Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 586 Regulus, You Have No Heart

Sirius was still standing there, his wand already pushed aside by Regulus, its tip still glowing crimson.

His arms remained outstretched, his muscles taut, his skin covered in dragon scales, as if someone had pressed the pause button on his entire body.

Regulus looked at his bewildered face and nodded in satisfaction.

I believe that what happened in the past half hour has touched Sirius Black's soul.

Even the most reckless person, after being tricked down from the sky, locked in a dungeon, and tied to a stone platform for half an hour, should learn a lesson when encountering unfamiliar wizards in the future. Even thinking for a second longer would be beneficial.

We can do this more often in the future, but not with anyone else, just with Sirius Black.

After all, he only knows one person who is reckless, impulsive, doesn't think things through, thinks he can do it all, and doesn't consider the consequences.

The surrounding environment began to change. The texture of the stone bricks blurred, the walls turned back into mud, the iron bars of the windows shrank back into the stone walls and disappeared, and the eerie green light outside dimmed, disappearing into the environment along with the sound of water.

The rows of bottles and jars on the shelf turned into damp mud, the stone platform softened, the metal faded, the space collapsed, and the soil rose.

A crack appeared overhead, revealing the blue sky. The two people were pulled upwards by the soil, returning to the surface from underground.

Sunlight suddenly filled the field of vision, the scent of grass filled the nostrils, and the wind blew from the direction of the open fields, with low hills in the distance.

The outline was clear, the sky was high, and the sun was bright.

Sirius regained his freedom, but because he had only been free for a short time, he didn't appreciate it much. His expression at that moment could be described as utterly blank.

It's like some gear in your brain got stuck, with two programs running at the same time. One is saying you were almost subjected to human experimentation, and the other is saying your brother was behind it. The two programs are fighting each other, and as a result, the system crashes.

Regulus took off his hood and stood to the side, his black curly hair slightly disheveled by the wind, and his face bearing a relaxed expression that Sirius seemed extremely irritating at that moment.

Sirius finally came to his senses. The dragon scales on his limbs disappeared one by one, and the gray-black scales began to shrink back from the base of his fingers, revealing normal skin.

His facial expression changed completely, as if he had changed his demeanor, from astonishment to a cold, expressionless face with his lips turned down.

Are you sick?

The voice was loud and angry.

Before Regulus could answer, the second sentence followed immediately: "You fucking tricked me."

He glared at Regulus with all his might: "You came all the way to Godric's Valley just to lock me up—you fucking..."

His mouth wasn't quite keeping up with his brain; he could only utter half a sentence, and when he couldn't find the words, he changed direction and yelled, "You—you just came to laugh at me? You—that—your facial features are all in disarray, your eyebrows are furrowed, your eyes are wide open, your mouth is agape, your voice is broken, your breathing is disordered, and your entire facial expression system is severely out of balance."

One moment he's baring his teeth, glaring, and wrinkling his nose; the next he's opening his mouth but can't say anything, struggling with himself. It takes a long time before he finally manages to come up with a complete sentence.

"Didn't you feel disgusted when you were clapping and snickering like that?!"

After saying that, he paused for a moment, then continued, "And that heart in that bottle—it's still beating. Do you really have those things?" Halfway through his sentence, he suddenly realized that they were all transfiguration, all made of mud, which made him even angrier.

"You—!" His eyebrows shot up, his face drooped, and his expression was a mess: "You're a pervert!"

Regulus stood by and watched him vent, and was even more satisfied.

We need to make this a regular occurrence, doing it every now and then, so that Sirius develops a conditioned reflex: in any unfamiliar environment and when he encounters any unidentified wizard, his first reaction will be to use his brain rather than his wand.

The source material is not a problem.

Escape room, underwater chase, a curse that means certain death within seven days of receiving a letter, a smile that doesn't belong to him in the mirror that laughs at him strangely, sexy medical staff in a cursed church, infected people with rotting bodies who bite anyone they see, burn patients who scare people in their dreams with razor blades in their hands, artists reaching out from the sewer grate to grab their trouser legs, worms that could fall from the ceiling at any moment and smear their faces with eggs and lay eggs in their stomachs, mermaids in the sewers, and more than a hundred days in Sodom.

The reserves are extremely abundant, enough for Sirius to play until graduation and still have plenty left over.

The effect will definitely be good. These tricks may not necessarily make Sirius a skilled wizard, but they will certainly greatly enhance his survival ability.

Sirius was still cursing.

You—you eyeballs—those yellow eyes are still glaring at me—you deliberately finished cursing and started panting, your chest heaving, your gray eyes staring at Regulus.

Regulus waited until he caught his breath before speaking, his tone relaxed and slightly amused: "Your disappearing spell is alright, it can even eliminate scents."

Sirius paused for a moment, then narrowed his wide eyes.

"I still need to practice the Illusion Spell more."

Sirius's anger was suddenly extinguished by those two sentences. He wanted to say something, but his emotions were already disjointed.

Regulus, you have no heart.

Regulus looked at him, who didn't even know which expression to wear, and the corners of his mouth turned up a little more.

