An Unexplained Mark

Since Talas was unwilling to stay, Hoffa could not force him.

Hoffa glanced at the flesh-and-blood eyeball in the distance, then at the eye symbol on the back of his hand, already half closed.

It was time to go back.

As though it had sensed his intentions, the maggot giant let out an anxious roar. Before it could complete its fusion, it staggered forward, smashing apart the hunched figures on countless stone bridges as it pursued him in a grotesquely twisted posture.

Hoffa turned and saw the thing crawling on all fours behind him. Joey was fucking no less of a trap than Yinduo.

What kind of sins had I committed? I haven't met a single normal person in this life! Why does everyone have to screw me over at least once?

As he accelerated, he put away his wand.

The repeated Transfigurations had also consumed an enormous amount of magic. He could not afford to overdraw himself now. If he collapsed from a headache, who knew what would happen?

Seeing Hoffa disarm himself, the maggot monster sped up even more. As it ran, it gradually transformed into an enormous version of Hoffa.

Those ugly maggots even copied the way he ran, flawlessly.

Hoffa's legs were not even a tenth as long as its. As they ran, countless black shadows on the bridge were knocked flying in every direction, their miserable cries unceasing.

With a slight turn of his head, he saw that it was about to catch him, and his anxiety deepened.

But at that moment.

A piercing cry came from afar.

A thunderous boom followed, nearly deafening Hoffa.

When he turned to look, a bird-shaped streak of lightning shot out of the void and arrived in an instant.

Carrying incomparable might, it pierced straight through the maggot giant's chest.

The maggot giant did not even have time to scream before the lightning strike blew it apart, scattering and rolling away like a torrent of rotten mud.

Dense electric arcs danced ceaselessly across the ground, making Hoffa's scalp tingle.

But he was not hurt.

As the maggots dispersed, a figure slowly emerged from the lightning. He was a young-looking man of extraordinary, strikingly handsome appearance.

He had a human body, yet his entire body was covered in gleaming dark scales and golden patterns.

"Sorry I was late," the man said politely.

"I'm not human. To enter the Bridge of the Past, I had to go ahead and obtain the guardian's permission. Otherwise, I would never be able to fly into the sky again."

The man slowly approached as the lightning around him gradually faded.

He wore no clothes. Gray hair, golden eyes, and muscles so exquisite they could blind anyone who looked at them.

"T-Talas?"

Hoffa widened his eyes. No matter how hard he tried, he could not connect this extraordinarily handsome man with the dying Thunderbird from the Forbidden Forest.

"That was my name in my previous life."

The man nodded. "I remember you. Aren't you a child from that magic school? How did you end up here?"

The extraordinarily handsome man looked at Hoffa and said gently, "That was far too reckless. This is not a place you should have come. Wizards have their rules, and the living have their world. If I had arrived any later, the Desire Worms of the abyss might have devoured your sense of self."

Desire Worms?

Hoffa pointed at the people around them carrying stone tablets.

"These...?"

"They are all pitiful people who could not bear to abandon their pasts. Desire and obsession torment them. This is the path they chose for themselves."

Talas shook his head. "Do not become like them."

Only after standing there in a daze for several seconds did Hoffa remember his mission.

"Oh, right. Joey asked me to find you."

Staring at a maggot twitching from the electricity on the ground, Hoffa said, "He asked me to tell you that he hopes you can..."

"Not forget him, right?"

Talas tilted his head and interrupted Hoffa.

Hoffa nodded. "That's right."

"Joey really is reckless." The extraordinarily handsome man sighed.

"To casually send a soul into the underworld... doing that will shorten his lifespan."

"Then will you retain some of your memories? About Joey?"

Hoffa looked up at Talas, fixing his gaze on his shoulder. (The other man's unabashed nakedness made him somewhat embarrassed.)

Talas slowly but firmly shook his head.

"Joey wants me to remember him. He wants me to return. I understand. There is no greater pain for humans than being forgotten by those they love. But there is nothing new under the sun. If one does not learn to forget, how can one calmly embrace a new life?"

"Uh, but can't you choose? Like a phoenix?" Hoffa asked in confusion. He could not understand why a creature would refuse immortality.

