"My young lord, what is the matter now?"
Jerry didn't even look up, using his fork to stab the last piece of scrambled egg on his plate into two halves, stuffing one half into his mouth.
Malfoy braced himself against the edge of the table, panting heavily several times.
Due to his mad dash all the way from the dungeons to the Great Hall, two strands of his platinum-blonde hair had fallen loose, hanging over his forehead and trembling slightly with his rapid breaths.
The collar of his Slytherin robes was soaked with a small ring of sweat, and that patch of dark green fabric on his back clung tightly to his skin.
He didn't sit down.
He pulled a stack of something from the inner pocket of his robes, slapping it onto the table in front of Jerry with a smack.
The force of that slap wasn't light, jarring the fork in the silver plate to jump, and the empty orange juice cup hit the condiment shaker with a clink.
Jerry's gaze fell downward.
A stack of kraft paper.
No... not ordinary kraft paper.
That was standard check paper from Gringotts.
Jerry recognized it at a glance.
The texture of that kind of paper was unique... pressed from a mixture of elven silk and a certain special mineral fiber produced in dwarven mining areas, the thickness somewhere between ordinary parchment and cardboard, the touch carrying a slightly rough, grainy feel, the color a dark, deep yellow resembling old gold.
Printed in the upper right corner of each one was the emblem of Gringotts Wizarding Bank... the silhouette of a goblin gripping a golden hammer. The lines were embossed onto the paper surface using miniature engraving techniques; running a finger over it, one could feel the textured grooves.
Jerry picked up the top one.
The front of the check was filled out with the amount and account information in standard Gringotts calligraphy.
Anti-counterfeiting runes were densely arranged along the four borders of the check. Those runes, miniaturized to the point of almost needing a magnifying glass to see clearly, glowed with an extremely faint silver-blue fluorescence in the morning light... that was a living anti-counterfeiting spell unique to Gringotts; as long as the check was still valid, those runes would continue to glow.
The amount box read:
"Two Hundred Thousand Gold Galleons Exactly."
Jerry flipped through the ones underneath.
The second one: One Hundred and Fifty Thousand Gold Galleons Exactly.
The third one: Eighty Thousand Gold Galleons Exactly.
The fourth one: Fifty Thousand Gold Galleons Exactly.
The fifth one: Twenty Thousand Gold Galleons Exactly.
The drawer box on each one was stamped with the same seal... "Malfoy Family Trust Vault · Number Seven."
That seal used goblin silver ink exclusive to Gringotts, leaving a deep indentation on the paper surface that almost pierced through to the back.
Jerry rapidly did the addition in his head.
Five hundred thousand.
Five hundred thousand gold Galleons.
He was still chewing half a piece of scrambled egg in his mouth; his chewing motion slowed by a beat.
What kind of concept was five hundred thousand gold Galleons... the total savings of the Weasley family at Gringotts was probably less than seven hundred Galleons.
The annual salary of an ordinary Ministry of Magic clerk was between three thousand and five thousand Galleons.
Even for some pure-blood families with decent foundations, like the Longbottom family or the Macmillan family, the total volume of their vaults would struggle to exceed three hundred thousand.
This stack of checks from the Malfoy family was equivalent to more than double the total vault volumes of these families.
Jerry swallowed that last piece of scrambled egg, picked up a napkin, and wiped the grease from his fingers.
"Your family vault let you hollow out half of it?"
Malfoy's panting finally steadied somewhat.
The instant he heard this sentence, a complex expression mixing pride and disdain surfaced on that pointy, still-sweaty face... pride in Jerry's attention to this number, disdain for Jerry's underestimation of the Malfoy family's financial power.
"Half?"
Malfoy extended his right hand, tapping twice on the tabletop with his index and middle fingers... that gesture was Lucius Malfoy's signature move when negating a certain viewpoint; his son had unknowingly picked it up.
"Not even a quarter.
A quarter... at most."
When he said "a quarter," he raised his chin slightly, as if stating a fact not worth making a fuss over.
Jerry placed the checks in his hand back on top of that stack, gently flicking the edge of the checks with his fingertip.
"A quarter?"
His tone was unhurried.
"Don't say a quarter... even if it's a tenth... your dad would have to break your legs."
Malfoy's chin pulled back.
His mouth opened and closed, as if wanting to retort, but that retort paused on the tip of his tongue for a second before turning into an indistinct mutter.
"Am I that much of a dandy..."
The trailing note of this sentence almost disappeared into the movement of his lips.
He scratched his platinum-blonde hair, messy from running, tucking a few strands that had fallen onto his forehead behind his ear... that action of tidying his hair restored to him a bit of the sense of decency unique to the Malfoy family.
