Feeling the tremors of the earth beneath his feet, Rhys let out a sigh. Scolding Helga now would be neither meaningful nor empathetic.
Thinking of himself as her friend, Rhys decided to help her in his own way.
He drew his wand and pointed it at the sky.
The moisture in the air began to condense at an accelerated rate, magic flowing through it. Before long, raindrops began to fall from the sky, attempting to wash away everything that had just happened.
"Darling, did you see that? That monster—"
"I saw it! What the hell was that thing?! Damn it, can't this piece of junk go any faster?!"
On the road, a Beetle car was hurtling along at its maximum speed of sixty miles per hour, a man and a woman inside still shaken to the core.
The two of them had been doing some ..naughty stuff when the ground suddenly began to tremble. They had thought it was an earthquake, but when they looked out the window, they saw a giant as tall as a mountain ridge.
The sight scared them so badly that they didn't even bother buttoning their shirts before starting the car and fleeing.
Fine, mist-like rain suddenly drifted down from the sky.
Several strands of rain, thin as cowhair, floated in through the car window, and the man's and woman's gazes gradually began to lose focus…
"Hit the brakes—"
Crash—!!!
Screech—!!
"Whew… how were you even driving?"
"Huh? Why am I driving?"
…
Rain drifted down, steam rose into the air, and every story was swallowed by the downpour.
Rhys returned to the scene of the incident. Helga's fury had already been spent, and she was sitting on the ground, resting.
The small earthen mound that had once been there was gone, replaced by a deep pit over thirty meters in diameter. Inside and around the pit were loose soil, stones, and fragments of plants scattered everywhere. These were the remains of the earth giant Helga had just created.
The rain falling from the sky carried the effects of a Memory Charm. It had no effect on Helga, but she still conjured a C-shaped platform to shield herself from the wind and rain.
When she saw Salazar return, Helga said nothing. She simply nodded at him as a greeting.
Rhys understood her mood and didn't say much either. He merely jumped down into the pit, trying to find Gemini within it.
Before Rhys had even made one full circuit at the bottom of the pit, Helga's voice came from above.
"Don't bother. He's everywhere now."
Hearing that, Rhys silently tossed aside the handful of damp soil he was holding. There was no longer any need to keep searching.
He hadn't had high hopes for the search to begin with. He had only been indulging a bit of wishful thinking, wondering whether Helga might have restrained her rage enough to leave Gemini a sliver of life.
After all, Gemini was someone with a Domain. Taking a few blows so Helga could vent her anger shouldn't have been a problem, right?
Unfortunately, whether Gemini was simply not very durable, or Helga's fury had been far too intense, the result was the same. Gemini hadn't held out.
Once his Domain was broken, Helga smashed him into pulp.
With that, the idea of following clues from these two cultists to track down the Secret Society was probably dead. After being ravaged by Helga's violent attacks and overwhelming magic, this entire area would retain no traces whatsoever. Not even magic could read Gemini's memories from when he was alive.
Abandoning the search, Rhys returned to the surface and walked over to Helga. Only then did he notice that Cedric had been placed right by her feet.
He crouched down to check on Cedric's condition and judged that he hadn't suffered any irreversible damage. Rhys casually tapped the hardened shell covering Cedric's body, producing a clear, crisp sound.
"A mixture of soil infused with my magic and tree resin. It activates when the wearer faces a lethal threat," Helga briefly explained to her old friend. "It can unfold a miniature Domain in an instant to protect the user's life."
"Clever design. Much more practical than the things I prepare for students," Rhys said. He felt Helga's creation was more reasonable than his own protective accessories, with noticeably superior life-saving potential.
"To be praised by you like that isn't easy at all."
Helga meant it sincerely. When it came to equipping students with magical items, Salazar was the true professional, exceptionally skilled at imbuing magic into all kinds of materials.
Of course, she still didn't know that Rhys had already succeeded in embedding his own Domain into a brooch. If she did, her jaw would have dropped.
"In any case, thank you for the Obliviation Rain," Helga said, looking at the rain falling from the sky. She couldn't help but feel a trace of gratitude for her old friend's assistance.
With his help, she no longer needed to worry about the aftermath of the battle. Once dawn broke, Muggles would only think an earthquake had occurred. No one would come forward saying things they shouldn't.
"We can't very well let them come knocking and drag you off to Azkaban," Rhys said with a smile.
This was actually a very serious matter. Of the four of them, Helga Hufflepuff was the one who respected rules the most. If she truly violated current laws and there was a proper legal process, there was a very real possibility she would accept the Ministry's judgment and be imprisoned in Azkaban.
Unlike himself. He would definitely find a way to escape conviction, such as killing everyone—NO! He's their ancestor! So.. like changing identities and continuing to live on.
Hearing her old friend's words, Helga smiled as well.
"So those people were what you call the Secret Society?"
"Yes. A bunch of scavenging little rats, picking up scraps we didn't clean up properly and putting them to use," Rhys said here, unable to stop himself from sighing. "It's just that the later kids weren't up to the task—even this trash-picking lot managed to beat them."
After he said that, Rhys and Helga both fell silent for a moment.
"Maybe it's not that our successors are incompetent," Helga tried to find an excuse for later generations of wizards. "Maybe it's just that the four of us were too strong. Before us, those gods had been running wild for thousands of years after all."
Rhys was taken aback, then felt that Helga's words made a lot of sense. Maybe it really was that they were too strong.
"By the way, earlier…" Rhys told Helga about what he had seen, Hela's head.
"She was different from the other fragments. She still retained part of her consciousness—she screamed when she saw me, she even tried to run."
"That's… remarkably intelligent," Helga felt as if she had a whole mouthful of complaints she wanted to voice, yet couldn't quite decide where to start.
"Don't look at me like that," Rhys waved his hand. "Once you've dealt with people from that Secret Cult often enough, you'll realize that those so-called 'divine remains' on them are just physical remnants left behind after false gods fell. For consciousness to remain intact at all is already unbelievable. Hela herself wasn't some particularly powerful deity to begin with—this kind of manifestation is very abnormal."
"You mean…?"
"In the final memories within her head, I saw an interesting fellow.. Loki. Do you remember him?"
"The god of mischief?"
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12 Chaps ahead at Patreon.com/HornyFBI