At this moment, Theodore and the others were on their way to the wizard's chess tournament.
Suddenly, he saw lines of scarlet text appear across the System screen before his eyes.
[You and Nezha, Lei Zhenzi, and the others leave the Jade Void Palace to travel abroad. How could Duobao Daoren's incarnation possibly miss such a good opportunity?]
[This time, to ensure absolute success, he offers living beings in blood sacrifice, slaughters ten thousand souls, refines a Banner of Ten Thousand Souls, and lays down a Soul-Slaying Formation.]
[In the distant sky, red light flickers faintly, black vapors billow thickly, and all resembles the underworld itself. Ten vicious ghosts, torn from the bodies of those slaughtered by Duobao Daoren's incarnation, wail and shriek, eager to devour the living.]
[This formation is no small matter. The host is urged to turn away immediately, or else you may well become one more soul within the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls!]
A peculiar look entered Theodore's eyes.
So Quirrell still refused to give up.
Rather than seizing the chance to go after the Philosopher's Stone while Theodore was away, he was still determined to kill him outside Hogwarts itself?
But what sort of method had Quirrell prepared that the System was classifying it as a Banner of Ten Thousand Souls and a Soul-Slaying Formation?
A moment later, as Theodore read the System's description more carefully, his heart stirred.
From the look of it, Quirrell's arrangement should be related to souls.
A smile slowly appeared at Theodore's lips.
If it were something else, he might have needed to be a little cautious.
But if it involved souls…
Theodore looked at the Judge talent he had inherited from Bloody Baron, at the blessings of the underworld, at the authority to sever and erase souls, and at the method for refining a Judge's Brush.
The smile on his face deepened.
A primordial Judge, placed inside the magical world, was practically the sovereign of the underworld and the natural bane of souls.
Trying to use soul arts against him?
The refinement of the Judge's Brush happened to require souls to be fed into it. If Quirrell had gone to the trouble of preparing them for him, then Theodore could only say that he was more than happy to accept the gift.
Without slowing down in the slightest, Theodore simply continued steering his broom toward the venue.
Scarlet text flashed repeatedly across the System screen. Seeing that it could not dissuade Theodore from charging straight toward the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls and the Soul-Slaying Formation, the System finally produced another line.
[The host gazes toward the Soul-Slaying Formation in the distance, shrouded in ghostly vapors and yin-laden gloom, as well as the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls forged from the slaughter of countless living beings. His eyes are resolute.]
[If this is truly a trial, then one ought to step through ten thousand dangers and hardships. If, upon witnessing evil that harms the common people, one chooses only to avoid it, then what kind of trial was this ever meant to be?]
[If I can watch the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls ravage the world and remain unmoved, then my heart of the path would no longer be clear.]
[The Heavenly Dao is not to be feared. Saints are not to be imitated. My path surpasses the Heavenly Dao, my art surpasses all arts. This time, let me see whether the Banner of Ten Thousand Souls can contain my heart of the path, and whether the Soul-Slaying Formation can force my soul to bow its head!]
Before long, Theodore and the others arrived at the wizard's chess venue.
The venue was not particularly large, nor were there many spectators. Even the staff numbers were sparse.
After all, this was only a small-scale wizard's chess tournament, nowhere near the grandeur of a true championship match.
Even so, it was enough to make Ron nervous.
In all his life, he had never entered such a formal competition.
Before this, he had only ever played wizard's chess against people around him. But now, the opponents facing him were players from across magical Britain.
Ron even heard some participants muttering in unfamiliar languages—something that sounded like French or German. Apparently, players had come from other magical communities as well.
His palms were starting to sweat.
Fortunately, when he thought of Theodore and the others standing behind him, the confidence in his heart grew stronger.
If Theodore had said his current standard was already more than enough to take a small competition like this, then it would definitely be enough.
Theodore was never wrong.
Taking a deep breath and calming himself, Ron finally stepped into the venue and faced his first opponent.
At the start of the match, he was still somewhat tense.
But after only a few exchanges, his mood relaxed almost immediately.
His opponent was weak—so weak that he was nowhere near the level of the Ron Theodore had personally trained. In fact, he was probably worse than even the old Ron had been.
In less than ten minutes, Ron had taken the opposing king and moved on to await his next match.
And the later rounds were almost the same.
He encountered scarcely any real resistance at all, and in one round his opponent even forfeited outright, allowing him to advance without lifting a finger.
In a scene that felt almost dreamlike, Ron realized that his next match would be the final.
If he won this one, he would be champion.