Then he took a deep breath, braced his hands on the tabletop, leaned his body forward, and stared straight at Jerry with gray eyes.
"I didn't steal this money, nor did I take it myself."
His voice was lowered, but his enunciation became much clearer than just now... that was the speaking speed and volume a person conveying important information would automatically adjust to.
"My father gave it to me.
Lucius Malfoy personally handed it to me.
He told me to bring these checks to you..."
Malfoy's index finger tapped heavily on that stack of checks.
"The purpose is to enter a joint venture with you. To buy a world."
Jerry's chewing motion stopped.
His fork hung in mid-air, a small, unfinished piece of bacon still clinging to the tines.
"Buy... what?"
"A world." Malfoy repeated it once, the excitement in his voice finally unable to be suppressed. "An entire world."
Jerry put down the fork.
The piece of bacon fell back onto the silver plate, emitting a faint clink.
He leaned back against the backrest of the bench, crossed his arms over his chest, his gaze moving from that stack of checks to Malfoy's face.
"Explain clearly."
Malfoy took a deep breath.
His hands spread open on the tabletop... the tips of his five fingers pressing on both sides of that stack of checks; that posture was like a businessman presenting his core proposal.
"Don't hide it from me anymore, Jerry.
It's already spread among the top pure-blood families."
His voice dropped even lower. The entire Great Hall was completely empty at this moment... there was no one even on the staff High Table; only the blue sky and white clouds projected on the magical ceiling overhead were slowly and silently moving.
But Malfoy still instinctively swept a glance to both sides, ensuring there were absolutely no potential eavesdroppers before continuing to speak.
"We are about to achieve victory."
This sentence coming from the mouth of a teenage boy carried a weight as light as discussing the win or loss of a Quidditch match.
But Jerry could hear that the original source of this sentence wasn't Malfoy... it was Lucius.
It was that old fox who had struggled and crawled in pure-blood social circles for over twenty years.
"The Olympian world clusters... those dimensional clusters ruled by False Gods... will completely collapse."
Malfoy's speaking speed began to accelerate. Driven by excited emotions, his gray eyes shone slightly, reflecting the morning light spilling down from the vaulted ceiling.
His fingers rapidly drew some irregular lines on the tabletop, as if sketching a war situation map.
"When these False Gods are completely cleaned out, those worlds they originally ruled... do you know how many there are?"
Malfoy held up one finger.
"The intelligence my father got is... at least one hundred and seventy.
One hundred and seventy independent, complete worlds with autonomous ecological cycles.
Some are resource-based, with endless mineral deposits and magical plants.
Some are agricultural, with suitable climates and fertile land.
Some are small, roughly equivalent to the area of London and a few surrounding counties.
Some are large... larger than the entire British Isles."
His voice grew faster and faster.
"These worlds were all previously under the control of the Olympian Pantheon.
The deities treated these worlds as their personal territories, backyards, resource bases, pastures... even exile grounds for prisoners.
Every world has its respective ecology, respective native inhabitants, respective resource reserves. Some worlds even have magical mineral veins and alchemical materials that wizards have never seen before."
Malfoy paused, licking his lips which had grown dry from speaking too fast.
"But the problem is... the Ministry of Magic can't manage them all."
His intonation suddenly shifted here from excitement to a more rational, analytical logic derived from his father.
"One hundred and seventy worlds.
Every single one requires a garrison, administrative management, resource censuses, native resettlement, infrastructure construction..."
Malfoy shook his head.
"Impossible.
Simply impossible.
The Ministry of Magic's manpower, budget, management capabilities... none of it is enough."
His body leaned forward a few more inches, his voice dropping to a decibel level only Jerry could hear.
"So what will the Ministry of Magic do?"
The corners of Malfoy's mouth hooked into an arc...
"Auction."
When this word spilled from Malfoy's lips, the air in the Great Hall seemed to become even quieter.
"The Ministry of Magic will put the control rights of these worlds up for public auction.
Control rights, not ownership rights... a legal distinction.
But in actual operation, there is no difference between control rights and ownership rights. You buy the control rights to a world, and everything in that world... land, resources, native inhabitants, weather, even the flow of time... is whatever you say it is."
His index finger tapped forcefully on that stack of checks.
"The most critical point is... a one-time payment.
Not a lease, not installments.
You pay once, buy out the control rights, and from then on, this world is your private territory. No paying taxes to the Ministry of Magic. No reporting to any institution. No accepting audits.
If you want to raise dragons inside, you raise dragons; if you want to plant Golden Ke-la inside, you plant Golden Ke-la; if you want to build a castle that belongs only to you inside..."
Malfoy's eyes lit up to a degree a teenage boy shouldn't possess.
"...If you want to do anything inside, no one cares."
Jerry's fingers slowly tapped on the tabletop.
