Hogwarts: I graduated before the system came

Agnese's answer was understated, but it hit Piero's sore spot accurately.

"After all, upholding the Statute of Secrecy is your job."

This extreme contempt made the Aurors behind Piero clench their wands tightly.

Piero raised his hand to stop them, but the smile on his face became even colder.

"Very good, it seems that Commander Vieri has divided our duties among us.

So, I'd like to ask, is it part of your job to use divine punishment-level attack magic on Italian territory, and the target is a current professor at Hogwarts?

This had not been reported to the Department of International Magical Cooperation, nor had the Auror Office been informed.

Am I to understand this as a declaration of war... by the Ministry of the Faith against the British wizarding community?"

He deliberately elevated the nature of the incident to the level of an international diplomatic conflict.

Agnese finally stopped wiping the shield.

She raised her eyes, and there was no anger in her ice-blue eyes, only a condescending indifference, as if she was looking at an ignorant child.

"Director Piero, if you have any objections to our actions, you can ask your minister to make an appointment with His Eminence the Cardinal of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith."

She paused and added:

"I think they'll give you an answer by next spring. Now, we're leaving."

"He will go."

A cold arc appeared at the corner of Piero's mouth. He took a step back, creating distance, as if pulling an invisible bow.

"He will also bring a complete exploration report of the illegal experimental sites of the Adam Project. I think His Eminence would be happy to talk to us about the Holy Cage and the werewolves who died of natural causes in the archives."

The moment the words "Adam Plan" were uttered, the air seemed to freeze.

Agnese's grip on the kite shield suddenly tightened, and her pupils shrank slightly, but her expression remained unchanged.

She said nothing more, but just looked at Piero deeply. Her eyes were complicated, showing both the anger of being caught and a hint of reassessment of Piero's intelligence capabilities.

Ignoring the livid-faced Piero, Agnese gestured to his men.

All the knights instantly transformed into soft holy lights that shot up into the sky and disappeared into the night. They used the unique movement method of the Holy See that was not "Apparition" - Holy Light Transmigration.

Seeing all her subordinates leave, she looked at Piero and said in a voice that seemed to come from far away:

"Some shadows are too deep to be illuminated by the candles of the Ministry. Be careful... don't stare into the abyss and fall into it yourself."

After saying this, she also turned into a ray of holy light and left.

All that was left at the scene were a team of Italian Aurors and a mess.

Piero stood there, his face ashen, his fists clenched so tightly that his nails almost dug into his flesh.

He knew that it was both a warning and a condescending... provocation.

A young Auror was shaking with anger:

"Director! They... they are so arrogant! They don't take us seriously at all!"

Piero slowly squatted down, picked up a handful of soil mixed with silver powder and holy water, and put it to his nose and sniffed it.

What burned in his eyes was no longer simple anger, but a long-simmering rage that was doubly violated.

"asshole!"

He cursed under his breath, stood up suddenly, and threw the dirt in his hand to the ground.

"Two bastards! One treats my territory like his own backyard, coming and going as he pleases! The other is even more ruthless, treating this place like an open-air shooting range for the Knights!"

His voice was not loud, but it silenced the Aurors around him.

The dizziness of Apparition faded away, and Lupin found himself in a deep and ancient space.

The air was filled with the smell of dust and dried bones. The surrounding walls were covered with layers of skulls. In the light from the tip of Douglas' wand, the dark eye sockets seemed to be silently watching them.

This is an abandoned early Christian catacombs beneath Naples, a forgotten corner and the perfect haven Douglas discovered while traveling many years ago.

"Ugh..." As soon as Lupin stood firm, he could no longer hold back and began to retch violently while holding onto the wall of bones.

His face was paler than the bones on the wall, and his whole body was shaking uncontrollably.

Douglas didn't say anything, but silently took out a crystal bottle from his pocket, which contained a dark purple potion.

He held Lupin steady and held the potion to his lips.

Lupin could smell a mixture of sedatives and a kind of... antidote specifically used to combat mental magic, with a faint scent of silver star grass.

He drank it obediently, and a cool warm current slowly soothed the wildness in his body.

Seeing Lupin's breathing gradually stabilize, he walked to a skull with a hole in the middle of the brow, counted three upwards, and then used his wand to knock on the left eye socket of the skull in the rhythm of "Douglas Holmes".

The wall slowly moved away, revealing a deep hole leading underground.

Lupin looked at Douglas's actions and couldn't help but complain:

"Do all of you Hufflepuffs like this? I've never seen anyone from Gryffindor use a picture frame as a door..."

Douglas shrugged and said before stepping in:

"Maybe there is, and you don't know it! Come in..."

Chapter 388 Douglas: It seems that the person behind this is an old acquaintance of mine

"Welcome to my holiday cottage."

Douglas' tone was as relaxed as if he was inviting a friend to enjoy afternoon tea.

"The furnishings here may be a little sparse, but it's quiet and can effectively isolate some...unnecessary attention."

The cellar was dry and stored with food, water, and some basic potion materials.

Lupin sat on a wooden bed, took a long breath, smiled bitterly and said:

"I feel like a piece of butter thrown into holy water. Douglas, they're... coming for you."

"It's obvious."

Douglas was checking the defensive spell at the entrance to the cellar and upgrading the security measures of the shelter. After all, he built it when he just graduated.

He swiped his fingers through the air, and silver runes merged into the stone wall and disappeared.

"However, I'm sorry for involving you. I expected the Vatican to take some measures against me..."

