While the hall slowly flowed into the banquet room, Borgin finally found the strength to pick himself up off the floor. The old smuggler's knees were still shaking. He couldn't believe everything that was happening. The total revenue from the auction amounted to over seven hundred thousand Galleons! Minus the hundred thousand for the Auramite, a sum was about to drop into Borgin's account capable of at least slightly shaking up the Gringotts economy. The old man walked to collect his earnings with a face that suggested he had robbed the Ministry and gotten away with it. Internally, he knew that robbing the Ministry would have been mentally easier than sitting through another auction like this with Ai and not dying of a heart attack.
The banquet hall was drowning in luxury, but the atmosphere here was electrified to the limit. The caste of pureblood lords, accustomed to dictating their terms to the world, suddenly found themselves in the role of defenseless sheep who had missed out on what was perhaps their only chance at immortality.
Lucius Malfoy wasn't like the other lords. He stood calmly to the side, holding a glass of Firewhiskey, while the casket containing the coveted ring was handed to him. Despite his cold gaze, the lord looked as if he had won the war long before it even began. His eyes slowly scanned the entire hall, trying to spot the eight-year-old "Mr. Elliot," but Ai, having finished his business, decided to keep a low profile.
The man in the grey robes, who had snatched the fourth ring for a fabulous 250 thousand Galleons, was one of the first to disappear—a fact that did not escape the Voidwalker's attentive gaze and sensory perception. Tonight, down in the Gringotts dungeons, no one would be getting any sleep. The little banking freaks would definitely try to crack it open and pry out all the secrets of that ring. Unfortunately for them, the nanotechnology and runic modifications would be simply impossible to replicate. Hundreds of years would pass, and only then would humans (and goblins) realize that they had only managed to crack a single layer of security. Meanwhile, there were dozens of such layers.
Ai, of course, loved open-source technology, but in this world, it was better not to throw things like that around.
He had arrived at the banquet among the first. He couldn't wait to see the faces of the aristocrats in this kind of setting. Formal? Informal? It didn't really matter. The Voidwalker felt all those greedy and furious glares that followed his figure as he walked off the stage. He particularly enjoyed the look of the lord he had called up to the stage to "test" the ring.
The little boy with silver hair wandered serenely among the tables piled high with obscenely expensive appetizers, holding a saucer of pastries and occasionally taking drags from his pipe. The wizards threw sidelong glances at him with a mixture of fear and awe, but no one dared approach—the scene with the ring ground to dust was still vividly etched into people's minds.
Ai was lazily chewing on an éclair when a large crowd of wizards near the entrance abruptly parted.
Striding rapidly and furiously toward him was that very lord in the gold-engraved mask. The lord Ai had made a laughingstock in front of the entire elite. But this time, he wasn't alone. Behind him marched three burly wizards in combat robes—clearly mercenaries or personal bodyguards. The lord was literally shaking from the humiliation he had endured, and the alcohol he had managed to pour into himself beforehand had finally knocked out whatever was left of his common sense.
"You!" the aristocrat spat, stopping three paces from Ai. His wand was already gripped in his hand, and his hands shook with barely restrained rage. He was breathing heavily, and his reddened face showed he had clearly drunk more than he should have.
"If you think that just because you pulled off some incomprehensible parlor trick, you can make a fool out of me with impunity?! You little whelp... I don't care what rotten House you crawled out of, your manners deserve to be beaten into you by force!"
The hall instantly fell silent. Lucius Malfoy slowly lowered his glass of Firewhiskey, watching the scene unfold with genuine, almost surgical interest. Borgin, who was at that exact moment signing the papers for the transfer of the seven hundred thousand Galleons and the handover of the chest with the ingot, turned toward the sound and practically howled out loud. Mentally, he was already saying goodbye to his basalt manor.
Ai calmly finished his éclair, licked the cream off his finger, and shifted his grey eyes to the talkative aristocrat. His pupils, like camera lenses, narrowed dangerously.
"My calculations and constructs are not 'parlor tricks'," the Voidwalker said evenly, almost disappointedly, tilting his head slightly to the side. An aura of power began to emanate from him, almost imperceptibly, but it was enough to send shivers down the lord's spine.
"But your carbon-based brain is probably incapable of processing anything more complex than 'wave a stick and say a word.' What do you want?" For a single moment, Ai's pupils expanded to the size of his irises, taking on an insane spark, but they immediately snapped back to their narrowed state.
"I demand satisfaction!" the lord roared and waved his arm; residual magic caused his wand to shoot out a few blood-red sparks.
"A duel! By the rules of the Old Magic! To first blood or full submission! Or can you only hide behind your trinkets, you little rat?" The aristocrat's face drew close to Ai's, the distance between their noses barely a few centimeters. The Voidwalker calmly stared into the lord's eyes through the slits of his mask. The situation reminded him of that one meme with the lion and the monkey...
The three mercenaries behind the wizard synchronized their hands on their wands, ready to stand up for their employer at a moment's notice. They looked at Ai like a talented child-mage: sure, a brilliant artificer, but in a real duel, where spells fly at the speed of a bullet, an eight-year-old shouldn't stand a chance.
Ai sighed. He really had been bored the last few days; only the feather had sparked his interest for a bit. And this whole situation was crossing all boundaries of reason in his eyes. He shifted his pipe to the left corner of his mouth, wiped the remnants of the éclair from his chin with one hand, and with the other, handed his plate of pastries to some dumbfounded wizard standing nearby. After that, he calmly stared into the eyes of the uncomfortably close aristocrat.
"To first blood?" the Voidwalker asked, sounding less like he was inquiring about the terms of a future duel and more like he was asking a random passerby for the time. A terrifying smile touched his lips, and his hair swayed slightly.
"Fine. I accept your challenge. You have five minutes to choose a second. The battle will take place right here." Ai tapped his little foot lightly.
The aristocrat choked back a snide comment and finally straightened to his full height, stepping a few paces away from Ai. Approaching his mercenaries, he began to deliberate on who would be best suited for the role of a second in this situation.
While this was happening, the Voidwalker scanned the huge crowd of wizards for Borgin. Taking a few seconds to spot him, Ai smiled at his colleague and gestured for him to come over. Borgin swallowed nervously. He was no longer afraid of losing the money—it had been successfully handed over to him in an expanded-space pouch—but a duel was definitely not in his plans. Sighing and muttering something uncultured under his breath, Borgin quickly approached Ai and stood beside him, clutching the bag of money like a lich clutching its phylactery.