"Phoenixes are different from us. They are witnesses to history, while we are merely participants. To Thunderbirds, freedom is more important than immortality. Only by overcoming one's ultimate fear can one gain life's purest freedom."

Hoffa did not understand what the other man meant. Perhaps his own understanding was simply not deep enough.

Still, he was only delivering a message. Now that it had been delivered, he had nothing more to say.

"Then I'm leaving," Hoffa said softly, preparing to turn and depart.

"Wait."

The extraordinarily handsome man stopped him.

"What is it?" Hoffa turned around.

"Do you still have enough magic?"

Only after hearing that did Hoffa realize that, after using Transfiguration repeatedly, his magic was already nearly depleted.

Hoffa shook his head. "Not much."

Talas smiled. "You really are the strangest wizard I have ever seen. Your mental strength is terrifyingly high; even Helheim's cold wind could not destroy you. Yet your magic is pitifully low—not even half that of an ordinary wizard your age."

Hoffa

Talas pointed at the bridge. "Without magic, you cannot drive away the Desire Worms. They are drawn to your life force and will cling to you without end, until you fall and become the same kind of being as them."

Hoffa looked around. Sure enough, the maggots that had been stunned by lightning were showing signs of waking up. Worse still, more and more worms were crawling up from the abyss onto the bridge.

"Do you have a way?" Hoffa asked.

Talas nodded. "Since you came all this way, it works out nicely. I ended my life early, and I still have some residual power left. It is of no use to me now, so take it. Tell Joey to take good care of my descendants."

As he spoke, he suddenly stepped forward and grabbed Hoffa's hand.

"Go back. When you have time, find a way to increase your magic."

With a crackle of electricity.

He shoved Hoffa hard.

A surging energy flowed from Hoffa's left hand throughout his entire body. He stared in shock, never having experienced such a sensation before.

He even felt as though he could do anything he wanted.

He wanted to bid Talas farewell, but before he could speak, Talas gave him one final smiling wave. In an instant, he transformed into a streak of lightning and vanished beyond the horizon.

Hoffa's entire body brimmed with power that felt ready to explode, and a flash of golden light passed through his eyes.

He turned and took a step. In the blink of an eye, he had run dozens of meters.

This felt incredible.

Seeing that the eye on the back of his hand was nearly closed, Hoffa broke into a full sprint, racing across the straight stone bridge at more than a hundred times the speed he had come with.

But likewise, more and more maggots crawled up from beneath the stone bridge. Monsters formed from countless maggots all wanted to possess Hoffa and occupy his soul.

The closer he got to the giant eye, the more of those ugly monsters there were. In the end, they formed a vast mass like an army.

Defying the lightning with all their might, hundreds and thousands of them lunged at Hoffa.

Hoffa's forward charge slowed.

But he was not afraid. The surging magic within him filled his heart with wildness and a desire to fight. There was even a trace of inexplicable beastly instinct stirring inside him.

He raised his hand and clenched it. As magic boiled through him, his wand rapidly lengthened and grew, exceeding two meters, then five meters, then ten meters, with no sign of stopping.

In the end, the wand actually became a forty-meter-long electrified greatsword. Dragging the hilt as he sprinted with all his strength, he finally swept it in a magnificent arc.

Every creature within a forty-meter radius was cut in two by that single strike.

Unfortunately, he only enjoyed that moment for one second before the magic Talas had given him was completely spent. Then, with no one left to stop him, Hoffa slammed headfirst into the enormous eye.

He vanished into its pupil.

After Hoffa passed through the eye, the enormous flesh-and-blood eye slowly closed and turned to dust in Helheim's cold wind.

Passing once more through layer upon layer of space.

As though waking from an absurd and bizarre nightmare, Hoffa's eyes, devoid of black pupils, gradually returned to normal.

A flicker of lightning crackled in his eyes before falling silent.

He smelled withered grass and felt the softness of earth beneath his cheek. The autumn chill of Scotland was exceptionally clear at that moment.

Hoffa barely pushed himself up from the ground, rubbing his temples.

Real pain kept shooting through his head, telling him that he had overdrawn his magic again.

He felt that something had appeared on the back of his hand.

