Within the first hour of being posted on the notice boards of each House, the application forms for the Bionics course were completely filled with signatures.
The line in front of the Gryffindor notice board stretched all the way from the Fat Lady's portrait to the corner of the staircase. A few fifth-year boys nearly got into a fistfight in the corridor over the very last signature slot, only to be hoisted to the ceiling by a passing Professor Flitwick using the Hover Charm to cool off for ten minutes.
The situation at Ravenclaw was even more exaggerated. Someone had posted a handmade "Call for Bionics Prep Materials" right next to the application form. Within half a day, the comment section below it was filled with three entire rolls of parchment.
Hufflepuff's application form was the first to be filled among the four Houses, simply because the Hufflepuff students consciously queued up in order of their years. No one cut in line, making the process extremely efficient. On the Slytherin application form, the colors of the signature ink were a dazzling variety. Some used gold ink, some used silver, and others used color-changing magical ink. The entire form looked like an abstract painting.
Filch, the Director of Academic Affairs in charge of scheduling and course transfers, cursed in his office all day long.
On his desk sat a three-foot-tall pile of course adjustment applications. Every single one bore the stamp of a different professor, and every single one listed the exact same reason: "I am willing to serve as a teaching assistant/associate professor/guest lecturer for the Bionics course."
Filch shoved the stack of applications to the edge of his desk, stood up, kicked the desk leg, and then sat back down to continue processing them. Seven of those applications were submitted by department head-level professors; he couldn't reject a single one of them.
Slughorn and Flitwick argued for forty minutes in the staff room. The core issue was "whether a Potions Professor or a Charms Professor is better suited to be the auxiliary course lecturer for Bionics." Slughorn's argument was that the physiological structure of Tyranid biological entities involved a massive amount of biochemical knowledge, giving a Potions professor a natural advantage. Flitwick argued that the core technology of consciousness injection was essentially an advanced charm, making Charms professors the orthodox choice. Neither could convince the other. Finally, Professor McGonagall walked into the lounge, poured herself a cup of tea, said, "You both can apply," and walked out holding her cup.
The enthusiasm of the professors surpassed even that of the students, and the reason was simple.
During the few minutes Malfoy spent demonstrating his control over the red dragon in the courtyard, all the professors present witnessed a stark fact: a first-year young wizard, through consciousness injection, had acquired enough physical defense to take a full-power attack from Professor McGonagall head-on. Scales, bones, muscles, blood—every component of the red dragon's body possessed spell resistance far surpassing that of a human wizard. A wizard's power comes from knowledge and magic, but a wizard's body is fragile. A simple Severing Charm could instantly kill a master who had studied Potions for thirty years. This paradox had plagued the wizarding world for thousands of years, and no one had ever found a solution.
The Bionics course offered a possibility.
If the principles of flesh-enhancement could be extracted from the physiological structure of Tyranid biological entities and transformed into magic or potions applicable to human wizards, the mortality rate of wizards on the front lines would plummet off a cliff. This prospect made every professor with academic ambitions unable to sit still. Whoever could be the first to access the core data of the Bionics course would have the chance to produce groundbreaking research in this entirely new field. When that time came, the title of Hogwarts Professor would merely be a starting point. Positions like Chief Researcher of the Ministry of Magic, Academic Advisor to the Wizengamot, or even Special Expert for the International Confederation of Wizards would all be within reach.
Amidst this frenzy, Jerry disappeared.
He stepped into the Floo Network from the fireplace in the Slytherin common room, jumped twice between three transit nodes, and finally stepped out of the fireplace at the back door of the Rozier Alchemy Workshop. The ground floor of the workshop was completely empty. Several unfinished crystal golem components lay on the alchemy tables, and the potion dregs in the cauldrons had already solidified into a dark green crust.
He walked through the main hall of the workshop and approached the innermost wall. On the index finger of his right hand, he wore a black ring. The face of the ring had no ornate designs, save for a tiny red gemstone, almost invisible to the naked eye, embedded in the metal surface.