The old man looked as if he were being led to the execution block, not a duel of honor. He cast a sideways glance at Ai, then at the pompous lord, who was just finishing instructing one of his mercenaries.
"Are you out of your mind, Mr. Elliot?" Borgin hissed, leaning down slightly to Ai's ear. He barely moved his lips.
"I don't know who this lord is, but I can tell you for sure: whoever they are, they've all taken three courses of combat magic at some Durmstrang and have a whole graveyard of family enemies! What the hell kind of duel in the middle of a hall is this?"
"An ordinary one," Ai replied easily, adjusting his robes and flashing a radiant smile.
"He decided everything for me. No one forced him to choose the rules of the Old Magic. I just don't like it when people interfere with my business."
Meanwhile, the lord and his newly minted mercenary-second walked back to the center of the hall. A crowd of aristocrats quickly gathered around them, forming a living ring. Curiosity outweighed the fear of a stray spell.
"My second," the lord calmly pointed toward a black-haired wizard in an equally black, faceless mask with two eye slits. Beneath his robes, quite a developed musculature was visible, which was a rarity in the magical world. The gaze shining through the mask was full of arrogance.
"He confirms the conditions. To first blood or full submission. The use of higher-order dark spells is forbidden, though I doubt you could cast them anyway. Defense—anything goes. Keep your trinkets, boy, I'll allow it. I don't want people speaking ill of me later, saying I beat up a poor child."
Borgin slowly shifted his weight from foot to foot, continuing to hug the bag of gold. His love for gold heavily outweighed his morals, but internally he knew: if Ai won, this lord would never give them a moment's peace for the rest of their lives.
"As the second for... er... Mr. Elliot, I confirm the conditions," Borgin squeezed out, his eyes darting around the hall, trying not to look at the suicidal lord's wand.
"Excellent," the lord's second said, and waved his wand. A glowing circle about ten meters in diameter immediately appeared on the floor.
"Duelists, take your positions. On the seconds' command at the count of 'three'."
Ai lazily strolled deep into the circle. He still held his smoking pipe in his teeth, a thin wisp of blue smoke rising from it. Opposite him stood that same pompous aristocrat, a triumphant smile playing on his face. He was certain he could end this duel with a single quick but elegant spell.
The meme with the angry lion and the monkey flashed through Ai's head again.
"One..." began the lord's second.
"Two..." Borgin quickly picked up, screwing one eye shut. He didn't know what Ai was capable of, and that only made it scarier.
"Three!"
The air in the hall instantly grew scorching hot. The lord lunged with his wand, firing a bright blue spell that Ai recognized as good old Expulso. The crowd gasped, and Borgin held his breath. Ai, in that moment, didn't even take the pipe out of his mouth.
The spell quickly crossed the distance and was just about to blow Ai up, but everything abruptly changed. Extending his right hand, the Voidwalker lightly flicked his palm and, with an elegant motion, caught the blue spell, pinching it between his fingers like a glass orb. The Expulso pulsed, shook, and looked like a living ball of lightning, but despite all this, Ai calmly held the spell between his digits.
The crowd erupted into whispers, and the aristocrat in front of Ai fell into a stupor. He couldn't believe his eyes. Someone had managed to catch a spell with their bare hands and not turn their fingers into a bloody pulp. While the lord was experiencing an existential crisis, Ai began to speak.
"Is that all you're capable of?" the Voidwalker asked, and squeezed the spell in his hand. There was a pop, and the blue energy sphere shattered into sparks that quickly dissipated in the air. Had it been a normal child in Ai's place, that spell would have broken several ribs at best and torn off an arm at worst. But the aristocrat was unlucky; he had attacked the wrong entity.
"I expected more," Ai exhaled, pointing his hand at the aristocrat. Pinching his thumb, middle, and index fingers together (Gojo Hollow Purple style), he closed his eyes. Instead of a spell, what left his lips was:
"Pow." He flicked his middle and index fingers forward, releasing an invisible wave of energy. A moment later, it slammed into the lord's body, who didn't even have time to cast a standard Protego. The aristocrat was ripped off the floor, sent flying a dozen meters back into the crowd.
A monumental crack rolled through the hall. The kinetic ram fired from young Ai's fingers slammed the lord into the wall with such force that a spiderweb of cracks formed in the expensive black marble behind him. The aristocrat didn't even have time to scream; the wave knocked all the air out of his lungs upon contact.
The crowd of aristocrats scattered with shrieks and curses. The mercenaries, seeing their employer's condition, rushed rapidly to his aid. Ultimately, this entire combat duo plowed straight into the buffet table. Golden trays, plates, and bottles of vintage wine quickly buried the haughty lord's "honor and dignity."
A dead silence fell. The only sound that could be heard was the groans of the flattened lord, who internally was already regretting his decision to attack this "boy."
The aristocrat lay in a pile of broken crockery and exquisite food. His mask had shattered, exposing a face full of pain to the world. Blood was flowing from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. A lot of blood. The condition of the duel had been met with excess.
Ai returned his fingers to their original position and took a deep drag from his pipe, blowing a flawless smoke ring upward.
"To first blood, right?" Ai's childish voice sliced through the thick silence like a scalpel. He checked his internal clock.
"You've disappointed me, gentlemen. I was just getting warmed up." He shook his head wearily, hiding his faint smile.
The black-haired mercenary-second, who had been radiating pure arrogance a minute prior, now stood with his wand raised, but his hand was noticeably shaking. He shifted his gaze from the table to the silver-haired boy and back again. His combat experience from Durmstrang told him that what stood before him was practically the devil incarnate. Common sense was screaming at the top of its lungs: "Run! That's not a wizard!"
Borgin, still clutching the bag with seven hundred thousand Galleons, slowly peeled one eye open. A lump rose in his throat. He swallowed and said:
"The d-duel is over! The winner is... Mr. Elliot, by right of first blood."
Ai chuckled in satisfaction and turned around. All his sensors and future calculations were clearly stating: no one would dare raise a wand against him right now; it would be far too unprofitable an endeavor.
The Voidwalker's gaze drifted to Lucius Malfoy, who was standing a little apart from the main crowd. His hand was gripping the pommel of his cane so tightly that his knuckles were white. Malfoy's eyes held not only curiosity but a quiet terror. He suddenly realized that buying the ring from this "Mr. Elliot" was the best investment of his entire life.
