HPxLOTM: A Wizard's Path to Divinity-Chapter 706: "Mr. Wisdom"

"???"

At a time like this, this is what you’re still thinking about? This is unbelievable. Have you all forgotten that once the barrier truly shatters, we’re all finished?!

Damn it!

I just went to the Harry Potter world for one single day, and when I turned back around, I was told that the Outer Deities had begun their invasion and the apocalypse had been dragged forward?!

At this very moment, Grisha Adam was still a long way from becoming a Pillar. The Evernight Goddess hadn’t yet settled things with the God of Combat. The future Lord of the Mysteries had just been snatched away by Amon and dragged off to be used as part of some "game."

And I’m only a Sequence 1 myself.

How am I supposed to fight this?

I might as well wash up properly and wait to die!

Edward took several deep breaths in succession, forcing himself to calm the turmoil in his heart. He fixed his gaze on Grisha Adam and said, "So then—you’re not telling me all this just to scare me, right?"

"I need you to help me...to help Evenight," He once more turned his eyes toward the Chaos Sea and the River of Eternal Darkness, tightly entwined together.

"Help us tear off a small portion of the Chaos Sea and the River of Eternal Darkness, so that, for a short period of time, we can possess enough power to repair the fissure Cheek created."

"And then?" Edward asked.

"The rest...can only be left to you."

"..."

Edward felt his mouth go dry. "I don’t think I can shoulder a responsibility like that."

Grisha Adam smiled faintly.

"Back then, after the Great Cataclysm, when I walked out of Chernobyl, I never once imagined that one day I would lead humanity in sweeping away the ancient gods and restoring humanity to this land."

"Very often, the way things develop is just that interesting—and that unpredictable, isn’t it?"

Edward fell silent, sinking into thought. After a moment, he suddenly asked, "If, back then, I had cooperated with Adam and followed His plan—would things really not have reached this point?"

"Perhaps," Grisha Adam replied. "But how could you be certain that Adam’s approach at the time was necessarily correct? How do you know that His plan to replace ’that person’ and resist the Oldest One wasn’t merely His own wishful thinking? How do you know...that this wasn’t all the Oldest One’s influence operating from the shadows?"

"As you yourself said, everything you did was more for the sake of self-preservation. Adam may have had the resolve to sacrifice Himself, but He never possessed the right to force anyone else to make that sacrifice."

"Most importantly, what’s done is done. What we should be thinking about now is how to solve the problem—not wasting time regretting whether we made the wrong choice. That has no meaning."

Edward was silent for a long while.

"I understand."

He took a single step forward and returned to the Harry Potter world, arriving once more at that "Dwelling of the Gods," at the boundary between the River of Eternal Darkness and the Chaos Sea.

Although Edward had not previously known how to tear away a portion of the Sefirot, once he was within the Harry Potter world, this was no longer a difficult task.

With a shift of his thoughts, the black river before him and the golden sea in the distance each branched off into a tributary. They surged forward, rapidly converging and flowing straight toward Edward.

He spread out his palm, and the small door of light—the Uniqueness of the Door Pathway—appeared once again. Accompanied by an intense, tearing pain, this Uniqueness was forcibly separated from Edward’s body, transforming into an illusory door of light that hovered in midair.

At that moment, the two tributaries arrived, each flowing precisely into the illusory door. Edward followed closely behind, passing through it and returning once more to the world of the Lord of the Mysteries.

At this instant, the Uniqueness of the Door Pathway truly connected the two worlds. The two realities began to interlink and merge, and the Harry Potter world formally entered the process of dimensional ascension.

Edward then performed two successive acts of localisation, locking onto the positions of Grisha Adam and the Evernight Goddess (Her true body). He opened two illusory doors leading directly to each of Them, allowing the tributaries of the River of Eternal Darkness and the Chaos Sea to flow respectively toward their intended recipients.

Bang!

After twisting violently, the imagined personality of Grisha Adam dissipated completely. On the other side of one of the illusory doors, His true body stood waiting. Once the tributary of the Chaos Sea had fully flowed over, He nodded toward Edward from afar and turned, preparing to leave.

Edward hurriedly said, "Wait. May I ask—both Blasphemy Slates should be in your possession now, correct? Could you give me one of them? You should know what it means to me."

Although his previous battle with Adam had made Edward clearly realise one thing—that when fighting existences above Sequence 0, possessing abilities without corresponding authorities was actually of very limited use—there was still a difference between having something and having nothing.

After all, Klein, after advancing to the Lord of the Mysteries, could use a single [Fooling] to make even the Mother Goddess of Depravity suffer, while Edward’s own [Fooling] had produced only limited effects against Adam, who had not yet advanced to Sequence 0.

Still, something was better than nothing. And now, as a Sequence 1, if he used [Imagination] to reverse [Regression] and temporarily reach Sequence 0, then paired with a Blasphemy Slate, it might just produce an unexpected effect.

"I’m very sorry."

Grisha Adam slowly shook His head and said, "The reason I am confident I can repair the fissure in the barrier relies precisely on the Blasphemy Slates. Therefore, please forgive me—I cannot give them to you."

