"…Why?"
Avada stared blankly at the twisted "why" scrawled in the notes before him, falling into silence himself.
"Repentance" was clearly nothing more than a manifestation of mental power—so why was it able to restore a torn soul to wholeness?
And what was even more unsettling, the kind of thought that made one's skin crawl the deeper one went: why, even when a soul fragment had already been drawn away by the Power of Death, could repentance still restore the soul to completeness?!
What, exactly, was a soul? Where did it come from? And why was it uniquely entangled with "repentance"?
Could it be that there truly existed a "Death"—a being silently ferrying and judging all souls?
No. He couldn't think about it anymore. If he kept going, he'd turn into Newton…
Avada shook his head hard, took a deep breath, and forced his turbulent thoughts back into stillness before continuing to flip through that terrifying notebook.
"Calm down. Calm down. There must be some deeper underlying principle here. Just as the root cause of soul-splitting lies in the Power of Death, the healing brought about by repentance must also have its own logic… I need to design experiments and uncover that logic!"
"…"
"Failure."
"Failure."
"Still a failure…"
"…Alright, I admit it. I've exhausted my methods. Unless I kill myself right now and personally observe the world after death with my own soul, I probably won't ever uncover the secret of souls and repentance in this lifetime."
"But I can't give up. As long as I still possess the ability to explore this world, I will press forward with everything I have. Perhaps human eyes cannot look directly upon the divine—but even so, I will take in everything that humans can see!"
"Since I cannot probe the principles behind repentance, then at the very least I'll record more data. Perhaps someday, a brilliant successor will glimpse a corner of the truth from the information I've gathered…"
"…"
"Thanks to the chaos stirred up by Gellert Grindelwald, I've managed to obtain a large number of black wizard specimens over the past few years—those with dull wits or little experience in the world. I simply had to continuously lure them into creating Horcruxes, then bring both the wizard and the Horcrux back with me for research. In this way, the sample size skyrocketed to over a hundred, including no small number who had created multiple Horcruxes…"
"Although I've always believed that someone of Grindelwald's talent wasting his time on wizard supremacy is a complete misdirection—he could have advanced magical research instead… I must admit that sometimes, progress in magic does require the support of certain external conditions."
"…"
"At last, some unexpected gains. Through the previous studies, my understanding of 'soul volume' has deepened considerably. By observing the changes in mental power during repentance, then simulating mental structures through natural magic, I've developed a spell that can replicate part of repentance's effect—forcefully bonding the main soul and soul fragments together…"
"But it's ultimately meaningless. It cannot truly heal the soul. Still, it's a solid beginning. I very much look forward to future generations completing this spell and truly achieving soul restoration through external force alone… That would be a tremendous step forward in the exploration of the soul."
"Additionally, I've recorded the fusion effects between soul fragments of differing volumes and the main soul under this spell. I hope this will be of some help to those who come after me…"
Several pages of densely packed charts followed.
"Hm? Professor Baker's annotations?"
A few lines of familiar handwriting entered Avada's view, and he couldn't help but read on with growing curiosity:
[This paper is one of the sources of my own "Repentance" magic. The reason I say it is incomplete is because the problems raised here remain unresolved.]
[After reading it, you may marvel at the profundity and wonder of the soul's domain, and feel admiration for this wizard's obsessive pursuit of truth. To be honest, even I hesitated at the time over whether to spare his life—after all, the number of black wizards who died at his hands was several dozen times greater than the number of innocents…]
[But in the end, I still chose to kill him. The author of this paper was himself a heinous black wizard. For the sake of his research, he murdered at least dozens of innocent people over a long period of time, and actively lured many who were not originally evil into falling into darkness…]
[Through this, what I wish to remind you is this: in the process of exploration, never forget that all magic and technology must ultimately revolve around life. Life itself is the fundamental purpose of everything.]
[Never lose yourself on the path of seeking truth to the point of disregarding life, and never lose your reverence for it.]
[Of course, I believe you can do this. Otherwise, you would not have been chosen by Hufflepuff, and I would never have entrusted this material to you.]
[Wishing you success.]
"…I will."
Avada let out a quiet sigh.
He had to admit it—earlier, he'd been somewhat intoxicated by that bizarre phenomenon. During the rest of his reading, even when confronted with those horrifying procedures, all he'd been thinking about was whether the author could uncover the secret of repentance…
Only now did he remember—over a hundred samples created through Horcrux-making meant over a hundred innocent people had been brutally murdered.
Only at this moment did the paper regain the same blood-soaked, heavy weight as the first one in his eyes.
Still, a lingering doubt surfaced in his mind.
Someone who had lived for an unknown length of time through Horcruxes, who could improve Horcrux creation methods, possessed an extraordinarily deep understanding of the domain of life, mocked Grindelwald with open disdain, and could even capture over a hundred Horcrux-bearing black wizards as experimental subjects…
Such a monster—setting aside whether he rivaled Dumbledore—should at least have matched Grindelwald, shouldn't he?
And to sustain such a vast and complex series of experiments, there must have been a massive organization behind him.
So how did Professor Baker manage to kill someone like that?
And if Professor Baker was truly that powerful, judging by his age, his strength should have already been fully formed over a decade ago. Then why hadn't he stayed in Britain to oppose the most notorious black wizard of that era—Voldemort?
"Forget it. I'll set those questions aside for now. There's something more important to confirm."
Avada glanced once more at the intricate charts, then closed the massive tome and quickly left his private room. Outside the Room of Requirement, he paced back and forth three times, then opened the Room of Hidden Things.
He shut the door behind him, strode over to Ravenclaw's Diadem, and while observing the hollow in its magic—the soul fragment within—he reopened the book to the pages labeled Repentance Magic Fusion Data Records. Pulling out paper and quill, he sprawled directly on the floor and began calculating…
When the results finally appeared on the page, Avada's face turned deathly pale.
"The result is… insufficient volume, unable to draw it in?!"
In his original plan, he intended to use the Horcrux Ravenclaw's Diadem as the core, setting up a customized "Repentance" magic at the end of the fourth-floor corridor—tailored specifically to Voldemort's mental characteristics, just like last term.
When Quirrell's body was destroyed by the protective charm on Harry, Voldemort would revert to his weakened wraith-like state. At that moment, Avada would activate the Repentance magic and directly imprison Voldemort's main soul inside the diadem, sealing him away once and for all.
But according to the experimental records he'd just reviewed—and the calculations based on his own data regarding Voldemort's mental power and soul—the soul fragment within the diadem was nowhere near sufficient to draw in Voldemort's main soul.
Instead, it would cause the fragment inside the Horcrux to return to the main soul.
And if he had no intention of doubting data derived from experiments on over a hundred black wizards…
Did that mean his entire plan had just… collapsed halfway through?
(End of Chapter)