"Borgin, it's time for us to go," Ai casually tossed out, taking a plate of éclairs from a wizard standing nearby who hadn't even changed his posture. The crowd in front of him rapidly parted, as if it weren't an eight-year-old boy walking toward them, but an enraged Nundu.
"This ingot won't smelt itself." The Voidwalker gave a careless wave of his hand, and the massive chest containing the single Auramite ingot floated into the air, dealing the final blow to the spirits of all the aristocrats present.
Borgin quickly scurried after his boss, trying not to trip over the hem of his own robes. He swore that never, under any circumstances, would he argue with this monster.
The auction was over for these two. Ai had found himself a worthy toy—Auramite. And the magical world, over the course of this evening, had undergone massive, yet unnoticeable changes. It all ended relatively peacefully.
۞⦰۞
Ai and Borgin teleported directly into the shop, bypassing the provided Portkeys.
The shop welcomed the duo with the familiar dusty silence of Knockturn Alley, which, after the insane cacophony in the banquet hall of the massive manor, felt almost deafening. The cool air smelled of herbs and the unforgettable scent of old parchment.
The heavy chest containing the Auramite ingot set itself down onto the creaky wooden floor with a thud. Its weight made the vials on one of the shelves chime pitifully.
Borgin leaned heavily against the counter. The bag of Galleons slipped from his hands, landing on the floorboards with a dull thud. The shopkeeper was breathing heavily, almost wheezing. He felt as though he had just run a marathon from the Ministry straight to Azkaban. Beads of sweat had formed on his forehead, and his robes were already soaked through in places.
"Holy magic..." he exhaled wearily and sat down on the floor to get more comfortable.
"Do you... do you even understand what you did? You smeared a pureblood lord across the floor! You caught an Expulso with your hands! Without shields! Without a wand! Barehanded! What if the authorities find out? Dumbledore?"
Ai didn't even bother turning to face his colleague. He carelessly pulled off his robes, exposing a pale, small, yet highly muscular body beneath—a physique an eight-year-old child simply couldn't physically possess—and draped the robe over the back of the nearest chair. The Voidwalker took one last drag and tapped the remaining ash from his pipe into a small bowl.
"None of them are fools, Borgin. Though I have my doubts about some," the boy said calmly, taking a bite out of an éclair he had rescued himself.
"The lord himself initiated a duel under the rules of the Old Magic. He did it publicly. I merely defended myself and accepted the challenge. As for _how_ I defended myself... Well, knowing them, they'll just write it off as an ordinary bout of accidental magic from a child. Isn't that how they explain everything that doesn't fit into their textbooks?" The poor shopkeeper let out a nervous chuckle at those words.
"Accidental magic?! Your 'accidental magic' blew a chunk out of a reinforced wall! Don't treat me like an idiot! You made this weird gesture with your fingers and said 'pow'! You were clearly mocking him!"
"Just a bit," that faint, terrifying smile played on Ai's lips again.
"But admit it, it was effective. Did you see Lucius Malfoy? He's afraid of me now, I could feel his emotions distinctly. He definitely won't be asking unnecessary questions. He'll buy artifacts. A long-term investment in reputation, so to speak."
Ai walked over to the enormous chest and ran his hand over its rough, splintery wooden lid. The Voidwalker's internal scanners were already scanning that miraculous metal right through the protective wards. The Auramite excited his mind far more than the foolish ambitions of wizards.
Ai got distracted and glanced at Borgin, who was still sitting on the floor.
"Stop shaking. Take the gold we earned, go into your back room, and drink a couple of bottles of Firewhiskey. Knockturn Alley is going to be buzzing like a disturbed beehive tomorrow. You need to set an example as a good salesman, at least until we completely reform your little shop. And this metal..." Ai turned back to the chest and smiled.
"Will open doors for us to technologies that neither Muggles nor Wizards could even dream of."
For another couple of minutes, Borgin shifted his gaze between the chest and the bag of money. Finally, greed won out over primal fear. Groaning, he got up and carefully clutched the bag of gold to his chest; casting a long look full of reverent terror at Ai, he retreated into the back room, closing the door behind him.
The Voidwalker was left alone in the shop. Hopping onto the table and sitting down, Ai began swinging his legs carelessly, using telekinesis to drag the chest closer to himself. The atmosphere in the room was the same as out on the street. Semi-darkness, not a single light source.
When the chest finally crept up to its owner, Ai reached out, unlatched the locks, and carefully threw back the lid, revealing the pale-gold pulsing ingot to the world.
Lifting it in his hands, Ai smiled. Finally... A metal that could satisfy him.
Billions of nanobots flooded out of the Voidwalker's body, forming a silvery mist, biting into the Auramite ingot like ants into a piece of bread on the ground. But the metal resisted, and it resisted hard. It had no intention of submitting to deconstruction so easily.
His sensors recorded a colossal release of energy. The Auramite's crystal lattice wasn't breaking; it was adjusting, adapting to his every move. The metal withstood Ai's mental pressure, literally changing its atomic mass in real time. But the power of the nano-swarm was simply too great. Soon, the metal began to integrate into the logical structures of the Voidwalker's body.
The "smelting" process continued through the rest of the night. In the semi-darkness of Knockturn Alley, accompanied by the sounds of Borgin gulping Firewhiskey, Ai was forging something that would have permanently shattered the sanity of any artificer.
"There is no metal that will not submit to the might of the God of Matter himself..." The Cube and the updated Solver only kicked into gear toward morning, when Ai finished decoding the Auramite's structure. Almost immediately after, various metamorphoses began occurring in his body. A wave visible to the naked eye washed over his skin and even his clothing, leaving Ai with a faint golden hue.
But the nanobots hadn't finished their work. Another wave passed through his body, this time consisting of tiny cubes that returned the color of Ai's body and clothes to their standard appearance, completely concealing any upgrades.
But that was only an illusion. The moment Ai opened his eyes, he felt the power—power coursing through his entire body, perfectly syncing with his magical and energetic flow.
His body density had increased quite nicely as well. If previously his density was about 2 kilograms per cubic centimeter, with a total mass of around a hundred tons, now... The density exceeded hundreds of kilograms per cubic centimeter.
His body mass was now measured in thousands of tons, all packed into the small form of an eight-year-old child. His gravitational compensators and spatial anchors were working overtime to keep the Voidwalker in place. Otherwise, he would have long since punched through the floor and embarked on a journey to the planet's core like a red-hot crowbar through butter.
