Deep within the dense forest, raging blue flames filled the sky, crushing the red fire into a paper thin layer.
Dumbledore gripped his wand, cold sweat beading across his forehead.
Since when did the wizarding world have a wizard this powerful?
The Grindelwald before him possessed strength far beyond his own.
Dumbledore feared he might not make it out of this alive.
A phoenix appeared out of thin air and opened its beak, unleashing a vast torrent of fire at Grindelwald.
It still wasn’t enough.
Fawkes’s intervention eased the pressure on Dumbledore slightly, but it did nothing to solve the fundamental problem.
Just as Dumbledore’s life was beginning to flash before his eyes, the overwhelming blue flames abruptly withdrew.
A vast empty swathe had been burned into the thick forest around them.
Before Dumbledore could even react, Grindelwald cast a spell at him that left him thoroughly confused.
“Specialis Revelio.” Nothing happened to Dumbledore.
Now Grindelwald was confused as well.
Could this man really be Dumbledore?
But the strength didn’t match.
Since when had Dumbledore been this weak?
His power felt almost exactly like Dumbledore’s had fifty years ago.
Fawkes, however, could not be faked.
“You really are Dumbledore.” Grindelwald could never mistake Dumbledore’s phoenix.
Other things might be counterfeited, but there were only a handful of phoenixes in the entire wizarding world.
And as far as Grindelwald knew, Dumbledore was the only wizard one would willingly come to save.
Dumbledore didn’t answer.
He watched Grindelwald warily and demanded, “Who are you?
Why are you impersonating Grindelwald?” “Me?
Impersonating Grindelwald?” Dumbledore’s words left Grindelwald completely baffled.
“Are you telling me there’s another Gellert Grindelwald in this world?” Dumbledore couldn’t make sense of the man before him.
He was extraordinarily powerful and possessed a wand that appeared to be the Elder Wand.
He could suppress Dumbledore with ease, yet seemed to harbour no real intent to kill him.
And judging by what he had said so far, this was probably also the Grindelwald who had used the Cruciatus Curse on Witt.
A man calling himself Grindelwald, with power on this level…
Dumbledore was already considering retreat.
He would return first, uncover exactly what was happening, and only then work out how to deal with this man.
Noticing the caution in Dumbledore’s eyes, Grindelwald voluntarily lowered his wand in a gesture of goodwill.
That was all the opening Dumbledore needed.
With a crack, he Disapparated at once.
Grindelwald hadn’t even managed to open his mouth before Dumbledore vanished at lightning speed, leaving him standing awkwardly alone in the ruined forest.
Even now, he still had no idea what was going on.
What exactly was the story behind this Dumbledore, who seemed so much like the one he knew and yet was clearly different?
After pondering the matter for a long while, Grindelwald decided to find someone and ask.
It had been a very long time since he had last wandered through the wizarding world anyway.
He might as well have a look around.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Walking along the streets of London, Grindelwald wore a dark expression and looked thoroughly displeased.
Muggles.
Muggles everywhere.
Since 1945, Muggles had practically disappeared from the world.
How could London possibly contain so many of them?
A distinctly unpleasant suspicion began forming in Grindelwald’s mind.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Back at Hogwarts, Witt sat in a chair with a chicken leg in his left hand, a glass of pumpkin juice in his right, and a roasted sausage hanging from his mouth.
He hadn’t eaten all day.
He was starving.
“Professor, aren’t you eating?” Witt asked curiously after swallowing the sausage.
McGonagall glanced at the devastation spread across the table.
After he’d rummaged through every dish like that, how exactly was she supposed to eat any of it?
“I’m not hungry yet.” “Oh.” Witt had only been asking out of politeness anyway.
If McGonagall wasn’t eating, that simply meant everything on the table belonged to him.
For some reason, every time Witt died inside a dungeon, his appetite increased slightly.
His physical strength and magical power also improved by a tiny amount.
The increase wasn’t much each time, but after enough repetitions, it had added up to something quite considerable.
That was precisely why Witt had continued grinding the dungeon despite knowing perfectly well that he was going in there to suffer, especially after Grindelwald switched to using the Killing Curse later on.
Instant death.
No pain whatsoever.
Just a faint sensation of cold.
Free stat gains were free stat gains.
Witt certainly wasn’t going to turn them down.
He was still wholeheartedly demolishing the meal when Dumbledore pushed open the door and entered in a distinctly dishevelled state.
The instant McGonagall saw him, she hurried over.
“What happened?” “I’m afraid there is much more to this child’s situation than we realised.” Remembering the terrifying pressure Grindelwald had exerted, Dumbledore couldn’t help sighing.
The wizarding world might soon be facing yet another upheaval.
McGonagall pressed him again.
“Professor Dumbledore, what exactly happened?” Dumbledore lowered his voice and recounted everything that had just occurred, including how Grindelwald had defeated him.
“A wizard stronger than you?” McGonagall was visibly shocked.
“Yes.
His magic was extraordinarily forceful.
I couldn’t resist his power at all.
It took him only a short while to suppress me so completely that I could barely move.” Even now, remembering that moment when he had almost died sent a chill through Dumbledore.
That was when McGonagall suddenly remembered Witt’s inexplicable disappearance earlier.
She pulled Dumbledore aside into a corner.
“Witt mysteriously vanished for a while earlier.” “It happened not long after you left.