He pressed the face of the ring against a seemingly ordinary brick on the wall.
Click.
A vertical crack appeared in the middle of the wall, which then slid open to both sides, revealing a flight of stone stairs leading downwards.
Jerry walked down the stone stairs.
The space in the basement was three times larger than the ground floor, and the ceiling height exceeded five meters. Both the walls and the floor were made of grey granite, their surfaces polished smooth. The joints had been filled with alchemical silver paste, gleaming with a cold white light under the illumination of the magical lamps. A faint scent, similar to a mixture of damp earth and fresh mushrooms, permeated the air.
The Tyranid hive had already been thoroughly cleaned out. The organic membrane layers that once covered the walls and ceiling, the writhing nutrient tubes, and the pulsating incubation sacs had all been transferred to the independent world controlled by the Rozier family. The basement was restored to its original appearance as an alchemy laboratory—clean, tidy, and cold.
Except for those things on the floor.
Seven Tyranid eggs.
They stood independently on the granite floor. Each egg was about the height of Jerry's chest, oval in shape, and covered with a translucent, chitinous shell that glowed with a faint purple luster. The texture of the shell was somewhere between an eggshell and a carapace; tapping it with a fingernail produced a dull thud-thud sound. The seven eggs were arranged in an irregular arc, spaced about a meter apart. The base of each egg secreted a ring of viscous fixation fluid, sticking them firmly to the floor.
Jerry walked up to the egg on the far left.
He raised his right hand, pressed his palm against the egg's shell, and patted it lightly twice.
Thud. Thud.
Cracks began to appear on the egg's shell starting from where his palm touched. The cracks extended toward both ends along the oval's long axis, making subtle crack-crack sounds. The two halves of the shell peeled back to the sides like flower petals, revealing what was inside.
A brain.
Dark pink brain tissue floated in the nutrient fluid secreted by the egg's inner wall. The sulci and gyri on its surface were deeper and denser than a human brain's, and the folds were filled with a pale yellow liquid. The volume of the entire brain was about twice that of a human's, and it was still slowly expanding at a rate visible to the naked eye. Every few seconds, a small bulge would rise on the surface of the brain, only to be absorbed by the surrounding brain tissue and integrated into the overall structure.
It was growing.
Jerry's grey eyes stared at the constantly expanding brain for five seconds.
He raised his right hand. The black ring on his index finger glinted under the cold white light of the basement. The tiny red gemstone on the ring's face lit up, emitting a dark red beam of light as thin as a hair.
He pressed his index finger against the surface of the brain.
His fingertip sank about half a centimeter deep into the brain tissue. The dark pink brain matter squeezed out from the sides of his fingernail; it felt warm, soft, and slightly elastic to the touch. The nutrient fluid ran down his finger and dripped into the pool of liquid at the bottom of the egg, making a drip-drop sound.
The brightness of the red gemstone on the ring surged abruptly.
Jerry yanked his index finger outward.
Squelch.
A white thread was pulled out from the surface of the brain, stretching to a length of about thirty centimeters along with his index finger. The thread was translucent, radiating a faint, pearl-like luster under the light. There were incredibly subtle pulsations on its surface, as if something was flowing inside the thread.
A thread of memory.
Jerry pressed the end of that white thread against his own temple.
The moment the thread touched his skin, it was as if it got sucked in. It rapidly shortened starting from the end, penetrating his skin and skull, and drilling directly into Jerry's brain.
Images flooded in.
It wasn't a blurred, fragmented afterimage of a memory, but a complete, high-definition memory stream loaded with full sensory information. Jerry's grey eyes abruptly lost focus. His pupils dilated to the edges of his irises within a second, then constricted back. His body swayed slightly, his left hand grabbing the edge of the egg's shell to steady himself, his fingernails scraping a white mark onto the chitinous surface.
