Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Regulus hung a hundred meters in the air, a crack split open in the middle of the leaden-gray cloud above his head. The cloud mass at the edge of the crack was still rolling outwards, as if being pushed outwards by a huge force, spreading outwards in circles, revealing a small patch of clean night sky behind him.

The pale moonlight leaked through the opening, shining on the wasteland, on the ruins, and on him.

The cloud layer had a very clean cross-section, and near the crack, it was shaken into fine, grayish mist that drifted downwards.

The air was filled with the stench of ozone, mixed with the metallic astringency left by the burning of magic, which made it bitter and choking when inhaled.

The wind stopped.

The shockwave of the Disintegration Curse pushed the air within a radius of several miles into a wall, preventing new airflow from entering. For a brief moment, the air at high altitude remained completely still, and the robes hung at the sides, no longer billowing.

After a long time, the wind finally pushed its way back from the direction of the North Sea, carrying the salty smell of the sea, along with the earthy smell of gravel and soil steamed by the high temperature, and filled the entire plain again.

His robes billowed up again, the silver-patterned battle robes being pulled back by the wind in the moonlight, making a soft, pattering sound.

The emptiness inside my body became clear at that moment.

That Disintegration Curse drained most of his magic reserves. From his core to his limbs, most of his magic channels were empty, leaving his body feeling hollow and unsteady, as if it had been drained.

His right hand gripped the wand, his fingertips trembling slightly, his thumb aching, his heart beating slower than usual, each beat heavy, blood pounding in his temples, all while a hollow feeling pervaded his body, a feeling that was hard to describe as either weakness or exhaustion.

But he was trembling all over.

The burning sensation started from the tailbone and spread up the spine to the back of the head, causing tingling on the scalp, a buzzing in the eardrums, and burning, swollen eyes.

This Disintegration Curse completely flattened the Roel family manor; centuries-old stone walls and defenses crumbled into sand and gravel within seconds.

The night was torn apart, the earth churned, and the entire wasteland trembled.

Nearly a thousand wizards stood on the hills miles away and saw the light, saw a man bring down destruction from the sky.

This was his magic, all done by himself, without any help from others, nor needing any help from others.

He used a spell from a height of one hundred meters to reduce the Roel family of the Twenty-Eight Sacred Clans to ruins.

A shiver surged from his chest, hot and intense. He couldn't tell if it was excitement, exhilaration, or something else entirely, nor did he intend to.

He let himself immerse himself in this emotion, neither suppressing nor calming it down; he let the feelings remain, and let them burn as they should.

When you're fighting, this kind of trembling is the best state to be in.

After a while, as the energy slowly sank down from the top of his head and his breathing became smoother, he finally focused his mind inward.

Deep within the soul, in the lower right corner of the star trail space, the position of Rigel has changed.

That dark spot crossed the limit. Before, it had been pressed there, heavy and dense, with all its presence retracted inward.

Even Regulus himself always relied on the tangible feeling that something was there before he could discern its extremely dark outline in his mental introspection.

Now that location is emitting something extremely fine and sharp, without color or light, not spreading outwards, and not illuminating any corner.

The entire star trail space darkened for a moment before stabilizing again.

The collapse was over. Everything that had been drawn in had reached its final density, stabilized, and sank to the lower right corner, sinking deeper than the other five stars. So deep that its weight slightly bent the entire star orbit.

At the same time, the little soul figure also made a move.

It has always stood at the center of the star trails, a quiet, glowing ornament since the day it was lit up, motionless, with no discernible direction.

Regulus sometimes even felt that it was just an observational sign, representing the existence of the soul, but not what the soul would do.

But at this moment, it raised its hand, and the small, luminous figure raised its right arm and stretched it out towards Betelgeuse. The movement was slow, but resolute.

The darkest point, Betelgeuse, which had sunk to its lowest point, stopped emitting its oppressive aura. After all its energy contracted inward to its limit, a very thin wisp was drawn from that location and flowed towards the direction of the little soul figure.

