Chapter 173: Total War of the Magicians (Edited)

The dung beetle meets the dried feces: it's perfect, it can accurately describe the situation of the three people right now: each of the three people wants something from the other two. Tom wants to find two teachers to trigger his anniversary, Professor Flitwick was looking for someone to promote his new game. Professor McGonagall, who has played the game before, and Professor Lockhart, the creator of the game, are naturally the best choices. Professor McGonagall is very simple: she just needs some strong men. That's all.

"Gilderoy, you're here!" Professor McGonagall wore a happy expression, and you could tell she was having some headaches over the task of decorating the Great Dining Hall: "I'm decorating the Great Dining Hall, do you have any suggestions?"

[Anniversary Celebration (Act 3) Contents: Terrifying Halloween begins]

[Description: Professor McGonagall is having a hard time decorating the school for Halloween, so if you can help her, you'll be rewarded with a great treat, right?]

[Quest Reward: Professor McGonagall's transformation experience]

Tom understood that the reward for this mission was probably related to Professor McGonagall's inner satisfaction. Tom rubbed his chin and looked around the Great Dining Hall, which was already empty except for the three of them after dinner. He said to Professor McGonagall, "Halloween.... pumpkins, dim candlelight, and bats are the classic ingredients, naturally."

Professor McGonagall nodded, the answer was quite satisfactory, and she would have prepared it if Lockhart hadn't said so. She had thousands of live bats ready, and Hagrid's giant pumpkins were ripe: each was as big as a carriage, and up to three people could sit inside.

"We can start with the weather on the roof," said Tom, who, as a teacher, had the power to change the weather on the roof. All he had to do was point his wand at the ceiling, imagine the ceiling weather in his head, and the ceiling would change on its own.

Tom waved his wand first, blowing out the candles in the Great Dining Room, which was plunged into darkness, and the only source of light left was the faintest of stars on the ceiling and the dim glow of a few candles beside the three of them, their flames still fluttering in the wind rushing through the Great Dining Room. Suddenly, the atmosphere of the old castle became frightening.

Both Flitwick and McGonagall sensed that the atmosphere was a bit sinister and unconsciously moved a little closer.

After blowing out the candles, Tom pointed his wand at the ceiling, and what had been a vast sea of stars on the ceiling quickly became dark clouds under his control.

The storm clouds rolled in, with a faint thunderclap inside, and a gust of wind sounded from the roof. A flash of lightning struck and both Flitwick and Professor McGonagall were startled: one of the dark clouds was a human face.

It was heart-challenging to see this suddenly in the gloom.

But Professor McGonagall frowned: that face looked familiar, it looked a little like.... She narrowed her eyes and looked intently at the ceiling. Another flash of lightning struck, and Professor Snape's grim face appeared in her pupils.

Professor McGonagall: っ?Д?)っ

This was not all, Snape's mouth suddenly opened and three pythons came out of his mouth and out of his eyes, seeing this scene, Professor McGonagall could not help but tell Tom: "Professor Lockhart, Severus is also a professor and Dean of a Hogwarts House, please don't put your .... er... head on the ceiling."

You were obviously smiling, but you didn't stop laughing, you looked so happy!", Tom grumbled inwardly, but still directly dispersed the dark cloud in the form of Snape.

"Professor McGonagall, are you sure you don't want to think about it? I think it's a good idea."

It took a lot of willpower for Professor McGonagall to control herself, not to follow her mind's choice, but to firmly reject the proposal.

But she was so inspired that she decided to add a dark cloud in the shape of a human face, so that the students would be startled to see it for the first time. But the theme was a Halloween party, not a haunted castle, so the cloud would also take the shape of a lion, snake, badger and raven when the students arrived, allowing the animals to roam the ceiling.

"And the fog!" said Tom, suddenly thinking of the key: "It's better to have fog in the Great Dining Hall, so the atmosphere will be better..."

The three discussed the matter among themselves, setting up the Great Dining Hall was such an arduous task that the other professors didn't bother to get involved and let Professor McGonagall do as she pleased, so Professor McGonagall didn't consult the other professors.

When the discussion was over, Hagrid came in with some large boxes containing decorations for the Halloween party.

"Thank you, Rubeus." Professor McGonagall told Hagrid to put the things in her office, and finally completed the distribution of tomorrow's tasks, with Tom in charge of decorating the Great Dining Hall, and Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick in charge of the rest of the castle.