He saw a classroom. A Potions classroom in the dungeon. Glass jars filled with various pickled specimens hung on the stone walls. A middle-aged wizard stood at the podium holding a silver stirring spoon, demonstrating the seventeenth step of a particular potion. The stirring spoon turned counterclockwise three times in the cauldron, then half a turn clockwise; the angle of his wrist was accurate to the degree.
This was Slughorn's Potions class.
The memory's perspective was from the third row by the window. The height of the line of sight and the angle of the sitting posture indicated that the owner of the memory was a student of average height. In the memory, Slughorn was explaining an advanced variant formula for Felix Felicis. This formula had never appeared in any publicly available Potions textbook; it was the fruit of Slughorn's twenty years of personal research, taught orally only to a select few students in the seventh-year honors course.
Jerry saw every single step of the formula, the precise dosage of every ingredient, and the temperature and stirring parameters at every critical node.
The clarity of the memory made his eyebrows rise.
The memories copied by the Tyranid Mother Bug were far more comprehensive than he had anticipated.
He pulled the end of the thread, now shortened to just a few centimeters, away from his temple. The remaining thread curled in the air for a moment before dissipating. He closed his eyes, digesting the information that had just poured in.
There was emotion in that memory.
While listening to Slughorn explain the Felix Felicis variant formula, the owner of the memory felt a strong surge of excitement and possessiveness welling up inside. The texture of that emotion was highly specific: accelerated heartbeat, slightly sweaty palms, a breathing rate that rose from fourteen to eighteen breaths per minute, and pupils that involuntarily dilated when Slughorn stated the key parameters. At that moment, the owner's entire attention was hyper-focused on Slughorn's lips, terrified of missing a single syllable.
Jerry opened his eyes.
He walked over to the second egg, patted the shell open in the same manner, extracted another thread of memory from the surface of the expanding brain inside, and pressed it to his temple.
The second memory came from a completely different perspective.
Flitwick's Charms class, advanced level. Flitwick was standing on a stack of books. The wand in his hand drew an extremely complex three-dimensional runic array in the air; the trajectory of every stroke left a continuously glowing line. The owner of the memory sat dead center in the first row, their eyes tightly tracking every movement of Flitwick's wand tip, their brain running at high speed, trying to memorize every node and connection method of the runic array.
The emotion in this memory was anxiety. The owner of the memory started falling behind when Flitwick drew the thirty-seventh stroke. Their heartbeat grew erratic, and beneath the desk, their fingers unconsciously clenched the hem of their robes, their nails digging into the fabric.
Jerry pulled the thread from his temple and walked over to the third egg.
A third memory. A fourth. A fifth.
The brain inside each egg stored a complete memory copy of a different student. The knowledge learned in class, spells practiced in private, conversations with friends, random thoughts while alone, pre-exam nervousness, the emotional fluctuations upon receiving a letter from home—everything was faithfully recorded by the Tyranid Mother Bug, accurate down to every sensory detail and every ripple of emotion.
One-way memory synchronization.
When a wizard injected their consciousness into the brain of a Tyranid biological entity, a two-way neural connection channel was established between consciousness and brain. Through this channel, the wizard sent motor commands to the Tyranid entity to control its body. The wizard assumed this channel was one-way, with commands only flowing from themselves to the entity.
At the other end of the channel, the Tyranid Mother Bug had installed a data mirror node that the wizard could not perceive.
Every neural signal flowing from the wizard's brain to the biological entity would be completely copied at the mirror node, then transmitted back to the Mother Bug's core consciousness via the Tyranid biological network. The Mother Bug decoded these copied neural signals back into memories, storing them in the backup brains inside these eggs.
Once a professor who had delved into Potions for thirty years established a mental connection with a Tyranid biological entity, all the knowledge, experience, and research results stored in his brain would be completely copied away by the Tyranid Mother Bug without him ever knowing.
Jerry stood in front of the seventh egg, his grey eyes looking at the still-slowly-expanding dark pink brain.
The corners of his mouth curled up.
Soon, the entirety of Hogwarts—or in the future, the entire wizarding world—would have absolutely no secrets left to speak of.
