Hogwarts: I graduated before the system came

Grindelwald's arrogance, Dumbledore's skills, and his own cunning... God must first test the quality of his vessels before choosing them. Your mission is not to capture him.

Agnese raised his head suddenly, his fingers gripping the hilt of the sword turned white from the force, and a trace of incredible humiliation flashed in his eyes.

She and her knight... were just bait?

"You did well, Agnese."

The cardinal was unfazed by her reaction and even showed a hint of approval.

"You have caused that sleeping beast... to bare its fangs. This only confirms my suspicion that Holmes's overly sharp sword has chosen a direction that will cut us."

The cardinal's voice turned cold.

"He seems sharper now than he was a few years ago. And you, my child, I will give you a more sacred mission."

As he spoke, ripples appeared on the surface of the holy water, and a horrifying scene emerged.

A werewolf bound to a cross altar with rune chains roared silently in pain. The life force in his body was forcibly drawn out by blood-red rays of light, gathering into a beating heart.

And under the altar, a devout knight was opening his arms, and the bloody heart slowly melted into his chest!

The knight's body began to twitch violently, and holy golden flames ignited from his body surface, but under the flames, his skin cracked inch by inch, and hideous bone spurs broke out of his body.

Those eyes, half of them were filled with divine enthusiasm, and half with the hunger of a beast!

Chapter 389 Why Didn’t We Notify Dumbledore

The cardinal's voice was filled with a frenzied passion.

“What we want to create is not a docile lamb, but God’s hound—the chosen wolf.

They will possess the unrivaled strength and resilience of werewolves, but without the uncontrolled savagery. Their claws will tear apart all heretics, and their howls will become new hymns of praise to our Lord!"

In the illusion in the water, a knight roared in pain under the cover of holy light. His body swelled while twisting, and the silver armor merged with the muscle fibers, eventually transforming into a majestic figure that was half human, half wolf, wearing light-forged armor and with golden flames in his eyes.

Instead of becoming a bloodthirsty beast, he became a living statue filled with the aura of divine destruction.

Agnese felt a chill run down her spine, a shudder of fear, nausea, and a hint of morbid curiosity.

The cellar air was dry and heavy.

The silver runes engraved on the wall by Douglas himself were faintly visible in the dim light, like a layer of delicate, cold spider web.

To Remus Lupin, this peace was like the silence before the storm, making him feel suffocated.

He looked at the layers of warning spells that were so complex and dazzling, and his worries became heavier. "Douglas," Lupin's voice was a little hoarse.

"The severity of this matter has exceeded our expectations. The Holy Shield, the Adam Project... this is simply the prelude to a war.

Why don't we inform Dumbledore? He has the right to know and the ability to..."

"Because this is Italy, Remus."

Douglas interrupted him and tapped Lupin's cuff with the tip of his wand. A wisp of almost invisible silver dust suddenly emerged, emitting a faint but unmistakable sacred aura.

Lupin's face turned pale instantly.

"Don't worry about the filth of the Holy Word Seal. This place can well shield it."

Douglas retracted his wand.

He picked up the black tea on the table, the temperature of the tea was just right.

"Every country and every Ministry of Magic has its own main mission. As for the Italian Ministry of Magic, from the first day it was born, it has only one enemy."

"It's across from the Holy See."

There was a cold sneer in his eyes.

"Don't underestimate the Italian Ministry of Magic. They have been fighting openly and covertly with the Holy See for hundreds of years. The pits they have stepped on and the blood they have shed are much more than we can imagine.

This time, the Vatican has only learned a little bit about Muggle genetic modification, and they think they can turn the world upside down? How naive.

He seemed to have remembered something funny, and the corners of his mouth rose slightly.

"Did you know that in 1888, the Vatican secretly carried out an operation called the Purification of the Holy Word?"

"They want to use a mass brainwashing spell to make all the Muggles in Rome start to actively attack wizards. A brilliant plan to cut off the root of the problem, right?"

"Guess what happened?"

Lupin shook his head; he had never read this history in any book.

Douglas blew slowly on the hot steam from his teacup.

"The Italian Ministry of Magic paid the price with the lives of six Head Auror Officers to suppress that insane ritual. Then, they wiped everyone's memory... including their own surviving Aurors."

He paused, his tone light and casual, but it sent a chill down Lupin's spine.

"It's as if this history never happened. This style of doing things is completely different from our Ministry of Magic, which likes to hold hearings."

Lupin smiled and whispered:

"That's not true. In fact, the Ministry of Magic also sacrificed a lot when dealing with You-Know-Who... well, that was only a part of the people.

Has the Church not given up all these years and is still trying to deal with all wizards? What is their purpose?

Douglas' tone darkened:

"If the events of 1888 were merely a test by the Vatican, they ultimately suffered no serious damage. The root of Adam's plan lies with Grindelwald. During the war that ravaged Europe, the Vatican hoped to capitalize on the chaos and restore the glory of theocracy. In the end, they were pinned down and ruthlessly rubbed by Grindelwald."

He drew a circle on the table with his finger.

"St. Peter's Cathedral was nearly transformed into the Italian branch of Nurmengard. In the end, they could only dejectedly declare neutrality and watch Grindelwald do whatever he wanted on the European continent."

Lupin asked doubtfully, "So, they want revenge?"

"No," Douglas's eyes sharpened. "It's about learning. Grindelwald made them understand two things. First, theocracy is vulnerable in the face of absolute power.

Second, the power of wizards is declining. We are no longer the monsters of ancient times who could move mountains and fill the sea.