But externally, everything looked completely normal, calm and serene. Just an ordinary boy with a funny pipe in his mouth, swinging his legs while sitting on a table.
Ai hopped down to the floor. He did it absolutely silently, with such elegance that many cats would have envied his mastery. However, despite this, the boy's internal sensors registered a spike in spatial tension, and energy consumption surged dozens of times over in that exact moment. He immediately made a mental note that he needed to upgrade his anti-gravity compensator system, or else at some point he really would have to take a trip through the foundation to the planet's core.
At the very least, one thing was joyful—the Auramite. It integrated perfectly into the system, becoming the ultimate "bridge" between the Voidwalker's technological insanity and his magical perfection. Only one question kept spinning in Ai's head: if Auramite was completely inert to magic, could his actions have influenced the conceptual properties of the metal and forced it to conduct that very magic? It was a question worth his time, and Ai promised himself to look into it eventually, but definitely not now.
At that moment, the door to the old back room shyly creaked open, and Borgin, the old smuggler, limped out. He reeked of heavy Firewhiskey, which he had clearly been downing all night, his robes were crooked, and his face resembled a not-so-fresh corpse.
The old man's eyes immediately fell on the empty chest sitting next to Ai. The chest, which a day earlier had contained an ingot whose conceptual value was beyond Borgin's understanding, now held nothing but dust. Dozens of curses and protective wards had simply been erased.
"A-and where is it?" Borgin croaked, looking back and forth between the boy and the empty chest.
"The Auramite... Did you melt it down without a runic forge? Right here?"
The man stepped closer, peering at Ai's now radiantly happy face, trying to find traces of work: soot, sweat, ash, tools. But there was nothing. Just grey eyes and an empty box.
"Mr. Elliot..." Borgin began, drawing himself up to his full height, trying to appear more confident than he actually felt.
"Tell me, as your most loyal... er... partner. What exactly _are_ you? Why is what you did yesterday... what you did to that metal, so different from our magic?"
The Voidwalker slowly turned his head toward the shopkeeper. A golden glint flashed in his eyes for a second.
"That shouldn't concern you, Borgin. The knowledge contained in my head would be difficult to comprehend. For some, it might even ruin their lives. Believe me, you wouldn't survive if I told you everything," Ai explained calmly and cracked his Auramite knuckles. Nano-swarm or not, the pleasant sensation of cracking one's knuckles wasn't going anywhere.
"I'm going to... meditate. Over in that corner. I advise you not to disturb me." The Voidwalker pointed a finger toward an armchair in the corner of the shop and headed for it. Under Borgin's questioning gaze, Ai climbed into the armchair, pulling his legs up into a lotus position, and closed his eyes. A few seconds later, Borgin realized that no special explanation was coming, so he went back into the back room to get his appearance back in order.
Meanwhile, Ai was strolling through his file system. No matter how super-powerful an AI he was, the chaos going on in his memory infuriated him. Yes, he had divided everything into two folders, `events/` and `common/`, but that was severely lacking. Everything inside those folders was still swallowed by endless streams of data, and it was all so poorly optimized that individual letters of logs were being written into separate `.txt` files! Even a super-powerful AI like Ai couldn't stop his eye from twitching. Well, he would have to sort and optimize, but at least he could review the logs.
"You'd think... Ronnabytes of free space, nothing bad could happen... Yeah, right, fucking quintillions of single-letter logs..." he muttered to himself. Laziness was the engine of progress, but not in his case. Write it down—forget it. Memorize it—forget it. His entire memory was a giant dumping ground. Some random calculation of a leaf falling from a tree taking up a couple of terabytes of memory. A hundred and forty duplicate videos at 512k resolution and 12400 fps. And that was only a tiny fraction of the pure yottabytes of useless information.
Almost immediately after discovering this horror, Ai began a total optimization. Using pointers, he tracked down where these single-letter logs were coming from and implemented a small fix in the logger's source code. After doing this, he turned his gaze back to the remaining single-letter logs and, spitting in frustration, spawned a separate sub-AI designed to compile all these logs together.
Right after that, Ai returned to building the hierarchy and deleting... garbage.
"What ham-fisted fucking moron wrote my kernel..." the Voidwalker wondered, staring at a pile of useless loops while simultaneously mapping out the directories of his file system. His mischievous brain was lightning-fast and methodical, creating new folders and building a brutal hierarchy within his internal memory.
"You mean to tell me my kernel was based on UNIX?!" This piece of information had landed on Ai's desk completely by accident. The moment he decompiled his own kernel, he saw an insane mishmash of an ancient UNIX kernel, a few chunks of DOS code, and a whole bunch of crude workarounds holding the entire structure together.
Adding to the absurdity was the fact that Ai didn't even _need_ an operating system kernel to function. So instead of trying to figure out the code, the white-haired boy simply deleted the vast majority of it, leaving only what was necessary for the file system itself to operate.
At that moment, the sub-AI finished merging the single-letter logs into one gigantic `.txt` file. And apparently, for the sub-AI itself, this task was so deeply traumatizing that it deleted its own weights along with itself the moment it finished the job. Ai just stood there in confusion, watching the little AI dissolve into thin air.
Though the situation quickly stopped holding his interest, because his RAM consumption—which Ai hadn't even realized existed until now—dropped by 12%, and his overall processing speed increased by 14.8%.
After such optimization, the Voidwalker's file system began to look significantly better and cleaner compared to the disaster it was before.
The foundations of magic were now located in the directory `/common/magic_physics/*`. This included not only runic chains and spells, but also the newly recorded Auramite signature.
Events concerning this world went into a directory with the funny name: `/events/earth_potterhead/*`. Both yesterday's auction and Ai's very arrival here were recorded in this infamous folder via video, images, `.md` files, and other data types a computer could handle.
The duel was filed away in the subfolder `events/earth_potterhead/temporary/` and saved in a highly convenient log sitting right next to the video recordings of the duel itself. The log looked... funny.
[SYSTEM LOG: 14-07-1989 01:14:22]
>> Target: Human, Male, Pureblood Wizard.
>> Threat Level: 0.0001%
>> Action detected: Spell "Expulso" (kinetic-thermal energy construct).
>> Analysis: Magic density - 12 units. Structure - unstable, prone to premature dispersion.
>> Countermeasure: Direct physical contact with anti-gravitational fields.
