Although Gryffindor was not as united as Hufflepuff, when facing Slytherin, they forgot all internal grudges.
Soon, a crowd gathered.
Then came the shouting and insults.
Unlike Ron, who was getting a little worked up,
Basil and Hermione were not swept up by the atmosphere.
Hermione thought House points were more important.
As for Basil,
his expression was quite something.
Just then, he had clearly seen several Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws hiding among the crowd,
quietly fanning the flames.
The Hufflepuffs stirring things up were rather crude about it, but as the largest and most united House,
with the other Hufflepuff students covering for them, even if someone sensed that something was wrong, they could not find the culprits.
The Ravenclaws stirring things up, on the other hand, were extremely meticulous.
With nearly everyone thinking they were bookworms, some pretended to mutter to themselves in deep thought; some held books and walked without looking where they were going; some carried peeled potatoes and examined them carefully.
They just happened to pass through the Slytherin and Gryffindor crowds.
They would "accidentally" step on someone's foot or bump into someone's head.
Meanwhile, Snape hid in the shadow of a corner like a Big Bat.
He was ready at any moment to deduct points—to play favorites.
It was just a useless House Cup. Was it really necessary to be this underhanded?
Basil felt as if his worldview was about to shatter.
No wonder Gryffindor had never managed to win the House Cup, even when they monopolized the best students.
It was not just Snape causing trouble.
There were also Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw.
They naturally did not want Slytherin to come out on top, but they did not want Gryffindor to earn too many points either.
In the end, the fight never broke out.
Although Flint was despicable, he seemed to prefer defeating Gryffindor on the Quidditch pitch.
He also wanted to boast about how outstanding their first-year player was.
Thus, restrained by the biggest brutes among the brutes, the other hulking Slytherins also backed down.
"Hey! Basil, you noticed it too, didn't you?" Percy suddenly appeared behind him at some point.
Basil nodded.
Percy said, "Are you surprised?"
"Yes." Basil signaled Hermione not to speak yet, then said, "I don't understand. From what I've seen, isn't Slytherin the enemy of the whole school? As long as Slytherin doesn't win the House Cup, everyone is fine with it. But today?"
Percy laughed. "This is also aimed at Slytherin. Didn't you notice? The ones they deliberately provoked were all Slytherin students. If a real fight broke out, they would join in using methods suited to their own Houses, making it impossible even for Snape to play favorites." He sighed wistfully. "What a pity. The last time such a grand showdown happened was two years ago. Fred and George were the main characters then. They had just started school."
"What a pity?" Hermione began to doubt her own ears.
She had thought Percy was on her side.
After only one night, by the next day,
almost all the students and portraits knew that Slytherin and Gryffindor each had their youngest-ever Seeker.
For a time, every conversation in the castle revolved around it.
Yet no one doubted whether Wood and Flint had gone mad.
All the students who had witnessed Harry and Malfoy competing back and forth in the air during flying class praised their skills to the skies.
Their excellent skills, along with the fact that Draco Malfoy used a feminine sitting posture, spread throughout Hogwarts.
Even Rita Skeeter joined in, publishing the story in the Daily Prophet.
But Basil had no time to care about any of that.
He was humbly seeking instruction from Youthful Voldemort, who was currently in the Chamber of Secrets.
Although Youthful Voldemort, summoned by the Summoning Card Horcrux: The Diary, had only one eye-catching talent suffix on his data panel—Proficiency in Dark Arts: Advanced—
there was a prerequisite.
His system was the real-world version of NetEase Games.
NetEase Games put tremendous care into outfits and all sorts of pay-to-win channels.
But its data panels were comparatively crude.
A player's magic resistance, physical defense, agility, strength, constitution, and so on were all lumped together under Health.
Nor did it provide a more vivid indication of a wizard's magical cultivation.
So even though Youthful Voldemort possessed magical cultivation and combat experience no different from seventeen-year-old Voldemort's,
his raw stats did not look any different from those of other outstanding students in the same year.
If only it could display Dark Magic Lv. whatever and Transfiguration Lv. whatever.
Basil could not help sighing again.
In the Chamber, Riddle borrowed a battered wand he had found in the Room of Requirement and displayed exceptionally brilliant combat techniques.
One spell flowed into the next.
Each previous spell provided amplification or groundwork for the following one.
The wand seemed to aim itself, destroying one by one the tables and chairs Basil had suddenly moved into the air inside the Chamber.
Even more impressive was Riddle's Killing Curse.
When facing the Killing Curse cast by the Boggart-version Voldemort Basil had summoned, he did not even look at it.
With his eyes closed, the wand spun in his palm on its own and found that green light.
An equally, if not more, dazzling Killing Curse shot from the tip of the battered hawthorn wand, accompanied by the sound of some unknown enormous thing cutting through the air.
The Boggart-version Voldemort's Killing Curse was shattered.
Along with Voldemort himself.
All that remained were broken stools and table legs scattered everywhere.
There was no helping it. The practice ground counted as part of the dueling component, so the school would have to suffer a little.
He would treat it as interest for letting the school use Hogwarts Castle.
Afterward, Riddle explained.
"My lord. There are three ways in which you cast spells."
"I am not referring to magic power and 'magic power.' I mean the three methods brought by the wand and the Grimoire."
"Spells cast purely through the Grimoire, if you do not guide them with spiritual power, will only perform according to the descriptions on the panel."
"A Stunning Spell can only stun, and a Killing Curse can only kill. Even if you 'consume' more magic power, all you create is additional damage. It is merely brute force. The fundamental nature of the spell's power does not change."
"Conversely, you do not need to chant an incantation. With a single thought, you can 'throw a punch' with almost no mental or physical exertion."
"And when using a wand—that is, traditional wizard casting—you need to focus completely and expend Mental Power when you are unfamiliar with it."
"But you have not truly combined the two. When you use the wand and the Grimoire at the same time, you merely receive the benefits of both at once."
"In fact, you should have noticed that none of the cards in your Grimoire have reached level two yet."
"That is because when you use cards, you have almost never used spiritual power to wield them."
"This way, you can only train your 'muscles,' meaning magic power itself. Your magical cultivation will not improve much."
"Perhaps you have glimpsed, through Summoning Cards, the level-two Devil's Snare created by using both powers at once."
"But a level-two spell is absolutely not merely an increase in damage."
"The level-four spells enhanced by your Echo are not true level-four spells either."
"Nor are your card levels limited to fifteen like they are in the game."
"In truth, a level-one spell is already at the level of an ordinary wizard."
"A true level-two spell will develop effects beyond the original spell, or enhanced effects built upon its foundation, according to your will."
"Like my Killing Curse. It can kill spells as well. That is something an ordinary Killing Curse does not possess."
"This is what Ron calls personalization."
Basil was a little confused.
He lay in his dormitory bedroom, opening his mouth without making a sound.
His voice had been transferred to the Chamber connected to Moaning Myrtle's bathroom on the third floor, reaching Riddle's ears.
"Then what exactly is a level-two spell? Going by what you said, the Stunning Spell with Banishing Charm properties that I used against Malfoy and his two lackeys was a level-two spell."
Riddle denied it. "That was a level-one spell with the properties of a level-two spell."
"A true level-two spell is more powerful when you use the same amount of magic power, while also possessing distinct characteristics based on your personal will."
"You do not need to inject extra spiritual power to restrain it or impose those traits upon it."
"It is as though it were alive."
"When that time comes, your wand will change with it and become more spiritual."
Before you continue