Tom's assignment also changed:

[Anniversary Celebration (Act 3) Description: Wait until 18:00 tomorrow night to decorate the Great Dining Hall for Professor McGonagall].

Once the tasks were assigned, Professor Flitwick found the opportunity to say to Tom, "Now that we're done, why don't you come to my office and we'll play a few games of magical chess? It's taken me over a month to develop the new game."

Professor Flitwick's eyes lit up at the mention of his new game.

Professor McGonagall frowned as she recalled some unpleasant experiences, Hagrid raised his bushy hand and scratched his hair, "I have to patrol the Forbidden Forest; with the recent rains and the rising waters of the Black Lake, I'm worried that something from the lake has entered the Forbidden Forest."

Professor Flitwick nodded, "Okay, then, this game can be played by three people, and this time I have designed a game that can be played by more than one person."

Hearing this, Professor McGonagall's mind wandered: if this was a multiplayer game....

She turned her gaze to Lockhart, who was also looking at her, and their eyes met, coming to a consensus.

[Anniversary Celebration (Act 4) Contents: Beginning of the Wizarding War]

[Description: Professor Flitwick has developed a new way to play magical chess, hurry up and try it!]]

[Mission objective (1): Help Professor Flitwick design a map]

[Mission objective (2): Complete a game on the map you designed] [Mission objective (2): Complete a game on the map you designed]

[Quest objective (3): Win a game]

[Mission Reward: Professor Flitwick's Enchantment Advice]

"Since it's your idea, Professor, we should definitely play it," Tom looked at Professor McGonagall, "I'm interested in a game that would take even you a month to develop."

Professor McGonagall agreed, so the three of them walked out of Professor McGonagall's office and followed Professor Flitwick to his....

"Games room?" Professor McGonagall was surprised, she was expecting Flitwick to take them to his office and bring out the new Magic Chess, but instead he was going to his 'games room'.... Since it was a games room, that meant Professor Flitwick's new game was a great game....

"Yes, the hallway where Professor Dumbledore kept the Philosopher's Stones last year has been unused, so I'm using it to set up my new game." Professor Flitwick said cheerfully, "This time with a lot of high level magic spells, Minerva, Gilderoy, you will never forget this experience."

Professor McGonagall also remembered that Professor Flitwick had been coming to her office a lot in the last few days, asking her to help him with some of his difficult transformations, and if a game of chess of magic was the work of both of them, it could be quite fun.

Professor Flitwick was not addicted to games, but to the various applications of magic spells. He started with the idea of making magic chess a three-player game: no one at Hogwarts could beat him hand-to-hand, so he wanted to make it harder for him: one at a time wasn't enough, he wanted to play against two!

Then he realized he had switched to multiplayer, so why settle for three? But the downside of multiplayer is that sometimes you can't get enough people together, so Professor Flitwick charmed the pieces to make their own decisions and replace the vacant player.

Once all of this was done, Professor Flitwick realized. The map was a bit small.

Step by step, the game got bigger and bigger, with more and more weird and wonderful ways to play, and it was due to be released at the end of September, so Professors Lockhart and McGonagall were asked to try it out, but it was delayed again and again, pushing it back from the end of September until now.

The three of them walked up to the third floor, past the library, when the door suddenly opened and a brown-haired witch stepped out with a stack of books.

"Hermione... Miss Granger, are you still reading in the library at this hour?" Tom almost made a mistake, but fortunately corrected it in time.

"Ah, Professor Lockhart, Professor Flitwick, Professor McGonagall," Hermione bowed to the two professors, dropping a book on the floor in her haste.

Tom picked up the book for her and glanced at it to see that it was a reference book for the Boggart essay. "It's not often a kid works hard enough to spend the day in the library," he winked at Hermione as he turned his back to the two professors. "Ten points for Ravenclaw! For your tireless pursuit of knowledge."

"Professor..." Hermione tilted her head, very nervous: if Professor McGonagall found out, something would definitely go wrong!

Luckily, Professor McGonagall didn't notice anything unusual other than the fact that she had scored too many points, and Professor Flitwick watched with glee as Lockhart scored points for his House; he would have given Miss Granger a point if it hadn't been unseemly for her to score points for Ravenclaw. Unlike a certain Dean, he did not abuse the right to subtract and add points.

"Miss Granger, pay attention to the balance between work and rest," said Flitwick, the more he looked at Hermione, the more pleasant it was in his eyes, and he thought that she had also contributed to the design of this game, although this effort was almost insignificant, but still he said, "Come and play a few games of magic chess with us."

