Hogwarts Raven

Chapter 416, page 415: Did you lure me in to kill me?

Seeing that Ian so readily admitted his strength, without showing anger or arrogance at having his identity exposed, the old man Musa's face revealed an even more genuine appreciation.
He laughed heartily, his voice becoming louder: "Your Majesty, you are indeed a man of few words! Indeed, as you can see, I am but an alchemist."

"I've spent my whole life tinkering with bottles, jars, pots, and pans." He guessed Ian's purpose for coming, so he knew that Ian was interested in something he owned.

That was an achievement he was very proud of.

Ian was not surprised that the other party was an alchemist. After all, to become close friends with someone like Master Caleb, the other party must have extraordinary attainments in alchemy.

after all.

As the saying goes, cats and mice are in cahoots.

Only those who share similar tastes can become friends for many years.

“I can tell you’re also an alchemy master,” Ian said with a slight compliment, but Musa waved his hand, his face showing an almost pure infatuation.

"I would not dare to call myself a master; Your Majesty is too kind."

"In my life, I haven't had any grand ambitions; I'm just passionate about food. My initial purpose in learning alchemy was simply to better understand and create delicious food. Others practice alchemy to turn lead into gold and achieve immortality, but I practice it to make stewed meat more tender, broth more flavorful, and bread more fragrant! Haha, isn't that a bit pathetic?"

As he spoke, he chuckled to himself.

Upon hearing this, Ian's eye twitched slightly, and he couldn't help but point in the direction they had come from, his tone somewhat strange: "So... your ultimate pursuit of gourmet food is reflected in... using those frozen meats that can be considered antiques?"

He simply couldn't associate those pieces of meat with labels from decades ago with "gourmet food," even if they had been "recreated" by the magical crucible, it couldn't be considered a pursuit of gourmet food.

Musa was not annoyed by Ian's teasing. Instead, he gave a meaningful smile and gestured for Ian to sit down on the stone bench by the edge of the field.

He patted the dirt off his clothes and sat down.

"Your Majesty, the shop you went to is my ordinary shop. It's located in the market and caters to the general public. For them, value for money is always the top priority."

"Not having enough to eat is worse than eating food from decades ago—although we are shamans, there are still many of our compatriots in Africa who struggle to feed their families."

“After all, we’re both quite fertile.” He paused, as if realizing he had veered off-topic, and his gaze swept over his thriving vegetable garden, his tone becoming somewhat distant. “Actually, those ‘antique’ ingredients you mentioned weren’t things I deliberately sought out to sell.”

“They are ‘additional gains’ or ‘byproducts’ that I got while doing something else… well, something more important.”

"There are quite a few."

“Leaving it there is a waste. I can’t stand wasting food, especially… edible food.” His eyes revealed an almost obsessive appreciation.

Looking at Musana's serious expression, Ian stopped dwelling on the logic that "it's fine to waste meat that's over a hundred years old." He keenly grasped the key information in the old man's words—"another more important thing," "an extra gain"—these words all had hidden meanings behind them.

He leaned forward slightly, his sharp gaze fixed on Musa: "So, this is directly related to whether I can acquire the technology for that time-reversal crucible, right?"

Ian had also learned the art of speaking, and he believed that Musa would never reveal such core secrets to a "stranger" he had just met for no reason.

This is true.

Musa's deep gaze met Ian's, his eyes seemingly filled with decades of experience and anticipation.

He slowly exhaled, his voice carrying an indescribable complex emotion: "Your Majesty, you have keen insight. Yes, we can reach some consensus. First, I need some help. To be honest, I once fell into despair over that matter, thinking that I would never be able to uncover the truth in my entire life."

"Fortunately... God has been kind to me. Before my old bones are about to be buried in the ground, I met you... a legend walking among men."

His sentiments were profound and sincere, carrying the relief of a drowning person grasping at a piece of driftwood.

The old man's words further convinced Ian that the other party wanted to make a deal with him, a deal that might involve a lot of deep and complicated issues.

"What do you want me to do for you? Kill someone? Or deal with some unshakeable force?" Ian asked tentatively, his tone tinged with curiosity.

With his legendary mage power, it seems that most problems in the world can be solved by force.

However, when Musa heard the word "murder," he shook his head bitterly, a sadness and melancholy that was completely different from when he talked about food.

"No, Your Majesty, I have no intention of killing anyone, nor do I wish to be an enemy of any power."