It is neither light nor force; it has no color, brightness, or shape. The mind can scan it and even skip over it; the brain does not classify it as visible.

But in his perception, that was the very edge itself, cold and fine, sharp to an extreme, as if it would be cut open as soon as it was touched.

The sharp edge pierced through the darkness of the star trail space, landing in the palm of the little soul figure, and then began to condense. The little figure closed its five fingers and grasped it.

There was still no color, no light, and not even a physical shape. Visually, there was nothing there. Your gaze would slip and you couldn't find a focal point, but your intuition told you that it was a sword.

The brain cannot see it at all, but the soul can recognize it completely.

It radiates outwards something closer to sharpness itself, spreading outwards from the sword's position. Wherever it passes, the texture of the spiritual space becomes clearer by more than one order of magnitude, and all blurred edges are cut away.

Betelgeuse, meaning "giant's sword" in Arabic, is 650 light-years from Earth. It has a mass 15 to 16 times that of the Sun and a surface temperature of 26,000 degrees Celsius. Most of its energy is radiated in the ultraviolet band, which is invisible to the naked eye, so it appears dark, but its actual luminosity is extremely high.

An unseen edge.

The moment the sword took shape, Betelgeuse became completely stable, and the next moment, the entire star orbit began to adjust.

The change began in the lower right corner, with Betelgeuse's gravity getting involved, and the five stars completed orbital compensation within a fraction of a second.

Betelgeuse re-enters the burst position, Betelgeuse returns to the center of the guardian orbit, and the rotation speed and spacing of the belt's three stars re-interlock.

The six stars regained their balanced position in the spiritual space, their orbital intersections shifted, the direction of energy flow adjusted accordingly, and the new star orbit began to operate completely.

Nothing external happened.

The nearly one thousand wizards still saw the same luminous figure floating in the air, bathed in moonlight, its entire body enveloped in the silvery light of the Unyielding Armor Charm, just as it had a few seconds ago.

They couldn't see the star trails, the sword in the little soul's hand, or the commotion churning within Regulus's mental space.

But Regulus himself knew.

Perception is changing, deepening, and extending in an unprecedented direction.

Magic perception was already synchronized with vision, scanning whatever it saw. Now it's sinking deeper, into the underlying structure of magic, no longer just capturing the location and intensity of the magic source, but also seeing the flow, the density distribution, and the subtle interactions between magic.

Every trace of magic in the air became clear, and he could discern the granularity of the emotions emanating from the magical fluctuations on the bodies of the wizards on the distant hills—who was fearful, who was excited, and who was expectant.

Spatial perception has also changed. Previously, one could sense the elasticity and deformation of space, and feel the folds when space is distorted.

Now the surrounding space reveals richer layers in his eyes. The density gradient of the spatial structure within a hundred-meter radius beneath his feet forms a complete map in his perception. He can simultaneously read where the space was thinned by the aftershocks of the Disintegration Curse, where it became viscous due to the remnants of dark magic, and where it remained in its natural state.

A more direct change is a comprehensive extension of perception, where vision is no longer limited to the fan-shaped area the eyes are facing.

The condensation of water vapor at the crack in the clouds, the shape of the wind turbulence behind, the wood still smoking deep in the ruins, the angle at which a witch's robe flutters in the distance—information from all directions floods in simultaneously, unfolding in my consciousness in a 360-degree, unobstructed way.

Without any processing or needing to be processed, they were simply there, and he knew it was there. The sensory network that used to require focused attention to maintain had now become instinctive, like breathing and heartbeats, all operating automatically.

My mind works much better now. Before, I had to divide my energy to do multiple parallel tasks. Four tasks were close to the limit, and five tasks would lead to errors. Now, I can do six, seven, or eight tasks at the same time, and each one is clear and stable. Maintaining them requires almost no mental effort.

Interference and crosstalk between multiple lines have also disappeared; each line operates independently and no longer interferes with each other.

Previously, it would have taken several steps to arrive at the result; now, the information and the answer come out together.

