Chapter 162

[Gloucestershire. A few dozen kilometres from the settlement.]

Appearing on the threshold of the house, Severus was almost immediately met by the house elf, who was cleaning the gazebo at that time. 

"W... welcome back, sir!" he greeted Severus timidly, in response, the sullen wizard only silently waved his hand and entered the house.

At that very moment, a staircase appeared in the floor, leading directly to a large crystal, which was the core of the "House as an artefact". Gorby had already restored the fence and everything else, so Severus could immediately take care of the spells that were damaged by the artefact that the unknown people used.

Of course, the house had a self-healing function, but due to the method by which they were able to penetrate inside, some errors arose in the weaves of the runes and the work of the core, which Severus had to urgently correct. 

And he did not want to delay with this, because it was fraught with their aggravation.

Therefore, he had to devote the next half hour entirely to this matter, until he finally closed the gap in the barrier and restored the functioning of the artefact.

All this time, he also thought about who and why decided to attack him, but the answer to his first question, no matter how much Severus thought, he was not able to think of anyone.

But the second one was not so difficult to guess. After all, from Nagini's memories, which she allowed him to read, he learned that the first target was Macmillan, who was saved by Jose, who noticed the barrier surrounding the store. 

But it was too late, the shadow mage arrived only at the end, when those people were going to finish him off. 

Therefore, when their next target was already him, it was not difficult to guess why exactly they came. 

Either it was the cube or the method by which the Prince hid the runes and spells cast on it, and there was no third option, because he created the glasses using runes from this world, so he did not hide the spells. 

Of course, there could be something else that Severus did not know and that Macmillan himself was able to get to the bottom of, but he doubted it, and even if so, it still did not change the matter. 

After all, the attack had already happened and he was not going to turn a blind eye to it until he got the heads of the bastards who dared to behave so arrogantly: directly attacking his house, wounding and taking the lives of many servants and even almost killing a man who greatly helped him. 

Leaving the house, the wizard moved to the cave that was built in the centre of the territory that the she-wolf had taken for herself, and he was met by a rather gloomy atmosphere, the wolves did not even pay much attention to the man who had appeared, but only "detachedly" and sluggishly moved around the clearing. 

"Twenty wolves..." the Prince thought with irritation, looking towards the graves.

"It was Agnes who asked to make them and bury the dead relatives, she really loved watching TV with me and saw this on one channel…"Nagini explained sadly, seeing where Snape's gaze was directed.

"I see," taking a deep breath and trying to dispel the negative feelings that could not help at the moment, he headed towards the cave. 

But before the wizard could reach it, he was met by a slightly limping she-wolf, whose right hind leg was bandaged, like her chest. She sensed the arrival of her master and, as usual, immediately came out to meet him. 

"Hi…I watched how you fought," the Dark Hound froze, hearing his words lowered her eyes, "Before, you could take three at once and would not have suffered so much, but because of your laziness, you lost your form, do you understand that?"

"Yes... I relaxed too much…"

"I'm glad you understand that, but it's also my fault that I underestimated the power of wizards and thought that your strength would be enough to protect this place in my absence," coming up to her, he knelt down on one knee and stroked the head of a surprised Agnes, "From this day on, I will take care of you three personally, so I will have to reduce your idle time until you become strong enough so that this does not happen again, understand?"

From her eyes, of course, it was clear that she did not like such an idea, but as soon as the Dark Hound's gaze fell on the graves, uncertainty disappeared without a trace. 

Over these three and a half months, she was able to become attached to these wolves and the fact that in one day, because of her weakness, so many brothers died, for her, it was a real blow. 

"Yes! I will try my best!"

"Okay, and you want this too, I take it?" he asked with a smile, looking towards the large stone. 

A few seconds later, the leader of the Blood Wolves, who had also suffered during this clash, came out from behind it. "Hrm…" he nodded silently, grinning, swallowing his pride, because the magical creature had not yet forgotten that day in the jungle, but at the moment, as a leader, he had to protect his pack so that this would never happen again and not feel that helplessness when, right before his eyes, his relatives were being killed and he could not do anything. 

"Then tomorrow morning, look for me with your remaining group, I think we can do much better." he raised himself and looked at the rest of the wolves, who immediately "perked up" after the leader's arrival, 

"And you will take care of the rest, okay?"

"Hrm!" the wolf nodded again. 

"I'm glad to hear it, then get well soon, Nellie will bring you some medicine in the evening, so you'll be back on your feet quickly," he patted Agnes on the head one last time and disappeared, leaving the two wolves to look at each other in surprise, and then, having finally regained their seriousness on their faces, they nodded to each other and headed towards the cave…

---

Besides them, the wizard, in the next half hour, also visited the rest of the monsters, with the exception of the Chimera King, who would easily tear the intruders apart if they were lucky enough to break through his territory. 