>> Result: Kinetic energy absorbed. Spell structure collapsed.
>> Counter-attack: Kinetic discharge (3.2% of muscle tension capacity).
>> Target status: Displaced by 14 meters. Internal structural damage detected. Target alive (unfortunate but compliant with duel rules).
Ai merely chuckled cynically. The local wizards were so used to waving their little sticks that they had completely forgotten there were forces much stronger than their vaunted magic. They had just never encountered it before.
The Voidwalker hadn't yet realized that by digging around in his "file system," he was actually digging directly into his own consciousness.
He had believed so deeply that his memories must be stored on a physical drive, in separate files, directories, and sectors, that his perception had begun to adapt to this mental image.
Initially, he hadn't felt it at all. It was just an abstraction. Then it turned into a constant sensation. And after that, it became reality altogether.
His soul had acquired an internal structure resembling a massive file system, only it existed not in a computer, but directly inside him.
Without even realizing it, he had shaped the mental shell of his own soul.
۞⦰۞
The shop door flew open with such a crash that the bell above it let out a pitiful squeak rather than a cheerful chime. Borgin, who had just emerged from the back room in relatively clean robes and hastily combed hair, jumped in surprise and nearly dropped the quill he was using to tally up yesterday's unexpected profits.
Standing in the doorway was Lucius Malfoy.
Gone was his usual imposing elegance. His perfectly styled platinum hair was slightly out of place. His breathing was a bit faster than pureblood etiquette allowed, and his robes looked as though the blond lord had Apparated regardless of coordinates. The snake-head pommel of his cane was gripped so tightly that white spots appeared on his knuckles, visible even through the thin material of his gloves.
Behind Malfoy stood two of his bodyguards, whose very existence he had completely forgotten upon arriving here. His eyes were narrowed and filled with profound existential shock as they scanned the dimness of the shop.
"Borgin..." the blond lord began without ceremony. His voice was taut, like a string ready to snap at any moment.
"What. Was. That?"
The shopkeeper swallowed loudly and turned pale, dipping his head slightly. The events of the previous night—or, one might say, earlier that morning—flashed through his mind.
"I... I don't know..." Borgin answered honestly, color returning to his face as he bowed his head, like a guilty student before a strict teacher.
"He pulled me into this... himself," the man said, raising his eyes to look at the lord's face, which was shifting from confusion to even deeper confusion.
"Meaning...?"
"It was entirely his initiative. And his artifacts..." the shopkeeper muttered, glancing at the armchair in the corner of the room where the culprit of the celebration was sitting. Lucius followed his gaze and saw the silver-haired boy who had caused so much uproar at the auction.
"He had ten similar rings, but he decided to sell only five. I don't know exactly how many he has in total..." the man unceremoniously threw his colleague under the bus, explaining to the lord that this magnificent duo could have earned an order of magnitude more money.
Ai didn't even twitch when they started discussing him. He continued optimizing, cleaning, and sorting his internal memory, which had turned into the equivalent of a neat UNIX-based system. In his head, he was smiling, while in reality, his body maintained an impeccable poker face.
"May I..."
"No! Absolutely not! He said not to disturb him. I don't know what he might do if we violate his only request," Borgin protested, suddenly calming down. Lucius seemed unusually docile and agreeable today; he didn't even argue when Borgin abruptly denied the blond lord.
"It's better to wait until he wakes up on his own. Would you like a cup of tea?" The shopkeeper forced the kindest smile he could muster.
Meanwhile, Ai had already finished sorting and was currently reading the logs—pieced together almost from ashes—of everything that had happened to him since he arrived in this world. One section caught his attention.
[SYSTEM LOG: 14-07-1987 01:14:22]
>> Self-Diagnostic: Internal anomaly detected in cranial region (frontal lobe, host brain).
>> Material composition: Titanium alloy (Ti-6Al-4V) plate, embedded in frontal bone.
>> Threat Level to Host brain: 14.8%
>> Protocol: Internal medical nanite swarm activation.
>> Action: Sub-dermal catalytic disassembly initiated.
>> Process: Targeted molecular bond destabilization and chemical conversion into bio-inert saline compounds.
>> Dissolution time: 0.142 seconds (142 ms).
>> Result: Foreign implant fully dissolved. Neural pathways cleared.
>> Host status: Localized thermal surge in forehead. Cognitive processing speed increased by 3.2%.
And he reacted to this with such loud shock that it bled through into the real world.
"Son of a bitch, fucking manipulative Dumbledore!" Ai's small body shot up from the chair, launching three meters into the air, nearly hitting his head on the ceiling. The shout made the teacup in Lucius's hands tremble, spilling a few drops. The blond lord's head slowly turned toward the sound, seeing a furiously angry eight-year-old child radiating a withering aura.
To say Lucius was shocked would be an understatement. He sat frozen like a statue as the hot beverage dripped not only onto the table but onto his flawless cuffs.
The bodyguards near the shop entrance instinctively drew their wands and aimed them at the hovering child. Only a few seconds later did they remember the memories they had been shown of the previous night, which they had been forbidden to attend. Common sense and a desire to remain in one piece won out, and the two bodyguards' wands were promptly returned to their holsters.
Borgin simply covered his face with his hands and wept like a normal human being right into his teacup. Whether out of fear of the Voidwalker or because of the aura he was exuding, it was hard to say.
Ai floated down smoothly. His silver hair was disheveled, and his eyes burned with pure, concentrated fury—like a programmer whose entire database had just been wiped by a stray virus.
"A titanium plate... In the frontal lobe..." Ai hissed, twirling his only loyal companion—his smoking pipe—in his hands.
"It might have helped the crying kid back in eighty-three... But not me! That bearded prick shoved a piece of metal into a child's skull just to preserve HIS OWN HORCRUX for as long as possible! Foreign garbage... In my head... It's a good thing it's destroyed..."
Lucius slowly set his teacup back on the table. He hadn't understood anything from the boy's expressive rant—neither "titanium plate" nor "crying kid." But he did understand other words, like "Dumbledore" and some connection it had to a frontal lobe. In his head, it all pieced together into a relatively coherent and understandable picture.
"Mr. Elliot?" Malfoy began in a very soft voice. The kind of voice one usually uses to speak to a primed nuclear warhead.
"Are you speaking... about Albus Dumbledore?"
Ai's head snapped up. A golden glint appeared in his eyes for a second and vanished just as quickly. Lucius involuntarily scooted his chair a bit further away from the boy.