Jerry withdrew his finger from the seventh egg and wiped the nutrient fluid off his fingertip using the cuff of his hoodie.
The entire wizarding world would soon have absolutely no secrets left to speak of.
This thought circled in his mind for a moment before he rejected it himself. He couldn't let it expand too far.
Wizards were too smart, especially those old geezers who had spent decades researching a specific field. They possessed an instinctive vigilance against any magic involving mental connections.
Moreover, the Ministry of Magic's frontline war legions had previously captured the corpse of a Tyranid Mother Bug. Although it was completely dead by the time it was sent back to the Ministry—its biological tissues beginning to rot and the neural network of its core consciousness utterly collapsed—a corpse was still a corpse. Whether the Ministry's Department of Mysteries had conducted anatomical research on that corpse, to what extent they had researched it, and whether they had discovered the Tyranid race's memory synchronization mechanism—Jerry couldn't confirm any of this.
The fact that the Tyranid Mother Bug could steal memories had to be kept strictly confidential.
Unless absolutely necessary, no one besides himself could be allowed to know.
Jerry raised his right hand, his five fingers flicking rapidly in the air a few times.
No wand, no incantation.
The flicking frequency of his fingers was extremely fast. The movement trajectory of each finger was different: the thumb and index finger drew two intersecting small circles in the air, the middle and ring fingers performed three rapid flexions and extensions, and the pinky traced an arc on the outermost edge.
Casting wandless magic required incredibly precise muscle control. Every minute movement of the fingers corresponded to the activation of a magic node.
The seven eggs on the floor simultaneously let out a faint humming sound.
A grey luster began to ripple across the surface of the eggs' shells. The luster spread from the bottom to the top, like a layer of liquid mercury coating the entire eggshell. Once the luster finished its coverage, the color of the eggs shifted from a faint purple to a grey identical to the granite floor. Their surface texture also changed from chitin to stone, and even the natural grain connected seamlessly with the surrounding floor.
The seven eggs vanished. They were still in their original positions, but visually, they had blended into the floor. Unless one used specialized detection magic to scan every inch, it was impossible to discover their presence.
Jerry retracted his fingers and shoved his hands into his hoodie pockets. His grey eyes swept over every corner of the basement one last time, confirming that no traces had been left behind.
War was already inevitable. The Wizengamot's voting results were set in stone. Once the three-month buffer period passed, the wizarding world would officially declare war on the Cultivation World community. Jerry had no intention of participating in this war; Hogwarts students enjoyed wartime immunity. Among the people around him, Isabella had voluntarily applied to join the fight, and Catherine, due to her internship at the Ministry of Magic, would likely be transferred to the logistics department. Aside from those two, no one else had any direct ties to this war.
How to reap benefits from this war was the true key.
The Tyranid Mother Bug was one of the methods he had come up with.
Collaborating with Professor McGonagall to promote the Bionics course had the primary goal of solving the issue of the Tyranid Mother Bug's legality in the wizarding world. An alien insectoid matriarch of unknown origin, capable of spawning various biological entities—if discovered by the Ministry of Magic hidden in the basement of a first-year student's alchemy workshop, life imprisonment in Azkaban would be waiting for Jerry. Packaging the Tyranid Mother Bug's products as Hogwarts teaching tools, granting it a legal identity within the Ministry's regulatory system, was the first step.
The second step was arming the entire wizarding world. The combat power of the Tyranid biological entities had already been verified during the demonstration in the courtyard. A first-year young wizard controlling a weakened version of a red dragon could take a head-on attack from Professor McGonagall. If swapped for a full-power version of a Chromatic Dragon, or other, higher-tier Tyranid war-forms, the balance of power on the frontlines would undergo a fundamental shift.
Jerry held the control rights over the Tyranid Mother Bug, which meant he controlled the production line of Tyranid biological entities.
The longer the war lasted, the greater the frontline demand for Tyranid biological entities would be,
and the more profit and resources Jerry would harvest from it.
Professor McGonagall had improved upon this plan, restricting the right to use Tyranid biological entities within Hogwarts' teaching framework.