Hermione: "???"

Hermione thus joined Flitwick's "Magic Chess Squad" as the fourth player.

When they opened the door to the abandoned corridor on the third floor, everyone was amazed at the changes that had taken place inside: the stinky three-headed dog, Fluffy, had disappeared, and the damp, cold floor and dilapidated walls had been cleaned: they had been so dirty and dilapidated that Professor Flitwick had put a new floor over the old one and a new layer of bricks over the old walls, decorating the corridor with a new look.

Thinking about it, from Hagrid's point of view, Fluffy is a very good boy, doing his best to protect the Philosopher's Stone in such a dingy, cramped room. Modern people, with cell phones and takeout, can't stand to spend a month in a clean room, but this three-headed dog can go a year with nothing, which is very touching.

The hallway was lit by candles and torches, showing Tom the new hallway in all its glory: there were chairs about five meters from the door and a huge piece of parchment, so large that Tom thought it would be more appropriate to call it vellum or elephant skin, on either side of the wall. There was no doubt that this huge scroll, five meters long, had been sewn together from several pieces of parchment, and Professor Flitwick must have used magic because there was no trace of stitching along the edges.

Five meters from the door was a huge sand table at the end of the hallway, with mountains, deserts, plains and meadows, and nearly a hundred small towns.

Tom, McGonagall and Hermione: Shit!

This is outrageous! They thought Professor Flitwick had only enlarged the board a little, but they didn't realize how much he had enlarged it, and how well he had done it! The difference between what they thought and what Flitwick had done was the difference between a text adventure game and an open-world game.

Professor Flitwick tapped his wand on the parchment on the left, which instantly lit up and revealed the mock-up map on the sand table.

The entire map was a rectangle due to the topography of the corridor, the upper half of which was covered with meadows and snowfields, the fertile plains below which was a herringbone river, the broad plains interspersed with several mountain ranges, and the oval-shaped ocean below the plains. The upper part of the sea has a temperate climate, the lower part a desert landscape. The desert is dotted with oases along the rivers and coasts. There is an island in the upper left corner of the map, but there are also many details such as swamps, lakes, basins, etc.

Tom: This map looks familiar!

Isn't this an abstract map of Europe? The Balkan Peninsula, the Apennine Peninsula, the Iberian Peninsula, Asia Minor and Great Britain, with the Mediterranean Sea in the middle, right? Below the Mediterranean is North Africa: the Sahara Desert and Egypt. France, Spain and Germania are fairly recreated, but Northern Europe and Russia are abstracted into a steppe and snowfield, and the Black Sea between Asia Minor and Russia is much smaller....

"This is the map I made myself, if you have any other ideas, you can also erase it and change the topography." Professor Flitwick looked at his hard work and was in a good mood, and he looked around at his two colleagues to see if they had any good ideas.

"It would be great if you could come up with a script! " he added.

Tom was stunned by Professor Flitwick's creativity: could he edit the map at will? With this news Tom immediately came up with an idea. So he dared to produce a play about the history of the East for the public to hear.

"The collapse of the empire, two insurgent armies, the remnants of the empire, the restoration of the previous empire, the barbarians from the north.... sounds interesting! "Professor Flitwick pushed Tom towards the map, "Here, press your hand on the map and visualize it in your mind."

Tom did as he was told, put his hand on the map and began to visualize it in his mind.

The map quickly changed, the sea moved to the far right, the desert was placed in the upper left corner, the prairie remained in the same position, at the top, but the snowfields moved to the upper right corner. The plain in the center is interspersed by two large rivers, which are joined by several mountain ranges. The terrain below the plain is more mountainous and there are more forests above.

Tom took a map of ancient China and used it in the context of the end of the new dynasty, when the Green Forest and the Red Brows were on the rise and the new dynasty was on its last legs.

Once the map was fixed, the sand table began to change according to Tom's design.

He then began to divide the map into zones. He divided the map into thirteen regions, each with a set number of cities. The regions were divided into three wealth classes, with nine cities in the upper class, six in the middle class, and three in the lower class.

These are Tom's names for the thirteen regions: Sili, Xuzhou, Qingzhou, Yuzhou, Jizhou, Bingzhou, Youzhou, Yanzhou, Liangzhou, Yizhou, Jingzhou, Yangzhou and Jiaoshu, and as for the powers, Tom has named nine: Mangxin, Greenwood, Chimei, Chengjia, Xilang, Beiman, Liangwang, Nanman and Baiyue.