But Severus knew that he would come too, because his cub had made friends with the tiger cub, which the Thunder Tiger would definitely take with him and Lucky, so the three of them could often be seen running around the territory on weekends. 

And moving again to the house, the wizard entered the building and headed to the second floor, where Tobbi was currently resting, who, instead of abandoning the store, decided to protect it and in the end suffered greatly because of this and he was also saved by Jose, who dragged him into the shadows in time, and Nestor took Shafiki away. 

Of course, after that time, when the shadow wizard saved Macmillan, he would hardly have been able to repeat it again, but the Aurors who came distracted attention to themselves, so he was able to save the house-elf. 

As soon as the wizard entered the room, he immediately frowned, seeing the house-elf lying on the bed, who was tied with bandages up to the neck, and half of his right ear was simply missing. 

But it was not the pitiful state of the elf that made him react like that, but the wounds, from which he still felt such familiar necrotic magic, but it was already very weak, even almost imperceptible. 

Approaching his bed, the Prince touched Tobby's chest and a red wave burst from his hand, which passed through the bits and in a few seconds destroyed the remnants of dark magic and at the same moment, the slightly tense face of the house-elf gradually began to smooth out.

"Necromancer, and I thought that I would not meet such wizards in this place...after all, it is one thing for Tom, who only understood a little about this and he could be classified as a "necromancer" with a stretch, but this is a real necromancer, whose magic was a real poison for all living things, The teacher said the truth, we can only dream of peace…"

"These are the people who can raise the dead as zombies? !" the snake asked in shock, she still has some impression of the movie "Night of the Living Dead", which they watched one night and therefore, she asked Severus a lot about them, from there she learned about necromancy, which is capable of this. 

"That's right, if you give them enough time, they can make a whole army of the living dead, but... only the Archmages Necromancers were able to strengthen them and grant intelligence, so even if you have to face an army, it will not be particularly difficult to destroy it."

"But…?"

"Don't worry about it, they are very weak, and they will never be able to penetrate your skin, they are just half-decaying corpses, slightly stronger than a human due to the influence of magic," stroking her on the top of her head, Snape calmly answered, placing his palm on Tobby's forehead and closing his eyes.

The next moment, images began to flash through Snape's head, where the skinny figure of a house elf surrounded by flames, single-handedly fought off a group of six wizards, each of whom used completely different elements.

 From these "shots" he could say for sure that three were only at the peak of the rank of "Master", two more had just moved on to the rank of "Master" and the woman using the element of wind was already almost at the peak of the initial rank and in terms of the state of the core, was no longer inferior to Dumbledore, who in five to ten years would definitely reach the middle stage of the rank of "Master". 

As Severus had taught, the elf sought to eliminate the earth and water mage first and foremost, and used the wind to his advantage, thereby enhancing his fire magic. 

He defended himself perfectly and used both the weaknesses and the advantages of his element against the enemy, but there was one weakness that was exploited by the enraged wizards, who felt lousy that some slave was holding back the six of them, this is what they shouted when they attacked Tobbi, and this weakness was the bench he was defending. 

And as soon as the wizards realised this, they began to specifically aim at it, which is why he was distracted by the bench and received wounds, one of which was the torn off half of his ear, but even so, he could still hold them back and even managed to leave a couple of wounds. 

But of course the house elf couldn't hold out for long, it was a losing battle, because even if he had a "Magister" core of average rank, he still wouldn't have been able to cope with such a number of opponents, and because he had to fight and simultaneously protect the shop, Tobbi quickly began to get tired, and his movements and reactions slowed down. 

And when the last wizard, who had been watching everything before and who turned out to be the Necromancer, entered the battle, it quickly began to come to an end.

Although the house elf had an elemental advantage, the Dark wizard turned out to be much more experienced and was very good at using his magic and the magic of his companions.

 In just a few seconds, they completely suppressed him and the Necromancer struck a blow that knocked the last strength out of the house elf's body and he lost consciousness, and then the memories ended... And Severus, watching all this, as if watching some kind of movie, was overwhelmed: both with fierce hatred for the bastards who dared to mock the creature so much, who after this incident became much more than a servant for him, although before, he did not consider him a servant, but rather a worker at the level of Shafiqi; so sadness and helplessness that he could not help Tobby, for whom he took responsibility and he suffered so much, although Snape understood that in this case he could not do anything.

But still, "Archmage",was able to find out something very interesting and finally, having warmly tapped the house elf on his thin hand, he disappeared from the room and on the house elf's face, through his sleep, a happy smile appeared...

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