Even magic couldn’t locate him.” “Do you think the two incidents could be connected?” Dumbledore and McGonagall compared the timing and discovered that his collision with Grindelwald had occurred at almost exactly the same time Witt disappeared.
It might have been nothing more than coincidence.
Even so, Dumbledore decided it warranted investigation.
“Professor McGonagall, please look after Witt.
I’m going to Nurmengard.” ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ While Dumbledore travelled through the night to Nurmengard to meet Grindelwald, the Grindelwald who had crossed into this world, the Grindelwald of the Radiant Twin Emperors, had already learned about this world’s history from the memories of another wizard.
The course of history here was completely different from that of his own world.
For some unknown reason, the young Dumbledore had parted ways with him.
From that point onward, the two had become enemies.
Deprived of a powerful ally and burdened instead with an equally powerful opponent, Grindelwald had failed to achieve his dream of establishing wizarding rule over Muggles.
In 1945, Dumbledore had defeated him and imprisoned him in Nurmengard, where he remained to this day.
Grindelwald didn’t quite know how to describe how he felt.
Conquer the world again?
No.
There was no need.
Leaving aside the fact that Grindelwald had no desire to fight Dumbledore, he had already achieved his dream once before.
He was now more than a hundred years old.
He had neither the time, the energy, nor the interest to wipe out the Muggles all over again.
Compared with Muggles, this world’s Dumbledore was far more deserving of his attention.
In Grindelwald’s original world, when he had first begun purging the Muggles, he and Dumbledore had a furious argument.
Dumbledore had eventually moved to Hogwarts and seldom paid him any attention after that.
Even the letters Grindelwald sent received only the occasional reply.
What you couldn’t have was always the most desirable.
Nothing described the present Grindelwald better.
Conquer the world ❌ Conquer Dumbledore (👍🏻ᴗ _ᴗ)👍🏻 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ At six o’clock the next morning, Witt was woken precisely on time by his alarm.
He immediately opened the System, unable to wait another second before drawing his next dungeon Quest.
After what had happened yesterday, Witt felt as though he had finally figured out the correct way to clear these dungeons.
Completing the Quest obediently was a dead end.
If you were going to do something, you might as well go big.
The familiar roulette wheel appeared.
So did the familiar handle.
Witt gave it a spin.
━━━━━ QUEST ━━━━━ [🟢 Green – Normal Quest | Lily’s Troubles] Lily has discovered that she possesses certain unusual abilities.
The discovery fills her with excitement, but also fear.
She is afraid that others will distance themselves from her and leave her isolated because of them.
She doesn’t dare tell her family and can only hide in deserted places to secretly practise her abilities.
The young witch Lily desperately longs to meet someone like herself, someone she can confide her worries in.
━━━ 🎯 Quest Objective: Become friends with Lily.
🎁 Quest Reward: @#￥%@#@%￥ ⚠️ Abandon Quest: @#%￥#!@% ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ [Author’s Notes] Lily’s wand is made of willow.
Willow is an extremely rare wand wood with healing properties.
The ideal owner of a willow wand is often someone who suffers from unwarranted insecurity.
This is probably hinting that Lily would be very easy to win over as long as someone gave her enough of a sense of security.
During their years at Hogwarts, Lily was a Muggle-born witch, while Snape was in Slytherin and spent his time with future Death Eaters.
Everyone knows what the Death Eaters stood for.
How could Lily possibly not have been afraid?
Lily believed Snape was different from the other Slytherins, but the reality was that when pushed, “Mudblood” was the word that instinctively came out of his mouth.
Fear, unease, even anger…
“Mudblood” was only the fuse.
The real bomb was something Snape had spent five years at Hogwarts burying with his own hands, little by little, while associating with those Death Eaters.
Once it finally exploded, there was essentially no way back for either of them.
Then James took advantage of the opening.
It wasn’t really about right or wrong, or even rationality.
Given their underlying personalities, it was an inevitable choice.
Snape never truly understood Lily.
He never gave her the thing she wanted most.
Instead, he continuously deepened her fears.
Even without James, there would have been someone else.
The two of them were never destined to end up together.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ???
Witt stared at the System interface in confusion.
The Quest itself was perfectly clear.
But what the hell was going on with the reward and the penalty for abandoning it?
Why couldn’t he understand either of them?
What kind of fit was this stupid System throwing now?
After thinking about it for a while, Witt decided to accept the Quest anyway.
He would complete it first and worry about the rest later.
Surely the System wouldn’t cheat him out of his reward.
The System possessed no intelligence, never answered his questions, and hadn’t even come with an instruction manual.
For the entire past year, Witt had been forced to work out all its functions by himself through trial and error.
He accepted the Quest.
Witt vanished from the room.
The very next second, McGonagall and Dumbledore hurried in together.
They cast spell after spell, probing the room and attempting to sense the magical marks they had placed on Witt.
Nothing.
They found absolutely nothing.
“Mysterious little fellow.” Dumbledore took out a sweet and popped it into his mouth.
If tracking magic didn’t work, then there was only one option left.
They would simply have to ask Witt himself.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Inside the dungeon world, Witt abruptly appeared in a narrow alley.
The surrounding streets had an odd mixture of modern and old-fashioned architecture, and only a handful of pedestrians were in sight.
It didn’t take Witt long to identify the target of this Quest.
Lily.
She had beautiful auburn hair and an adorable smile, but most striking of all were her brilliant emerald green eyes.
She looked like a little angel.