Ancient Wizards Return to Hogwarts...

Chapter 518 The Dark Lord of Azkaban

While Hogwarts was enjoying a peaceful atmosphere, Rice arrived in Azkaban.

Sensing the approach of living people, the Dementors gathered around, and then Rice drew his wand.

Silver light flashed above Azkaban as pythons swam, unleashing a swarm of serpents that wreaked havoc on Azkaban.

Under normal circumstances, even if someone knows the Patronus Charm and can summon a physical Patronus, it would be difficult for them to run rampant in Azkaban. This is because the power of the Patronus has its limits; the phenomenon of Harry dispelling hundreds of Dementors with a single spell is definitely an exception.

Unfortunately, Rice is an exceptional case within an exceptional case.

So he directly stormed through Azkaban.

The Ministry of Magic's attitude towards this wizarding prison was completely laissez-faire, so there were no wizards stationed on Azkaban Island—even if there were, it wouldn't change the balance of the war.

After being repeatedly beaten by Rice's guardian spirit, the Dementors couldn't take it anymore.

They sent a representative to question Rice about why he broke the ancient cooperative pact between the Dementors and the wizards.

Faced with the Dementor's question, Rice was very curious: "A contract? What contract? Let me see it."

As it turned out, the Dementors actually found a scroll of parchment that looked very old and worn, with a passage written on it in Old English, French, and Latin.

The general idea is that Dementors and wizards should maintain peace and not start a full-scale war between the two races. The Dementors remain in Azkaban and are not allowed to go out freely, while the wizards are obligated to provide them with criminals as food.

There are also some additional clauses, which mainly discuss the responsibilities and obligations of both parties, as well as the price that wizards need to pay to hire Dementors.

For situations like Fudge's, where he uses Dementors as bodyguards, extra "money" is required.

After reading the contract, Rice fell silent.

Ultimately, he chose to accept and abide by the ancient contract, which is consistent with his usual style of doing things.

"So..." The Dementors really want Rice to go back to where she came from.

But Rice wasn't willing to do that; he still wanted to make Azkaban his base!

After a moment's thought, he took out a roll of parchment from his pocket and made a contract with the Dementors that was unique to them.

Then the top floor of Azkaban prison became a forbidden area for the Dementors. They were forbidden from coming here to disturb Rice's peace without permission. Rice was not afraid of the Dementors, but their "domain" effect was quite annoying and always stirred up some negative emotions in him.

Moreover, the islands at sea are inherently damp, and if Dementors were to come and bring that chilly feeling into the room, it would be impossible for anyone to live there.

Looking at the small island, which wasn't very big, Rice couldn't help but feel a little regretful: he wasn't very good at earth magic, otherwise he would definitely have reclaimed land from the sea to expand the island's area.

This little island is still a bit cramped to live on.

After easily dealing with the Dementors, Rice began visiting the prisoners on the island.

He paid little attention to the wizard criminals who had committed minor offenses and were only sentenced to a few months or a few years. He simply brought out the most vicious criminals, those sentenced to life imprisonment, and gathered them together.

As the Dementors retreated, life gradually returned to the prisoners' eyes.

The experience of the Dementors leaving was as luxurious to them as a drowning person surfacing to breathe fresh air.

Everyone is taking the opportunity to enjoy this rare moment of peace and tranquility.

Rice wasn't in a hurry; he just slowly waited it out with them.

About half an hour later, seeing that most people had at least regained their ability to communicate, Rice finally spoke.

"I'll give you a chance: submit to me and regain your freedom. Or, embrace death."

Many prisoners showed changes in expression.

Rice knew that most of these people were Voldemort's Ironclad Death Eaters, so he dropped another bombshell.

"Voldemort is dead. I am now the new Dark Lord, and I have come to inherit the legacy left by my predecessor." With that, he threw Voldemort's corpse in front of the prisoners.

Fortunately, Voldemort's appearance after his resurrection was almost identical to his appearance before being defeated by Harry; otherwise, with that inhuman and ghostly appearance, the Death Eaters might not have been able to recognize their master.