He stopped what he was doing, turned around, looked at Lupin and said:

"Remus, think back on their actions. The Holy Light Cage, the Silver Mist... all of these arrangements were designed to restrict and weaken you, not to kill you directly.

The speed at which their encirclement contracted pushed us towards the center with precision, yet they always maintained a safe attack distance."

He held up two fingers, a sharp light flashing in his eyes:

"They have two goals: first, capture him alive. Second, test him.

The female knight, Agnese Vieri, was the youngest commander of the Order of Saint Sebastian, known for her tough tactics and firm beliefs.

Each of her commands was textbook-precise, but too precise, like... a carefully choreographed exercise.

She was waiting for me to make a move, testing my limits in dealing with this standard Holy Light siege."

"A test?" Lupin frowned.

Douglas sneered:

"I've only seen this style of data acquisition at any cost in one place—a few years ago, by the cardinal of the Vatican who studied black magic.

It seems that my return has made his successor uneasy, and this successor is likely an old acquaintance of mine."

Lupin asked doubtfully:

"What exactly did you do last time?"

Rome, headquarters of the Italian Ministry of Magic.

The atmosphere in Piero Rossi's office was terribly low.

"The Adam Project! Damn it!"

Piero banged his fist on the heavy oak desk, making the inkwell jump.

"Director, we... our understanding of this plan is very limited."

A senior Auror reported with gritted teeth.

"Both the International Affairs Department and the Minister have issued gag orders. We only know that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has refused to share any relevant intelligence with us, citing internal purification as an excuse.

All we know is that over the past twenty years, they have taken at least fifty werewolves from various werewolf tribes in the name of shelter and treatment, but these people... have never appeared again."

Piero calmed down and said coldly:

"I'm the Director of Law Enforcement, but I don't even know what's going on in my own jurisdiction, and I'm told not to ask any more questions. How long does he plan to protect those lunatics... The Holy Shield of the Order of Saint Sebastian has been deployed... and yet I only know the name and general purpose of this thing."

Obviously, he had just reported the progress to the minister, who said he did a good job and that this would be how he would handle any subsequent matters related to the Adam Project.

Only then did he realize that the minister's request for him to monitor Douglas was a test for him...

He knew that the official channels had been blocked, so he could only take the path in the shadows.

Half an hour later, in the dark and damp underground archive.

Piero looked at Gianluca, the head of the archives of the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures, an old wizard with gray hair and reading glasses.

"Director...those things are taboo. The previous minister personally ordered them to be sealed. I...I don't have the authority..." Gianluca didn't dare to look Piero in the eye.

Piero stepped forward, placed his wand against his chest, and said in a voice as cold as iron:

"Gianluca, tell me your location, or I will throw you into the prison island of Sicily for obstructing the investigation into the Dark Wizard incident and leave you to keep company with those werewolves!"

The old wizard's face turned pale and he pointed tremblingly to a corner covered with spider webs in the deepest part.

Piero cast a blasting spell to open the rusty lock and pulled out a file with a blackened cover.

On the cover of the file, written in ancient Italian is "Adam Project - Risk Assessment".

"These are files that were sealed by order of the previous minister 20 years ago."

Gianluca, the head of the archives at the Department for the Regulation of Magical Creatures, who had accompanied him, pushed up his glasses.

"At that time, the Ministry of Doctrine of the Faith first proposed the Adam Project, hoping to cooperate with us. They claimed that it could eradicate the werewolf curse. One of our researchers participated in the initial evaluation, but... he later went insane."

Piero quickly opened the file and the contents were shocking.

The report details the alleged treatment process:

Through a ritual that mixes holy water, unicorn blood, and some unknown spiritual imprint, the animal nature in the werewolf is forcibly stripped away, with a success rate of less than 5%.

The losers either died on the spot or had their minds destroyed, turning into soulless shells that only knew how to follow orders - they were called "Saint Dogs" in the report.

What sent a chill down Piero's spine was the last page of the report, on which was written a line of comments in scribbled handwriting:

"The ultimate goal of this project is not to cure, but to select, to select super soldiers who can withstand the transformation of Holy Light... The target is not limited to werewolves."

Piero slammed the file shut. He finally understood the crazy ambition hidden behind Agnese's words "Purification itself is sacred".

A photo in the appendix on the last page of the report made his pupils shrink - it was a transformed magical creature with traces of holy light burning and rune branding on its body.

He immediately thought of the sensational case a few years ago in which Douglas Holmes dismantled a Dark Wizarding organization connected to the Cardinal.

The magical creatures recovered by the Aurors from the scene at that time had similar, inexplicable signs of transformation.

"I see……"

Piero muttered to himself, cold anger burning in his heart.

“The so-called abolition research has simply moved from above ground to underground; they have never stopped!

Holmes was targeted not because the Cardinal, who used black magic, was killed and the Vatican felt humiliated, but because he accidentally... touched the tip of the iceberg of Adam's plan!

In a windowless room deep inside the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican.

Agnese knelt on one knee in front of a pool of holy water as clear as a mirror. What was reflected in the water was not her own figure, but an old man wearing a crimson cardinal robe, his face hidden in the shadows.

"I failed, my lord." Agnese's voice was emotionless. "Douglas Holmes is more powerful than the records indicate. His magic... bears some resemblance to Grindelwald."

"Shadow?" The cardinal in the shadows chuckled softly, his voice old and distant, as if from another era.

"No, my dear Aegis, that is not a shadow, it is an echo.