The Mantis King and the Lizard King

The first thing to emerge from the open door was not a person, but a string of familiar voices.

After all, those voices had left a deep enough impression on Manus before.

An energetic old man with graying hair emerged from the room, leaning on a cane. His gaze was fixed on Griffin, and the meticulously groomed mustache above his lips trembled slightly.

Unlike the faint sharpness in his words, the old man's expression showed nothing but longing for his son.

Griffin's expression was equally worth examining. Faced with his father's scolding, he too looked somewhat emotional and excited.

Manus's gaze drifted back and forth between his grandfather and father several times. It seems the Death Eaters' impact on our family was even greater than I originally estimated.

Yet whether from the Daily Prophet's contents or the situation outside, it seemed the Death Eaters did not actually hold such an overwhelming advantage...

So they did not have that much of an advantage, but they were threatening enough?

Manus had long known that his family could not deal with the Death Eaters while they were still unable to overturn the Ministry of Magic, but that had mostly been a judgment based on his previous experience.

Now that he had gained a more comprehensive understanding of wizards, he realized that the Death Eaters might be even stronger than he had imagined. Or rather, the strongest among the Death Eaters might be stronger than he had imagined.

That strength was not being measured against the standards in his memories, but against the level of spellcasters in this world.

It was known that the Death Eaters had already become an openly active force, recognized by the Ministry of Magic as a dangerous organization. Quite a few people had even joined the Death Eaters publicly without worrying that the Ministry would arrest them for it.

That did not resemble an evil organization that was still at a disadvantage. Otherwise, the Death Eaters would at least have concealed their identities in public.

But if the Death Eaters had already gained the upper hand and the Ministry of Magic was on its last legs, then the stability of the outside world clearly did not fit either.

If the situation had truly reached such an unstable point, then even if the Ministry tried its best to suppress the news and maintain order, it could not have succeeded in practice. Rumors would have spread rapidly, and the prices of strategic supplies such as potions would have soared.

Manus could think of only one explanation for such a distorted situation.

For the sake of a research project, Manus had once observed the ecology of monster populations in a forest. The relationship between the lizardfolk there and a species of mantis-like magical beasts vaguely resembled the current Wizarding World.

As physically powerful and highly social humanoid monsters, the lizardfolk held a natural advantage against magical beasts. Moreover, the king of the lizardfolk was also the strongest monster in that forest.

Naturally, the lizardfolk ruled that forest.

The average combat strength of those mantis-like magical beasts surpassed that of an individual lizardfolk, but their numbers were few. And while the Mantis King could crush any other lizardfolk, it was no match for the king of the lizardfolk.

This balance of power meant that the lizardfolk did not fear the mantises overthrowing their rule, nor did they worry that the mantises would storm their camp and threaten their safety. If they did, the Mantis King would undoubtedly be throwing its life away.

But when carrying out solitary tasks such as hunting outside their territory, the lizardfolk displayed extreme vigilance and fear toward the mantises.

Because once separated from the group—or, more precisely, from the protection of their king—there was no outcome other than death if they encountered the Mantis King.

It is known that wizard magic seems to place greater emphasis on developing instinct and talent rather than pursuing reason and knowledge.

Ripples spread across Manus's Spirit Sea as past definitions and information concerning the concept of wizards were extracted and integrated.

This model dictates that a wizard's strength will not progress in a gradual, step-like fashion.

Although breakthroughs in magical knowledge and research sometimes occurred in leaps among magicians, if one expanded the spatial scale to encompass all wizards and extended the temporal scale across the history of magicians, the distribution had always tended toward a step-like pattern.

Perhaps the steps grew somewhat steep at the end, but they remained stable.

The wizarding model, while infinitely magnifying individual advantages in talent, also weakened humanity's advantages in cooperation, inheritance, and the use of universal reason.

Achievements founded on talent and instinct were difficult to reproduce universally. Thus, it was easy to imagine that the distribution of wizarding strength had to be extremely scattered.

Expanding the scales of time and space in the same way, it would probably resemble a plain where strange peaks occasionally rose abruptly, only to fall like meteors just as suddenly, having almost no effect on the entire plain.

Interestingly, such reliance on instinct and talent, along with the rejection of highly social achievements such as reason and cooperation, was a phenomenon more commonly seen among monsters.

And now, Britain's Wizarding World displayed the same state Manus had once seen among the monster populations in that forest...

An interesting convergent phenomenon. It could serve as a research subject, but its priority was extremely low.

With no shortage of magical research materials, Manus was not particularly interested in sociology.

Assuming the two situations are indeed similar to a certain extent, then the Mantis King is undoubtedly Voldemort. So who is the Lizard King? The Minister of Magic?

After hesitating for a while, Manus shook his head. The Minister of Magic was merely an official, not even royalty. Strength was probably not a mandatory criterion for selecting the Minister.

By comparison...

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore?

The long, awkward name surfaced in his memories. An image of an old man smiling appeared in his Spirit Sea. Manus had seen it on a character card included with a snack called a Chocolate Frog.

Those character cards featured famous wizards from the Wizarding World. Some had long since died, but others were living legends. Each card included an animated portrait and a brief introduction.

This Dumbledore was a living legend. Though the introduction did not go into detail, one sentence stood out among its relatively short contents—

Widely considered the greatest wizard of the age.

"Widely considered" and "greatest"—when those two phrases were put together, they could practically be equated with "most powerful" in Manus's mind.

A weak person, especially one who was still alive, could never be widely acknowledged as the greatest no matter how great he was.

There would always be people who judged everything by strength, and those who thought that way were often not weak themselves. At the same time, a title like "the greatest person" had to come with immense fame, wealth, and influence.

Unless those character cards were merely self-congratulatory praise within a small circle, this Dumbledore had to be one of the strongest wizards, even if he was not the strongest.

So, are you the Lizard King of the Wizarding World?