As an island nation, Japan was home to quite a few volcanoes, not counting the famous Mount Fuji.
The volcano beneath Mahoutokoro was by no means small.
The instant the fire element was touched, it erupted into violent agitation. A volcano that had lain dormant for nearly a thousand years awakened once more.
Outside, Gus was counting heads. The children were all dressed in rags, each of them like a walking corpse.
The Headmaster's experiments weren't limited to electrical shocks. He used emotional impacts far beyond what ordinary people could endure, twisting these children into something abnormal.
Among them were even wizard children. By forcibly stimulating their emotions, the Headmaster had boosted the magic of these seven- or eight-year-olds.
Those who endured it did gain some results.
Those who didn't had their memories wiped.
This research had already driven the Headmaster completely mad.
Musashi and Shizuka ran out. When Shizuka saw the children's lifeless eyes, she broke down and began to sob uncontrollably.
"Move it, get out of here," Gus urged the children, but how to leave quickly became a problem.
By now, Musashi had shaken off his shock and said, "Go to the giant seagulls. We'll leave on their backs."
Gus frowned. "Those things will listen?"
"They listen to instructors," Musashi said, looking at Shizuka.
Shizuka wiped away her tears, nodded, and led them onward.
Just as they were heading toward the platform outside the institute's palace, a thunderous roar rolled through the ground.
The earth shook violently, the tremors spreading to the entire island.
The sea churned with surging waves, and the nearby air force base sounded its alarms.
The remaining instructors were all drawn out by the disturbance.
One of the middle-aged female instructors saw Shizuka leading a group of children away and immediately stepped out to question her.
"Instructor Shizuka, what are you doing?"
Shizuka knew this instructor well. Unlike Kra, she wasn't someone who knew about the Headmaster's experiments.
"Instructor Arashi, the volcano is about to erupt! We need to leave now!" Shizuka shouted.
Instructor Arashi was still doubtful, but in the next instant, the ground of Mahoutokoro began to crack.
A massive fissure split open in front of them.
Scalding heat burst up from the depths of the fissure.
Crimson magma churned below, surging upward.
At that moment, Instructor Arashi's expression changed completely.
She didn't even have time to ask where the children had come from. Pulling out her wand, she cast a freezing spell, laying down a path of ice.
"Hurry and take the children across!" Instructor Arashi felt the ground beneath her feet grow unstable and sticky. She glanced down to see the soles of her shoes beginning to melt.
The temperature here was rising rapidly. Other instructors appeared one after another, all fleeing outward.
No one had the attention to spare for Gus and Musashi anymore.
As the commotion grew more violent, Mahoutokoro's alabaster walls suddenly collapsed.
Like a domino effect, building after building crumbled in rapid succession.
Outside the gates, everything was shrouded in dense white mist, from within which came waves of terrified seagull cries.
Several instructors worked together with Gus and Musashi to get the children onto the backs of the giant seagulls.
They departed in five batches. Each giant seagull carried four children, accompanied by a single instructor.
As the fifth giant seagull was about to take off, Shizuka looked down at the two of them and shouted, "Musashi, get up here, now!"
Musashi stared at Mahoutokoro collapsing before his eyes. He had studied here once.
He had struggled here, known glory here, known disappointment here. Now this school, turned into a cesspool by the Headmaster, was crumbling apart, crimson magma flowing through its ruins.
His emotions were indescribably complicated.
"No—!"
Gus let out a grief-stricken howl, beating his chest and stamping his feet.
He looked even more heartbroken than Musashi, who was actually from this place.
"Boss, boss! How am I supposed to live without you? You still owe me so many payments!"
Gus was in real pain. His Galleons—his shiny, golden Galleons—were just gone like that?
A building buried under magma clearly left no chance for anyone to survive.
That was why Gus looked like his parents had just died.
After all, he'd been only one step away from getting rich overnight.
Musashi grabbed Gus and dragged him aboard just before the giant seagull fled.
The magma completely swallowed Mahoutokoro.
Above the entire island, heavy black clouds and rising hot air made it difficult for the giant seagulls to keep their balance, nearly sending them plunging downward.