Looking down, he found that the blood eye on the back of his hand had disappeared. In its place was a faint golden pattern, so pale it seemed drawn with gold dust and was impossible to notice unless one looked closely. The pattern resembled an eagle, yet it was perfectly symmetrical, its design outlined in an extremely simple manner.

Just as Hoffa was wondering what the pattern was.

A man rushed out from a corner, grabbed Hoffa's shoulders, and looked at him hopefully.

"Well? Did he agree to come back?"

It was Joey.

Hoffa came back to himself. He looked at Joey, then at the enormous bird corpse beside them, and shook his head regretfully as he slowly relayed Talas's final words to Joey.

As Hoffa spoke, the excitement on Joey's face gradually faded, eventually becoming uncontrollable sorrow.

After Hoffa finished, Joey stood silently in place for a long time, holding the bird egg.

A cold wind rustled the leaves of the Forbidden Forest. Finally, the bleak old man let out a long sigh and muttered softly, "I knew it would be like this. Death is a game for the brave. Talas, I am still far too inferior to you."

Hoffa did not know how to comfort Joey, so he could only remain silent. But Joey quickly pulled himself together.

He patted Hoffa on the shoulder and said sincerely, "You really had it rough. You are the bravest Ravenclaw I have ever seen."

Brave?

Heh. Hoffa rolled his eyes. If you'd told me from the start that I was going to the underworld, I wouldn't have gone even if you broke my legs. Wasn't I just tricked into it?

Still, he had made it back, and a month of hard labor had finally come to an end.

Hoffa did not want to complain to Joey any more about his dangerous experiences in Helheim. He desperately wanted to return to the common room and relax beside Ravenclaw's fireplace.

He held out his hand. "Where's the form?"

Holding the egg in one arm, Joey pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket with the other.

"Your form. I marked it as Outstanding. Go back. If you have trouble in the future, you can come find me. Just don't offend the higher-ups at Hogwarts. They won't joke around with you."

Hoffa took the parchment. Sure enough, there was a large red checkmark in the Outstanding box at the very top, along with Joey's signature and wax seal below.

Satisfied, Hoffa tucked the parchment into his robes.

After returning to the tree house and saying goodbye to Joey, Hoffa headed toward the castle while rubbing his still-aching head.

As he walked back, he examined the strange pale golden pattern on the back of his hand.

Talas had left it on him in the underworld. He had initially thought that power was single-use and would disappear after being spent.

But now, it seemed that was not the case. Hoffa was very curious about what this thing actually was.

He kept feeling as if something inside his body was flowing into the pattern, as though he had grown an extra organ that could breathe.

As he examined it, he had just reached the school entrance when the pain in his head intensified.

Hoffa's expression changed. Something was wrong.

He had not cast any magic, so why were the symptoms of magic depletion getting worse?

The sensation of something flowing through the golden pattern on his arm became even more obvious.

And a strange hunger rose in his mind.

Hungry.

Was he hungry?

Hoffa froze, then looked at his arm again.

At last, he understood what was happening.

This golden pattern was devouring his magic, and it was doing so at an astonishing rate.

Fuck!

Seeing that his headache was growing increasingly severe.

Hoffa immediately sat cross-legged on the ground and began to meditate.

Only after he began meditating did he feel an indescribable hunger. It was not physical hunger, but hunger for magic.

He did not dare be careless. Again and again, he practiced Milarepa Walker's Meditation Method, rapidly restoring his magic.

Finally, after meditating for an hour, that hungry feeling gradually faded. Hoffa gritted his teeth and rose to his feet, wanting to return to the common room and properly study this thing.

But before he had taken two steps, the hunger returned.

It was like a crying, insatiable infant waiting to be fed.

The sudden headache made Hoffa lean against the wall, clutching his head.

WTF!

Ignoring the astonished looks from the students around him, Hoffa had no choice but to sit down again and continue meditating.

And so, every time Hoffa meditated for an hour and restored his magic, the pale golden tattoo would drain every bit of magic from his body within minutes—no, within seconds.

And there was no sign whatsoever of it giving anything back.

After meditating three times in a row, all sense of novelty and curiosity was finally swept away, replaced by shock, anger, and confusion.

At the castle entrance, Hoffa threw back his head and cursed at the sky, startling a flock of pigeons into flight.

"Hey, you old bird, what the hell did you leave inside me?!"