"What about that Gollum? Where did he go?"
Altair looked around. Gollum had not appeared directly the way the notebook had, and Altair had no idea where the System had placed him.
If it had dropped him into the Muggle world, Altair could already imagine the consequences.
A strange-looking humanoid creature, mentally unstable, forever muttering in that eerie voice, "My Precious!"
Just thinking about it was enough to make his scalp tingle.
"Sméagol has not yet been deployed. Host may freely choose a location for placement. It may only be placed within the wizarding world."
"Please note: Sméagol's storage period is one month. Once the character summon refreshes, Sméagol will automatically be placed somewhere within the range surrounding the Host."
Hearing the System's answer, Altair let out a sigh of relief.
After thinking it over, he realized that Gollum did not seem particularly useful to him anyway.
Hobbits had little magical ability to begin with, and Gollum was insane. Keeping him around would be pointless. Worse, he would constantly try to steal back the One Ring, so it was better not to keep him at all.
"Place Gollum in Azkaban."
Altair made his choice.
"Ding!"
"Sméagol has been successfully placed in Azkaban!"
Hearing the System's notification, Altair was quite satisfied.
But then another thought suddenly occurred to him.
Wasn't tomorrow Harry Potter's birthday?
If he had placed Gollum in front of Harry Potter at midnight tonight, what would have happened?
Harry Potter closes his eyes and makes a wish. Then when he opens them, he finds a pair of huge eyes staring right at him, and hears:
"My Precious!"
Just imagining it was amusing.
"What a pity. Harry Potter isn't in the wizarding world right now."
Altair shook his head with a smile and did not dwell on it. Instead, he took out the notebook he had just stored away.
Originally, he had not been able to understand the ancient spells recorded inside.
But after unlocking the One Ring's Necromancer ability, Altair suddenly found that he could now read and comprehend them.
While Altair studied Saruman's notes in his room, far away in the North Sea...
A lonely island stood in the freezing waters, and upon the cliff of that island rose a black castle.
This was Azkaban, infamous throughout the wizarding world.
Outside the castle, countless Dementors circled and drifted through the air.
Inside a room on the third floor, a humanoid creature no larger than a house-elf suddenly appeared.
Its two eyes glowed like bulbs with a yellow-green light, and together with its nearly bald head and hideous face, it looked profoundly unsettling.
"Where is this?"
Gollum hunched over, cautiously examining the unfamiliar surroundings.
"It's a trick!"
A second voice came from his mouth, dark and sinister.
"It's Baggins's trick! He's a thief! A vile, filthy thief! He stole our Precious! My Precious!"
"Yes, Precious!"
"My Precious!"
Gollum's eyes turned greener, glowing faintly in the gloom. He spun in place a few times and spat viciously.
"It must be Baggins! He found some Elves to work magic and locked us up here!"
As Gollum cursed viciously, a woman's figure suddenly emerged from the darkness in the corner and entered his field of vision.
Her hair was tangled and filthy, and she herself looked no cleaner. At that moment, she was staring fixedly at him, her eyes gleaming with ill intent.
"How... fascinating. Hahahahaha."
The woman stared at Gollum and slowly spoke.
Her voice sounded like the rasp of a corpse clawing its way out of a grave. Even Gollum, dark and twisted as he was, felt his scalp go numb.
"A house-elf? No..."
The woman stepped closer, her eyes fixed on Gollum with ferocious intensity as she shouted,
"What exactly are you? A goblin? Or some human twisted by a curse?"
"Who is Baggins? What treasure did he steal? And how did you get in here?"
Gollum backed away carefully until the cold stone wall of the castle pressed against his back and he had nowhere left to retreat.
He quickly crouched down, snatched up a sharp fragment of stone, and glared viciously at the woman before him.
"Mine! It was my Precious!"
"Your Precious? Hahahahaha."
The woman burst into manic laughter, then produced a battered wand from somewhere unknown. She suddenly pointed it at Gollum, baring her teeth as her smile turned even more sinister.
"Crucio!"
Gollum's agonized shrieks rang through all of Azkaban, mingling with Bellatrix's mad laughter.
And the one responsible for all of it was currently in the warm comfort of a room in Shelby Manor, testing his magic.
"Lesser Undead Creation!"
"Summon Skeletal Warrior!"
With a light wave of Altair's hand, a dim ghostly glow flashed through the room.
Then, a skeletal warrior nearly two meters tall appeared in front of him.
Its bones were exceptionally thick, and its two pale hands gripped weapons: a rusted iron sword and a wooden shield.
It was obvious that in life, this had once been a powerful warrior.
Dark green ghostfire burned inside the skeleton's empty eye sockets.
It stood motionless before Altair.
"Not bad."
Altair nodded in satisfaction.
This skeletal warrior looked rather strong, at least not like one of those fragile, crumbling skeleton soldiers that looked ready to fall apart.
Altair then controlled the skeleton warrior and had it move around a little.
Its speed and strength far surpassed those of an ordinary person. One skeletal warrior would have no trouble handling four or five Muggles at once. And although its weapon looked rusted, it was actually still quite sharp. Add in the delightful possibility of tetanus, and its combat value could not be underestimated.
After testing it for a while, Altair canceled the spell, and with a bang, the skeletal warrior vanished once more.
There were many ancient spells recorded in Saruman's notebook, including a portion of necromancy.
And the Necromancer ability did not disappoint Altair in the slightest.
He had only studied it briefly, yet he had already fully mastered the Lesser Undead Creation spell just now. He could even cast it without a wand.
The more magical power a wizard possessed, the more skeletal warriors they could summon.
With sufficient magic, summoning thousands at once would be easy.
"Besides skeletons, there are zombies, liches, death knights, bone dragons... hmm, they all look pretty simple. But my magic isn't enough yet..."
Altair's command over necromancy exceeded even his own expectations.
He had only skimmed through it for a short while, yet he already felt as though he had mastered all those spells. The only reason he could not test them yet was because his magical power was still insufficient.
Besides necromancy, Saruman's notebook also contained spells related to holy magic, nature magic, and elemental magic.
Altair casually flipped through some of them. Although he could not grasp them as quickly as he had the necromantic arts, he had a strong feeling that if he studied them properly, he would still be able to master them very quickly.
"As expected of the One Ring. No, I should say, as expected of the Dark Lord Sauron. After all, Necromancy is Sauron's talent."
Altair glanced at the time, put the notebook away, sighed in admiration, and headed downstairs for dinner.