Meanwhile, on the other side…
"Master, these are the colleagues I selected," Barty Crouch Jr. said softly as he led twelve black-robed figures over.
Voldemort nodded seriously. Then, right in front of Barty Crouch Jr., he cast a disdainful glance at the group of Death Eaters that had been picked out through the whole short-one-tall-one process.
The meaning of that expression was astonishingly straightforward.
To accomplish great things with this bunch?
Wasn't that pure wishful thinking?
Soon, all of them mounted their broomsticks and flew toward Azkaban.
And at this very moment, Kasenhis hadn't even gotten out of bed yet.
Snape's intelligence had been extremely useful. For example, Voldemort had completely abandoned his original sneak-in-quietly-and-don't-fire-until-spoken-to strategy.
After all, for Voldemort at this stage, manpower was desperately lacking. Regaining Karkaroff had originally been a good thing. Keeping Karkaroff alive could give the scattered, fleeing Death Eaters a bit of reassurance and draw them back to his side.
Let them know that the Dark Lord was merciful.
But unfortunately, Karkaroff somehow decided to bite back at Snape. And that old thing really was carrying out a mission from Dumbledore, so there was only one outcome.
He had to die.
If even a latecomer Death Eater like Karkaroff ended up dead, the Death Eaters hiding out in the outside world were now even more terrified. Dragging them out one by one across the entire world wasn't realistic, so for Voldemort at present, the only timely rain was the diehard Death Eaters in Azkaban.
And now they were saying that the Order of the Phoenix planned to pull the rug out from under him and finely mince the Death Eaters in Azkaban ahead of time. How could that be acceptable!
Wasn't that basically taking Voldemort's life?
So he immediately had Barty Crouch Jr. mobilize the forces. And since he already knew about the Order's ambush plan, they decided to set out in advance and give those elite members of the Order a counter-ambush.
Wouldn't that be perfect?
And so, Voldemort led a large group of Death Eaters to Azkaban ahead of time, killed the guards, and rescued the Death Eaters loyal to him.
After that, everyone hid near the gates of Azkaban.
Waiting for Kasenhis and the others to push the doors open.
But clearly, they had miscalculated.
Because Kasenhis brought his teammates straight into Sirius's cell.
At that moment, Sirius's vision and memories suddenly overlapped. Purple points of light… sudden teleportation, and such an eerily familiar sensation of teleporting.
Why did the mysterious person who rescued him from Azkaban back then feel so similar to Kasenhis?
Could they be from the same school, senior and junior brothers?
He was just about to ask in a low voice when he noticed that the madwoman sister who should have been locked in the cell next to his was already gone.
"Holy shit! I should've realized earlier! Voldemort must've learned about our plan and gone ahead to rescue those Death Eaters in advance!" Kasenhis said, utterly dumbfounded.
What was awkward, though, was that aside from him, no one else reacted nearly as strongly.
"...You all already knew?" Kasenhis asked blankly.
"Dumbledore didn't say too much yesterday. He probably wanted Snape's lie to come across more naturally, so he only said half of it. As for the second half of the plan, we could all guess it. Once Voldemort knew the news, he'd definitely move to rescue them early, so our real plan was to strike later but arrive first."
"Like riding broomsticks down from the top of Azkaban to sneak up behind them, or taking some secret passage. But you bringing us straight into the inside of Azkaban—that was a pleasant surprise," Moody explained.
"This feels like taking off your pants just to fart. This way, we're definitely going to kill fewer Death Eaters," Kasenhis said with a pained expression.
"But we can give up a few scattered kills in exchange for greatly increasing Snape's safety and autonomy on Voldemort's side. That's a pretty good trade," Mrs. Longbottom stepped over and explained.
"Alright, so the goal is to make Voldemort feel that Severus's intelligence is impeccably accurate. Is that it?" Kasenhis understood a bit more. After all, his brain was the straightforward, science-type kind. Three-dimensional modeling in his head, simulating chemical experiments or even an atomic bomb explosion, no problem.
But this kind of psychological mind game really wasn't his forte.
"You all… understand this now?" Moody asked.
Almost everyone, including Kasenhis, nodded, except Sirius.
He still hadn't wrapped his head around the first issue, namely the time-gap mind game between Voldemort and the Order.
But the plan didn't require him to understand it anyway. As long as he could draw his wand, that was enough.
Along the way, the group reined in their emotions and used Wither talismans to drive the Dementors into a manageable area, then slowly crept toward the direction of Azkaban's main gate.
Kasenhis also made sure to give everyone a layer of Night Vision potion, allowing them to abandon light-producing spells like Lumos and stay more concealed.
Before long, with Sirius leading the way, the group cautiously approached Azkaban. Only one corner remained ahead.
But this corner was like every corner in a shooter game. Even if there weren't ten or eight guns hidden there, there was definitely a sack after sack of beefy muscle bros lying in wait.
The reasonable options… smoke or a flashbang.
But for Voldemort, that kind of small trick probably wouldn't work, so Kasenhis chose something ruthless.
Avada Kedavra was power that came from Death itself, and the Wither, as a result, had extremely strong resistance to it.
Lupin saw soul sand and a wither skeleton skull appear in Kasenhis's hands, his pupils practically shaking as he shouted, "What the hell are you doing?!"
No one else reacted much. If anyone had this big of a reaction, it was only Lupin. After all, he had personally witnessed the sheer destructive power of this thing before. Back when he was a professor, he had even collaborated with Kasenhis's alchemy. Lupin knew exactly how terrifying the thing inside those small Wither talismans really was.
"Obviously… this corner ahead is the final danger. I'm going to whip up something insanely badass to give those Death Eaters a little Wither shock," Kasenhis said with a grin.
After crafting the Wither, he directly hugged the massive Wither, aimed it at the wall around the corner, and waited as the aura around it grew increasingly terrifying. Only then did Kasenhis suddenly hurl the Wither at a precise angle.
"Feldhorn!"
The Wither was thrown out by Kasenhis, slammed hard into the wall, bounced violently, and then shot straight toward the direction of Azkaban's main gate—
Boom!
"Now!"
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