Chapter 46: Damn it, the * is poisoned!

Cohen had actually anticipated it.

Harry had found the Mirror of Erised just as Dumbledore planned; the old man was really into some cutting-edge psychological roleplay.

"Advanced age... South Tong, England... an eleven-year-old boy... no matter how I look at it, this is a bit too weird!"

Cohen felt the corners of his mouth twitching.

"Huh? What are you mumbling about, Cohen?" Harry hadn't caught Cohen's muttered words, but he had much more important things to share. "You've got to hear this—I saw my parents last night!"

Yet Cohen, who had just killed two people, seemed hardly any better than Dumbledore.

"I think I've suddenly achieved inner peace," Cohen sighed.

"What did you just say?"

"I—I saw my parents! In a mirror!" After failing to control the volume of his initial exclamation, Harry immediately dropped his voice, though not a single other student was awake at this hour.

"Things in mirrors are fake, Harry," Cohen reminded him. "Face reality; no matter how handsome you look in a mirror, you look exactly the same in real life."

[Sin Value +1]

[Note: The evil Dementor employs even dirtier tactics to bully the Savior.]

"But I've never seen my mum and dad," Harry seemed to be trying his absolute best to find an argument proving that the mirror wasn't an illusion. "Maybe that mirror is foreshadowing the future?"

"..."

Cohen really didn't want to shatter Harry's fantasies—especially not just three days after being touched by that Herbert for all of three seconds.

"Are you coming with me to see it tonight?" Harry asked eagerly. "Maybe you'll be able to see them too—I mean Mr. and Mrs. Norton..."

"Aren't you afraid of getting caught?" Cohen knew Harry had the Invisibility Cloak, but he still feigned complete ignorance. "Wandering the halls at night costs fifty points—Gryffindor doesn't have many points left to spare."

"How could I forget to tell you about this—" Harry slapped his forehead, quickly pulling a thin, silver-liquid-like fabric out of his robe pocket. "Someone sent me an Invisibility Cloak—look."

Harry showed Cohen the gift he had received yesterday.

"An Invisibility Cloak?" The trace of envy in Cohen's eyes wasn't fake—if he had this thing, he wouldn't have to worry about how to ambush enemies.

Damn it, if anyone dared to provoke him, he would just throw on this cloak, flash-apparate right behind them, and then smack his lips right against their face to suck out their soul, the kind of thoroughness that even stomach-pumping couldn't undo.

Actually, he probably didn't need to get that close; so far, Cohen had never actually sucked out any creature's soul mouth-to-mouth—that was a bit too disgusting.

Normal Dementors needed to direct the "Dementor's Kiss" toward the target's lips, but Cohen didn't seem bound by this rule.

Perhaps it was due to miraculous alchemy, or perhaps other biological traits in his bloodline.

"Fine, I'll go with you."

Cohen agreed to this solely to study the mirror up close, paving the way for getting his hands on the Sorcerer's Stone later.

Ideally, when the time came to act as the villain, he would snatch the Sorcerer's Stone right in front of Harry. That way, he could complete both the good-side quest (stopping Voldemort from getting the Sorcerer's Stone) and the evil-side quest (stopping Harry Potter from getting the Sorcerer's Stone).

If both sides lose, it means neither side loses—another glorious triumph for the peace of the magical world.

It is recommended that the system award ten thousand points.

Cohen was extremely confident about dealing with Quirrell. Quirrell's soul had become terribly fragile due to Voldemort's possession and erosion; Cohen had been capable of devouring it since the very beginning of the school term.

As for that 40-strength soul fragment of Voldemort, though Cohen couldn't devour it yet, the opponent couldn't inflict any serious impact on Cohen using the Killing Curse either. Therefore, the evil party was evaluated as posing zero threat.

Right now, the only problem to consider was how to reasonably pocket the Sorcerer's Stone, which was supposed to be destroyed in the future.

Upon receiving Cohen's agreement to join the nocturnal excursion, Harry looked delighted—if Cohen could see his parents too, wouldn't that mean he also had hope of seeing his mum and dad in reality once again?

This deduction made no sense whatsoever, since Cohen's adoptive parents were both still alive, rendering it completely useless as a reference.

Yet excessive hope always makes people dull-witted.

In Dumbledore's words, "It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live. With the sunlight outside the castle and the calls of our friends, we will eventually wake from the dream."

According to Ron, Harry had been absent-minded the entire day, skipping both lunch and dinner.

However, Cohen had another task for the daytime—he hadn't yet thoroughly gone through all the books brought up from the basement, nor had he studied Allie's species abilities.

Allie was still fast asleep.

Cohen chose to curl up in an armchair in the Room of Requirement to read—starting with *A Trace of Evil Lives* from that stack of books.

This book was clearly one of the experiment's source material selection catalogs—Cohen found two circled sections with extensive marginal notes in this nearly worn-out book.

The first section was about "Dementors." This kind of non-being was the wizarding world's most troublesome Dark magical creature because they possessed no physical substance and thus could not be killed, only repelled—yet their danger level was extremely high, and their attacks were virtually undefendable. Only a handful of spells could deal with them, of which the "Patronus Charm" was the most effective, though its difficulty was extremely high. Not even the Aurors at the Ministry of Magic had many who could summon a corporeal Patronus.

