Exams began in the first week of June.
During the final half month, John almost never stepped out of the Constellation Society.
And just like the legend spreading through Slytherin, he seemed to have become a night stalker who appeared only after dark.
It was said that once, a young wizard challenged Filch by sneaking out, only to run into John around a corner.
John's sudden appearance frightened the young wizard so badly that he fainted on the spot, directly confirming John's title as the night stalker.
His unpredictable comings and goings made every Slytherin wizard live in fear.
John had no idea which bastard was spreading bad things about him.
He had clearly only come out to take a bath, yet somehow, people had turned it into a ghost story.
After drying his wet hair, John returned to the Constellation Society.
"There must be a medium before energy can be obtained from other places."
John glanced at his golden scales. He had just spent a while basking in the moonlight in Dragon Valley, and the power of the stars had entered his body.
But it was still somewhat insufficient. John needed more power before he could possibly break through.
Most importantly, John was not clear on what Level 8 was like. Among the people he had met, perhaps only Dumbledore was the closest.
But that old man...
John thought about it, then decided to forget it.
"A battle against an evenly matched opponent can stimulate my power to a greater extent."
With his current strength, the number of people who could fight him could be counted on one hand.
But there was not a single one he was likely to encounter.
The closest was Dumbledore, but that man would not make a move easily.
Perhaps if John kidnapped Harry and used him as a threat, there might be a chance.
The other, Grindelwald, was even suspected to be dead. Although its credibility was not high, there were temporarily no traces of him either.
The rest were unknown.
After all, in the seven years since he had stepped into the magical world, John had only met four people who could reach this level in total.
Dumbledore, Voldemort, Grindelwald, and his teacher, Nicolas Flamel.
His teacher's six-hundred-year-old magic might not be the strongest, but at the very least, it was the greatest in quantity.
Then there was Merlin, though John did not even know whether he should count as human.
The Merlin he had encountered had basically never had much chance to act.
If he counted others, John did have one more target.
That was Heimdall, the silver dragon in the Dragon Farm.
The silver dragon that had lived for a thousand years was definitely a top-tier existence, but its aged body and the eyes it had lost from gaining prophetic ability had greatly reduced its strength.
Moreover, as the king of dragons, John could not very well attack his own subject.
"It still has to start from other powers."
After thinking it over, John still came back to the main point.
Stars and darkness.
John could absorb the former, while the power brought by the latter from another dimension was unforgettable.
The only question now was how to cross the boundary between worlds and allow himself to draw power from another dimension.
"Magic is interconnected," John said thoughtfully. "Does that mean it can be absorbed through some method?"
John felt that he needed to conduct some experiments.
So he entrusted Hagrid with searching for some dark-natured things on his behalf.
Hagrid did not understand this, but he felt that John must have his own use for them.
When there were only seven days left before exam week, Hagrid delivered those things.
In the eyes of a magical zoologist, those adorable little fellows had no good or evil.
Only bad wizards would think of using those little fellows to make profit and do wicked things.
John expressed his agreement with this and asked Hagrid to hand the things over to him.
Sometimes, John truly felt that it was a terrible waste that Hagrid had not become a black-market merchant. Among the materials, he saw an extremely rare reverse scale from a bicorn.
The bicorn was a dark creature opposed to the unicorn.
According to legend, only an impure woman could ride a bicorn.
It seemed to be a symbol of lust and impurity.
Hagrid explained it to John.
The bicorn was a magical creature that disliked light, and because of that, certain unique things had developed on its body.
For example, its scales had very high hardness and, like dragon hide, possessed fire resistance.
John had no idea where Hagrid had obtained it. After all, this species had not appeared in Britain for a hundred years.
After obtaining the materials, John began experimenting.
He wanted to create a medium that could draw energy from other dimensions.
For this reason, he flipped through the Darkhold from beginning to end. Curses could be counted as a kind of dark energy.
After several days of work, John carved ancient Elvish script onto the bicorn's reverse scale.
Hanging it around his neck, John closed his eyes.
He stepped onto the solitary island in the ocean.
The stars shone in the sky, and the surroundings were silent, leaving only the sound of the rolling tide.
The boundless silence seemed ready to swallow a person whole.
