The Dementor could only flee with its head in its hands, not daring to fight back.
"There's… no other entertainment… I'm… very bored." The black-robed skeleton responded to Ian while still chasing after the Dementor, who was wailing and begging for mercy.
Ian felt like he was raising a cat and a dog.
He wanted to mediate.
But he was also afraid the black-robed skeleton would hit him too, so he had to let the Dementor suffer a bit. In truth, the skeleton mostly just wanted to pry open the Dementor's mouth and stick its head inside to take a look.
Since the Dementor didn't want to cooperate, it got beaten instead. Maybe enduring this was part of the road to becoming the King of Dementors.
"When Heaven assigns a great mission to the Dementor, it must first strain its bones and exhaust its mind… This is your tribulation, my friend." Ian wasn't sure if that consoled the Dementor at all,
But at least its pitiful wails were now much quieter.
…
The next day,
Newt Scamander, his wife, and his sister-in-law left the school. Ian didn't know whether or not they had reached an agreement with Nicolas Flamel regarding the Time Turner. Since they didn't meet again, Ian hadn't been able to promote his necromancy further, but he didn't really mind. He hadn't even used the key to the Grindelwald family vault yet.
For now, the priority was to continue studying. With Voldemort and Quirrell gone, campus life was peaceful again, and there weren't many students discussing what happened with Quirrell.
Maybe it was because not many people really knew Quirrell in the first place.
Day by day, time continued to pass.
With so much to research and work on, Ian's free time after class and meals was full and productive. The second-generation warming product he had developed, Life-Saving Hand Warmer, was a huge success, finally defeating the Weasley twins' products in Hogwarts' campus market for the first time.
After all, their alchemy skills weren't even in the same league. Once Ian found the right market direction, his advantages became obvious. It was finally a moment for Ravenclaw to shine.
Of course, the one shining most was Ian himself. After overwhelming the Hogwarts market with his absolute dominance, he even took the opportunity to advertise himself in the Great Hall.
"Professional Hogwarts Anti-Lost Maps! Winter Cold Remedy Potions! Hogsmeade Snack Sourcing! I also accept custom alchemy toy commissions for anything you want!"
"As for the scope of this customization, just know this: payment upon satisfaction! You think it, I make it! There's nothing I can't create!" Ian made his pitch loudly and proudly while the professors were away; he couldn't have sounded bolder.
The whole vibe was pure arrogance.
With his exceptional talent in [Transcendent Alchemy], Ian could produce things at a low cost that others could only create at high cost. If he opened a shop in Diagon Alley, he probably wouldn't encounter a single worthy competitor.
"What about things that school rules don't allow us to possess?" A student asked, eager and full of curiosity.
"If the school rules permit it, I'll sell it. If they don't… then I'll sell it for extra. You have to understand, school rules are dead, people are alive! There's always a way around the rules! Trust me! I've been professionally skirting them all year!" Ian lowered his voice when replying to that question.
He didn't want the twin brothers, his main competitors, catching wind of his schemes. To be honest, making money wasn't Ian's primary motivation in selling these things; he genuinely wanted to help his classmates.
Of course, improving his [Alchemy] Proficiency was also a major reason Ian was so proactive in promoting his products. The higher the level of his abilities, the more he needed to try new and unfamiliar experiments.
To say he was stealing his classmates' alchemy ideas would be too harsh, Ian saw it more as a collaborative, crowd-sourced form of study and improvement.
Anyway, the students were happy.
Ian was happy.
Everyone won, and Ian won twice.
After advertising his services, Ian received a ton of orders from students across all years, and even the twin brothers from Gryffindor placed a custom order for a particularly complex prank item.
Ian accepted every single one.
He wasn't worried that the twins would learn his techniques from these collaborations.
Only the Slytherin House, who had had some "misunderstandings" with Ian, didn't really place any orders. Of course, they didn't dare go to the professors and report Ian's "illegal business," either.
But when the Slytherins started seeing students from other Houses showing off new and fascinating items for entertainment, they couldn't sit still any longer and eventually approached the true black-market merchant of Hogwarts.
Aurora.
She took the opportunity to sell a bunch of overpriced, underpowered "Founder's Relics." And those Slytherin students who got their hands on the new toys had no idea that their ideas and innovations were also being passed through Aurora to Ian, becoming yet another source of nourishment for his growth in alchemy.
Yes.
That's why people say Aurora was the real cunning merchant. Her rate of progress in the art of scheming was astonishing. Once an innocent girl, she'd now fully evolved into a genuine middlewoman scalper.
Ian probably deserved some credit for that transformation, too. After all, it was Ian who encouraged her to take orders from Slytherin and even got Daphne Greengrass, leader of the Anti-Prince Alliance, to put on a bit of a performance to help with the sales. For a few gold galleons that she normally wouldn't even look at, Daphne worked hard.
Ian could tell that Daphne Greengrass didn't just "respect" his authority. She was genuinely broke. During Christmas break, she and her bestie had even resorted to flipping pastries from the house-elves' kitchen.
A pure-blood lady had fallen so far, Ian couldn't bear to see it. So he successfully flipped the leader of the Anti-Prince Alliance for just two gold galleons.
Life was going great for Ian, and he was loving every minute of it. His joyful days continued right up until another blurry day, when, after class, he went to see Nicolas Flamel to ask some questions about alchemy.
Aside from absorbing the brilliant ideas of his fellow students, Ian was also diligently learning from the old professor's alchemy experience. As a result, his [Alchemy] Proficiency was increasing rapidly.
Nicolas Flamel's progress in researching the Tower's magic text was also way beyond Ian's expectations.
In just a few days, the old man was already capable of using the Tower's magic text system to construct small-scale magical works.
(To Be Continued…)
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