One tap.
Two taps.
Three taps.
That rhythm was unhurried, like the external manifestation of some internal calculation running.
"Why would the Ministry of Magic sell?"
His voice was so flat there wasn't a single ripple.
Malfoy had been waiting for precisely this question.
"Money."
One word.
"The frontlines are burning money." Malfoy's voice became urgent, yet still maintained the organization drilled into him by his father. "Do you think fighting a war doesn't cost money?
Every day... every single day... the consumption at the frontlines is an astronomical figure."
He began ticking off his fingers.
"First, personnel losses.
For every Combat Auror from the Auror Office killed in action, the pension to the family is four thousand Galleons.
Retiring due to severe injury is two thousand Galleons plus lifelong medical coverage.
Do you know how many people have been killed in action at the frontlines up to now?
The number my father got is... as of last week... a total of one thousand two hundred killed in action.
Pensions alone have already burned through nearly five million Galleons."
The second finger.
"Second, weapons and equipment.
To deal with ordinary Dark Wizards, standard wands are enough.
But to deal with deities and their divine servants? The magical output of standard wands simply isn't enough to look at.
The frontline legions are using Combat Wands specially manufactured by the Ministry of Magic's Ordnance Department... the manufacturing cost of each one is fifty times that of an ordinary wand.
Furthermore, these Combat Wands degrade extremely quickly during confrontation with divine power; the average lifespan is only three months.
Every three months they have to be replaced with new ones.
The standard composition of an attack cluster is five hundred people, one Combat Wand per person, a round of replacements every three months... you do the math on this bill."
The third finger.
"Third, healing supplies. Injuries caused by deities are different from ordinary spell injuries... fragments of divine power remain in those wounds; ordinary healing spells and potions simply can't clean them out.
The Healers at St. Mungo's are currently using a special potion called 'Tears of the Purifier'; the raw materials are unicorn tears and phoenix ash.
The market price of unicorn tears... do you know how much it is?
Three hundred Galleons per milliliter.
What is the daily dosage at the frontlines? Twenty liters."
Malfoy brought his three fingers together.
"These are just the three most basic expenses.
There's also logistics transportation, intelligence gathering, maintaining stability in occupied areas, setting up temporary administrative structures... every single item is a bottomless pit.
My father estimated that from the start of the war to now, the Ministry of Magic's total military expenditure has already exceeded two hundred million gold Galleons.
Two hundred million."
He heavily spat out this number.
"What is the Ministry of Magic's annual financial budget?
Eighty million.
Two hundred million in military expenditure... equals burning through the financial budget of the next three years entirely in advance. The national treasury has already hit bottom.
They have to sell. It's not that they want to sell... they must sell."
Malfoy straightened up, his hands tucked into the pockets of his robes.
At this moment, his posture switched from a message-delivering son to a semi-mature businessman... back straight, chin slightly raised, the excitement in his gray eyes settling into a deeper certainty belonging to a profit-seeker.
"So this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity."
His voice wasn't loud, but every word was enunciated very clearly.
"The value of those worlds... the true value... far exceeds the auction price.
The Ministry of Magic is being forced to sell dirt cheap.
Wait until the war ends, wait until the situation stabilizes, wait until the resources in those worlds are developed... their value will flip ten times over. Twenty times. Even a hundred times."
He pulled something else from his pocket... a piece of parchment folded in three.
After unfolding it, a crude, hand-drawn dimensional topological map was drawn upon it.
Dozens of circles of varying sizes were scattered across the parchment; beside each circle, a name and basic information were marked in tiny font.
"This is a preliminary list my father got from internal channels at the frontlines.
It's not yet complete... the complete list supposedly won't be made public until after the Ministry formally announces the auction... but it already has the basic information of over fifty worlds."
His index finger drew a line on a circle marked "-17" on the map.
"This one.
-17.
One of Apollo's former territories.
Medium-sized world, area roughly equivalent to Scotland.
Mild climate, abundant sunlight year-round... it was the Sun God's former turf, after all.
Surface census shows a massive amount of Sunstone veins... Sunstones, you know what those are, right?
The top-tier light-attribute material in alchemy; the market price for one gram exceeds fifty Galleons.
The estimated Sunstone reserves of this world..."
Malfoy swallowed a mouthful of saliva.
"A conservative estimate is over three thousand tons."
He pushed that topological map in front of Jerry.
"Three thousand tons of Sunstones. Calculated at market price.
You multiply it."
Jerry did not calculate it.
He didn't need to calculate.
Three thousand tons of Sunstones... three billion grams... fifty Galleons per gram... one hundred and fifty billion gold Galleons.
That was a number that made the entire Ministry of Magic's annual budget look like pocket money.