The appearance of Voldemort's corpse caused a stir among the Death Eaters.

No one could have imagined that they would reunite with the great Lord Voldemort in this way.

No one could have predicted that Lord Voldemort was already dead. After all, the Dark Mark on their arms had just reignited not long ago, and the prisoners of Azkaban had been quite happy about it for a while.

Several Death Eaters were completely unable to accept this situation and collapsed onto Voldemort's corpse, crying hysterically.

Rice raised his hand, and several beams of light flashed. They all fell to the ground, motionless.

After killing these die-hard Voldemort followers, Rhys looked at the remaining prisoners and asked with a hint of delight, "Is there anyone else who wants to follow Voldemort?"

Several more people silently stepped out from the crowd, walked up to Rice, and died one by one.

Rice frowned: I didn't expect Voldemort to have so many die-hard fans.

The deaths of these people left a large empty space in front of Rice.

Looking at the few prisoners in front of him, Rice was somewhat disheartened.

He examined the arms of the men and found that only two of them were Death Eaters.

After a moment's thought, Rice felt relieved.

It's not that Voldemort's Death Eaters are extremely loyal, but rather that only extremely loyal Death Eaters would appear here.

He raised his wand and tapped it twice on the two Death Eaters, severing their left arms, which were branded with the Dark Mark.

The intense pain nearly made them faint, but Rice stopped their wounds in the next second and installed two magically made arms on them.

"Now that you have submitted to me, don't leave any trace of the previous one," Rice said casually, explaining his actions.

He then used a magic potion to carve his mark on these people.

"From today onwards, you will be my servants." After completing these actions, Rice nodded in satisfaction.

Compared to the prisoners of Azkaban, Rice actually preferred to use Helga's puppet, but it seems that the conditions for doing so are not currently available...

He wondered if Helga could still be a puppet. If so, he hoped Helga could give him dozens of automatons to use.

"Sir, how should we address you?" After a long silence, someone finally broke the silence and asked a question.

"Just call me Your Majesty." Rice had already decided on his title and the name of his organization on the way here.

When the man asked for the name of his organization, Rice proudly told him that his organization was called "The Serpent."

"Every official member of the organization must take a code name, named after the snake. I don't care what your previous names were; within the organization, everyone will address each other by the snake's name."

He had long been annoyed by the self-proclaimed status of Voldemort's followers.

Death Eaters? Sounds like members of a gourmet society. The followers of the previous Dark Lord Grindelwald really knew how to name themselves; they called themselves saints—how impressive!

Of course, Rice's own snake organization isn't much better; it sounds like a reptile zoo.

Every member of the Snake Organization must have a code name, and Rice himself is no exception; his code name is Snake King.

Speaking of the Snake King, Rice remembered that he seemed to have left a Snake King in the Chamber of Secrets at Hogwarts, and he would retrieve it when he returned to Hogwarts someday.

Thus, the new Dark Lord and his organization were formed. The process was somewhat hasty, but no one could ignore its power.

After that, Rice chose to continue receiving Voldemort's legacy.

He picked up a severed arm from the ground and then used his wand to poke the Dark Mark on the severed arm.

About ten seconds later, figures dressed in robes and wearing hoods appeared one after another on the island of Azkaban.

They stood silently at the edge of the island, gazing at the Azkaban wizard prison not far away, an uneasy atmosphere spreading among the crowd.

To be honest, if they hadn't witnessed their master's resurrection in Little Hangton Village a few months ago, they would never have wanted to be here.

Unfortunately, they would have been killed if they hadn't come, so they came anyway.

The Dementors sensed something new and swarmed towards the area, putting the Death Eaters who had come to the scene on high alert.

Some Death Eaters, seeing the overwhelming army of Dementors, couldn't help but tremble with fear, their teeth chattering and their legs shaking. They almost wanted to Apparate away immediately.

Fortunately, the Dementors stopped about ten meters away from them. They split into two groups, making way for them.

Watching the Dementors' actions, these non-diehard Death Eaters began to form a bold guess.

Rice appeared at the end of the airstrip.

He strolled slowly, gradually approaching the Death Eaters.