The Church understood this, so they no longer prayed for miracles. They wanted to use Muggle genetic modification to create miracles that could tear wizards apart. "

The atmosphere in the cellar was extremely depressing.

Suddenly, Douglas stood up, patted the non-existent dust on his robe, and the rebellious arc at the corner of his mouth rose again.

"Don't worry about the Italian Ministry of Magic. We can't afford to get involved in their mess with the Vatican. We have a disembodied Dark Lord waiting to be dealt with in our own country. How can we have the time to worry about other people's internal affairs?"

He stretched.

"Now that my whereabouts have been exposed, I don't have to worry about alerting anyone when I use Apparition. At most, I'll force the Italian Ministry of Magic to get involved.

Let's go, we also have our main quest. I just don't know when Fenrir Greyback will be able to bring his friends to the party here."

After saying that, he walked outside with Lupin, who had not yet fully recovered from the shock.

When they stepped into the tomb full of skeletons again, Douglas grabbed Lupin's arm.

Before Lupin could even react, he was yanked backwards by a powerful force.

The space twisted and squeezed violently, and all the furnishings in the tomb turned into blurred blocks of color in the field of vision, and then collapsed in an instant.

When their feet touched solid ground again, they had returned to the valley where they had been ambushed by the Knights of the Holy Shield.

The air still held the scorching smell of the collision between holy light and magic, mixed with the fishy smell of earth after the rain.

Lupin immediately drew his wand and looked around warily.

"How do we get back here?"

"First," Douglas shrugged, "let's see if there are any interesting clues left here, so we don't have to run around the mountain like headless chickens."

He winked slyly.

"Secondly, the most dangerous place is often the safest. You can't even imagine that I'll strike back immediately, so how could the enemy expect that?"

As he spoke, he squatted down, picked up a handful of charred soil and rubbed it between his fingertips.

He closed his eyes, and invisible magic spread around him like a spider web.

“It was cleaned up very neatly and professionally,” he murmured, “but… they took some things away, and also left some garbage that shouldn’t have been left behind.”

His whisper seemed to linger in the air.

Douglas's sight finally locked on the bottom of an inconspicuous rock.

There, a plant of aconite that should have withered in winter was growing stubbornly in an extremely strange posture.

The edges of its petals were actually glowing with a faint, ominous golden glow.

"It seems that the testing site of Adam's project is closer than we thought."

Douglas stood up, but his eyes did not stay on the strange plant. Instead, he looked at the dark cave entrance on the other side of the valley.

"I'm more curious about something else now," he said slowly. "What exactly happened to the Ash Claw Tribe? Why did the people from the Church choose to ambush us here?"

Chapter 390: The Technique is Too Amateur

The entrance to the abandoned mine is like a huge mouth that has been gnawed by time until only the skeleton is left, silently breathing in and out the cold breath from the ground, a mixture of ore and decay.

The moment Douglas and Lupin stepped into the abandoned mine, it was like stepping from the noisy outdoors into a vacuum glass cover.

The air in the valley outside was mixed with the fishy smell of soil after the rain, the burnt stench of holy light, and the strange sweet fragrance of aconite.

Here, in the main passage of the mine, there is no smell of blood in the air, no smell of ozone left from magic, and no fishy smell from the werewolf tribe.

The air is dead.

There is no dust, no debris, even the moss that should have grown on the rock wall due to years of moisture has been cleaned away.

This kind of cleanliness is more disturbing than a pile of corpses.

It is not natural cleanliness, but a suffocating blankness left after all traces have been forcibly erased.

"This is impossible."

Lupin lowered his voice, and every word he said seemed to be sucked away by the dead air.

His brows were tightly furrowed, he closed his eyes, and his nostrils flared slightly, trying to catch any clues from the dead silence.

However, he could smell nothing.

No, to be more precise, his sense of smell was forcibly formatted by an invisible force.

The air was filled with a powder, colorless and odorless, but like countless tiny, cold needles, it pierced his senses, leaving his brain blank, leaving only buzzing tinnitus and a disgusting, dry smell similar to chalk dust.

A feeling of frustration surged into my heart like a tide.

The tracking instinct that werewolves are most proud of has become a complete joke here.

He shook his head, forcing down the feeling of defeat.

The sense of smell is gone, but the eyes are still there.

He drew his wand and whispered, "The traces appear!"

A faint blue light overflowed from the tip of the staff and swept across the ground, but nothing emerged.

"Damn it, even the detection spell was blocked."

Lupin cursed under his breath. This feeling of powerlessness was worse than facing a group of Death Eaters.

"Don't waste your energy, Remus."

Douglas's voice echoed in the empty mine tunnel, with a hint of lazy mockery.

“This is the Dust of Silence, an antique from the Vatican Inquisition, specially designed for the senses of magical creatures.

It can turn Krupp, who has a keen sense of smell, into a stupid dog who can't find a bone, and it can also temporarily disable your nose."

He looked around, and there was no confusion in his deep eyes. Instead, there was a flash of contempt for seeing a poor imitator.

"It's too amateurish."

He chuckled, and the laughter was particularly harsh in the dead silence.

"They think that by erasing all traces of magic and sprinkling some powder on it, they can turn this place into a blank slate? Naive... They forget that this world, besides magic, also has the laws of physics."

Before he finished speaking, Douglas had already squatted down. His movements did not look like those of a powerful wizard, but rather like those of a meticulous Scotland Yard detective investigating a crime scene.

Lupin suppressed his dizziness and forced himself to calm down.

He gave up his sense of smell and instead scanned the ground like Douglas, but he still found nothing.