Of course, massive costs would be generated during the actual mining, processing, transportation, and sales processes, and dumping a massive amount of Sunstones onto the market in the short term would inevitably lead to a price plunge.
The true realizable value might only be one percent or even one thousandth of the theoretical value... but even so, that was still an astronomical figure.
"My father's plan is like this..."
Malfoy's speaking speed slowed down. When he spoke this next segment, every word had gone through obvious deliberation... the arrangement of these phrases, the placement of the emphasis, even the timing of the pauses, all carried the shadow of Lucius Malfoy.
This was a fourteen-year-old boy repeating the talking points his father had rehearsed repeatedly.
"The Malfoy family provides the capital.
This five hundred thousand Galleons is the first installment of earnest money. If you agree to cooperate, subsequent funds can be added based on the actual auction price... the upper limit is two million Galleons."
He held up one finger.
"You provide... the connections.
The control rights of some worlds will not go through public auction, but will be given directly to individuals or groups with military merit through internal allocation."
The second finger.
"After acquiring it, we both share joint responsibility for development and operations.
The profits... a fifty-fifty split."
He brought his two fingers together, making a chopping motion in the air.
"Half belongs to the Rozier family.
Half belongs to the Malfoy family."
Malfoy finished speaking.
He stood opposite Jerry, his platinum-blonde hair reflecting slightly in the morning light, his gray eyes staring dead at Jerry's expression... trying to read any sliver of a signal of inclination from that boyish face.
But Jerry's expression gave him nothing.
Jerry just sat on the bench, arms crossed over his chest, his gaze falling on that hand-drawn dimensional topological map.
On the magical ceiling of the Great Hall's vaulted dome, a white cloud slowly drifted past the position of the sun, casting a fleeting shadow on the long table.
There were eight minutes left before class.
Jerry cast a glance at that dimensional topological map.
Then he cast a glance at Malfoy.
"Let's go to class first."
When he said this sentence, he had already reached out to gather up that stack of checks... the five standard Gringotts check papers were stacked neatly by him, folded once, and stuffed into the close-fitting inner pocket of his shirt. That action was extremely casual, like putting away a used napkin.
Five hundred thousand gold Galleons disappeared just like that into a teenage boy's open shirt collar.
Malfoy's eyes lit up.
That kind of lighting up wasn't the excitement from detailing the plan earlier, but a more direct sense of confirmation belonging to a businessman seeing the other party reach out to accept the goods.
The checks entered Jerry's pocket... no matter how Jerry verbally said "I'll consider it," the action itself was already a kind of signal.
The corners of Malfoy's mouth had just begun to turn up...
Jerry stopped.
Not the kind of pause where you're walking and suddenly remember something.
It was an abrupt stillness where the person's entire movement system was completely frozen in a certain instant.
His footsteps stopped in the aisle between the long table and the bench.
The heel of his right foot had just touched the ground; his left foot was still hanging in mid-air.
The hem of his shirt was still swaying slightly due to the inertia of walking, but his torso had become completely motionless.
His eyes looked in a certain direction.
Not any direction within the Great Hall.
His gaze pierced through the magical ceiling on the vaulted dome... pierced through that illusion surface reflecting blue sky and white clouds... looking straight toward a certain coordinate existing outside physical space that only he could perceive.
Those black pupils contracted in that instant.
Then released again.
The entire process took no more than two seconds.
"Your dad might have to change to a different target world."
Jerry put down his left foot that had been hanging in mid-air, turning around to face Malfoy. His expression recovered that unhurried laziness from just now, but a layer of something Malfoy couldn't identify was added to his tone.
Malfoy froze for a moment.
"Change targets?
Why?
The Sunstone reserves of -17..."
"Because that world has already been eaten clean."
Jerry cut him off.
"Eaten... clean?"
Malfoy's brain snagged on these words.
What did "eaten" mean?
The mineral deposits had been fully mined?
The resources had been plundered?
Or...
"Eaten" in the literal sense?
Jerry didn't explain.
He raised his right hand, casually waving toward the direction of the Great Hall's vaulted dome.
That waving motion carried a trace of magical fluctuation... extremely faint, so faint Malfoy almost couldn't feel it.
But the blue sky image of the magical ceiling on the Great Hall's dome produced an almost invisible-to-the-naked-eye ripple in that instant, as if something had passed through that illusion barrier.
Three seconds later, a grayish-brown barn owl dove down from some unseen entrance on the dome, silently gliding across the entire length of the Great Hall, landing steadily on Jerry's extended forearm.
Its talons gripped the cuff of Jerry's shirt; it tilted its head to look at him and let out a low "hoot."
Jerry reached into his pocket, pulled out a small scrap of parchment and a self-writing miniature quill, and quickly jotted down two lines.