"What I want... is simply to find a long-buried truth and figure out a story from long ago... that concerns the fate of two people."

This answer was completely unexpected by Ian.

Looking for the truth?

Ian was stunned. He had considered many possibilities, but he never expected that the other party would make such a seemingly "simple" request, which was often the most complicated and exhausting.

He looked into Musa's eyes, which were full of stories yet now revealed a deep longing, and seemed to realize something. But he did not interrupt and just waited quietly.

Musa seemed lost in distant memories. His cloudy gaze fell upon the simulated blue sky and white clouds in the distance of the manor, which were indistinguishable from the real thing. In a tone that was as if he were telling an ancient legend, with a unique rhythm and deep emotion, he began to recount his life story.

"That was a long, long time ago...so long that many details have become blurred, but the feeling is as clear as if it were engraved in my bones."

"When I was young, well, I was about as big as you are now, or maybe even a little smaller. I've always been a restless person."

"My teacher, a strict but knowledgeable old wizard who had long since passed away, said that I had cleverness but no perseverance, wasting my good magical talent. In order to temper me and broaden my horizons, he took me away from the tribe and began to travel all over the African continent."

"We walked through the scorching Sahara, traversed the dense Congo rainforest, camped at the foot of Kilimanjaro, and meditated amidst the mist of Victoria Falls."

This is the beginning of a typical life for a wandering wizard.

Unlike most academic wizards, the African wandering wizards and the Hogwarts academic wizards represent two completely different paths of inheritance in the magical world.

Hogwarts is a temple of knowledge, emphasizing systematic teaching, textbook theory, and standardized testing. Students learn "standard spells" in fixed classrooms and cultivate magical plants in greenhouses, all within safe boundaries. Magic is broken down into teachable courses.

The growth of a wizard is like an assembly line, pursuing "correctness" and "standards".

African itinerant sorcerers, on the other hand, are practitioners of survival. They have no fixed academies, but instead follow their mentors deep into rainforests, deserts, and battlefields, learning magic on the edge of life and death. Their "classrooms" are swamps teeming with venomous snakes, caves sealed by ancestral spirits, and the camps of centaur tribes.

They don't memorize spells; instead, they master magic through personal experience. They learn antidotes after being bitten by poisonous insects, acquire protective spells after witnessing tribal wars, and even participate in the "Bone Carving Enlightenment" ritual to understand the fusion of magic and flesh.

The academic school pursues "control," while the wandering school pursues "adaptation." The former casts spells with wands, while the latter often uses their bodies as a medium—carving symbols into bones, swearing oaths by drinking blood, and communicating with spirits through dance. Their magic is more primitive, more direct, and more dangerous. There are no OWL or NEWT exams; the only test is whether one can survive in the wilderness.

In Africa, a sorcerer's "power" is not measured by how many spells he can recite, but by whether he can summon thunder and rain with a stick or arrange three stones to trap ghosts without a wand.

They believe that magic is not in books, but in the wind, in the earth, and in every heartbeat and breath. This is why most wizards of this kind are more powerful than those from academia.

The main point is that wizards who survive to adulthood are undoubtedly very powerful. Unlike the high survival rate of those from academia, it's not easy for wandering wizards to grow up.

The fact that the traveling group, whose scenery is visible to others, is actually due to the survivor effect; many more wizards who perish during their travels never have the chance to show themselves.

Low survival rate.

High upper limit.

This is the traveler school.

The academic school has a high survival rate but a low minimum standard.

Both of these growth paths have their advantages and disadvantages.

While Ian was pondering, the old man continued telling his story—perhaps all older people, whether wizards or not, have this fondness for being long-winded.

Anyway, the other party kept talking non-stop.

"Those days were tough, but they also showed me the vastness and wonder of the magical world. I learned a lot of things that I couldn't learn in school, but deep down, I still wasn't very interested in those profound magical theories or complex battle spells. I preferred observing the plants and animals along the way, tasting the local specialties, and recording those unique flavors in my clumsy way. For this, I got scolded by my teachers quite a bit, who said I wasn't doing my job properly."

"Until... we arrived at a beautiful lakeside tribe on the edge of the East African Rift Valley. There, the water and grass were lush, and the people were warm and hospitable. It was there that I met her... Armani."

When Musa spoke the name, his voice became unusually gentle, and his eyes sparkled with a youthful brilliance.

