Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 445 Revisiting the Werewolf Camp

Outside an abandoned mining village in northern Yorkshire.

The two teleported to the outskirts of the camp, landing on a low slope, about a hundred meters from the village entrance.

The wasteland in March was a bit warmer than in February, but the night wind was still cold.

The photinia had not yet turned green, its withered stems trembling against the ground, while the moon overhead was large and round, its silvery light spreading across the entire hillside.

Regulus raised his hand and gently swept it in front of him, and the modified Illusion Spell silently spread out.

A transparent film of water descended from above, enveloping the two people. Moonlight streamed down, passing straight through, leaving no shadows.

Dumbledore looked down at his disappearing arm, raised an eyebrow, and said nothing, letting Regulus do as he pleased.

Then he raised his hand and tapped it lightly, the movement relaxed and casual, with a hint of undisguised smugness.

Regulus sensed something; a very light layer enveloped him, clinging to his skin, his vest, and even his hair.

Dumbledore stood right next to him, less than half a meter away, and could see the old man's outline.

But his magical senses told him that there was nothing there; the air temperature and flow were normal, and there wasn't even the slight tremor that one would expect when breathing.

He scanned it twice more, but still found nothing.

Dumbledore had used the same method before outside the Shrieking Shack, appearing out of thin air under the old oak tree. His senses went blank, and when he looked up, he found the old man already standing in front of him.

This time I experienced it up close, but I still gained nothing. However, the fact that I gained nothing is the answer in itself.

The Disillusionment Charm only conceals vision, but Dumbledore's thing shuts down all sensory channels: sight, hearing, smell, temperature, magical fluctuations, and even the sense of existence itself.

Moreover, there were no traces of magic left after the spell was cast; it was abnormally clean.

Dumbledore's blue eyes curved upwards, his lips turned up, and the wrinkles around his eyes were fully revealed.

He saw the expression on Regulus's face when he released his senses but couldn't detect anything. He was very satisfied, so satisfied that his eyes were smiling.

Regulus withdrew his senses, his amber pupils narrowed slightly, and the corner of his mouth twisted into a smirk.

The old man was showing off.

Fine.

With preparations complete and no need to walk, he reached out and placed his hand on Dumbledore's arm, Apparating once more.

The air seemed to twist, and the two disappeared from the low slope, reappearing in the open space in the center of the camp.

The last time Regulus set fire to the Fiery Blaze, it burned down the entire center of the village.

The campfire remnants, the piled-up garbage, the sticky substance on the ground, and the werewolf's foul secretions were all burned.

When I left, all that was left was a layer of charred, hard crust, so clean that all that remained was the smell of burning.

The scorched earth is still there, but it's now covered with a new layer of filth.

The hard crust of the ground that had cracked had been broken up quite a bit, and new dirt was embedded in the cracks.

There were more bones than last time, scattered among the pebbles, some still with bits of meat that hadn't been completely gnawed away, their surfaces covered in teeth marks, all from being eaten raw.

The air was thick with the stench of urine; it was hard to tell whether it was human urine or wolf urine, as I lacked the relevant knowledge.

For a human, using urine to mark territory is somewhat unreasonable, but after turning into a wolf, it makes sense, since he is now a beast.

After two months, the campsite was soaked through again.

Many makeshift shacks were erected around the area, with rags, broken planks, and dry grass haphazardly bundled together.

The ground still bears the marks of the last raging fire.

The soil in the center of the open space was scorched by the high temperature, turning grayish-black and as hard as pottery, with irregular cracks on the surface, which concealed sand and bone fragments.

In several particularly intensely burned areas, the quartz and feldspar in the soil melted and cooled under the intense heat of the fire, forming a thin, grayish-brown, glassy crust.

But the werewolf obviously didn't care. New mud was smeared on the glass shell, and new shells formed on the mud. He mixed it with urine, and it became a new piece of ground.

Dumbledore stood to the side, his gaze sweeping over the broken bones scattered on the ground, the secretions plastered on the walls, the ground soaked in urine, and the human figures huddled in the shacks.

The light in his eyes dimmed, and his lips tightened.

Then I saw the scorched earth beneath my feet, the marks of fierce fire, the vitrified ground, and the dead zone within a radius of tens of meters.

Blue eyes lifted from the scorched earth and landed on Regulus's face.

Regulus shrugged.

There was noise coming from outside the camp: footsteps, growls, curses, and the cracking sound of bones breaking.

Regulus's magical perception spread out, sweeping across the entire camp.

Last time there were thirty or forty people, this time there are around sixty, almost half as many again.

The new fluctuations are coarser and more unstable, with the forces of humans and beasts still tearing at each other's souls.

Voldemort continued to supply Greyback with resources, and the werewolf army continued to expand.

Of course, not all those bitten survive.

Werewolves have no reason; they can't even control themselves when they transform, let alone consciously control the force of their bites.

If a Muggle is bitten, they die. Only wizards survive and complete the conversion. But even wizards can't join immediately after being bitten.

Werewolves don't offer after-sales service; once they've bitten someone, they leave them to fend for themselves in the wild. If they survive, they transform and live on; if not, they die in some ditch.

Those who survived were ostracized by society and abandoned by their families. With nowhere to go, they could only follow the direction where their kind gathered and eventually found their way here.

Greyback doesn't need to recruit them personally; he just needs to put up a sign saying, "We're recruiting werewolves here."

Some are still on their way, some have just been bitten and haven't even had a chance to transform yet, and some are already dead.

Some of the people that Greyback had sent out to bite were not in the camp; they were somewhere chasing the next group of victims.

