บท 160: Chapter 160: Devouring Voldemort's Soul
Cyrus stretched his stiff body, then glanced around at the chaotic surroundings. With an elegant wave of his wand, everything returned to its original state. He then rubbed his forehead and slowly picked up the now misshapen ring, a look of contempt in his eyes.
"You thought you could possess me?"
Before his resurrection, Cyrus had already consumed a fragment of Voldemort's soul. At that time, Voldemort's remnant soul wasn't his match, let alone now. From the moment Voldemort attempted to possess Cyrus, his fate was sealed.
However, the outcome turned out to be beneficial.
After devouring another fragment of Voldemort's soul, Cyrus could clearly feel that his own soul had grown stronger.
A wizard's casting ability is linked to their willpower, which in turn is connected to their soul. A wizard with a powerful soul inevitably possesses immense casting ability. At this moment, Cyrus felt as if he had absorbed an experience pack, and his magical power had grown significantly!
This newfound strength made his gaze toward the Goblet and the Diadem become somewhat greedy.
However, he wasn't so crazed as to immediately devour the souls within these two Horcruxes.
After all, these were other people's souls. Even if there were special reasons allowing Cyrus's soul to be compatible with Voldemort's, if too many of Voldemort's fragments were mixed into his own soul, then the question would arise: was he still Cyrus or was he Voldemort? This was an unavoidable issue, as the soul itself defines one's identity.
However...
"Once I thoroughly digest this soul fragment from the ring, perhaps I can attempt to consume the next one," Cyrus thought.
He certainly wouldn't pass up any opportunity to enhance his power, but the prerequisite was ensuring no future troubles.
Much like the villains in martial arts novels who absorb others' internal energy, most end up going mad due to the conflicting energies.
Now, Cyrus needed to slowly digest this fragment of Voldemort's soul, allowing it to completely become a part of his own strength.
So, in the following days, Cyrus stayed at Hogwarts. During the day, he mostly rested or studied ancient magic in the Room of Requirement. In fact, he had plenty to research: ancient magic, magical creatures, blood curses, Horcruxes, the Resurrection Stone...
At night, he would search for the location of the Athenaeum - the Room of Knowledge.
However, up until now, he had no significant progress.
Fortunately, life at Hogwarts was never too boring. Although he couldn't find the Room of Knowledge, he had free access to the library, and its numerous books were extremely useful to Cyrus.
With a thousand years of accumulated books, even Voldemort couldn't have read them all. It was a vast treasure trove.
In his memory, there were some notes from Slytherin's magical experiments. Slytherin's experiments were evidently imperfect and had many issues, but within nearly a millennium of accumulated knowledge, there were bound to be one or two people who could provide answers.
Even if there weren't, it didn't stop Cyrus from being the one to solve these problems.
So, during this period, the two dragons became his subjects for experimentation.
Considering the value of dragons and that Cyrus kept them more as pets than test subjects, these experiments weren't cruel. At most, he would draw some dragon blood or cut a small piece of dragon skin, trying to harness the ancient magic within their bloodline.
The most remarkable thing about dragons was their magical resistance, which made them almost immune to most spells. Ordinary wizards' killing curses might not even be able to kill them. The second was their fire.
This fire was incredibly powerful and had not only a burning effect but also an explosive one.
However, this aspect didn't interest Cyrus much.
Fire, in terms of power, had Fiendfyre. If you wanted to add some explosive characteristics, you just needed to combine it with an explosion spell. The properties of these two spells were similar, and merging them was quite easy, at least for Cyrus.
His other research direction was the blood curse affecting Nagini, not only to help her but also because he was very interested in this magic, which was both a curse and a form of transfiguration.
Blood curses were very similar to ordinary animal transfiguration; both spells caused wizards to lose their human will and become unable to revert to their human forms. However, the blood curse had a longer and irreversible effect on a wizard's will.
No one could stop this process, not even the Transfiguration master Dumbledore.
Cyrus could now easily wave his wand and transform Nagini back to her former human self, but even then, she wouldn't consider herself a human.
Animagi, when transformed into animals, would hear a second heartbeat, whereas with a blood curse, it was more like the human heart would slowly stop beating, eventually being completely replaced by the animal's heartbeat.
Nagini's body, mind, and even soul were now indistinguishable from those of an ordinary snake.
If Cyrus hadn't read *Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them*, he would never have imagined that such a snake could have once been a person.
"The blood curse and Wolfsbane are like diseases rather than magic, and there's no potion that can cure them," he thought.
Cyrus had actually considered using the cup to produce a potion that could break the curse, but obviously, the cup wasn't a wishing cup. It couldn't create something that didn't exist in the world.
Time passed quickly. During this period, Hermione sometimes tried to contact him. However, unless it was something very important, Cyrus usually didn't respond. He didn't want to turn the diary into a chatting tool, especially with those continuous message bombardments, which he found somewhat unbearable.
But recently, some news had caught his attention: Sirius Black's case had been completely overturned.
The newspaper Dobby brought to Cyrus reported this, and Hermione also relayed the news through the diary. After Dumbledore detained Peter Pettigrew in the Ministry of Magic, Sirius finally appeared voluntarily and participated in the trial.
It's said that he didn't seem to want to clear his name at all; instead, he wanted to commit murder in court and directly kill Peter Pettigrew.
However, Dumbledore stopped him.
Of course, if that was all, the news would have been rather unremarkable to Cyrus, but things were clearly not that simple. The key point was that after the trial, Peter Pettigrew, who was supposed to be subjected to the Dementor's Kiss, escaped before the punishment could be carried out!
This was very interesting.
It was important to note that Dumbledore was in the Ministry of Magic at the time, and Sirius had already revealed during the trial that Peter Pettigrew was an Animagus in the form of a rat. The Ministry should have had comprehensive measures in place to prevent Pettigrew's escape.
Yet somehow, that filthy rat managed to escape?!
Cyrus didn't believe this had nothing to do with Dumbledore.
He inclined to think that it was Dumbledore himself who had allowed Pettigrew to escape. Of course, Pettigrew probably wouldn't realize this.
Think about it carefully—Pettigrew was now a fugitive, and his Animagus form had been exposed. In this situation, where could he go?
He had nowhere to go except to seek refuge with the weakened Voldemort. The Ministry was hunting him down, and the Death Eaters wouldn't spare him either. The only path before him was to find the Dark Lord and help him regain his power!
Only by doing so could he reestablish his position among the Death Eaters.
Dumbledore needed Voldemort to return, and preferably to be revived using Harry's blood. Only this way could Voldemort be completely defeated.
Of course, there were still variables.
The only thing that Dumbledore was unsure about now was Cyrus.
He didn't know whether Cyrus could be considered Voldemort's Horcrux. If so, then as long as Cyrus was not dead, Voldemort would probably not die either.
But he was not really worried about this. Judging from the events of the battle at Gringotts, it was obvious that there was an irreconcilable contradiction between Cyrus and Voldemort. Even if left alone, they would go towards the path of opposition.
Because of this, Dumbledore was not as sorry about Cyrus stealing the diadem as he seemed.
The point is that he wants to find out what kind of person Cyrus is.
Judging from his current performance, Cyrus does not seem to be a huge threat, but Dumbledore is not sure whether this is the real Cyrus or an illusion shown by the other party.
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