"Go find Snape."
"Just say Malfoy and I are taking a leave of absence this class."
He rolled up the slip of paper and stuffed it into the message tube on the barn owl's leg.
The barn owl flapped its wings, launched itself from his forearm, traced a beautiful arc in the air, and flew out toward the Great Hall doors.
Malfoy's face changed color.
"You... asked Snape for a leave of absence?"
His voice carried a genuine nervousness.
Snape was the Head of Slytherin House, and had always maintained discipline over his own students that was strict to the point of being paranoid... especially regarding behaviors like "skipping class without a valid reason."
Malfoy could imagine Snape's expression upon receiving that note: the corners of his mouth pulled down into two knife-carved lines, his black eyes churning with a gloominess enough to make a first-year student wet their pants on the spot.
"Jerry, Snape he..."
Jerry had already started walking.
He didn't walk toward the doors of the Great Hall.
He walked toward a fireplace on the side wall of the Great Hall.
That fireplace was normally unlit... the fireplaces in the Hogwarts Great Hall were mainly used for heating in the winter; there was absolutely no need for them on an April morning.
A layer of cold ash piled in the hearth of the fireplace; the charred remains of the last handful of firewood burned last winter still lingered on the iron grate.
Jerry stood in front of the fireplace.
He raised his right hand.
And snapped his fingers.
Snap.
Nothing changed in the fireplace.
He snapped again.
Snap.
Still nothing.
A third time.
Snap.
The instant the third snap fell, those things on the inner walls of the fireplace hearth that looked like ordinary soot and charcoal residue suddenly began to move.
Those ashes, as if blown by some invisible force, peeled off the hearth walls, spinning, gathering, and rearranging within the internal space of the hearth.
They weren't scattering randomly... they were forming patterns.
Lines.
Lines, extremely precise and arranged from ash particles, extended upward from the bottom of the hearth one by one, branching, crossing, and branching again.
At every intersection, a miniature node compressed from high-density ash coalesced; the lines connecting node to node nested within each other in a topological structure complex enough to make one dizzy.
The Floo Network.
But not an ordinary Floo Network.
Malfoy stepped closer, wanting to see clearly those ash patterns rapidly taking shape in the hearth.
His pupils contracted... the density of those lines, the frequency of the branching, the number of nodes, far exceeded the standard Floo Network models he had seen in any magical transportation textbook.
A standard Floo Network is a tree structure... a main trunk connects to several branches, the branches connect to terminal nodes, and each node corresponds to a fireplace.
Simple, intuitive, activated with a sprinkle of Floo powder.
But this thing Jerry was constructing in the fireplace...
Was not tree-like.
It was web-like.
And a multi-layered, nested web.
Malfoy suddenly felt a bit dizzy.
"What is this..." Malfoy's voice instinctively lowered.
"A directional teleportation network," Jerry said without looking back. "For long distances."
He reached his right hand into the hearth of the fireplace... directly into that ash network still spinning and rearranging.
His finger pressed gently on one of the nodes within it. That node immediately lit up with a faint, dark green fluorescence, and then, along all the lines connected to it, conducted that smear of green light to every corner of the entire network.
The entire hearth of the fireplace was filled with dark green light within a second.
Jerry pulled his hand out, casually wiping the ash from his fingers onto his trousers.
Malfoy stared at that glowing green fireplace, a dry swallowing sound coming from his throat.
"You don't need Floo powder?"
"Using that stuff for long-distance teleportation..." Jerry turned his head to look at him. "You'd just be waiting to be torn to shreds."
Malfoy's face paled a shade.
Jerry didn't give him any more time to mentally prepare.
He took a step toward the fireplace... the hem of his shirt reflected an eerie dark color in the dark green light... and stepped his entire body into the hearth.
Green flames surged from beneath his feet, climbing up his calves, waist, chest, all the way to the top of his head.
Then he vanished.
It wasn't that feeling of "a person spinning and being sucked away in green flames" during Floo powder teleportation.
Jerry's disappearance was instantaneous... one frame he was still standing in the fireplace, the next frame the hearth was empty, leaving only those faintly glowing ash lines.
Malfoy stood in front of the fireplace.
The green flames burned quietly in the hearth, occasionally emitting a few faint crackle sounds.
He looked at the fireplace.
Then looked back at the empty Great Hall.
"...Damn it."
He muttered, then closed his eyes, and took a step into the green flames.
...
First came pressure.
A pressure squeezing in simultaneously from every direction of the body, even and continuous.
It wasn't that dizziness of being flung around by centrifugal force in a spinning tunnel during Floo powder teleportation... this pressure was closer to being stuffed into a shrinking box. Skin, muscles, bones—all tissues were simultaneously enduring external, isostatic compression.