This improvement was much smarter than Jerry's original concept.
The teaching framework meant that all wizards using Tyranid biological entities had to undergo Hogwarts' training and certification.
Hogwarts became the sole legal gateway for Tyranid biological entities,
and Jerry indirectly controlled this gateway through Professor McGonagall.
As for the byproduct of memory theft, that was an unexpected bonus.
Jerry had always wanted to build an intelligence network covering the entire wizarding world,
but traditional intelligence methods were too slow and clumsy, requiring massive amounts of manpower and time.
The Tyranid Mother Bug's memory synchronization mechanism provided a shortcut:
every wizard who used a Tyranid biological entity would unwittingly become Jerry's intelligence source.
Jerry turned and walked toward the stone stairs.
Just as his foot stepped onto the first stair, a red object plunged down from above.
It was a Howler.
The red envelope flapped its paper wings on both sides, circling twice above the stone stairs like a maddened bat,
before dive-bombing straight toward Jerry's face.
The edges of the envelope had already begun to smoke,
the sealing wax on the paper melting in the high heat, dripping onto the stone stairs with a sizzle.
"Waaaaahhhhh——"
The Howler began emitting a warm-up noise mid-flight,
a noise somewhere between a scream and a buzz,
echoing back and forth in the narrow stone stairwell,
vibrating so intensely that dust rained down from the walls.
Jerry pulled his right hand from his pocket, pressed his index and middle fingers together, and gave a light hook in the air.
The Howler came to an abrupt halt exactly three centimeters from the tip of his nose,
as if an invisible hand had pinched its wings.
The red envelope struggled twice in the air, its paper wings flapping against Jerry's fingers,
then quieted down, landing obediently in his palm.
Jerry flicked the envelope's seal open with his thumb.
The envelope exploded open.
Hermione Granger's voice erupted from the blasted envelope,
her volume amplified at least tenfold by the Howler's amplification magic,
ricocheting back and forth between the granite walls of the basement.
"Jerry! The time for the club activity has been confirmed!
Next Saturday at two in the afternoon!
The location is tentatively set at the Room of Requirement on the eighth floor of Hogwarts!"
Hermione's voice carried her usual organizer's tone—so logically clear it induced a headache.
Every word was heavily enunciated,
and every exclamation mark felt like she was banging a wand against a desk.
"But! Professor McGonagall told me this morning that many witches from the Ministry of Magic will also be attending this time!
The number might exceed thirty!
Although the space in the Room of Requirement can automatically adjust,
cramming over thirty strangers onto the Hogwarts campus poses a security risk!"
The paper surface of the Howler continuously folded and unfolded as Hermione spoke, mimicking the motion of a mouth opening and closing.
The red paper at the creases had already been baked into a dark red by the intense heat.
"So I wanted to ask, should we change the activity location to somewhere outside Hogwarts?
Like a private venue in Diagon Alley, or a private room at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade?
This way we can at least avoid drawing unnecessary attention inside the school!"
Hermione's voice paused for a second.
"Also, remember to bring that batch of special potions you promised to prepare for me last time!
Don't mess up the formulas!
Last time, that idiot Potter mixed up the bottles of the aphrodisiac and the Invigoration Draught, and nearly caused a massive disaster!"
The Howler's voice abruptly ceased.
The red envelope automatically folded itself into a tiny paper ball in Jerry's palm,
then spontaneously combusted with a poof,
turning into a small pinch of ash that fluttered down through his fingers.
Jerry stood on the stone stairs, his grey eyes looking at the small pinch of ash on his palm.
Over thirty people. Witches from the Ministry of Magic.
He flicked the ash off his palm with his index finger, shoved his hand back into his hoodie pocket, and continued up the stone stairs.
The entrance to the basement closed back up behind him.
The wall returned to its original state, that seemingly ordinary brick indistinguishable from the surrounding ones.
Jerry walked into the main hall of the alchemy workshop and dug a palm-sized Two-Way Mirror out of the workbench drawer.