Not only would he receive a purse of gold that, to him, was practically astronomical, but it would also mark the first time in his life that he had surpassed others at something unmistakably his own—something no longer hidden beneath the brilliance of his brothers.
No matter how hard he tried to remain calm, Ron's heart was pounding violently as he walked toward the final board and sat down on one side of the covered table.
At that same moment, Theodore's gaze moved away from the venue staff, all of whom were very clearly under the influence of the Imperius Curse.
The situation was obvious.
Quirrell had arranged for all the truly difficult opponents to be placed on the other side of the bracket, leaving Ron with a path full of filler contestants.
Otherwise, while Ron certainly did possess the strength to reach the final, the journey would never have been so smooth.
"So Quirrell's purpose was to guarantee Ron reached the championship match?"
"In that case, the centerpiece of whatever he prepared would most likely be…"
"The board."
Just then, the moment Ron took his seat, one of the staff suddenly yanked away the curtain covering the chessboard.
A board entirely different from the previous ones appeared.
It was made of some unknown black material, and it was stained everywhere with dried blood. Every piece upon it seemed steeped in gore, radiating a sinister aura that made the skin crawl.
Ron's eyes widened in terror.
He was just about to stand up and back away when the world spun around him.
In the next instant, the chessboard became incomparably real.
Every chess piece had grown enormous, and each of them was looking at him with a dark, malicious gaze.
When Ron turned his head, he discovered something even more horrifying—
his own body was still sitting outside the board.
It looked as if his very soul had been dragged into the game.
"What… what is going on?!"
The sudden upheaval immediately threw the entire venue into uproar.
At that moment, Quirrell, hiding backstage, pinched his voice and let out a shrill cry of false alarm.
"Heavens! This is dark wizard's chess played for one's very life! It hasn't appeared in the magical world for many years!"
"Once you enter a dark wizard's chess match, you can only survive by fulfilling the victory condition and winning!"
As Quirrell cried out, ten vague figures appeared inside the dark board.
Before Ron's eyes, ten identical chessboards appeared at once, each with a grim, sinister soul seated on the opposite side.
A vicious smile spread across Quirrell's lips as he continued his overacted gasping.
"Ah—so the condition is to defeat the souls of ten chess masters in succession?"
"Wait! I recognize them! These are all famous wizard's chess champions!"
"The eight-time champion is among them!"
"It's over—completely over! How could a child possibly beat them? Who could possibly sa—"
Quirrell had originally intended to provoke Theodore into stepping into the board to save Ron.
If that happened, Theodore too would be dragged into the dark match.
No matter how powerful Theodore's magic was, that did not mean he possessed deep attainments in wizard's chess—let alone the ability to defeat ten top-level players in succession.
He should have been doomed.
And yet what Quirrell had never expected was this:
before he could even finish crying out whether anyone would save Ron, Theodore was already seated across from the board.
Without the slightest hesitation, he took the other chair.
Quirrell actually froze.
No, really—
not even a moment's thought?
Was Theodore really going to step into the trap that easily?
Inside Quirrell's mind, Voldemort let out a cold laugh.
"This is Dumbledore's teaching. His so-called education of love."
"Even a genius as dazzling as Theodore Ashbourne has been poisoned by that nonsense. Otherwise, if he had lived long enough, his future achievements might truly have become impossible to imagine."
"But now it's over. It's all over…"
Quirrell's face flushed with excitement. He snatched up his glass and drained the champagne in one swallow.
Steady.
This was done.
Yet at that very moment, Theodore—sitting across from the dark chessboard—merely curled his lips in a faint mocking smile.
He could clearly feel a pulling force coming from the board, as though it wanted to drag all three souls and seven spirits of his being into itself.
But that paltry force, compared to Theodore's own soul, was little more than an ant trying to shake a mountain.
If Theodore did not wish to move, then even if the board were ten times stronger, it would not be able to stir him in the least.
"Though I have to say," Theodore murmured, "this is the first time I've ever seen souls in such a hurry to meet a Judge of the Underworld."
"Since you want to play, then I'll indulge you."
The next moment, Theodore allowed his soul to follow the pull and stepped cleanly out of his body, entering the dark chessboard in a single stride.
The instant his majestic presence entered the board, an expanse of underworld chaos unfurled around him, as though the ruler of the dead had arrived in person.
Then, right before Quirrell's bulging eyes—
the blood-stained, sinister chess pieces on the dark board, along with the ten eerie figures seated upon the ten boards—
all bowed their heads at once.
As though ministers kneeling in greeting before their emperor.
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