Return of Salazar Slytherin

“Huff… hah!”

Loki opened his mouth and drew in great breaths.

At this moment, he looked far more miserable than when he had charged into the underground seal full of confidence.

His robes were already torn to shreds and stained with blood. His left arm had been cleanly severed at the elbow.

At least he had managed to shake off Ravenclaw’s corpse that had been pursuing him.

Loki still felt shaken.

If that corpse had been even slightly more intelligent, he might have died here!

If he really had perished in this place, it would have been absurd.

After making so many preparations and laying so many plans, only to be killed at the final step by the corpse of an enemy from a thousand years ago, causing the entire plan to collapse…

That would have been far too ridiculous.

In truth, Loki had simply been unlucky.

The corpse of Ravenclaw he encountered had been casually strengthened by Rowena herself after possessing Aries, making it somewhat stronger than the version Rhys had encountered before.

If Loki had faced the same version Rhys once did, he might not have ended up in such a miserable state.

After confirming that Ravenclaw’s remains were nowhere to be seen, Loki finally had time to deal with his injuries.

A thin flame appeared on his severed hand.

The flame was extremely fine, almost like a thread.

He pulled open his robes and crudely stitched together the wounds across his body.

These flames carried the power of his domain. Only because of that could they stitch the wounds closed. Otherwise, even the strongest ordinary thread would have been cut apart by the lingering wind-element magic within the injuries.

After dealing with the less serious wounds on his torso, Loki aligned his severed forearm with the stump and stitched it back on using threads of flame.

Once he had roughly treated his injuries, Loki used magic to conjure a fresh set of robes and put them on.

At the very least, he looked much better now.

Provided one ignored the arm hanging at his side at an unnatural angle.

After finishing all of this, Loki continued deeper into the dungeon.

Along the way, he passed many seals left behind from the era of the Four Founders.

Some were still extremely stable, while others were already on the verge of collapse.

If Loki wished, he could easily have stopped for a few minutes and destroyed those seals.

The monsters released from within would have given the teachers and students of Hogwarts more than enough trouble, assuming any of them survived the battle above.

But he did not.

Loki merely glanced at those seals, suppressed the urge to destroy them, and continued toward the deepest part of the sealed area.

According to Loki’s original plan for Hogwarts, he had intended to uproot the entire school founded by those four sinners and raze it to the ground.

But his view had changed.

This had nothing to do with Voldemort.

In Loki’s eyes, Voldemort was nothing more than an insignificant third-rate fool. His opinion meant nothing.

Loki had simply come to believe that wizards were an extremely important part of his envisioned future.

They could be punished.

They could be made to understand who their true masters were.

But they could not be exterminated.

After all, the gods stood above all others at the very summit of the world.

The gods needed wizards as servants, both to worship them and to manage and suppress ordinary mortals on their behalf.

Otherwise, would the gods have to descend personally every day to collect offerings from mortals and put down rebellions?

That would be far beneath their dignity.

Someone had to handle such menial work!

As for those wizards who were clearly far too powerful, Loki had an excellent solution for them as well.

Why not simply elevate them into gods?

For someone like Albus Dumbledore, Loki would not even mind sharing his title as God of Fire.

With thoughts of that future filling his mind, Loki soon reached the deepest part of Hogwarts’ sealed underground region.

This place lay at the boundary between the world of the living and the Underworld.

It was the final remaining link left behind after the four Founders severed the connection between the realms of the living and the dead.

Someone might ask why the four Founders had deliberately left such a link behind in the first place.

Wouldn’t completely severing it have prevented anyone from ever exploiting it?

The reason was simple.

Although the worlds of the living and the dead stood in opposition, they were like a person and their shadow, two sides of the same thing.

They could never truly be separated.

Leaving behind only a single “link” was already the absolute limit of what Salazar and the other three could accomplish.

In other words, if this link were destroyed and the final connection vanished, things would reverse once they reached an extreme.

The two realms of life and death would instead connect directly.

This was the very foundation of Loki’s plan.

Standing before the link, Loki could feel the fluctuations in space.

The scene ahead looked as though it were being viewed through the rising heat above a blazing frying pan.

Even space itself was visibly distorted.

Loki stretched out his hand and gathered all of his magic into his palm.

Then he brought it down violently upon the distorted space.

…

The Quidditch Pitch.

The dozen or so contestants waiting for their matches, having realised that something was wrong, followed the players’ passageway up to the surface.

What greeted them was a stadium in complete chaos and a duelling arena surrounded by a raging wall of fire.

It was not until Hagrid lifted a masked attacker high into the air and hurled him down in front of them that they finally realised what was happening.

Hogwarts was under attack.

Daphne immediately cast a flying spell on herself and shot toward the stands.

The other contestants snapped out of their daze as well and hurried into action. Some found safe places to hide, while others joined the battle to help Hogwarts suppress the attackers.

As everyone else moved, Cedric suddenly grabbed Hermione by the sleeve and spoke rapidly.

“If you see Daphne fighting someone later, put both of them into your domain together. Understand?”

Hermione froze, not quite understanding what Cedric meant.

Then she saw Daphne leap forward and punch straight through someone’s chest with a fist flowing with magma.

Hermione instantly understood Cedric’s good intentions.

He was genuinely worried that once the fighting ended, Daphne might be sent to Azkaban for further studies.

Accidentally killing one or two Dark Wizards during a battle was not a major problem, but the way Daphne was going about things carried a considerable risk.

Hermione immediately gave Cedric a look that said, “I understand,” signalling that he could leave everything to her.

Among the members of the Society who had infiltrated Hogwarts this time were several experts who either possessed domains or had fused with divine remains.

Although the Hogwarts professors, the Headmasters supporting Hogwarts, and the Ministry officials were all highly skilled, they still found these opponents extremely difficult to handle and were drawn into bitter fights.

If the battle had lasted much longer, they might even have begun to lose.

Fortunately, the contestants who came to reinforce them greatly reduced the pressure.

Cedric and the others in particular could each tie down one of the high-ranking cultivators who had fused with divine remains, bringing the battlefield back into balance.

Just as everyone was fighting fiercely, a cracking sound suddenly echoed in their ears, as though something had been torn apart.

Everyone’s movements slowed for half a beat.