The landing coordinates of spatial warp, the prediction of spell trajectories, and the gravitational ratio between anchor points—all of these used to need to be calculated, but not anymore. Before the problem is even fully formed, the answer is already floating in my mind.

The invisibility of Betelgeuse is just like the changes happening to him at this moment. Those perceptions, those calculations, those reconstructions completed in the mental space are all silent and unknown to anyone.

Those outside only saw a boy standing in the sky, radiating light.

Regulus withdrew his inward probing senses. The changes in his body required time to experience, and every detail was worth pondering, but not now. There was a war going on, so he would deal with it later.

The Star Orbit Meditation is activated, the new six-star system begins to operate, the magic core begins to be replenished, and the return speed is much faster than before.

With the six-star channel connected, the resistance of magic within the channel is reduced, and the filling efficiency is nearly doubled.

He closed his eyes, suspended high in the air, and slowed his breathing to its slowest, allowing the magic to flow back and operate on its own.

A window of about twenty or thirty seconds is enough.

At the same time, use your new senses to scan the ruins beneath your feet.

Thirteen died.

The Disintegration Spell targets buildings and the earth; the spell itself acts on inorganic matter.

People were crushed to death, trampled to death, thrown off by the shockwave, fell to their deaths, some were completely crushed by the collapsing stone walls, and others were swallowed by cracks in the ground when it shattered. Not a single intact body was left.

Therefore, strictly speaking, these thirteen people were killed by a sudden collapse, which is a physical death.

There were also a few deaths that were more hierarchical. They were first propelled into the air by the blast wave, and before they even landed, the rooftops above them collapsed. People and rocks collided violently in mid-air, and after they landed, the area looked like a single, identical thing.

With the new level of sensory precision, Regulus can see things he couldn't see before: heat.

Those arms and legs, half-buried in the rubble, still had some body heat, blood was still seeping out, and faint white steam was rising from their edges, which appeared as a faint warm-toned signal in our perception.

He could even see the temperature distribution of the blood; the blood spurting from the arteries was warmer and brighter, while the blood seeping from the veins was darker and cooled down faster.

This reminded him of the bucket of dirty water that the butcher had dumped in the alleyway before, the steam rising from the bucket and dissipating with a gust of wind.

It was a bit disgusting, but not too bad.

About twenty of them are still able to move around.

Some lay prone, their chests pressed against the ground, each breath bringing up bits of dust, moving slightly, then slightly more.

Some were crawling out of the rubble, their palms pressed against the sharp edges of the stones, cutting themselves all over, but they kept crawling.

Some had already stood up, swaying unsteadily, their wands still clutched in their hands, pointing haphazardly at the sky, seemingly aiming at something.

It shouldn't be him; the direction doesn't match.

Several people showed stronger signs than others, stood more steadily, reacted faster, and had already begun to move towards the outer perimeter, their wands constantly moving, probably casting defensive spells on themselves or looking for cover.

The signal in the very middle is not right.

At the heart of the ruins, deep within the rubble, the dark signal was initially weak and chaotic. The shockwaves of the Disintegration Curse had scattered everyone's magical signals, and this signal was no exception.

But in the few seconds that Regulus scanned it, the signal was restored, the chaotic fluctuations were converging, and the weak intensity was recovering, becoming solid and heavy.

This is not a natural flow of magical energy or self-repair; it comes from something more direct, as if something is pouring in from the outside. There is another source of magical energy sending energy into this signal in a very forceful way. The internal structure of the signal is being stretched and deformed, but its intensity is visibly increasing.

One by one, the remaining signals around us went out, and with each one, the central signal grew stronger, at an absurdly rapid pace.

The signals that had just been extinguished were drained; their paths of disappearance were clear and consistent, all converging towards the center, pulled by some force, crushed, and swallowed up.

The magic is gone, and so is life.

Dag Rol.

In the ruins where all signals had been shattered by the Disintegration Curse, it was devouring people.