Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 460 Voldemort: Mine is better

At the end of the pier, on the stone embankment facing the sea, Voldemort stood with his back to the land and his face towards the North Sea.

The tide was receding, revealing layers of barnacles and wet green algae on the pier pillars, while the sea in the distance was pitch black.

He stood at the highest point of the stone embankment, his black robe billowing behind him in the sea breeze.

Dolohoff followed Bella to the dock, where Voldemort's silhouette was clearly visible in the moonlight.

The body is slender with broad shoulders. The length of the arms and fingers still retains the outline of a human, but the fingertips are longer than they were three months ago, the knuckles are more prominent, the nails are more curved, and the color is darker.

His skin was paler than when we last met, and dark bluish veins were faintly visible on his temples.

His jet-black hair was neatly combed back, and the sea breeze had no effect on him; not even the ends of his hair moved.

The black robe billowed behind him, and wisps of black mist occasionally drifted past the hem, only to be scattered and then gathered again by the sea breeze.

Dolokhov knelt on one knee, bowed his head, and pressed his right hand to his chest: "Master."

He had done this move many times, and every time his knees touched the ground, something inside him was churning.

He was a few years older than Voldemort. At Hogwarts, Tom Riddle was a junior student, intelligent, quiet, and well-liked by the professors.

I've seen that dark-haired freshman sit by the fireplace in the Slytherin common room for an entire afternoon, holding a book; I've seen the humble smile on his face after being praised by Slughorn at the Slug Club; I've seen his unwavering dark eyes when he was cornered by upperclassmen in the corridor.

At that time, he was an upperclassman in Slytherin, watching his junior grow from a freshman to a prefect, and from an orphan to the most talented student in the entire school.

At that time, he was the elder brother, appreciating, mentoring, and even somewhat proud of me.

Slytherin has produced a genius, and this genius is younger than him. He will grow up and become a future ally that the Dolokhov family can make.

More than thirty years have passed, and that quiet junior has become a name that makes the entire magical world tremble, while he kneels in front of his junior, his knees pressed into the cold mud.

The fear is real, creeping up from the base of the spine, every single time.

The master's magic pressed down on the entire dock, making the air heavy, and each breath felt like inhaling something thicker and colder than air.

My heart was beating slower and harder than usual in my chest, each beat feeling like it was fighting against external pressure.

It could feel the oppressive aura emanating from its master, seeping into its skin through the air.

But the loyalty was real. Once he chose this path, more than twenty years ago, when he first knelt down on one knee in a dark alley to that young Tom Riddle, he never intended to turn back.

What we fear is power itself, and what we are loyal to is also power itself.

Voldemort did not respond immediately; the silence lasted for a long time.

The sea breeze changed direction several times, turning from the north to the northeast and then back again. In the distance, the sound of waves crashing against the pillars was constant, one after another.

Then the hem of her robe slid silently across the stone slab and turned toward Dolokhov.

Walking was silent; the ground beneath my feet was covered with pebbles and shell fragments, yet I made no sound.

The covering on his body absorbed all extraneous sounds; even the sea breeze rustling through his robes made no extra noise.

"Antonin".

Voldemort's voice was very soft, more of a whisper than a audible whisper. He didn't ask why he was there, nor about the stronghold, nor anything else.

Call out a name, wait, and let the person kneeling speak for themselves.

Dolokhov's voice was hoarse as he spoke briefly and to the point: "Master, Skipton outpost has been attacked. The Pwitt brothers tracked Lukewood to the outpost, and I ordered a siege."

Then a man with completely white hair, in his early twenties, appeared. He stood outside the castle for two minutes, then unleashed a devastating explosion, blowing the entire front of the castle away.

He paused, swallowed a mouthful of bloody saliva, and said, "I ordered a retreat, and all personnel were safely evacuated."

"That person wasn't strong," he continued. "The explosion took too long to prepare; apart from that one, the rest of the attacks were within the normal range."