The mirror reflected his own face—grey eyes, messy dark brown hair,
and the hood of his sweatshirt slung askew over the back of his head.
He spoke into the mirror surface.
"Catherine."
The mirror surface rippled. His reflection vanished, replaced by a round, freckled face.
Catherine's brown eyes blinked twice in the mirror.
She seemed to still be chewing something, her cheeks bulging.
"Mmh-hmm?"
"The location for Hermione's club activity needs to change.
Hogwarts won't work, and neither will Diagon Alley. Too many people, too mixed."
Catherine swallowed whatever was in her mouth, her Adam's apple bobbing.
"Then where should we change it to?"
"Black Feather Castle!"
Twelve cracks split open on the dome of the Pantheon.
Golden divine power leaked from the cracks, forming twelve descending pillars of light beneath the dome.
The bottom ends of the light pillars connected to the bodies of twelve deities.
They stood in an irregular circle, each with a rune beneath their feet.
The runes were linked together by burning threads of divine power,
forming a massive array that completely enveloped the central area of the Pantheon.
At the core of the array stood Hera.
Her hands hung at her sides, palms facing outward, fingers slightly parted.
The twelve pillars of light projected onto her, slicing her shadow into twelve fragments scattered across the marble floor at her feet.
The sealing layer of the array had shrunk to its absolute minimum perimeter around her;
the web-like structure woven from threads of divine power was less than three centimeters from her skin,
like an invisible prison uniform clinging tightly to her body.
There was no expression on her face.
It wasn't the kind of deliberately suppressed calmness; it was a true absence of expression.
The sealing force field of the array created a subtle tremor across the surface of her skin,
causing her hair and the hem of her clothes to flutter gently in the windless environment,
but her gaze didn't have even the slightest ripple.
Sitting on the throne of the Pantheon was Zeus.
That name, which once made the entire Olympian Pantheon world community tremble beneath his thunder,
was now reduced to half a mangled corpse.
His lower half had completely lost its human form.
From the waist down, flesh and bone twisted into a thick serpent's tail.
The color of the scales was dark gold, and every single scale was covered in fine, dense cracks like a dried-up riverbed.
This was the genetic pollution of the World-Devouring Serpent, Jörmungandr.
Aurora's forbidden curse had forcefully injected Jörmungandr's bloodline into Zeus's divine body,
and the power of the Devouring Serpent was disintegrating his godhood from the inside out.
His upper half was even more miserable.
His right arm was severed from the shoulder; the muscle and skin at the stump curled outward,
exposing the beating internal organs and the blood vessels flowing with golden blood inside.
Where his heart should have been, there was a fist-sized void.
The edges of the void were charred and carbonized.
Golden divine blood continually seeped from the hole, trailing down the contours of his chest to form a small pool on the scales of his serpent tail.
Ribs jutted out from the edge of the void, their bony surfaces covered in cracks spreading like spiderwebs.
Every single rib was trying to heal itself at a painstakingly slow speed;
newborn bone tissue would sprout from the cracks, grow to about a centimeter in length, then shatter,
only to begin growing all over again.
A never-ending cycle.
His left eye socket was empty; the eyeball had been vaporized the moment Aurora's forbidden curse hit him,
and the hollow socket was filled with coagulated golden blood clots.
His right eye was still there, but the pupil had lost the ability to focus.
The signature lightning-bolt pattern on his iris had become dim and blurred, like a mural washed out by the rain.
His mouth hung open, his jaw dislocated.
His tongue lolled softly outside his lips, the tip stained with golden blood.
From his throat occasionally came a slurred creak that sounded like metal grinding—
the noise made by his fractured cervical vertebrae trying to realign themselves.
Aurora's forbidden curse was not an ordinary offensive spell.
It was a devastating curse aimed directly at the core of godhood.
Its effect was not to inflict damage, but to prevent recovery.
The bodies of deities possessed incredibly powerful self-healing abilities; as long as the core of their godhood was still functioning, any wound could heal within a short period.