"But your later human transformation was quite good, silent and without a cane, a great improvement."

Sirius's eyes lit up, and the muscles around his mouth seemed to twitch upwards; he was about to burst into laughter.

Regulus praised him, which pleased him a little. His Transfiguration was indeed quite good, and he felt a bit proud, but he suppressed these two reactions the moment they surfaced.

Having been locked in the dungeon for over half an hour, I still hear the eerie, cackling laughter echoing in my ears, and the chilling, oppressive magical memories linger throughout my body. It would be absurd for me to laugh out loud at a compliment under these circumstances.

He turned his head away forcefully, chin held high, his gaze fixed on the distant low hills.

There was someone flying high in the sky. A small figure rode a broomstick, drawing lines in the sky. A loud cheer came down and was blown away by the wind.

After a moment of silence, Sirius's gaze remained fixed on the distance.

He turned his gaze away from the low hill and stared at the grass at his feet for a long time, pursing his lips, his brows furrowing and relaxing repeatedly.

Then she raised her head, avoiding Regulus's gaze, and said in a much softer voice, "You planned this from the beginning, didn't you?"

Regulus raised an eyebrow.

"When I said I wasn't going home, did you feel a sense of relief?"

He wasn't going home, which gave Regulus a chance to get back to what he needed to do. Regulus was a burden, and it was good to get rid of him. He had been holding onto this thought for the entire summer.

Regulus looked at him, his posture as relaxed as before: "You're doing quite well at the Potters' house."

Sirius paused for a moment, his mind going blank again.

The silence didn't last long. His mood shifted abruptly from somber to curious. The shift was so sudden that he didn't even realize it before the words were already out of his mouth.

"What exactly is that spell?" He still didn't look at Regulus, his gaze drifting to the crooked tree in the distance, his tone a bit harsh: "Is it really as sinister as the newspapers say?"

Sirius's face twisted again, a mixture of awkwardness, curiosity, and resentment, all three emotions clashing on his face.

"The Daily Prophet says it's a destructive spell that surpasses current wizarding magic rating standards," he rolled his gray eyes upwards, "and that it's a family secret spell that the Black family has never shown to the public in hundreds of years."

"There's also some column called Pureblood Observation, which says that you have the most overwhelming solo battlefield performance since the Twenty-Eight Holy Races began to be recorded, that you are the most outstanding heir of the Black family in the last two hundred years, and that the entire pureblood landscape of Britain is about to be redefined."

He finished speaking, but the various emotions on his face were still undecided, none of them gaining the upper hand. His face was contorted, his mouth was pursed, and his eyebrows were uneven, his whole demeanor trying to project an image of someone who was just asking casually.

Regulus's lips curled up slightly more.

The content in the newspaper was quite fair.

"I invented it myself."

Sirius fell silent again.

He knew Regulus was strong, he always knew, so strong that comparing himself to Regulus was pointless.

It's not uncommon for wizards to invent spells and tricks; even a novice wizard can come up with something on a whim, let alone an adult wizard.

But the curse destroyed a pure-blood family manor with a history of several hundred years that had been fortified for several days. Thousands of people watched as a beam of light fell from the sky and shattered the ground.

He worked very hard and never gave up on Transfiguration. No matter how many times the broom flew, he never missed a day of Transfiguration practice.

He felt a little proud when he finished the human transformation he had done underground. Regulus had also said that it was well done.

He put a lot of effort into developing his talent; he went to Professor McGonagall's office no less than twenty times, for more than half a year.

Time, from only being able to conjure up the appearance of scales, to the scales having magic working within them, every step was achieved through hard work and perseverance.

But compared to inventing a spell that could fall from the sky and destroy the entire manor, this progress is hardly worth mentioning.

Regulus looked at his face, which was a mixture of awkwardness and barely suppressed curiosity, and asked, "Want to learn?"

Sirius's eyes lit up again, then quickly narrowed. He turned his head, bared his teeth, and said in a harsh, defiant tone, "I'll learn if you teach me!"

Regulus chuckled lightly: "We'll talk about it when school starts."

The Disintegration Curse has two thresholds, which are perfect for Sirius Black.

One method is magic manipulation, which involves compressing the magic to its limit the moment it flows into the core of the staff, completing the switching between compression and release within one-hundredth of a second.

Another approach is cognitive convergence, which involves locking the goal in your mind as a complete whole for understanding, regardless of how many parts it contains, how big it is, or whether it has boundaries.

One focuses on magical abilities, while the other on mental skills; both have a direct impact on improving a wizard's overall competence.

As for advanced applications of cognitive convergence, such as cross-medium transmission, it doesn't matter whether Sirius can master it or not. For most people, simply being able to generate pure power from this spell is enough.

The chain-like transmission technique is his own domain. If Sirius Black can truly reach that level, it means his magic manipulation...

His control, way of thinking, and mental strength have reached a considerable level, so he is not unteachable when the time comes.

He glanced at Sirius, whose ears were slightly red on his face that was turned away.

No rush, there's plenty of time before school starts.