[Anniversary Celebration (Act 4) First mission objective completed]

"It's done, let's take a look?" After the division, looking at the new map, Tom thought the game was ready to begin. The three of them approached the map and looked at it carefully. They understood that the location of the opening game was important, so they all wanted to pick a good ground.

But the map was so unfamiliar to them that the three were in a state of limbo.

"Gilderoy, you pick first." Professor Flitwick finally stopped thinking and let Tom go first. Tom didn't even think about it and chose Sengjia, in Yizhou: the terrain was excellent, the main area was a basin surrounded by mountains, you could advance, attack, retreat, and defend, it was easy to avoid being sent into the public in a wave, and it was the only superior region in the south, with nine cities.

Hermione, after some thought, chose Xiliang, the closest to Tom, which, along with the desert, took up almost a third of the map, Professor Flitwick unconsciously avoided Sili and Guanzhong, which was already in the fourth war, and chose Qingzhou and Chimei, which was on the edge of the map.

The game began.

The data for the individual powers appeared on the scroll on the right, and Tom could see tax rates, population, money, minerals, food and materials for each city, special troop types for the different regions, and even a people index, politics and tech tree!

"Professor Flitwick has a lot of stuff up there!" exclaimed Tom from the bottom of his heart. After the opening he did nothing, he imposed a blockade, built up his infrastructure and cut off all roads to the outside world, setting up barriers on key roads. Then he did nothing but fight the southern barbarians and cultivate, sending a request for an alliance to Hermione in the north.

Hermione was ready to make her mark as she got to grips with the interface, when she gaped at Tom's antics: how can you do that? Crouching like a turtle and waiting for the right opportunity?

But she soon realized she couldn't repeat it because her land was so arid that farming was so inefficient that she could only graze. But after observing a bit, he realized that he had two advantages, one was that he had a good external environment, the Cheng family in Yizhou, south of Tom, was an ally; it was the most western regime; Mangxin in the east, in the middle of the Si Li Pass, was the most powerful force, which had six states, was friendly to her, and was too busy dealing with the Green Forest and Red Eyebrows attacks to think about dealing with herself; the only enemy was the northern barbarians, who were also The only enemy was the northern barbarians, who were also scattered.

Hermione recruited her own army and got 6,000 cavalry soldiers, and then ravaged the barbarians, stealing horses, cattle and sheep: horses were a synthetic material for cavalry, cattle increased food production, and sheep were food, which increased the heart of the people.

Hermione first enriched her own forces, and then sold the rest to Tom in Yizhou. It was a strange situation: Professor McGonagall and Professor Flitwick were attacking cities and territories, and Tom and Hermione were trading across borders....

Of course, Tom was not completely discouraged, he was still fighting seriously against the southern barbarians.

The situation was changing rapidly, with the Green Forest and the Red Brows quickly overthrowing the Mangxing, and Hermione was not standing idly by, working with Tom to divide up the Sili and Pingzhou regions. Mangxin was the first to be eliminated, followed by the southern barbarians and the northern barbarians, who were also on their last legs after Hermione's defeat.

Tom was at the height of his power and marched his army eastward along the Great River, leading 80,000 men to fight Professor Flitwick's Red Brows, who had swept through Qing, Xu and Henan, by Jingzhou. Professor Flitwick had only 60,000 men, and he had come a long way to fight the battle. 80,000 against 60,000, the advantage was ....

Tom was annihilated.

Had it not been for the battle between the Greenwoods and the Redbrow and Hermione's support, Tom would have been sent straight to the Great Dining Hall.

But Tom was completely defeated this time. His Yizhou had a total of 800,000 people, and 80,000 young people were lost at once, basically saying goodbye to this game.

No big deal, this game can be played by oneself or one's own side. Tom watched as Hermione took over all the border states while Professor Flitwick beat up the Greenwoods, then moved south in time for the big battle between the Redbrow and Greenwoods, drove the tigers away, helped the Greenwoods destroy the Redbrow and then turned around and finished off the Greenwoods to unify the Middle Kingdom and win the game.

As for Professor McGonagall, she fought from the beginning to the end in the southern jungles, trying to unite Jiaoshu and Yangzhou....

Until the end, she joined the Tang-He alliance and won outright.

Throughout the game, Hermione fought, Professor Flitwick fought NPCs, Tom shuttled supplies between the enemy and allies, and Professor McGonagall was on the brink....

But everyone had fun playing.

[Anniversary Celebration (Act 4) Mission Objectives (2) and (3) completed.]