Reproach and Lies

Although Orianna was a doll, being carried through the air by a doll girl still made Ye Ting feel incredibly awkward.

Feeling so uncomfortable, he squirmed uneasily and protested to Orianna, but the doll girl ignored him—after all, the doll girl who was constantly tucked into Father's pocket had long wanted to try doing this herself. She was doing it entirely on purpose.

How had the once innocent and pure Orianna become like this?

So this was the legendary sweet-on-the-outside, dark-on-the-inside type.

The moment he entered the third floor, Ye Ting caught a whiff of a pungent stench, a mixture of filthy socks and a public toilet that had never been cleaned.

Then he heard it—a low muttering and the sound of enormous feet dragging across the floor.

At the end of a passageway to the left, a huge figure was moving toward him.

Ye Ting quickly struggled free from Orianna's embrace, cast Reducio on her, and tucked her back into his pocket. The girl looked somewhat reluctant to stop.

Before Ye Ting stood a monster he had never seen before. It was twelve feet tall, with dull, granite-gray skin. Its enormous, clumsy body resembled a huge heap of boulders, topped by a head as small as a cocoa bean. Its short legs were as thick as tree trunks, ending in flat, rough, callused feet. The stench it gave off was nauseating. It gripped a thick wooden club in its hand, which dragged along the ground because of its long arms.

That was a Troll, a magical creature with astonishing strength but extremely low intelligence. It shared the same name as the trolls in World of Warcraft, but its intelligence was clearly somewhat different.

The Troll stopped beside a door and peered inside. It waggled its long ears, made up its mind with its tiny head, then lowered it and slowly squeezed into the room.

Immediately afterward, Ye Ting heard a sound that nearly stopped his heart—a shrill, terrified scream coming from that room.

It was Hermione. She was hiding in the girls' bathroom.

Without hesitation, Ye Ting drew his wand and charged over.

Hermione Granger was cowering against the wall opposite, trembling as she cast Wingardium Leviosa. A thick book smashed into the Troll's head, but such a weak attack had no effect on the thick-skinned monster.

The Troll was closing in on her, lumbering forward as its massive muscles smashed the porcelain sinks along the way to pieces.

Am I going to die? Realizing that her spell was useless against the monster, Hermione's face went deathly pale. She shut her eyes in despair and waited for death to come.

At the very moment she faced death, the first person to appear in her mind was neither her parents nor the Hogwarts professors, but that boy—the handsome boy who had risked his life to save her when she fell from her broom.

Save me—Ye Ting— she cried out inwardly.

Though she had not used Felix Felicis, her wish was immediately granted.

"Sectumsempra!" Ye Ting shouted the incantation. An invisible, razor-sharp blade sliced through the air and flew soundlessly toward the Troll's back. In an instant, it carved a wound over a meter long across its back. Blood sprayed from the gash and streamed out in torrents.

The sudden agony made the Troll roar and howl. It wildly swung its huge club, smashing the entire bathroom until bricks and stones flew everywhere.

At last, the dim-witted monster turned around and discovered the culprit.

With an enraged roar, the Troll charged at Ye Ting with its club raised, leaving a trail of blood behind it.

At that moment, Hermione, who had already fallen into despair, noticed the change as well. The boy's incantation and the Troll's strange reaction told her that someone had saved her and drawn the Troll's attention away from her.

She looked closely. The boy she had been thinking about stood at the bathroom entrance.

"Watch out!" Seeing the Troll head toward Ye Ting, she cried out anxiously.

After glancing around, she frantically picked up broken stones from the floor and hurled them at the Troll, trying to distract it without caring whether she could handle the monster herself.

However, Ye Ting had injured it so severely that Hermione's interference could not draw its attention at all.

The Troll raised its enormous club high, then brought it crashing down at Ye Ting.

Yet, faced with that devastating blow, Ye Ting's expression did not change. Ignoring the howling wind, he calmly spoke the incantation.

"Shield Charm!"

With a boom, the Troll's full-force strike seemed to slam into an invisible wall.

The air shuddered violently twice, but the terrifying club stopped three centimeters above Ye Ting's head, unable to move another inch.

Indeed, because Trolls possessed powerful magical resistance, even at Ye Ting's current level, his spells could not do much to them. Spells such as Expelliarmus and Stupefy were far less effective against Trolls, but spells like Sectumsempra and the Shield Charm, which worked indirectly through physical effects, could still be somewhat useful.

Especially when wielded by someone with magic as powerful as Ye Ting's, they had indeed inflicted severe damage on the Troll.

Seizing the opportunity, Ye Ting nimbly circled around the Troll and reached its back, then struck the sinks with Bombarda.

In an instant, an entire row of sinks exploded into pieces. The pipes burst one after another, and the gushing water drenched the Troll from head to toe.

Soaked all over, the Troll struggled to turn around, intending to take revenge on its opponent once more.

Ye Ting held his breath, focused his attention, and cast a freezing spell at it with all his strength.

Because he had unleashed the spell with his full power, its effect was so immense that it turned the ordinary into the miraculous. The water covering the Troll rapidly froze within seconds, and its movements instantly stiffened—it had been frozen solid, completely unable to move.