The number of werewolves bitten far exceeded the number of those successfully transformed; sixty werewolves represented hundreds of attacks and dozens of lives lost.

But Greyback didn't care; if he bit someone, he'd win; if he killed someone, that would be the effect Voldemort wanted: panic.

Regulus watched the figures emerge from the shed one after another, his heart unmoved.

In his view, those who were bitten were all of very low skill level.

A wizard with even a little skill can use the Ironclad Charm to block, or Apparate away. Even if their reaction is slow and they get tackled, and don't have time to draw their wand, is there really someone who can't even cast spells without a wand?

Not to mention those who have formally studied combat, a werewolf is no threat whatsoever to a proper wizard.

Those who get bitten either have a non-existent defense, a complete lack of awareness of their own defenses, or are simply unlucky enough to have taken the wrong path, stumbled upon a full moon, and run into a wolf that's going berserk.

Either way, it implies a lack of strength or vigilance.

sad.

He glanced at Dumbledore.

The old man's blue eyes, reflecting the moonlight, had lost their former gentleness.

His gaze swept over a young werewolf huddled in a corner, trembling, and over a middle-aged werewolf squatting on the ground, gnawing on raw meat.

These people were all ordinary wizards before.

Some people might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time, encounter a werewolf who wants to bite them, and then their whole life takes a wrong turn in this wretched place.

Some people are still struggling, their magic still bearing traces of humanity; others have stopped struggling, their animalistic instincts covering their humanity, leaving only an empty shell.

Some people have nothing left but the strength to chew food and dig in the dirt.

Dumbledore's eyes lingered on those figures for a long time.

He didn't speak, and neither did Regulus.

The two stood in the middle of the open space, on the scorched and dirty earth, watching more and more werewolves emerge from the ruins.

Werewolves gathered in the center of the open space from all the dilapidated houses.

New faces made up a third of the group; some looked to be in their early twenties, with youthful features and skin that hadn't yet been worn down by life in this place.

But his eyes had begun to cloud over, and there was something sinister pushing outwards from beneath them, sliding from the living person toward something else.

They were new werewolves who had recently been bitten and hadn't fully accepted their fate yet, but they would soon. After being in this kind of place for a while, they would have to accept it whether they wanted to or not.

Graybuck came out of the largest stone house.

He was still wearing that thick leather vest, his arms were covered in scars, there wasn't a single patch of intact skin from his wrists to his shoulders, his nails were black and long, and his yellow eyes gleamed with the cold light of a predator in the moonlight.

He walked to the center of the open space and glanced at the pack of wolves.

His mouth opened wide, revealing a row of yellowed, sharp teeth. His voice was rough and hoarse, and his vocal cords, worn down by long-term howling, emitted a low, rumbling sound.

"Come here, everyone."

The werewolves surrounded them from all directions, and dozens of figures gathered in a circle under the moonlight.

Graybury looked at them, his yellow eyes scanning from one face to another, the malice in them thick and sickening.

"Some of you are still dreaming that you are still human, that you can go back, that you can sit in front of the fireplace drinking hot chocolate, that you can let your mother—"

He suddenly adopted a high-pitched, nauseatingly shrill voice, squeezing out a harsh whisper: "Ah, baby, you're back, my baby—"

The "baby" was drawn out and trembled in the air, so disgusting that even the old wolves nearby bared their teeth.

The sneer on Graybury's face was still there, but the next moment it suddenly burst into a rage, his face turned bright red, the veins on his neck bulged, and saliva sprayed from between his yellow teeth.

"Even your own mother wouldn't recognize you! You want to go back? Go back and look in the mirror! Look at your face! Who the hell wants you—who the hell wants you!"

The roar echoed through the camp, shattering several pieces of the glass enclosure.

The new werewolves shuddered. Some shrank back, some lowered their heads, and some had something welling up in their eyes but forced it back down.

Graybuck then adopted a seductive tone, low and hoarse.

"Wake up! You can't go back. The smell on you is proof. Smell yourselves. Even your own mothers wouldn't recognize you if they stood in front of you. What are you still thinking?"

You are no longer wizards. Those people outside won't want you, the Ministry of Magic won't want you, and you can't even get through the doors of St. Mungo's.

Where can you stay? Only here! Who can you stay with? Only us! What are you? You are werewolves! Like me, like him, like them!

He patted his chest, the applause deep and resonant, striking his thick muscles. Then, he raised his hand and swept his thick fingers across the old wolves behind him, his voice carrying a chilling tenderness.

"The moon is out, your bones are about to break. This is your first transformation. If you survive, you'll live. If you don't, you'll die under some wall, and no one will collect your bodies."

Then he withdrew his finger, pointed it at his chest, and grinned menacingly: "Here, no one thinks you're dirty. Outside you're trash, but here you're mine, my person, and I'll protect you."

But those who don't listen, I won't wait for those wizards outside to deal with them, I'll do it myself—”

He paused, his yellow eyes scanning every face, his chest suddenly bulging, his voice rough and grating: "Did you understand?!"

The wolf pack fell silent, dozens of eyes fixed on him, some murky, some filled with fear, some with lowered heads, some with bared teeth, and some with a low whimper.

Graybuck said nothing more, standing in the center of the open space, waiting for the moon to be fully round.

Regulus withdrew his gaze.

This wolf was tested by him with three different killing intents last month, and was burned by Fiery Blaze once more. Now it's still standing here, giving orders to the wolf pack, full of energy.

The recovery is going well; the beast's brain is indeed resilient.