Behind him, the Dementors on both sides merged together, gradually closing the passageway. By the time Rice reached the Death Eaters, the Dementors behind him had already formed a vast swarm, flying everywhere in the sky behind him, yet none daring to cross the line and come before him.

The Death Eaters felt their breathing become difficult. The young man in front of them looked young, but he exuded an extremely dangerous aura that made their hair stand on end.

Their intuition told them that the person in front of them was extremely dangerous, even more terrifying than the Dark Lord.

"Before we get down to business, I need to show you a few things." Rice snapped his fingers, and several wisps of objects floated out of the Azkaban prison.

Then several Dementors grabbed the objects and neatly arranged them in the open space between the Death Eaters and Rice.

The Death Eaters looked down and turned pale with fright: in the very center of the ground lay Voldemort's corpse, and judging by the color of his skin, he had probably been dead for some time.

Several other corpses were placed next to Voldemort's body; judging from their clothing, they were prisoners from Azkaban.

Everyone sensed something and, after carefully examining the faces of the other corpses, they quickly recognized these old friends.

"Bellatrix..."

"Mursayber?!"

"Rodolphus Lestrange!!!"

A few whispers rose from the crowd, then quickly fell silent. Everyone waited for Rice to speak.

"Alright, as you all see, Voldemort is dead." A smile appeared on Rhys's face. "I questioned the prisoners here, and some of them were unwilling to submit to me, so I sent them to meet Voldemort."

The Death Eaters couldn't help but shudder, and then they heard Rice throw a question at them.

"Are you willing to submit to me?"

Lucius, who was in the Death Eater group, was prepared. He strode out of the crowd and knelt on one knee before the evil spirit with the face of his nephew to show his loyalty.

With Lucius leading the way, the others also knelt down in a rush, indicating their willingness to submit to the new Dark Lord.

"Very good, very good! A wise man submits to circumstances!" Seeing that there was no large-scale mass sacrifice for Voldemort, Rice couldn't help but feel a sense of pleasure.

"Wait a moment..." Rhys drew his wand and walked up to Lucius, first gesturing for him to roll up his sleeves, then Rhys sprinkled some potion on his arm.

Amidst the bewildered gazes of the crowd, Rice drew his wand and pressed it against Lucius's Dark Mark. A few seconds later, a cloud of black mist rose from his shoulder.

As the black mist dissipated, the Dark Mark of the Skull and Snake had vanished, replaced by a coiled snake. This mark bore a striking resemblance to the Slytherin crest of Hogwarts.

The reason Lucius's arm wasn't severed and replaced with a new one, as was done with the prisoners in Azkaban, was because Lucius held a special position in their eyes, and Rice was unwilling to use such a punitive method on him.

The other Death Eaters benefited from Lucius's influence and were also given "surgery" by Rice. However, Rice had far less patience for them; he didn't even bother applying pain-relieving potions, instead using magic to remove the Dark Marks from their arms. They screamed in pain.

After the Dark Mark on the last Death Eater's arm was replaced with the Serpent Mark, Rice announced that the entire group had now joined his Serpent Organization.

After announcing a bunch of rules for the Snake Organization, Rice told them to remember to choose code names and then announced that everyone could disband.

The members of the Snake Organization looked at each other, feeling that there seemed to be some very important things that hadn't been done yet, but they didn't dare to ask Rice directly.

After all, this is His Majesty's first order. If he doesn't carry it out immediately and instead stands up to ask questions, isn't that a bit too reckless?

Finally, Lucius mustered his courage and stepped forward to ask the question everyone was most concerned about: What exactly is the purpose of the Snake Organization?

"To explore the ultimate limits of magic and make the magical world great again," Rice said, half-jokingly.

His ultimate goal is to disrupt the destiny of this world.

The members nodded thoughtfully.

"So what do we need to do?" Lucius pressed.

"Let's use your home as the activity center for now. You all have to come here every seven days." Rice didn't assign any special tasks to the members; he simply told them to stay put.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

Update delivered, goodnight everyone.

The next update will be at midnight tomorrow night.

(End of this chapter)