Cohen had a bad feeling—had the Burke family been completely wiped out?
The manor was gone, and the last Burke was locked up here by the Ministry of Magic as a doorman…
"Cheer up, at least you're free." The Earl saw Cohen deep in thought and decided to offer some consolation—even though he wasn't usually good at comforting people.
"Damn it, I thought I could kill them and inherit the family fortune."
Cohen said regretfully:
"They must be broke now—those contraband creatures are very expensive, even B-grade contraband sells for thousands of Galleons…"
"…"
The Earl was silent for a moment:
"I knew you wouldn't say anything good."
To prevent his dear Uncle Herbert from waking up and interfering with his plans, Cohen cast a rope transformation charm on the chair to securely tie up his criminal uncle.
"All done!" Cohen clapped his hands after finishing, admiring his handiwork—Herbert was tied up like a dumpling, with only his nose exposed.
Now that he shouldn't be able to cause trouble, Cohen planned to release him before he left. Otherwise, if Herbert died, this dangerous area would be left unguarded—the Ministry of Magic would definitely find out, and an investigation might expose Cohen.
As Cohen was about to leave, he suddenly realized the Earl hadn't followed. He turned back to the Earl, who was still standing in the distance, and asked,
"Aren't you coming with me?"
"No, I haven't even had a home run with Hedwig yet, I'm not going to go looking for trouble," the Earl refused. "The ruins are full of remnants of dark magic."
"Alright, you stay here and watch this guy—here's your wand."
Cohen took the wand he had bought for the Earl from his pocket.
He felt he should prepare something like a dimensional pocket for the Earl, since an owl couldn't hide such a long wand on its body.
Or he could tie a small pouch with a seamless extension charm to the Earl's left leg, so the Earl could use his right paw to reach for his wand from the pouch on his left paw—if only an owl's talons could do that.
After tossing the Earl's wand to him, Cohen plunged into the snow outside.
"Snow melts, ice disappears."
Cohen waved his wand at the entrance to the manor ruins, and the surrounding snow began to dissipate around him, revealing the charred ruins and ground.
Since the main manor had collapsed, Cohen could only discern the structure of each room by looking at the foundation stones.
Dark spells swirled in the air; some black magic, once cast, was difficult to completely eradicate.
But the residual spells, which should have been highly aggressive, showed no hostility towards Cohen, even swirling merrily around him.
"This is…"
Cohen frowned, looking at the black mist effects around him that resembled a final boss.
Because these black mists seemed very close to him… like—
"Whoosh!"
Suddenly, a wisp of black mist pierced straight into Cohen's body.
Then another, and the next.
The black mists that had initially just swirled around him crept into Cohen's body one after another.
[Soul Integrity: 22.1%]
[Soul Integrity: 22.2%]
[Soul Integrity: 22.3%]
...
Cohen watched his rapidly increasing soul integrity and put down the wand he had prepared to stop the black mist.
These souls are fragments of himself?!
Cohen felt a refreshing sense of well-restedness—he had never before seen such a rapid increase in soul integrity in just one minute.
Finally, after the last wisp of black mist entered Cohen's body, his soul integrity stopped at 27%.
"Only five percent of such a large mass?!" Cohen looked at the suddenly empty ruins around him with disappointment; all the black mist had returned to him.
In other words, Cohen's tiny fragment of soul had rendered the entire manor completely uninhabitable...
It seemed he was still a heavily contaminated source of dark magic curse.
The other soul fragments should have scattered and escaped; only a small portion remained.
However, even 5% was a pleasant surprise for Cohen.
After all, the spiders in the Forbidden Forest could no longer provide much valuable soul.
When Cohen's soul integrity was at 20%, those souls below 10 points were completely useless to him.
Even a mature eight-eyed giant spider could only provide Cohen with a small amount of soul strength—and eight-eyed giant spiders needed several months to grow from juvenile to adult, their growth rate was too slow.
Cohen needed some higher-quality soul cultivation methods.
After absorbing the black mist, Cohen's focus shifted back to the ruins themselves.
As we all know, when the protagonist explores ruins, they always find a secret basement, which holds all the secrets of the ruins—secrets that the person who inspected the ruins before would never have discovered, even if the entrance to the ruins is easy to find.
Cohen found a pile of ruins with the most obvious signs of magic. After clearing away the rubble and dirt with "Whirlwind Sweep," a cracked floorboard was revealed.
"Show Your Mercy!"
He cast the Reveal Charm on the ground.
However, the expected invisible staircase did not appear, and the cracks on the ground began to writhe as if they were alive, eventually forming several words.
[Show Your Mercy]
Show Your Mercy?
Does Hogwarts teach any spells with "Mercy" in their names?
Seriously, is there such a thing as a "Mercy Charm" in Harry Potter?
"Avada Kedavra!"
A beam of green light shot from the tip of Cohen's wand, shattering the floorboard in the next second—using the Death Curse as an Explosion Charm seems to work quite well.
Cohen had no interest in playing any puzzle games with this stone slab.
It even showed mercy—Avada Kedavra was Cohen's mercy.
It was fortunate that the stone slab had no soul, otherwise Cohen would have certainly let it experience the Dementor's kiss, a kiss "more despairing than death."
After the slab shattered, a staircase leading to a dark basement appeared before Cohen.
"Fluorescent."
Cohen lit the tip of his wand and descended the stairs.
Below was a dark corridor with many rooms on either side, each marked with a number by a faded gold plaque.
At the end of the corridor was a double door, larger and more intricately patterned than the other room doors, likely leading to the most important place in the entire manor.
Cohen felt he shouldn't have been discovered here, because if Dumbledore and the others had been here, this place wouldn't be here…
[Soul Strength: 67 (Weak)]
The system marker appeared in the room at the end. Behind that door, Cohen couldn't see the person's face.
What had survived here for ten years?
A dark magic creature?
A magical beast?
An experimental prototype?
Or... a person?
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(End of Chapter)