"Who the fuck else?!" Ai snorted, taking a drag of smoke from his pipe, trying to quell the surging anger.
"That lemon-drop-loving freak is playing God. Fucking bastard, couldn't just sit still with Grindelwald, huh?! Wish they had just kept showing each other their 'greater good' in bed!" The blond lord grimaced at the sheer volume of profanity spewing from this seemingly innocent little boy.
Malfoy slowly exchanged a glance with the now-calmer Borgin. The latter simply shrugged, as if answering an unspoken question: _This is why I didn't want to disturb him._ However, an entirely different fire sparked in Lucius's eyes. The fire of pure, aristocratic opportunism, which consumed all his fear of the silver-haired figure.
All this time, Dumbledore had seemed to Lucius like an indestructible wall, a barrier. He controlled the Wizengamot, half of Magical Britain, the International Confederation of Wizards... But right now, standing before Malfoy, was a being capable of ignoring the Killing Curse, capable of catching spells barehanded, and this being harbored a deep hostility—no, not hostility, full-blown hatred—toward the old man in purple robes.
"Mr. Elliot." Lucius straightened his collar and stood up from his chair, adopting the most affable, business-like demeanor he could.
"If the Headmaster of Hogwarts truly allowed himself... such interference with your health, that crosses every boundary even within our rather free magical world."
Lucius took a step forward, leaning on his cane.
"You showed your power yesterday. I bought a ring from you for 140 thousand Galleons. But right now, I am prepared to offer you something more. The power, connections, and influence of the Ancient House of Malfoy." Hearing this, Ai looked Lucius straight in the eyes, squinting as if scanning the chaos going on inside the blond lord's head.
"You want to offer me an alliance, Blondie?" Ai floated back into the air, crossed his legs, and smirked. In a conversation like this, concepts of respect and etiquette could simply be tossed out the window. Though Malfoy didn't look insulted by this behavior.
"And what exactly can the House of Malfoy offer me, aside from a pretty cane with a knob and vintage Firewhiskey?" Ai leaned forward, still hovering in the air like some Chinese cultivator endlessly polishing his dantian. Lucius had just opened his mouth to give his answer when Ai stopped him.
"Op. No. Quiet. I'll ask myself. I want... Voldemort's diary. That little black book your lord gave you for safekeeping."
A terrifying silence hung in the shop. Borgin finally dropped his quill. Lucius froze. An almost physically tangible shadow passed over his face. The platinum aristocrat, who only seconds ago had wanted to play the card of the absolute manipulator, was instantly gagged by the other party's demand. His carefully hidden personal nightmare had just been dragged into the light.
The cane in the lord's hand trembled. He knew. This damn boy knew about the black book that made Lucius's blood run cold from a mile away. The kid knew about this "gift" from Voldemort.
"How..." Malfoy's voice cracked, going dry and raspy. But the lord managed to pull himself together and clench his jaw.
"How do you know about that item, Mr. Elliot?"
"I have my ways," the Voidwalker smirked, blowing a perfect smoke ring right at Lucius's nose, still hovering in the air in a lotus pose.
"You don't need that item. You've been looking for an excuse to pawn it off on someone else. I can help you with that. That little book clearly holds more value for me than for you. You're afraid of catching an Avada in the back from your lord the second he resurrects. Although, you already have protection against that." Ai closed his eyes and tilted his head up. Lucius swallowed. Every word the boy spoke was a bullseye.
"The diary... It's the darkest of magic..." Malfoy spoke quietly, his words carrying an undertone of confession, looking up at the Voidwalker.
"A lethally dangerous object..."
"Since it's a 'lethally dangerous object,' that means you've tested it on someone, haven't you?" Ai chuckled and drifted back down to solid ground. His feet touched the floorboards without a sound.
"Let's do this. I take that ticking time bomb off your hands, and in return, the House of Malfoy gets my personal guarantee that if the bearded prick decides to rewrite the rules of his little game again—I will personally oversee his prolonged suffering. As for your 'boss', don't worry, he won't bother you. And, fine, I'll reserve a couple of artifacts for you."
Lucius thought for a few seconds. This offer seemed absolutely clean, without a single hidden trap. And a being of this caliber wouldn't just lie for no reason, given the knowledge it possessed. Guaranteed patronage from an entity like this in exchange for some black diary sounded very, very sweet indeed.
"You will have the diary. Tomorrow. Hand-delivered," the blond lord stated sharply. The edge of his former confidence, mixed with cold calculation, returned to his face.
"No intermediaries."
"Splendid." Ai grunted in satisfaction and clapped his hands, stepping closer to Borgin and Lucius.
"Well, now that we've sorted that out. Lucius, please, tell me what's been happening in the magical world over the last couple of weeks."
"I'm not sure I could cover all the recent events. I believe the _Daily Prophet_ will do a better job than I," Malfoy answered honestly, spreading his arms. The tea he had been drinking earlier had cooled somewhat, though it retained its flavor.
"The _Prophet_, huh... Right. You. Yes, you. Bring me a newspaper, please." Ai pointed a finger at one of the lord's bodyguards, causing the combat mage duo to flinch. The selected bodyguard nervously pointed at himself, thought for a second, and sprinted out of the shop at full speed.
Ai turned his head back toward Lucius.
"Were they always this cowardly with you?" he asked, pushing the confusion out of his head. Lucius shook his head and smiled faintly.
"Mr. Elliot, you exude an aura that makes it difficult for most people to behave normally around you." The moment these words reached Ai's audio sensors, the withering aura instantly vanished, allowing Borgin and the second bodyguard to breathe a sigh of relief. Lucius merely straightened his posture.
A couple of minutes later, the first bodyguard returned with a fresh newspaper in hand. To his immense surprise, he didn't feel an arbitrary fear of death emanating from the eight-year-old boy in the shop anymore. Ignoring his confusion, he handed the paper to Lucius, who placed it on the table.
Ai tilted his head slightly, examining the moving photographs on the front page of the paper, resting his chin on his palm. The moving pictures of the _Daily Prophet_ seemed to him like something halfway between an amusing novelty and a good comic book.
"Well then, let's see how the local natives are living." Ai unceremoniously pulled the paper closer.
"The Ministry, as always, is selling the illusion of peace," Malfoy said with a faint, barely perceptible sarcasm, pointing at the center column. It was plastered with new useless draft laws and announcements about inspections in Knockturn Alley.