Voldemort did not respond.

Dolokhov felt his master's attention on him, and the weight was very clear, as if something was pressing down on the back of his head through the air.

The scar on the left side of his face started to itch again, and new granulation tissue was wriggling under his skin. He resisted the urge to scratch it.

But while he held back his hands, he couldn't help his mouth; his expression turned ferocious, and he gritted his teeth: "That person's methods are extremely despicable, his nature is extremely insidious, and his actions are utterly vile!"

He paused again, the pain in his left cheek throbbing between the words, and with each heartbeat he could feel the new blood vessels throbbing beneath the scar.

"He has no bottom line, no dignity, is despicable, base, vulgar and rude, extremely filthy. This person is lowly in character, cruel by nature, uses dirty methods, and acts indecently. He is a thoroughly despicable person."

His magic was chaotic, his behavior was dishonorable, he—”

His speech quickened, his vocabulary piled up, and the words he uttered became denser and more numerous. A person who was usually so taciturn that he almost never spoke suddenly became eloquent.

He tried to hold back, but he couldn't quite manage it.

Fifty years old, a core member of the Death Eaters, a top duelist, had half his face smashed by a punch, and was then escorted away with noble courtesy.

What's disgusting isn't the beating itself; injuries from fighting are common. He's broken more bones than anyone else, and he's also had his bones broken by others.

What's disgusting is that aristocratic etiquette.

That gesture made it very clear: I could kill you, but I choose not to; you can leave now, take the broken bones from your face with you.

He had replayed that less than one-second scene in his mind countless times, and each time he felt more disgusted. Every time he repeated it, the scar on his left cheek would itch.

Voldemort still did not turn around; his head tilted slightly, so slightly that it was almost imperceptible.

bad.

In Dumbledore's mind, the people around him were all kind, upright, and law-abiding, just as pedantic as their master.

Dumbledore liked to take in people like these: brave Gryffindors, loyal Hufflepuffs, and righteous Aurors.

A young wizard whom Antonin Dolohov, his most trusted torture expert and a taciturn, almost mute subordinate, described as utterly wicked, appeared beside Dumbledore.

He turned around, his scarlet pupils falling on Dolokhov, and uttered an extremely soft whisper, so gentle it was almost imperceptible.

"let me see."

Dolokhov raised his head, meeting those scarlet vertical pupils. The moment their eyes met, the intrusion began.

The needle, incredibly fine, pierced the depths of Dolokhov's consciousness with a forceful, precise, and unyielding approach. Dolokhov's gaze froze, unable to look away.

Voldemort flipped through his memories quickly, page by page, without any emotion.

My first memory.

The white-haired wizard stood in the wilderness, casting the Ironclad Charm to form a sphere, then infusing it with the Flow Charm, compressing it, stretching the two-minute preparation into a few seconds.

Voldemort witnessed the compression process, with the air inside the sphere changing from transparent to bluish-white and then to blue-white. The Ironclad Charm was used in reverse to create a restraining method, ultimately forming a fist-sized sphere of light.

Then came the explosion, the blinding white flash, the impact, the fireball rising, and the castle being blown away.

Voldemort's attention lingered briefly on the combination of the Ironclad Charm's reverse restraint and the Flow Charm's compression.

The underlying logic of this system is impure; magic here is a tool, a lever, used to manipulate the surrounding environment and leverage external forces.

The effect does indeed exceed the scope of ordinary explosive spells, but its scale is low.

The power of magic comes from magic itself, from the direct rewriting of reality by will, and from the resonance between the soul and the world.

A wizard wields the power to rewrite the rules, yet he uses it to manipulate and squeeze.

Using cleverness to compensate for insufficient purity of magic, the means outweigh the essence.

It's over.

The second memory is of fighting.

Dolokhov and the white-haired wizard clashed across the pile of rubble, their purple fire spells and orange lightning explosions colliding, both sides holding back.