Then came distortion.
Distortion on a visual level.
A massive amount of high-speed flowing color blocks appeared before Malfoy's eyes... not colors, but something more fundamental than color... as if the light spectrum itself had been wadded up like a wet towel, and the water wrung out became the projection on his retinas.
A violent churning transmitted from his stomach.
That nausea wasn't ordinary motion sickness or seasickness... it was a signal of total collapse from the vestibular system of his inner ear, caused by violent changes in the topological structure of space itself.
His brain lost all ability to judge "up" and "down" in that instant.
Malfoy wanted to throw up.
His stomach contracted violently, acid surging to his throat...
Then it all ended.
Light.
Blinding, completely unfiltered, purely violent light poured into his pupils from every direction in front of him simultaneously.
Malfoy's eyes instinctively squinted in the intense light; his tear glands began to secrete tears due to the sudden light stimulation. He felt his body was...
Falling.
The sound of wind shrieked past his ears.
His robes violently billowed in the airflow, slapping against his face and arms.
His platinum-blonde hair was completely blown loose, standing straight up in the opposite direction of his fall... which was upward.
Malfoy's first reaction was to draw his wand.
His right hand pulled his wand from his sleeve in zero point three seconds... ten inches, hawthorn, unicorn hair core... his lips parted, ready to shout "Wingardium Leviosa..."
Something soft caught him from below.
Thump.
It wasn't the impact of hitting hard ground.
It was an extremely even decelerating force provided by a large-area elastic surface.
Like falling into a giant trampoline... but softer and more resilient than a trampoline.
Malfoy's body bounced twice on that soft surface; the height of each bounce was lower than the last, the kinetic energy completely absorbed after three bounces.
He sprawled on top of that thing.
His face pressed against that soft surface.
It wasn't cloth.
It wasn't rope.
It wasn't any man-made material he recognized.
It was a web.
Purple.
The web threads were about as thick as his pinky finger, the surface covered with a layer of faintly glowing, semi-transparent mucus. The touch was somewhere between silk and the tendon of some animal he couldn't name... extremely pliable, yet possessing a steel-like rigidity when stretched to its limit. Every web thread was trembling slightly, as if something were flowing inside them.
The mucus stuck to his face.
Warm.
With a faint scent, similar to a mixture of mushrooms and wet earth.
Malfoy peeled his face off the web surface... the mucus pulled several silver-silk-like fine threads between his cheek and the web surface, then snapped with a pfft sound... he struggled to sit up straight.
Then he saw the surrounding scene.
It took his brain a full five seconds to complete the preliminary processing of the image before his eyes.
During those five seconds, his mouth hung open, not emitting a single syllable.
Mountains.
Mountains everywhere.
But they weren't mountains.
Those things... those massive structures standing around him, ranging in height from dozens to hundreds of meters... indeed resembled mountain ranges in appearance, with conical outlines and upward-tapering slopes. But their surfaces weren't rock.
Not dirt.
Not any geological structure Malfoy had ever seen on Earth.
They were purple.
A deep, dark purple bearing a faint fluorescence.
That color wasn't painted on, but the color of the material itself... like the shell of some living, breathing organism.
Malfoy was about two hundred meters away from the nearest "mountain."
Even from this distance, he could clearly see the surface details of that structure...
A honeycomb.
The surface of that hundreds-of-meters-high purple megastructure was densely covered with hexagonal holes.
The diameter of each hole was about two to three meters, arranged extremely neatly, the spacing between each almost perfectly identical.
From the depths of every hole, a faint, pulsing, dark purple light emanated... the frequency of that light wasn't constant, but flickered on and off at a slow rhythm, similar to a heartbeat.
It wasn't just one.
It was dozens.
Hundreds.
In every direction Malfoy's field of vision could reach, these purple, honeycomb-like megastructures were lined up, extending all the way to the end of the horizon.
The gaps between them were filled with smaller, more irregularly shaped purple structures... some looked like some kind of piping system extending from the base of one megastructure, winding its way to connect to the side of another; some looked like some kind of sac-like storage structure hanging on the surface of the megastructures, like giant mushrooms growing on a tree trunk.
The ground wasn't dirt either.
Malfoy looked down at the "ground" beneath the large purple web under his feet.
It was a hard surface with a texture similar to a carapace... dark purple, slightly reflective, covered with irregular patterns and protrusions.
Between the gaps of certain protrusions, a dark green, viscous liquid seeped out, forming tiny streams on the ground that flowed slowly along the patterns on the carapace surface.
The air was warm.
Much warmer than an April morning in Britain.
The temperature was roughly between thirty-five and thirty-eight degrees Celsius, the humidity extremely high; when breathing, one could feel the moist air condensing into tiny water droplets in the alveoli.