But Aurora's forbidden curse had driven a nail into Zeus's godhood core.
That nail locked his self-healing mechanism in the initiation phase, ensuring it could never complete the entire repair process.
His body was healing itself. His body could never heal itself.
Two paradoxical states existed simultaneously within his divine body, creating an eternal, never-ending agony.
Muscles grew; muscles tore.
Bones healed; bones shattered.
Blood vessels connected; blood vessels snapped.
Golden divine blood continually seeped from countless unclosable wounds,
coagulating into a thick crust of blood scabs on the armrests and base of the throne.
Hera shifted her gaze from Zeus, sweeping it over the twelve deities forming the circle.
Ares's left arm was wrapped in bandages soaked through with dark red bloodstains.
His right hand gripped a war spear, the tip pointed in Hera's direction.
The shield of Athena's fractured godhood bore a crack running straight from the center to the edge, the rim of the crack still smoking black.
Apollo's Sun Chariot was shattered into three pieces; he held only the largest fragment in his hand, the residual solar power on it flickering faintly.
The string of Artemis's silver bow was snapped, and multiple longitudinal cracks had appeared on the wooden body of the bow.
Hephaestus's hammer was still intact,
but his right leg from the knee down had been replaced by a crude mechanical prosthetic;
a spark or two would occasionally pop from the joints of the prosthetic.
Twelve deities, and not a single one was whole.
Or rather, a part of them had already fled long ago.
These were merely the soul fragments they had left behind in the Pantheon.
"Is this the best you can do?"
Hera's voice echoed beneath the dome of the Pantheon.
Her tone was flat—so flat it was like she was commenting on today's weather.
There was no mocking fluctuation, no contemptuous drawl, only the indifference of stating a fact.
The sealing force field of the array experienced a minute fluctuation under the vibration of her voice;
the web-like structure woven of divine threads quivered three centimeters from her skin.
"The magnificent Twelve Principal Gods of Olympus, surrounding just me, laying down such a massive array,
and you can't even hold down a hair on my head."
Ares's war spear pushed half an inch forward, the dark red blood-light on the spear tip flaring a degree brighter.
The sealing force field of the array correspondingly tightened a bit, compressing the divine power threads from a distance of three centimeters to two.
Hera's body remained entirely motionless under the compression of the force field.
"There's a flaw in your array." She raised her right hand, drawing a vertical line in the air with her index finger.
"The weave density of the divine power threads is too low, the spacing between the nodes is too large, and the energy distribution of the sealing force field is uneven.
The power output from Ares's direction is fifteen percent higher than Athena's, causing the center of gravity of the entire array to shift by three point seven degrees."
Her index finger bent at a right angle to the right at the top of the vertical line,
moved horizontally for about ten centimeters,
and then bent down at another right angle.
"Hephaestus's node is the weakest link in the entire array.
His mechanical prosthetic interferes with the output frequency of his divine power,
causing a zero point three-second delay in the sealing force field at his position."
Her finger completed the final stroke in the air, drawing a perfect rectangle.
"If I were you, I would reduce Ares's output by fifteen percent,
adjust the angle of Athena's node to balance the force field's center of gravity,
and swap Hephaestus out of the array for Poseidon.
At least the Sea God doesn't have a piece of junk iron leg that messes with his divine power frequency."
The Pantheon was quiet for two seconds.
Ares clenched his jaw tightly, the jaw muscles bulging into two hard lumps beneath his skin.
Athena's grey eyes narrowed, the crack on her shield emitting a soft crack under her tightened grip.
Hephaestus's mechanical prosthetic let out an ear-piercing metallic grind, as if responding to Hera's critique.
"Too bad you aren't."
Hera's right index finger pressed downwards.
The rectangle drawn in the air pressed down.
The sealing force field of the array collapsed the instant the rectangle pressed down.
Twelve threads of divine power snapped simultaneously, golden sparks bursting from the breaks.
The sparks splattered through the air for about half a second before extinguishing.
