Chapter 32

As I had decided to stop caring about the timeline or anything really, I thought it to be the right time to play with a horcrux and if in the process I get a famous magical artifact, well I wasn't going to complain.

I made my way to the Room of Hidden Things and tried the plethora of methods every self-respecting reincarnator does to find Ravenclaw's Diadem faster. Alas, it was not meant to be and I had to do it the old fashioned way.

I turned on my Mage Sight, actively started to boost my reflexes and senses and since I hadn't yet gotten around to learning unaided flight, started running like hell. It was an interesting experience because while I had quite a bit of brute strength and speed, my agility, dexterity and such left much to be desired, so I was sadly turning into a barbarian in a world of wizards. I decided to make my next Integrator victim something agile and dexterous, maybe some sort of feline or...Acromantulas. Who knew? Maybe I could become the magical version of Spider-Man. I could use magic webs as well...Hmm, this was starting to sound interesting.

I was thankful for my two Minds because otherwise I would have never managed to stop from crashing along stuff or spot the interesting trinkets and books along the way. I marked the more intriguing ones with my mana to make them easier to find later and continued my search for one of the Founder's relics.

Vaulting over desks and whatnot or wall running to avoid a bunch of objects lying carelessly on the ground, I felt like a character from one of those endless running games. But it was still fun, speeding through the room at speeds no other human in this world could reach, not even wizards. Well, at least to my admittedly limited knowledge, for all I knew there could be a wizard out there who decided to be Superman and sacrificed a ton of people in a ritual or something.

Having two Minds was wonderful, because even with my thoughts all over the place, I still managed to keep my balance and spot the horcrux. Granted, with my Mage Sight it was easy to spot seeing as it was a squirming inky black in my Mage Sight-aided vision. And that was a pretty easy coulour to spot in a world of white (mostly white, but there were other colours too. There were a ton of stuff in the Room of Hidden Things).

I coated my hands in Pure Magic and deciding to be even more cautious, I coated my entire body with layers of Pure Magic causing me to 'glow' a pearly white. Well, now I knew what to do if people started suspecting me of being a 'Dark Lord'.

I cannot emphasize this enough, so I once again reiterate, having two Minds, and both super minds at that, is amazing. I could perform actions that required 'all' my focus while simultaneously thinking inane thoughts, and that was one of my greatest strengths.

Having found my 'armor' to be satisfactory, I cautiously let a hand gently touch the Diadem and when I could feel there were no dark magic shenanigans, I decided to lift it.

I could destroy the horcrux right then and there because I could use Fiendfyre, uncontrolled Fiendfyre is still Fiendfyre and something told me Pure Magic could do the job as well, but I wanted to see if I could salvage something from the soul-piece of Voldymort, mainly his experience, knowledge and of course, the ability to speak to serpents.

Parseltongue was something that was not so easily obtained and nor could parseltongue-based passwords be easily subverted. I had tried to imperious a conjured snake as well as a bunch of random snakes to hiss 'open' at the water basin in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom but nothing happened which led me to believe that parseltongue had to be something more special. My biggest blow had come when even a intent-loaded blast of Pure Magic could do nothing. After that I had decided to find rituals that could help me acquire the unique achievement 'Parseltongue obtained!' but I could find nothing especially noteworthy, either the rituals were too costly or they were extremely untested and experimental. I had, of course, tried to use my Integrator on random snakes, both conjured and otherwise, but apart from gaining a rudimentary version of thermal vision, I hadn't had any other gains.

Which led me to here and now, in the Room of Hidden Things with a piece of a Dark Lord's soul in a priceless magic artifact suspended in front of me. Now, for the hard part.

This plan of mine was more of an experiment really. I wanted to see what kind of miracles Pure Magic could do so I really didn't hold much hope in it. Once again applying a liberal coating of Pure Magic around my hands, I turned on my Mage Sight at full force, and tried not to focus too much on the bright golden coulour emanating from Rowena Ravenclaw's Diadem. It was pretty distracting but thankfully the Dark Lord's squirming, inky black disgusting soul piece was easy enough to focus on.

I focused on my hand to become intangible and to my surprise it wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. Then it was all a matter of 'reaching in' the Diadem and ripping out the soul anchor. All things considered, I was feeling pretty awesome dealing with a horcrux with my bare hands.

An over the top amount of Pure Magic along with the full-fledged intent of both of my minds on 'purify but don't destroy' did the job. The squirming, disgusting part was destroyed and what was left behind was a soul piece that was a lighter shade of black.

What was interesting was that without my Mage Sight-aided vision, before purifying, I could see a black smokey like substance but after purifying I could see nothing. All I could see were a few distortions in the air which clued me in to the existence of something. That was all things considered, intriguing.

Deciding to experiment on it some other time, I tossed the soul piece in the shape of a ball in the air and quickly took out my wand and fired the Integrator at my airborne target. Soon, the disintegrating part was done and I quickly stuffed the diadem in my robes and ran out the Room of Hidden Things. I willed the RoR to come in existence instead and quickly ran in and sank into the comfiest couch in existence. In preparation for the pain I might feel, I disconnected my consciousness from my body and no a second too late as I felt the first bout of the pain that was about to rack my body.

I relaxed into the couch and waited for the Integration process to end. What I had neglected was that this time the main gain I would face would be in the Soul and to a lesser extent, the Mind area, which weren't protected from my technique to protect myself from the pain.

I had just had enough time to realise that before pain, the likes of which I hadn't and didn't want to face ever again, hit me and I managed to just let out an agonizing scream or two before passing out.