Chapter Nine: Improvements & Ambitions

Things went quite well for me in the last time. I got several power-ups, and the noisy basilisk was finally dead. It only took me a Confundus Charm and a rooster that was suddenly felt like crowing until the poor bird exhausted itself from it. Then I returned it back to the small family farm from where I took it and left a complete medieval suit of armor as a small compensation for stealing the farmer's cock. It might be worth a small fortune, but selling the armor was too much of a hassle, and I had better things to do right now.

Indeed, I just finished teleporting all the boulders a few meters away from the mouth of the creepy old grandpa, allowing me to access the dead basilisk. As for the fourteen boulders, I decided to keep them in case I needed them again in the future.

Anyway, I had a few large crystal-glass jars prepared to harvest the highly corrosive basilisk venom.

The oversized eyes of the giant basilisk greeted me with their sickly-yellow coloring and large, black slits. Its head was surprisingly less snake-like and resembled that of a dragon with a slightly elongated mouth that ended in a sharp beak, filled with large and dagger-like teeth. Above its yellow eyes were two massive horns that grew backward with a slight wave.

And as for the body, the basilisk has a massive physique and appeared like a 'short' snake that was slightly fat but packed with muscles. Its dark-green scales were large with sharp edges and dangerously spiky to the touch.

Its entire physique looked similar to that of a so-called Lindwurm, a limbless, wingless dragon species that once existed in Germany and France before it was hunted into extinction. It was the weakest of all dragon kind, and brave muggle knights used its death as a means to gain fame and glory.

That said, there was no way that Harry Potter could have realistically killed a basilisk like the one before me with just a sword alone. The impressive monstrum looked like a ferocious Titanoboa on steroids, with the head of a horned T-Rex, and eyes that could deliver instant death. It was a massive creature and could simply steamroll Harry to death without much of an effort.

"It's nice to be the protagonist of a story," I muttered to myself while milking the basilisk teeth of all their precious venom.

To do that, I used an iron pole and poked one of the many teeth in order to trigger its injection-reflex. In the meantime, I would hold my crystal-glass jar below the tooth and collect the bright, neon-green venom that the pointy end of the tooth squirted out.

It took me about an hour to harvest every drop of venom possible. The nine jars that I filled with the venomous green liquid were more than enough for several lifetimes. It was mainly used as a potion ingredient, and a drop was usually enough. And now, I had what appeared to at least a thousand drops in each jar.

After finishing milking the monster snake, I sealed the jars and stored them away, placing them in the corner with the important and valuable stuff.

And when I returned to the massive basilisk, I gave it a last look before I drew my wand to cast an overpowered Flammarys at it. Vivid golden fire started to engulf the serpentine monster with ravenous hunger.

The size of my 'manapool' was fairly impressive and didn't exhaust easily. The bountiful ambient magic in the Chamber of Secrets also made my spell even stronger, so I was basically continuously casting Flammarys without pausing once. My wand was like an erupting volcano, spewing fire and even more fire at the melting basilisk.

All the while, a rush of power filled my body. Both my magic and body were improved and received a significant boost, and I even felt myself growing a few centimeters in height. My eyes started to feel like two pieces of scorching-hot coal, too. It was a painful experience, but the bubbling excitement I felt from the possibility of obtaining an awesome upgrade and new magical skill allowed me to casually ignore the pain with a wide smile on my face.

My skin started to tingle after a while, which was an indicator for me that it obtained a qualitative improvement, too.

One hour easily passed this way, and I still kept showering the dead basilisk with my voracious fire that devoured the large body bit by bit, slowly but surely.

…

Several hours later and Slytherin's basilisk joined his master in the afterlife, and the benefits I reaped were absolutely bloody awesome.

First, I got a 'Serpent King' aura that would make spiders flee in terror and snakes worship me as their supreme emperor.

"Oh, I really want to see how Spiderman reacts to this ability," I chuckled devilishly.

The second gain was a major improvement of my skin, making my birthday suit more resistant against foreign and malicious magics and energies, and also physical damage to some degree. The effect would be a great deal more powerful in my true form.

And as for the last and most awesome gain… well, my eyes received a magical enhancement, and I would be able to cast certain spells with my eyes from now on! Stuff like the Confundus Charm, for example.

Furthermore, I could focus my fiery energy and summon two powerful and highly destructive laser beams from my eyes, similar to Superman's ability in many ways. However, there was a downside. Weaponizing my eyes in such a manner would physically exhaust me a great deal. This ability wasn't of a magical nature, but a newly gained natural ability for my eyes and each second would drain my body's energy reserves.

Nevertheless, I was a very happy Johnny Vegaz. I planned to use my 'Fiery Vision' as a hidden dagger to catch enemies off-guard.

"Maybe I should hunt down that Fenrir Greyback fellow," I muttered thoughtfully while scratching the back of my head.

Greyback was a sick fuck that didn't only infect children with the werewolf curse out of perverted amusement, but he raped most girls he came across before eating them. He was a homicidal psychopath, rapist, cannibal, and much more. Killing him was a must, and I really wanted to see what happens if I fed a human to my fire – or a werewolf.

Killing Greyback was quite easy for me since I was physically more powerful, and Greyback, while dangerous, was known to be a shitty wizard. He preferred to get close to his prey and rip you apart with his claws. He was more beast than human and fought just like one.