Dolokhov was stalling for time, and the other side was also cooperating in stalling for time, both sides deceiving each other and giving each other an out.

This part was translated the fastest, so I'll skip it.

The third memory.

As the black smoke spread, his subordinates began to teleport away. Dolokhov stood at the edge of the black smoke, taking one last look at the white-haired wizard.

With an arm raised, the wand traced the Apparitions starting gesture, and in the same instant, the white-haired wizard appeared before him.

His long, silvery-white hair was blown backward by the wind that compressed the space, and scorching magic power surged from his body. His right fist, wrapped in a layer of dark red light, slammed upward into his left cheekbone.

The screen shook briefly, then the world spun around.

The white-haired wizard took a step back, bent slightly, placed his left hand on his chest, and stretched out his right hand, pointing to the empty wilderness beyond the black smoke.

The extremely affected aristocratic manners, the elegant posture, the radiant smile—in this context, they were nauseating.

Voldemort's memories faded.

The image faded away, and he remained quiet for a while.

Dolokhov's Apparition technique had already been initiated, and spatial compression had begun, but it was intercepted by the white-haired wizard within the time limit.

The method of directly injecting magic into the fist is crude, but the precision in capturing spatial fluctuations and the timing of casting are indeed rare among this generation of wizards, completely different from the trickery of the previous method.

That last move was alright, but as for that aristocratic gesture—

He memorized that face: long silver hair, amber vertical pupils, and burning magic.

Voldemort's face remained expressionless, but his crimson vertical pupils narrowed slightly.

Dumbledore now has a young wizard by his side, who is quite powerful and ruthless.

He has one too, but he's younger, has better potential, and his personality is completely different.

He was never in a hurry to judge Dumbledore's affairs; Dumbledore was old, and his clichés of justice and light could no longer attract true geniuses.

But occasionally, a few noteworthy names would slip across to the other side, and this white-haired wizard was one of them.

Regulus Black is another one, but he's on his side.

Voldemort turned to Bella, his voice soft, yet carrying an unusual warmth that was unusually clear in the sea breeze.

"How's Regulus doing lately?"

Bella's face instantly went out of control; a small muscle under her left eye twitched, her mouth turned down, and her pupils suddenly contracted in the moonlight.

Extremely fast, it was retracted in an instant.

She hated him, but she couldn't show it to her master; any extra emotion would only remind him of her past failures.

Her master did not abandon her; he personally transformed her, picking her up from the ruins of that defeat and reforging her.

She lowered her head, her eyes burning with fervor, her face cold: "Master, the public news is that he went to India for the family business."

Then he immediately corrected himself, speaking a little faster, his eyelid twitching: "India is fake. The Black family wouldn't let their heir go to a place like that."

Voldemort's crimson vertical pupils fell on Bella's face, expressionless and unresponsive.

Bella's breathing became shallow, the fervor in her eyes turned into panic, her face remained cold, only her voice sounded urgent: "I will immediately investigate his whereabouts."

Voldemort withdrew his gaze, turned back to the Infernal slowly rising in the moonlight: "Go."

Bella knelt on one knee, her voice devout, suppressing an uneasy tremor: "Yes, Master."

Then he got up, took a few steps back, and with a phantom-like movement, disappeared into the night with a snap.

Voldemort slightly raised his hand, his tone extremely gentle: "Antonin, heal your face."

Dolokhov stood up, bowed his head, and stepped back: "Yes, Master."

Walking back along the dock, past that open space, the pit was still there, and the corpse still stood with its hands hanging down, its empty eye sockets facing the sea.

The scar on the left side of my face started to itch again, and new granulation tissue was wriggling under the skin.

After leaving the fishing village, he shifted his form and disappeared into the night with a snap.

On the stone embankment of the dock, Voldemort turned back to face the North Sea, his black robe billowing in the sea breeze.

The spot where Bella had just stood still bore the imprint of her boots, but a gust of sea wind swept up the dust, erasing all traces.