The air was permeated with a rich, complex odor composed of a mixture of various organic substances... the earthy smell of mushrooms, the sweetness of resin, a pungent, spicy smell similar to insect pheromones, and a faint sour smell of humus that made Malfoy's stomach churn once again.
The sky overhead...
No.
There was no sky.
Malfoy looked up; the position where the sky should have been was covered by a massive dome composed of purple organic matter. That dome was at least a thousand meters above the ground, but under the illumination of sunlight... the light seeped in through certain semi-transparent, membrane-like areas on the dome... it cast large-area shadows with a purple hue, enveloping the entire space in an eerie, dark purple illumination somewhere between daylight and dusk.
Malfoy's mouth finally closed.
Then opened again.
"What... what the hell is this place...!"
His voice echoed briefly in this alien space composed of organic carapaces and honeycomb megastructures, most of the soundwaves absorbed by those purple surfaces, leaving only a muffled echo like speaking in an empty cave.
Jerry stood beside him.
He didn't know when he had started standing there... perhaps he had already taken his position while Malfoy was still sprawled on the large purple web struggling to digest the scene before his eyes.
There were no signs of disarray on his clothes or hair, as if that spatial jump that nearly made Malfoy throw up was just walking on flat ground for him.
"-17," Jerry said. "That world your dad wants to buy."
Malfoy's brain stalled for a moment.
-17.
Apollo's former territory.
Sunstone veins.
Conservatively estimated at three thousand tons of reserves.
His gaze once again swept over those purple honeycomb megastructures surrounding them... those hundreds-of-meters-high organic mountains densely covered in hexagonal holes, looking like they were built by some living giant insect.
"Where are the Sunstones?" Malfoy's voice was a bit weak. "Where are the mineral veins? Where is Apollo's temple?"
"Eaten."
Jerry's tone was as flat as saying "The breakfast bacon was eaten."
"All of it?"
"All of it. Even a third of the crust was eaten. The original surface no longer exists... this thing you're standing on now is newly grown."
Malfoy looked down at the layer of dark purple carapace ground beneath his feet.
That wasn't "ground."
That was... the shell... of some kind of creature?
His stomach churned again.
"What exactly are these things..."
An extremely deep, near-infrasonic roar came from beneath their feet.
The entire carapace ground produced a faint tremor in that instant... as if something extremely massive in volume were moving beneath the ground. That tremor transmitted along the patterns on the carapace surface to the soles of Malfoy's feet, making his knees bend involuntarily.
In the distance, at the base of a honeycomb megastructure about five hundred meters away, a hole at least ten meters in diameter slowly opened.
The edge of the hole was composed of some muscle-like tissue, like an opening eye... or a mouth.
From that hole, a humanoid figure walked out.
Malfoy narrowed his eyes.
That humanoid figure walked in their direction.
The pace wasn't fast, but the distance covered by each step was larger than a normal human's... roughly 1.5 times an ordinary stride.
As the distance shortened, Malfoy gradually saw clearly the details of that humanoid figure.
It was a woman.
...Or rather, something that looked like a woman.
She was very tall.
A little over 1.8 meters, half a head taller than Malfoy.
Her build was extremely slender, the proportions of her limbs deviating slightly from human standards... her arms were about ten centimeters longer than a normal person's, her fingers also thinner and longer, the tips slightly curving into hook shapes.
Her skin was light purple.
Not the purple of sickness or hypoxia... but an even, healthy lavender purple with a faint luster.
The texture of that layer of skin was somewhere between human skin and a certain high-grade carapace... most areas were as soft as a human's, but on the shoulder blades, the outside of the forearms, and the shinbone area of the calves, there were several distinct, deep purple chitinous hard plates covering them, like naturally grown armor.
Her face...
Malfoy sucked in a breath of cold air.
That face was beautiful.
Beautiful to a degree that short-circuited a human's aesthetic system.
The proportions of her facial features were as precise as if calculated with a mathematical formula... a high, straight nose bridge, slightly upturned corners of the mouth, a perfectly curved jawline.
But on this face that could be called perfect, a few details exposed her non-human nature.
Her eyes.
There was no white of the eye.
The entire eyeball, from the cornea to the sclera, was completely covered by a deep purple iris with golden radiating lines.
The pupils were vertical slits... narrower and deeper than Catherine's feline pupils... contracting into two nearly invisible thin slits in the sunlight.
When those eyes looked at you, they produced an illusion of "being scanned by X-rays"... as if she wasn't looking at your surface, but at the structure of every single cell in your body.
