vigo found themselves in a dire situation.
Fortunately, a voice rang out from nearby.
"I'm not dead!"
Capricornus pulled the ice spike from his chest, leaving a gaping hole. The mist enveloped his wound, swiftly filling and mending the opening.
Within his domain, even after suffering what would normally be a fatal wound, Capricornus was relatively unharmed. After all, when a wizard activates a domain, they essentially become part of it.
This makes wizards with domains overwhelmingly powerful compared to those without them—a difference akin to a dimensional disparity. However, Capricornus could sense something was off.
For some reason, he had lost the usual seamless control over his domain.
The mist was still under his command, but manipulating it felt strangely awkward, difficult to describe.
Seeing that Capricornus was unhurt, Sagittarius and Vigo felt a surge of renewed hope.
If something had gone wrong with Capricornus, they would have been completely doomed tonight.
But with him still maintaining his strength, they stood a chance.
The two exchanged a glance, increasing their magic output, pouring all their power into the godly remains that parasitized their bodies.
Vigo's skin grew even paler, making her seem like a true marble statue—not just in appearance, but in toughness as well. The ice needles could no longer pierce her skin.
Sagittarius' transformation was even more startling.
His eyes ignited with flames, and through the blaze, his perception of the world changed. Physical objects dissolved and deconstructed, leaving only colorful clusters of magic.
On the surface, the three had completely reversed their disadvantaged situation.
Considering Capricornus' large-scale domain in play, they seemed to hold every advantage. But despite this, Sagittarius wore an expression of fear—because the world he saw through his magic-enhanced vision starkly contradicted reality.
The entire sky and ground were flooded with silver-green magic.
Everywhere he looked, the world was drowned in this overpowering magic, consuming nearly everything, including Capricornus' domain, which spanned much of Hogwarts.
In his magic vision, Capricornus' domain was almost entirely eroded by the silver-green energy. As for himself and Vigo, Sagittarius could only see their faint, flickering magical auras, as fragile as candles in the wind.
They were like a lone boat adrift in a vast ocean, constantly on the verge of being swallowed whole.
Sagittarius wanted to warn his teammates, but when he opened his mouth, not a single sound escaped. At the very moment he tried to speak, the numbness that had started in his arm spread throughout his entire body, leaving him completely paralyzed.
Capricornus and Vigo were too focused on gathering power for a counterattack to notice Sagittarius' strange condition.
Suddenly, the endless barrage of ice needles and the occasional ambushes by ice spikes stopped, and a figure appeared a short distance in front of them.
Vigo wanted to charge forward and deliver a powerful elbow strike, but Capricornus stopped her.
By this time, Capricornus had sealed the hole in his chest with mist, looking as though nothing had happened.
"Who are you?" The old man warily scrutinized the person standing before him.
His first impression of Rhys was his youth—he looked unbelievably young.
"Salazar Slytherin," Rhys answered truthfully.
Vigo snorted in disbelief, and although Capricornus remained silent, his expression showed that he too didn't believe Rhys' claim.
"If you're Slytherin, then I must be Athena," Vigo retorted sarcastically.
Rhys shrugged. Sometimes telling the truth just makes people less likely to believe you.
Capricornus wanted to say something else, but Rhys raised his hand to cut him off.
"I don't know if you have a teacher or if your teacher ever told you this, but the simpler a domain is, the stronger it will be."
"For example, water is stronger than rain, snow, frost, or mist; wind is stronger than smoke, and so on. In other words, try not to let your domain be a derivative of another."
"Even if you can't grasp a fundamental domain, you should at least aim for a combination of basic elements. For instance, magma—formed by combining fire and earth—is a great example. Of course, that's asking a bit much since those who can comprehend domains are already elite among wizards," Rhys rambled on, sounding almost like an old professor lecturing his students.
Capricornus was listening intently, almost forgetting that they were in the midst of a life-and-death struggle.
But soon, he realized something was terribly wrong—he had completely lost control of his domain.
"You see, this is how a basic domain crushes a derivative one. If you had mastered a different domain, I might have had to put in more effort. But since yours is mist, it's quite simple," Rhys said, waving his hand casually, and Capricornus' domain instantly dissipated.
Now, all that remained was a light drizzle falling from the sky.
Capricornus' face turned ashen.
At that moment, Sagittarius, who had been frozen in place, suddenly burst into flames.
If time were slowed down, one could see that his entire body had become fuel for those burning eyes of his.
The fireball split into two—one half streaked toward Rhys like a shooting star, while the other half shot up into the sky.
Facing an opponent so overwhelmingly powerful that it induced despair, Sagittarius chose to sacrifice himself, fully offering his body to the godly remains fused within him. His only hope was to delay Rhys for even a brief moment, while his soul attempted to escape.
Boom!
The fireball collided with Rhys, instantly reducing him to ashes. But before Vigo's face could fully register joy, another Rhys appeared just a few steps to their side.
As for the other half of the fireball flying toward the sky, it gradually dimmed in the constant drizzle, and finally, after flying nearly a hundred meters, it was extinguished.
Plop!
Two cloudy eyeballs fell onto the grass.
Rhys glanced at them, a fleeting thought crossing his mind—they seemed strangely familiar, perhaps once belonging to an old "acquaintance."
"Yes, I'm nothing more than a relic of a bygone era," Rhys said casually. His eyes drifted toward Vigo and Capricornus, and with a tone full of regret, he remarked, "But the fact that you couldn't even deal with an outdated relic like me is truly disappointing."
Capricornus opened his mouth, wanting to say something, but no words came out.
He felt something flowing from his chest.
Looking down, he realized that the mist that had been sealing his wound had vanished, and blood was now trickling from the gaping hole.
Capricornus could feel his strength rapidly draining away, and his vision began to blur and darken...
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