"How long was I unconscious for?!"
That was the first thought that flashed through his mind after he hurriedly shut his eyes again. Only then did the more direct sensations from every part of his body belatedly flood into his consciousness.
His entire face felt numb, and his throat was so dry that he could not help wondering whether he could even still speak at all. His limbs and bones felt as stiff as if they had been filled with cement, making even the slightest movement of a finger incredibly difficult. Even trying to take one deep breath immediately earned protests from his windpipe and lungs.
So he settled for less and tried to turn his head a little—
Only to instantly hear a deeply ominous sound from his neck.
"..."
All right, no need to guess anymore. With how his body felt right now, he had definitely been unconscious for at least over half a month.
And the place he was in could only be a bed in the Hospital Wing.
Which meant he had most likely already missed Dumbledore's experiment, missed the chance to meet that whole group of the world's top academic giants...
It sounded a little regrettable, but when he thought about what he had gotten in exchange—direct insight into the secrets of the soul, becoming a wizard whose attainments in that field were second only to the Peverell brothers—the opportunity to meet those academic titans and help out on the sidelines suddenly seemed very small indeed.
Though this did mean trouble for Grindelwald and Leach University. He had no idea how Nathan Clarke's body had been kept over in Nurmengard...
Right, my link device—was it discovered or not?!
His heart suddenly jolted, and he hurriedly used his spiritual power to try connecting to the body that might or might not still be in Nurmengard.
Fortunately, he succeeded.
As his technology had gradually improved, his link device was no longer that glasses frame with a Disillusionment Charm cast on it. It had long since been reduced to a thin little plate no bigger than a fingernail, which only needed to be attached behind the ear to be used. And to keep it from falling off or getting lost, Avada had gone even further and performed a minor procedure on himself, implanting the plate directly beneath the surface of his skin.
It was essentially permanently carried, and extremely well hidden.
It seemed that after he had fallen unconscious, the Hospital Wing had not performed a full, detailed examination of his body. They had probably only checked his spiritual power, then either found something or found nothing and simply left him lying there. If that thin plate had been discovered, it would have been removed at once as a prime object of suspicion and taken away for study, rather than still lying quietly beneath his skin with no sign of having ever been touched.
"Then I might as well check on Nathan Clarke first. My real body probably can't move for the time being, but a wooden body doesn't have the problem of stiffening up after lying around too long..."
As he thought that, his consciousness descended into Nathan Clarke's body. Opening his eyes with practiced familiarity, he took in the bodily senses that flooded back from every direction and found himself lying in a dim, narrow stone room. Beneath him was the crudest of beds, and thick iron bars had been fixed across the nearby window.
This was probably one of the cells somewhere inside Nurmengard?
"Looks like Grindelwald knows this body is artificial and didn't let the university come pick me up."
Avada pleasantly sensed how agile and powerful the body felt. He flipped himself off the bed in one motion, looked out the window to confirm that he really was in Nurmengard and not some bizarre place, and then prepared to go to the top of the tower to find Grindelwald.
But when he instinctively raised a hand to fix his hair, he suddenly noticed that both his hands and arms had somehow accumulated a thick layer of dust...
"What the hell?"
Only then did he realize something was wrong, and he immediately checked his whole body.
His entire front half, including his face, was covered in a visible layer of dust!
"How long was I unconscious exactly?!"
This was the Austrian countryside, inside a tower no less. Muggle factories and car exhaust could hardly affect the air here. It would take no short amount of time for this much dust to build up!
He directly summoned a mass of clean water and gave himself a quick rinse, then, not caring at all about appearances, yanked open the door and rushed up the first staircase he could find leading upward.
If his premonition was right, then he had already wasted far too much time!
Knock, knock, knock.
When he saw that somewhat unfamiliar wooden door once again at the end of the corridor, he walked straight up without hesitation and lightly knocked.
The door opened very quickly, revealing Gellert Grindelwald's aged face.
"You're awake?"
He looked at the still-damp Avada with faint amusement.
"You were out for quite a long time this round... I hope what you gained in the timeline was worth the time you spent."
"...So how long exactly was I unconscious?"
"Four and a half months."
"..."
The number struck Avada into silence.
He had been unconscious for... nearly half a year?!
Judging from the time before he passed out, that meant it was already August now!
Which meant Hogwarts had not only finished the entire second half of the school year, but had already entered summer vacation, and the new term was just around the corner? He was practically about to become a fifth-year already?!
A sense of being in a different world rose unbidden in his heart. The last time he had felt something like this was probably when he discovered he had transmigrated.
"Come inside and sit."
Grindelwald shook his head, directly pulled Avada—who was still staggering around like a penguin—into his room, then returned to sit down by the bed.
"Tell me about yourself first. What did you experience in the timeline over these four months? Or rather... in your perception, how much time passed?"
"It didn't feel... like that much time passed."
Avada frowned as he tried to recall what had happened in the timeline.
"Even if I'd gotten completely absorbed in studying, there's no way I could have gone four and a half months without food or sleep and not noticed the passage of time at all..."
"Studying?"
For the first time, genuine surprise appeared in Grindelwald's eyes.
"You went looking for magical knowledge from the future? And you succeeded?!"
So Grindelwald had apparently tried using prophecy that way back in the day too—trying to freeload off the techniques of his future self.
Unfortunately, he had probably failed.
"...No. Something even crazier than that."
Avada fell silent for a while as he organized his wording, hoping to minimize the mental shock to Grindelwald as much as possible.
"Uh... let me put it this way."
"The current me can already barely create the Deathly Hallows."
"..."
Grindelwald stared at him blankly for a long while, not even blinking once, as if he had turned into a statue.
Then, without the slightest warning, he suddenly leapt straight up from where he stood, seized Avada by the collar, and the veins on his arm bulged instantly.
"What did you say?! What did you say you can make?!"
(End of Chapter)