Her hair... if it could be called "hair"... was composed of hundreds of extremely fine, dark purple tentacle-like threads. Every single thread possessed a faint capacity for autonomous movement, slowly squirming, intertwining, and separating even in a windless environment. The overall effect looked like a cascading waterfall of deep purple long hair, but if one observed closely, they would find the ends of those "hair strands" occasionally curling up, as if detecting something in the air.
On both sides of her ears grew a pair of slender, backward-curving keratinous protrusions... looking a bit like insect antennae styled into hair accessories. The surface of that pair of protrusions was covered with a deep purple texture of the same color as her body carapace, the ends slightly bifurcated.
She wore...
To be precise, her body was covered with a layer of covering composed of some organic material, clinging tightly to her skin. The color of that covering was two shades darker than her skin, presenting a deep tone close to black-purple.
Its coverage area was evidently meticulously designed... the chest area only covered the necessary parts, leaving large areas of light purple skin exposed on her collarbones, shoulders, and waist/abdomen, while the lower half was a pair of long trousers made of the same material, fitting so tightly one could see the outline of every muscle.
She was barefoot. The skin on the soles of her feet was a deep purple hard carapace; every step left a shallow, patterned imprint on the ground.
She walked up to Jerry.
The instant those purple eyes covered in golden radiating lines looked at Jerry, a minute change occurred on that perfect face that was cold to the point of being almost inorganic... the corners of her mouth turned up one millimeter.
"Master."
Her voice sounded like two people speaking at the same time. One voice was a normal, crisp female vocal line, and the other voice lay at its base—deep, vibrating, carrying a certain infrasonic resonance transcending the frequency of soundwaves, inducing a physical trembling in Malfoy's chest cavity.
She bowed slightly; that bowing motion was elegant to a degree a non-human creature shouldn't possess... her spine remained ramrod straight, merely tilting fifteen degrees from the waist up, her head slightly lowered, those purple tentacle-hair strands cascading down the sides of her face like a waterfall during the bowing motion.
Jerry reached out his hand, gently patting the spot between that pair of keratinous antennae on the top of her head.
"Mmh. Have you eaten your fill?"
That way of asking... that casual tone, like asking a pet cat if it had eaten dinner... caused a severe logical conflict in Malfoy's brain in that instant.
She straightened up.
"The main body has completed the digestion of thirty-seven percent of the original planetary crust.
The Sunstone veins were processed with priority, conversion rate ninety-nine point three percent.
The remaining zero point seven percent of impurities are undergoing secondary decomposition in the secondary digestive cavity."
Her voice lacked any emotional fluctuation when stating these data... like a precision instrument reading out a report.
But after finishing stating the data, her line of sight shifted slightly, moving from Jerry's face to the section of collarbone exposed by his open shirt collar, lingering for zero point five seconds, and then moving back to his eyes.
"The Sunstones have been entirely converted into biomass energy.
The total biomass of the Hive has increased by twelve percent.
The newly hatched drone units exceed four hundred thousand."
Malfoy's knees went weak.
Three thousand tons of Sunstones.
A theoretical value of one hundred and fifty billion gold Galleons.
Eaten.
Eaten by this... this... thing he didn't even know what to call. Converted into something called "biomass energy."
And then hatched four hundred thousand...
"Drone units?" Malfoy's voice squeezed out from his throat.
That humanoid female's purple gaze panned over to Malfoy.
The weight of that gaze made Malfoy's spine run cold section by section from top to bottom. The way she looked at him wasn't like looking at a person... more like looking at a piece of unclassified organic matter, currently evaluating its nutritional value and difficulty of digestion.
"The basic labor unit of the Hive," she said. "Responsible for gathering, construction, transportation, and primary defense. Average body length four point two meters, carapace hardness..."
"Enough, enough." Jerry waved his hand.
He turned his head to look at Malfoy.
Malfoy's face had already gone from pale to green.
His lips were trembling slightly; his platinum-blonde hair had completely fallen apart from the high-altitude drop and the web bouncing just now, hanging in strands over his forehead and cheeks.
His robes were covered in the mucus from that large purple web; the shoelace on one leather shoe was loose, and the other leather shoe still had a piece of purple organic residue of unknown origin stuck to it.
That humanoid female with light purple skin standing in front of Jerry slightly tilted her head... that action carried a certain deliberate cuteness shaped by Jerry's aesthetic preferences... and then looked back at Jerry.
"Is what Master brought... food?"
Malfoy's face went from green to white.
"No." Jerry patted the top of her head. "A guest. Don't scare him."
The corners of her mouth turned up another millimeter.
"Yes, Master."
Those purple tentacle-hair strands hung submissively under Jerry's palm; a few strands at the ends wrapped around his wrist, like a sea anemone acting spoiled with its tentacles.
Malfoy stood rooted to the spot, his legs weak, his gaze wandering among those hundreds-of-meters-high purple honeycomb megastructures.