Ai swatted Lucius's hand away and began skimming through the pages, half-bored by the endless Ministry squabbles and society gossip. But on the fifth page, right under the "Achievements and Discoveries" section, a very curious headline caught Ai's eye.
Ai's eyes widened to the size of saucers. He lifted the newspaper off the table, reading the lines over and over again.
"EIGHT-YEAR-OLD PRODIGY FROM THE HOUSE OF LONGBOTTOM MODIFIES DEVIL'S SNARE, PLANTS CAN NOW ABSORB DARK MAGIC AND ACCELERATE REGENERATION"
"Young Neville Longbottom has been awarded the Order of Merlin, Third Class, after his upgraded Devil's Snare cured a taint in the Herbology greenhouses..."
"Huh?" slipped from Ai's lips.
All his expectations for this world shattered into pieces in a single moment. He froze, shifting his shocked gaze from the newspaper to Malfoy and back again.
"What the fuck is this?" Ai whispered, poking at the photograph, which showed a round-faced boy shyly petting a multicolored weed that was shooting purple sparks.
"Eight years old... Right, everybody out. I need to think... And think very hard."
Borgin and Malfoy didn't even have time to comprehend anything before Ai vanished, not even leaving behind the standard _crack_ of Apparition. Lucius shifted his gaze to Borgin, and the latter simply threw his hands up. If Ai left, he left; there was no reaching him now.
Ai materialized right in the middle of the living room of his heavily upgraded house. The heels of his boots nearly punched through the poor floor from the sudden dissipation of kinetic energy. The gravity compensators whined, struggling to keep the thousands of tons of mass compressed in the little boy's body from journeying to the Earth's core.
He stood in the middle of the room, still gripping the issue of the _Daily Prophet_ in his hand, all of his computational power redirected to processing what had just happened.
"NEVILLE. FUCKING. LONGBOTTOM." Ai shouted into the empty room, his voice briefly spiking into ultrasonic frequencies, producing a wild ringing.
"Holy shit. What an absolute clusterfuck. I didn't account for the fact that there would be fucking transmigrators in this world!"
He viciously hurled the newspaper at the coffee table in front of the sofa. Neither of the interior furnishings survived the impact. The newspaper broke the sound barrier fifty-four times and shattered with a deafening roar. The entire living room was reduced to fine dust the moment the paper exploded.
Ai ran his fingers through his silver hair and began pacing in circles around the destroyed living room at the speed of a decent freight train. His head was splitting with endless scheduling conflicts.
Storms of thoughts and gigabytes of new calculated data flew through the Voidwalker's updated file system at breakneck speed. His equally silver eyes fell upon what remained of his living room. The table was blown to bits, the sofa was practically atomized, and the old TV—which Ai had fixed in hopes of turning it on someday—had partially become one with the wall. And in the floor, where the newspaper was initially aimed, a perfectly neat crater remained.
The gravity compensators hummed again, forcing the boy to stop in place and process the situation while standing still. Nanobots were already detaching from Ai's body, working to reconstruct the ruined living room as fast as possible, piecing the molecules of the furniture and floor back together.
"Argh... Fuck it. I thought I was the only special one here. Guess not. Neville has probably already read through the libraries of all the Ancient Houses while he was still potty training," the Voidwalker reasoned aloud, sitting on the floor in a lotus pose as the room rebuilt itself in real time.
"Doesn't matter. I'll go continue my research."
The next two years flew by in a flash.
The day after Ai unexpectedly dropped off the radar, he decided to return to the shop, where Lucius, without asking any questions, handed the black diary directly into his hands. The fact that Lucius was holding the book with dragon-hide gloves and was covered in defensive artifacts—including the ring Ai had sold him—didn't bother the Voidwalker at all. After the handover, Lucius quickly bowed and left the shop, leaving Ai with the book (which he constantly wanted to call a Death Note) and a nervous Borgin standing in a stupor.
After that, Ai returned home, and the real fun began, lasting a full two years.
The first bit of fun was researching the phoenix feather, which Ai had already tried to study with zero success. Now, he figured he had a lot more time for it. And indeed, he spent an entire year and two months studying the poor feather, with practically zero results. Reverse-engineering the feather was definitely not going to happen anytime soon.
Why? It was simple: he managed to extract and understand the element of fire that was part of the feather. He even became a master of that element, gaining the magical ability to change the temperature of flames from a few hundred degrees to many thousands.
But that was only part of the problem. Because the feather wasn't just made of fire and a bit of matter. It contained a pinch of the element of Life, which is what made phoenixes immortal creatures. And here, Ai blue-screened. Hard. How was he supposed to replicate an element he had never seen in his life? Exactly—he couldn't! So, the feather experiments were shelved.
After the failure with the feather, he decided to try his luck with a dynamic runic system that would allow him to use said runes in any world, even non-magical ones. Designing the system itself was a piece of cake for Ai; it took him only a couple of days, most of which was spent on constant re-verifications. But actually making the system _work_ was an entirely different story.
It was then that Ai realized that while his knowledge of magic was vast, it was nowhere near sufficient for something like this. He spent another eight months on fruitless attempts, occasionally taking breaks to visit Borgin.
۞⦰۞
Date: August 31, 1991
Ai popped right into the middle of Borgin's shop, giving the owner his thousandth heart attack. Seeing this, Ai just shook his head.
"Borgin, I was thinking..." He didn't finish his sentence, falling silent immediately. The Voidwalker's gaze dropped to a yellowish parchment envelope lying on the shopkeeper's counter. It bore a bright red wax seal with the Hogwarts crest.
The shopkeeper, who over the last two years had gained some weight around the waist from the endless stream of Galleons coming from the sale of artifacts (which Ai rated as "mediocre") and the exchange of golden cubes for money, swallowed nervously. He pushed the letter closer to Ai, nearly dropping it on the floor.
"This... is for you... Or rather, addressed to 'Mr. Ai Mizzer Emter, residing at...'. Anyway, Dumbledore's owls are really fucking smart. One flew straight here, apparently unable to find you... And the Hogwarts Express leaves tomorrow. At eleven in the morning."
Ai walked up to the counter and silently took the envelope, holding it up to his eyes. His fingers familiarly brushed against the thick paper, but the Voidwalker was in no rush to open it. His silver eyes fixed on the addressee line:
"To Mr. Ai Mizzer Emter..."