Several large paragraphs of handwritten notes in this chapter caught Cohen's attention.

[As a non-being life form, Dementors are difficult to use as incremental material for the homunculus in the flask. Recommendation: Remove.]

This sentence had been "negated" by a horizontal bar drawn in red ink; the experimental procedure must have been arrived at through repeated discussion rather than a project leader making an arbitrary executive decision.

[Overruled. Although Dementors cannot be added later, they can serve as the foundational base material. Their inability to die and their soul-striking aggressiveness are precisely the most crucial links in the entire experiment.]

Starting from here, the annotations below turned into an argument.

Unknown Researcher No. 1: [You could add Basilisks and Phoenixes; the effect is the same.]

Unknown Researcher No. 2: [The only known Phoenix in Britain with a confirmed location is Dumbledore's. If you disagree, go steal Dumbledore's bird.]

Researcher No. 1: [Huh? Me? Fight Dumbledore? Seriously?]

...

The rest was nonsense. The experimental results indicated that they ultimately chose Dementors as the base; Cohen was roughly 60% Dementor, with the remaining human, nightmare, and two unknown species of bizarre creatures accounting for 10% each.

"When other Dementors see me, won't they call me a Mudblood?" Cohen wondered warily.

"And then you'll just finish them off on the grounds that 'Azkaban seems a bit too urbanized,' right?"

The Count muttered while covertly stealing Cohen's candy:

"Nothing you do would surprise me anymore."

Ignoring the Count, Cohen turned to the next marked point.

The second section was about "Nightmares," the exact kind found in *Secrets of the Darkest Art*.

Nightmares were evil creatures created by Herpo the Foul. The pure unicorn should never fall into corruption, but when a curse thick and viscous as liquid poured into the corpse of a unicorn embryo, even the messengers of heaven would be dragged into hell—

"This passage looks wrong no matter how I read it," Cohen frowned. "Corruption, viscous liquid, chastity..."

"What, what! Let me see!" The lazy brown-feathered bird eagerly squeezed in.

After shooing away the excited bird, Cohen continued reading the subsequent content.

Though named "Nightmares," this was clearly just Herpo's morbid sense of humor.

This creature possessed no abilities related to "dreams." Aside from having a physical form resembling a unicorn and carrying curses flowing through their bodies, they shared almost nothing else with unicorns.

Nightmares possessed none of the benevolent magic inherent to unicorns.

However, Nightmares were natural masters of curses; they could unleash potent curse magic through their spiraled silver horns, or inject curses directly into an opponent's body via physical piercing.

Their blood was liquid curse—yet upon leaving the body, a Nightmare's blood would rapidly evaporate.

Cohen experimentally made a small cut on his hand.

"Oh, mother of—"

Cohen watched with his own eyes as his blood transformed into black cursed smoke—the people who had walked closely with Cohen over the past decade were truly blessed by fortune. It was a good thing Cohen had rarely ever gotten injured, otherwise just a touch of this meant loss of life!

[Ding! Special ability unlocked: Liquid Curse (1/10)]

The system popped up at this moment.

The unlocking progress of the special ability was (1/10), indicating that Cohen's blood right now was probably not the fully realized liquid curse.

Yet this also made Cohen realize a terrifying problem.

If blood was a curse, what about bodily fluids?

If he ever grew up and wanted to find a partner...

*Is bodily fluid poisonous?*

Cohen drew a deep breath.

Terrifying. If he didn't resolve this, it would practically amount to a life sentence without a wife...

Still, he was only eleven years old right now; he probably didn't need to worry about that just yet.

However, judging by the rate at which this blood evaporated, Cohen felt that if he wanted to use this as an offensive method, he would probably have to smear the blood onto someone at close quarters.

Shaking his head, Cohen continued reading.

Nightmares could blend into herds of unicorns—because unicorns couldn't tell the difference between curses, as curses flowed through their own blood as well. In their eyes, a Nightmare was merely a peer of a different color.

It seemed unicorns possessed quite a high degree of inclusivity.

Yet Cohen had no intention of putting Allie into the Forbidden Forest; unicorns not being able to tell the difference didn't mean Hagrid and the other creatures in the forest couldn't.

A black unicorn looked like nothing normal, and furthermore, Allie's completely white-eyed stare was truly creepy.

The racial traits of the Dementors granted Cohen the ability to harvest souls and emotions, as well as soul-state immortality, while the Nightmare gifted Cohen with an aptitude for Dark curses and the hidden countermeasure of poisonous blood...

This book only marked those two creatures; Cohen's other two unknown bloodlines were definitely not any of the other species listed in the book.

The rest of the book stack consisted of professional texts on alchemical runes and machinery, containing nothing regarding evil creatures.

In other words, if Cohen wanted to figure out the origins and abilities of his remaining two bloodlines, he would probably have to get his hands on the original experimental report.

It seemed he would need to have a proper "chat" with Mundungus during the holidays.

Having spent the day studying in the Room of Requirement, Cohen met up with Harry in the common room at night.

The Invisibility Cloak easily concealed the figures of the two eleven-year-old boys, making the first step of the night excursion a smooth success.

Yet the second step didn't go quite as smoothly.

Because Harry discovered that he couldn't remember the way to the empty classroom housing the Mirror of Erised.