"Armani is the daughter of a tribal priest. Just as her name implies, she is like a serene and dazzling pearl. Her eyes are like the deepest lake, and her smile can melt the ice on Lake Victoria. She is not only beautiful, but also a gifted sorceress, especially skilled in communicating with nature and healing magic."

"The people in the tribe all say that she is a child blessed by the lake spirits." This way of describing her is a bit like sycophancy, but a high-EQ way of saying it is affectionate enough.

Judging from the old man's tone, he had indeed succeeded in currying favor, becoming an anomaly among simps, envied and resented by countless other simps.

"Our meeting was an ordinary event, yet it felt like fate. I was by the lake trying to extract the essence of a type of aquatic plant using my crude alchemy, hoping to create a new seasoning. I messed it up, causing a small explosion and ending up covered in soot."

“She happened to see this while she was gathering herbs by the lake… Instead of laughing at me, she came over, used the Clear Spring spell to wash my hands, and then used her warm healing magic to soothe the burns on my hands.” Musa smiled nostalgically: “She asked me why I was doing something so dangerous.”

"I stammered and said it was to make something delicious."

“When she heard this, she didn’t think I was neglecting my studies like the others did. Instead, her eyes lit up and she said that she also loved to study how to make food more delicious with local spices and herbs… We just talked like that by the beautiful lakeside, starting with food, then magic, our experiences, and our fantasies about the future… It was as if we had endless things to say.”

"That evening, the setting sun dyed the lake surface gold, outlining her profile like a goddess. At that moment, I suddenly understood what my teacher had once said, but which I had scoffed at—the true power of magic lies not in destruction, but in creation and connection. And my hobby, which was considered 'not doing my proper job,' seemed to have found its meaning."

Well, it sounds like a beautiful story, but Ian is, after all, a mischievous little wizard with a dirty mind. He really wants to know if this connection is the one he's thinking of? It's probably something like a phone charger and a phone, a scene that can only be understood but not explained.

"Cough cough."

Ian felt ashamed that his thoughts were not pure enough.

of course.

He was also pleased with his vivid imagination—anyway, he didn't feel ashamed for long, and then stared at the old man with an expression that the old man couldn't understand.

This did not hinder the old man's storytelling.

“We stayed in that tribe for much longer than originally planned. The teacher noticed the change in me, and although he was still strict, he didn’t push me too hard. Armani and I explored the jungle together, identifying herbs; I taught her some simple cooking skills and alchemical tricks that I had learned from various places, while she introduced me to the spirits of the lake and taught me to listen to the sounds of the wind and the earth… Those were the happiest and most fulfilling times of my life.”

“We fell in love, and like all young lovers, we made an eternal vow.” Musa’s voice gradually lowered, and the light faded from his eyes.

It was replaced by a deep, profound pain.

“I understand,” Ian said softly, his tone tinged with pity and understanding. “You loved each other, made vows… but love can never withstand reality. Was it your parents’ opposition? Or the tribal rules that forbade it? You were forced to separate, each marrying someone else, and then you became strangers, a regret that remained.”

He seems to have a lot of insight into this.

Musa was slightly taken aback, not expecting him to make such a guess.

Ian, however, was already immersed in the "classic tragedy" he had constructed, and continued, "Or... fate is even crueler. Just as you are about to get married, disaster strikes—a rival tribe launches a surprise attack, a plague spreads, or a magical uprising? Your homeland is reduced to ashes, your people are all killed or wounded, and she... she also tragically perishes? You carry the pain and regret, living alone to this day, burying that love deep in your heart, only whispering it when no one is around..."

He spoke with such sincerity, as if he had personally witnessed an epic love tragedy, and he was almost moved to tears himself. This is mainly because many TV dramas follow this kind of plot.

Musa, however, felt increasingly uneasy as he listened.

The pain on his face was gradually replaced by an extremely strange expression—a mixture of shock, laughter, and a hint of helplessness, as if asking, "What nonsense are you spouting, you outsider?"

He remained silent for a few seconds before finally speaking, his voice tinged with hesitation and disbelief:

"No."

Ian was taken aback: "What?"

“No parental objections, no forced separation, and no disaster.” Musa slowly shook his head, and the deep pain in his eyes strangely faded, replaced by an almost tender reminiscence. “We later… got married. In the first rain of the rainy season, the ancestral spirits witnessed our vows.”

Three years later, we had a son who loved to laugh, just like his mother…

His move was truly unexpected for Ian.

"..."

So all that talk was just about showing off their relationship?

(End of this chapter)