His words immediately reminded Edward of a scene from the original work, where Amon had once used a Blasphemy Slate to block the Mother Goddess of Depravity’s attempt to invade Earth through Mr. Door. He therefore changed the question, "Then what about the other Cards of Blasphemy?"

Grisha Adam spread His hand. A delicate, exquisitely crafted card flew through the illusory door and landed precisely in Edward’s palm. The image on its surface was still Roselle’s face, but his expression was sinister and malevolent, with two demonic ram horns growing from his forehead—

The Abyss Card.

Grisha Adam said calmly, "This is something I recovered last time on Blue Mountain Island from the hands of that dead ’Devil.’ It’s also the last Card of Blasphemy in my possession."

—The "Devil" He referred to was the descendant of that demon family who later joined forces with the Rose School of Thought to ambush Edward, only to ultimately perish beneath the Tyrant’s lightning.

"Alright. Thanks."

Putting away the Abyss Card, Edward turned his gaze to the other door. He did not see the Evernight Goddess. Instead, all that met his eyes was a tranquil darkness filled with moonlight flowers glowing like stars and clusters of night vanillas.

A moment later, both illusory doors closed and vanished.

Edward quietly watched the "Uniqueness" door of light slowly expanding in size. As his spirituality surged, he swiftly layered concealment upon it using the Sequence 0 abilities [Concealment] and [Secrecy] that he had consumed.

After that, he once again separated a Worm of Star to transform into a clone and said to it, "I’ll leave this place to you."

He immediately switched perspectives and answered through the clone, "Understood."

Yes—strictly speaking, this clone could no longer be considered a true clone. The consciousness controlling it was still Edward’s own. It was a case of dual focus: Edward could switch between the clone and his main body at any time to deal with any possible "unexpected situation."

The "clone" snapped its fingers, and its figure blurred before disappearing.

Edward steadied his mind and left this place as well.

———

The situation of the war on the Northern Continent became increasingly clear.

Facing simultaneous declarations of war from three nations, Loen was driven steadily backwards, losing portions of its territory every single day. Coupled with the king’s death, the entire country stood on the brink of collapse, only a single letter of surrender away from total defeat.

Meanwhile, on the Southern Continent—

After the Rose School of Thought’s high-ranking combatants suffered successive heavy blows, and its mid-level forces were shattered by the Temperance Faction, the Indulgence Faction of the Rose School of Thought was all but nominally extinct.

On the other hand, the high-ranking angels and demigods of East and West Balam—directly or indirectly controlled by the Numinous Episcopates—found themselves intercepted one-on-one by the Sanguines every time they tried to intervene in the battlefield, leaving their strength completely stifled.

On top of that, the Artificial Death faction suddenly declared that they had received a response from Death Himself, causing the Numinous Episcopates to rapidly disintegrate. Soon, they were too busy saving themselves to care about anything else, forced to watch helplessly as the resistance forces rapidly expanded their gains.

Of course, even so, the resistance forces’ overall strength still lagged somewhat behind that of the regular armies of East and West Balam—until something changed.

When faster, more heavily armed new aerial weapons took flight from within the resistance army, the regular forces collapsed almost instantly.

If Edward had been present, he would certainly have recognised these "new weapons." They bore more than a passing resemblance to the fighter jets he had once helped the Evernight Goddess obtain from the Harry Potter world—except these "new weapons" leaned far more toward alchemical creations.

Yet this kind of technological disparity, vast as the difference between heaven and earth, constituted an outright dimensional strike. Even if it did not deliver an immediate, decisive blow, anyone with eyes could see that the overall outcome had already been decided.

And it was precisely at this moment—

Deep beneath the Intis Palace, a handsome man with slightly gentle features slowly opened his eyes. He sensed it clearly—

His Red Priest advancement ritual had been completed.

He took out a banner: its pole forged from pitch-black metal, its fabric scorched and tattered, stained with countless dangerous flecks of blood. He raised the already-prepared potion and drained it in a single gulp.

At that very instant, a figure clad in black armour and wearing a crown appeared. He walked forward slowly and let out a sigh.

"It’s been a long time, ’Mr. Wisdom.’"

"..."

The handsome man’s eyes flickered as he said coldly, "So you really didn’t die...usurper, Roselle Gustav."

"You as well, Your Majesty," Roselle replied with a complicated expression. "I thought you had long since turned back into a woman, gone off to freely enjoy the life you desired. I never imagined you would walk this far."

The gentle-featured man replied flatly, "I trusted you so completely back then, handing all authority over Intis into your hands. Yet you were still not satisfied—you usurped the throne, reduced the Sauron family to commoners, and nailed me to the pillar of historical shame!"

"I trusted Adam just as much. I joined the Twilight Hermit Order only to obtain freedom, yet He used me and Vermonda to clear the obstacles for you, and for the sake of the trend of His tomes, sacrificed us without the slightest hesitation!"

Roselle was momentarily speechless.

"So you did all this...just to take revenge on us?"

The former "Queen" of Intis, Dorian Sauron, let out a cold laugh.

"Revenge?"

"Heh. I stopped caring about that long ago. I simply came to deeply understand one thing—so-called freedom must be built upon strength. If I can possess supreme power, then I will possess limitless freedom!"

———

[Note]: Don’t forget to VOTE. It keeps me motivated.