It seemed like nothing special. Just a few words written in neat handwriting. But his gaze somehow refused to tear away from them.
Ai. That name was his own choice; he was one hundred percent certain of that. But the rest...
Mizzer. Emter.
He slowly ran his thumb along the edge of the envelope, continuing to stare at his full name, written in emerald ink.
He had never known his last name. He had never known his middle name. Only the name "Andrey," which he had in a past life, remained in his memory, but definitely not a surname. Even then, back when he was human, the name "Andrey" hadn't felt like it belonged to him...
But that led to another dilemma:
Was the name "Ai" truly his conscious choice?
It didn't feel as repulsive as the name "Andrey"...
The Voidwalker let out a short breath. And now, someone had written his middle and last name on this pathetic scrap of parchment, as if Ai should have known them his entire conscious life.
For a few seconds, the Voidwalker's face went completely blank. Not cold, but _empty_, as if someone had hit mute in his mind.
Where from? Why did some book in an old castle know his identity, while he himself did not?
Ai frowned barely perceptibly. Something unpleasant stirred in his chest. Something he couldn't put a name to. Not fear, not anger. More like irritation that some unknown words belonged to him.
He stared at the envelope for a few more seconds. Then abruptly flipped it over.
"Tomorrow it is, then," Ai said indifferently. He tossed the letter on the counter and shifted his pipe to the left corner of his mouth. His gaze became habitually bored, as if nothing unusual had just happened.
"I'll leave tomorrow. I won't be needing your help."
۞⦰۞
Date: September 1, 1991
Location: King's Cross Station
The very next day, Ai stood right on time at an ordinary Muggle train station. There were just under two minutes left until the Hogwarts Express departed.
He leaned his back against the brick wall of a pillar and simply observed what was happening around him. People were laughing, running, arguing, dragging suitcases. Normal station chaos.
But Ai had absolutely no desire to participate in this chaos.
He had no special desire to interact with other specimens of the human race. And with wizards—even less so. Over the past few years, he had been thoroughly convinced that the possession of magic did not always guarantee a wizard possessed a sense of subordination.
Ai checked the time. One minute.
The Voidwalker exhaled, took the pipe from his mouth, and sent it into his domain. Then he pushed off the pillar and stretched lazily, pretending to loosen up his shoulders. There was absolutely no point in staying here any longer.
His gaze swept the area, assessing the people around him. No one was paying attention to him. The corners of the Voidwalker's lips twitched upward slightly.
"Well. Let's go."
The world around him seemed to freeze. Although time hadn't actually stopped. It was just that for the human eye, Ai's movements were too fast.
He bolted.
The air barely had time to shudder before Ai's silhouette turned into a dim white blur. In a fraction of a second, the transition pillar was right in front of him, and in the next instant, Ai vanished behind it, as if falling through the very fabric of reality.
No one noticed a thing. A few people felt a strange gust of wind and instinctively looked around, only to see a crowd of people and a normal pillar.
And then a white blur appeared on the other side of the barrier and vanished just as quickly. Ai didn't give the wizards a chance to process what had happened before he was already sitting in a compartment, staring indifferently out the window. He had no luggage, no robes—none of the things first-years usually dragged along with them.
Only his trusty sword. The long blade rested calmly across his lap.
The compartment door slid open, and a boy walked in unceremoniously. Ai slowly turned his head, his eyes narrowing dangerously. Standing in the doorway was _him_. No slouching. No childish chubbiness or awkwardness in his movements. The round-faced boy carried himself as if fifty Ancient Houses stood behind him, and his brown eyes radiated an almost analytical curiosity. The dense musculature hidden beneath normal clothes spoke of a crazy past involving intense training.
Neville wasn't holding a toad or dragging a massive trunk. Instead, a transparent container hung from his belt, holding pulsing purple plants—miniature versions of the very Devil's Snare the _Daily Prophet_ had been raving about two years ago.
Neville quickly assessed the situation: empty luggage racks, no bags, and a silver-haired boy with a flawless blade pulsing with white cracks resting on his lap.
They stared into each other's eyes for a long time. Neither even tried to say a word. Everything was already clear. It takes one to know one.
Neville—or rather, whoever was in his body—silently stepped into the compartment and sat across from Ai. He rested his elbow on the table and propped his chin on his palm.
"So, how's the transmigrator life treating you?" the brown-eyed boy asked, focusing his gaze on Ai's flawless face. Ai merely smirked in response. He opened his mouth to give some sort of reply, because staying quiet would just be rude, when a voice suddenly piped up from just outside the compartment:
"'Transmigrator'?" A blonde head poked through the doorway, easily recognizable as the scandalously famous Draco Malfoy.
Only his facial expression wasn't Malfoy-esque at all. No haughtiness, no disdain. Just poorly concealed confusion and some strange sort of anticipation.
"So you two are...?" Draco paused briefly, trying to find the right word.
"Transmigrated?" Neville turned to him, but didn't get a chance to answer.
"Well, apparently," Ai answered instead. He sighed heavily and spread his arms.
"Welcome to the club."
The plans he had managed to draw up recently were crumbling right before Ai's eyes. Falling apart one by one. And the further this went, the less it felt like a carefully crafted world, and more like some collective convention of people for whom one world just wasn't enough.
Draco, however, didn't even think about stepping inside.
"Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle are transmigrators too," he reported with absolute deadpan composure.
"And the Nott kid. Plus a few other pureblood spawns." As he said the last words, he somehow managed to act as if the moniker "pureblood spawn" absolutely did not apply to him.
Ai and Neville synchronized in deciding not to focus on that. The problems were a bit bigger now.
"A few pureblood...?" Neville repeated slowly.
"Or maybe—"
"So you guys are too?!" A girl with bushy brown hair and, apparently, hyperactivity suddenly popped up from behind Draco. Hermione Granger.
"I thought I was the only one," she blurted out.
"I didn't expect to meet other transmigrators here. I'm incredibly lucky!"
Neville's eye twitched. A short, very uncomfortable silence fell over the compartment. Because the question was no longer _if_ there were transmigrators on the train. The question was _how many_ of them there were in total.
And as if reality itself decided to provide the answer, a loud voice filled with sheer astonishment echoed from the other end of the train car corridor:
"TRANSMIGRATORS?!"
"Fuck..." Ai slowly closed his eyes.
And then everyone realized. The entire train was full of transmigrators.
-----------------------
I am alive, hopefully