John's expression was calm. The Darkhold floated before him.
The light around him began to dim.
The Obscurus energy within his body overflowed, greedily absorbing it.
The ancient script on the reverse-scale charm gradually vanished, and even the scale itself became darker, twisting everything that approached it like a black hole.
John raised his right hand. His palm turned greyish-white, and black threads entered through the reverse-scale charm.
He kept searching within it, until one black thread took root inside.
John suddenly opened his eyes. The colour of his skin faded into greyish-white.
The pupils of his eyes turned vertical, yet they were strangely pitch-black.
Starting from his right hand, black patterns spread upward along his body.
||Get back!||
John shouted, and the patterns stopped. The magic in his body devoured the energy he had drawn in.
After a few breaths, John's skin returned to normal.
He let out a heavy breath, closed his eyes, then opened them again. Everything had returned to normal.
He could feel his magic increase slightly. Although it was faint, it was still exciting good news.
The reverse-scale charm returned to its original state. John stood up, stretched lazily, and said, "Looks like it succeeded."
The power of darkness had been devoured by John, and it caused him no discomfort.
Because the Obscurus was essentially an energy body formed from the convergence of countless darknesses, it could naturally devour darkness.
This method was something only John could use. For anyone else, it would undoubtedly be the same as pushing themselves into a pool of poison.
Seeing a path forward again, John felt somewhat excited.
However, he did not absorb too much. Instead, he transformed into a golden dragon over a hundred feet long and basked in the starlight on the solitary island.
He did not waste the power of the stars either.
The starlight seemed to twist as it approached him.
But after crossing the distance of light-years and reaching John, there was not all that much left.
If there had been centaurs on the island, they would definitely have been baffled.
...
The final three days.
The pressure brought by exam week made students wipe their sweat as they studied in the library.
Madam Pince treated every little brat who dared make noise in the library fairly.
Crabbe was chased and beaten by a broom because of the snoring he made after falling asleep.
Goyle, who had also fallen asleep, was woken by the commotion and immediately no longer dared to sleep.
The seventh-year N.E.W.T. exams would last two weeks. They were not too different from the O.W.L. exams, and invigilators were likewise sent by the Ministry of Magic.
Malfoy crammed Transfiguration, while Daphne focused on Defence Against the Dark Arts.
Neville was also constantly improving his Potions.
The whole school was working hard.
John, meanwhile, was holding his new Order of Merlin and accepting an interview.
"May I ask, regarding what many Potions masters have speculated, whether the werewolf curse can be solved like a bloodline curse, what is your view?"
This was a tricky question, and who knew which blind fool had asked it.
John chuckled and said, "Like vampires, werewolves are beings who have existed for a long time in the history of the magical world. After the Wolfsbane Potion was developed to suppress the ferocity after transformation, there is basically no longer any question of werewolves losing control."
He did not answer directly. Instead, he told everyone that werewolves had long since ceased to be a problem.
On the contrary, once werewolves were controlled, there was no difference between them and ordinary people.
The only difference was that during the full moon, your werewolf friend would turn into a furry werewolf.
But without a few differences, how could it be called the magical world?
Perhaps drinking with a werewolf during the full moon would not be anything strange in the future.
After this interview ended, John headed to Hogwarts.
This time, he had come out with Slughorn.
Along the way, he also encountered some acquaintances.
For example, the invigilator from last time, Griselda Marchbanks.
This old woman, who had once invigilated Dumbledore's exams, was very happy to see John.
"You are the most talented wizard I have ever seen," Marchbanks said. "I hope that in this exam, I will be able to see your outstanding magic again."
"There will be a chance," John replied with a smile.
Marchbanks was very happy. She had examined three Lords with her own hands.
Albus Dumbledore, Tom Riddle, and John Wick.
This was the handover between three eras.
John was the final successor, and perhaps the last king of Marchbanks's career.
Even in the long-lived magical world, this old woman was an elderly existence.
Before leaving, Marchbanks even teased Slughorn about his exam back then.
At that time, Slughorn had nearly made a mess of Transfiguration.
With his old embarrassment exposed, Slughorn could not help complaining.
They returned to Hogwarts.
As the remaining time passed, only one day remained before the exams.
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