"Yeah, but I need to find that guy first," I reminded myself as I walked out of the mouth of the creepy old grandpa.

Finding Greyback would be a real chore. He was still in the UK since he saw himself as an alpha, and the werewolves of mainland Europe were under the leadership of an alpha from Transylvania. An alpha would never tolerate the presence of another, and that guy from the mainland was a so-called Sholomenar, which was a title given to people that graduated from Sholomance.

And Sholomance was the same school where the legendary Count Dracula graduated from – the prime ancestor of all vampires. He was the official ruler of Transylvania, one of the oldest and largest magical communities.

Sholomance was also the school that Lilith visited – the first succubae and the reason for the downfall of the ancient city of Babylon, the first magical community. She was also known as the Mother of Discord.

Not to mention Baba Yaga, she was a crazy Dark Lady from Russia that had the habit of turning beautiful people into horrifying, twisted monsters.

All these people lived for hundreds of years already. Voldemort was a small country pumpkin compared to these guys. I mean, it wasn't a secret that Count Dracula was the champion of Sholomance, serving a literal demon that was the headmaster of the school. And because of his position, Count Dracula commanded a colossal, undead black dragon that acted as the mascot of the school.

There must be a good reason why Greyback avoided the alpha werewolf that ruled over mainland Europe.

Anyways, back to the main topic.

Fenrir Greyback was really good at hiding. My guess was that he was using the Forbidden Forest as his hideout since it was the only place around here large enough to hide him. It was a gargantuan forest, and Greyback was a wolf, in some way. It was only natural that he would want to hide in a place where his animalistic side felt homey.

But simply wandering into the Forbidden Forest felt too risky for me at the moment, even with the ability to teleport away in the face of danger.

It was probably wiser to wait at least a year or two until I learned enough magic tricks to deal with more types of situations. Until then, I might even be able to increase my strength once again in some way.

With all that said, I moved to the corner with the precious stuff and grabbed myself a few dusty tomes from the bookshelf I had standing there. The books I found in the Room of Hidden Things weren't useless at all, and memorizing their contents was a must. More knowledge means a stronger foundation, and a strong foundation means an easier path when it comes to developing my own spells and style.

Well, I wasn't personally interested in the content shown in books such as Magick Moste Vile or The Black Serpent. That stuff seemed to have been written by a member of a satanic cult, especially the latter. But it was still knowledge, and I valued all knowledge.

…

…

Days turned into a week and one week turned into two. Most of my time was invested in studying and practicing all kinds of new magics.

My progress was surprisingly impressive due to the support of Voldemort's fragmented memories. They made it quite easy for me to learn the more advanced spells of the Hogwarts curriculum, such as the shield charm Protego, the blasting curse Confringo, and so on.

There was still a lot of practice necessary, however. I wanted to master all these spells to be able to cast them silently. That was a significant advantage in battle. It shortened the 'casting-time' since I didn't have to utter the incantation verbally anymore, and it would add a surprise factor to the game.

I also started to feel slightly 'overpowered' for a boy of my age. I was picking up one spell after another, and some were mastered after just a few hours of practice.

Well, I was mostly talking about the basic stuff, but even so… my progress was almost ridiculous. Only two weeks and I learned everything one could learn in the first four years of Charms, DADA, and Transfiguration, and was able to cast the majority of the stuff silently.

The more advanced magics took a little bit more time, but at this rate… I was confident that I could complete my entire magical education before my fourth year.

What was left was Potions and Runes, but I wasn't really interested in magical cooking, and Runes had to wait because of its time-consuming nature. You first had to carefully carve the rune, then fill it up with special ink, and then utter the proper 'words of power' to activate the rune - and you had to do that for every single rune that followed. And when you finished, you sometimes had to connect all the runes you have drawn with so-called 'runic knots' – depending on what effect you were aiming for.

That's why I decided to focus on 'simple' spellcasting. There were spells available for almost everything runes and potions could do. However, spells were more demanding from the caster. You had to be practiced and skillful, required a lot of mental focus, and some spells requested a certain amount of power.

Runesmithing and Potioneering only required skill and patience - and high focus if you want to be really good at them. These two magical schools were sometimes more efficient than spells, but you had to invest a lot of time to make it work.

For example, the luck potion Felix Felicis was a real chore to brew, and one mistake in the process had the chance of killing you in a violent explosion. Also, the potion would need at least six months until it was finished and ready for consumption. And while the effect was certainly nice, the potion itself would also make you overconfident and prone to reckless behavior. Basically, you would turn into a Gryffindor with plot-armor.

With all that being said, I decided to focus all my attention on spellcasting for now since it profited me the most.

One of my future ambitions was to hunt down magical creatures with special abilities to devour them and assimilate their magical abilities. So, I wanted to be prepared for that with a large arsenal of spells.

Fenrir Greyback would also be the first person that I would kill. The more magic I knew, the better my chances to succeed in that endeavor.

Because of that, I was training and practicing for the majority of my days and only stopped in order to get myself some orange juice and lots of delicious stripes of smoked dragon meat from the Diagon Alley. The latter was quite expensive with five Galleons for a pound, but I didn't care much about how much money I spent if it served my personal progress.

Devouring the smoked dragon meat seemed to nourish my body for a little bit. The amount of dragon meat I consumed so far made me feel stronger, more vigorous and energetic, and manlier, too. It was a nice effect, and so I ended up buying all the dragon meat that I could get my hands on.

…