Multiple aircraft took off from the air force base to evacuate.
They had detected that the volcano was about to erupt.
And sure enough—Booom!!!
Just as the giant seagull carrying Gus and Musashi flew beyond the island's boundary, a heaven-shaking explosion erupted.
Crimson magma blasted straight into the sky.
Volcanic ash spread everywhere, its coverage so vast it could only be called catastrophic.
A gray snow fell over the surrounding area.
…
||This is even bigger than I expected.||
No one could survive a volcanic eruption.
Except for a fire dragon.
Nearly pitch-black scales moved through the magma as John rode the eruption out of the volcano.
High in the sky, his scales blended perfectly with the night.
No one knew he had left that place.
When he finally stopped flying, John flew straight out of Japan.
He landed in a deserted mountain forest, where the massive body of the dragon shifted and transformed back into a human.
John's expression was calm as he held a newspaper borrowed from some unfortunate person's owl—he had no idea whose.
"The disappearance of a magical school is explosive news, even in a place that's been sealed off for so long."
A full week had passed since John triggered the volcanic eruption, and the matter of Mahoutokoro had already become known across the entire world.
Not just the magical community—even the Muggle world was reporting on the volcanic disaster.
For John, the bigger the commotion, the better.
Only something loud enough could allow him to completely vanish from everyone's sight.
As he walked through the mountains and forests, whenever he grew hungry, he would pick some fruit to eat.
Biting into a tart, unripe apple, John pulled a scroll from his small satchel and began to read.
"Hyakki Yagyō?"
As he looked over the records on the scroll, John's brows knit tightly.
What was written there reminded him of something else.
Voldemort's dead corpses, the inferi.
The difference was that Inferi were created by injecting magic into a body, making it appear alive, though in essence it was nothing more than a soulless shell.
Hyakki Yagyō, on the other hand, discarded the physical body entirely, allowing the soul to be imprinted onto other objects like a ghost, thereby granting the ability to command spirits.
Ordinarily, ghosts might cause discomfort when they came into contact with the living, but on their own, they posed little real threat.
Hyakki Yagyō, however, granted ghosts the power to physically touch the world.
"A form of soul magic?" John murmured, rubbing his chin. "What the Headmaster wanted to create wasn't that simple."
In Japan, there were legends of a hundred demons—and of great yōkai.
The Headmaster wanted an army of Hyakki Yagyō, using other modified bodies and handing them over to be controlled by the hundred demons.
That way, the army's combat power would increase dramatically.
But such biological modification was clearly evil and illegal.
John recalled the motionless bodies submerged in that viscous liquid. A flash of cold fury passed through his eyes.
"Too bad I didn't get the chance to reach the Mirage Realm and find Death. His soul would've been worth a lot."
The Mirage Realm wasn't somewhere one could enter at will. The three times John had gone there, it had all been with the aid of souls.
He had only encountered Death twice.
So, to avoid wasting anything, John had extracted that old bastard's soul and sliced it into fine strands, bit by bit.
Trash like that didn't deserve the chance to enter the underworld.
Out in the mountains, John wasn't worried about being seen.
After walking for some time, he spotted a church.
Come to think of it, wizards and the Church...
The relationship between the two really was complicated and peculiar.
John headed toward the church.
At that moment, his hair color began to change, shifting from its original black to gold.
More than that, his facial features subtly altered as well.
Sharper lines appeared, making him look noticeably more mature.
He walked into the church.
John had expected to see nuns or priests.
There were no nuns—but he did see a priest.
A man who seemed born with an irresistible kind of charm.
Clad in a priest's robes, heterochromatic eyes, a man in whom wickedness and handsomeness coexisted.
Grindelwald.
John saw Grindelwald, and Grindelwald saw John just as clearly.
The meeting of the Second King and the first Dark Lord of this century.
John raised his hand and grasped at empty air. The already ignited Silverhand Sword appeared in his grip.
The blade sliced through the air, golden flames burning along its edge with a terrifying roar.
"So," John said coolly as he drew his wand with his left hand, "what should we call this—enemies meeting on a narrow road?"
"Or is it really just that much of a coincidence?"
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