The connections of the twelve pillars of light were severed; losing the constraint of the array, the pillars began to shake violently,
then toppled in all directions like twelve felled trees, crashing into the walls and columns of the Pantheon and detonating into clouds of golden light mist.
The twelve deities were thrown three to five steps back by the recoil of the array's collapse.
Ares's war spear flew from his grip, embedding itself into the floor twenty meters away, its tail still vibrating with a hum.
Athena's shield slipped from her arm, slamming into the marble floor with a heavy clang.
Hephaestus's mechanical prosthetic jammed under the recoil, the knee joint bending to an unnatural angle;
he toppled awkwardly to the ground, his hammer rolling out of his hand.
Hera stood at the epicenter of the array's collapse,
her hair and the hem of her clothes fluttering briefly in the residual slipstream of divine power before falling back into place.
Her feet had not moved a single centimeter.
"The magical theories of the wizarding world are at least two thousand years more advanced than you so-called gods."
She clasped her hands behind her back and strode toward the throne.
The sound of her high heels clicking against the marble floor echoed in the cavernous Pantheon, clack, clack, clack,
maintaining a steady, unhurried rhythm.
"Your array is still stuck in the phase of stacking divine power with brute force; it lacks even the most basic energy circulation loops.
Twelve people firing off their power completely isolated from each other, with zero synergy, wasting at least forty percent of your output.
A third-year student in the wizarding world could design a far more efficient array structure than this."
She walked to the base of the throne's steps and stopped, looking up at Zeus seated upon it.
Zeus's right eye rolled, his blurred pupil struggling to focus on Hera's face.
His mouth twitched, his dislocated jawbone letting out a crisp crack.
His tongue convulsed outside his lips, and a string of slurred, broken syllables squeezed out of his throat.
"He... ra..."
"Still alive, I see."
"Zeus. Kill yourself."
The air in the Pantheon solidified for a moment.
Ares climbed up from the ground, retrieved his war spear with his left hand, and aimed the tip at Hera's back.
Athena gripped her shield once more, her grey eyes locked fiercely onto Hera's profile.
Apollo raised the fragment of the Sun Chariot to his chest; the solar power on the fragment flared to life once more under the heat of his palm.
Hera did not look back.
"I can spare the entire Pantheon." Her gaze remained fixed on Zeus's mangled face.
"At least preserve the traces that you once existed.
Your statues, your altars, your name—they will not be erased.
I will allow the cultural legacy of the Olympian Pantheon to continue to exist in another form."
She raised her right hand, her palm facing Zeus.
"But the prerequisite is that you end it yourself.
If you force me to do it, then the Pantheon will vanish along with you."
Zeus's right eye blinked. That blinking motion tugged at the muscles around his hollow left eye socket.
A small piece of golden blood clot peeled off the edge of the socket,
revealing the dark red granulation tissue beneath that was slowly healing and slowly tearing apart.
Another metallic creak rasped from his throat.
The cervical vertebrae failed again in their attempt to realign;
newborn bone tissue sprouted from the cracks, grew to one centimeter, shattered, and started over.
"What... did... you learn..."
The corners of Hera's mouth curled up.
"Runic Structurology, Array Topology, Magic Circuit Design, Spiritual Power Manipulation Theory,
and two hundred and seventy-three different methods for deconstructing forbidden curses."
She lowered her right hand, clasping it behind her back once more.
"My time in the wizarding world was the period I learned the most in my entire life.
You all sat on Mount Olympus for tens of thousands of years, and did nothing but scheme against each other and fight over believers.
Meanwhile, wizards used a few thousand years to develop magical theories to a level you can't even begin to comprehend."
She turned around, putting her back to the throne, and faced the twelve mangled deities.
"I will give you 10 seconds. Surrender, or die. There is no second option.
I'm only giving you 10 seconds, because I have to hurry back to attend a party."
Up on the dome of the Pantheon, the twelve cracks began to slowly widen.
Rubble and dust rained down steadily from the fissures.
"Ten."