The Sorting Hat's ancient, motley consciousness was a chaotic ocean woven from thoughts, emotions, and memories.
It was accustomed to overlooking all.
Accustomed to judging.
Yet in the infinitesimal instant it probed Eric's mind—one ten-millionth of a second—the observer became the observed.
At that very moment, [Perfect Logic] resonated terrifyingly with the [Causality Investment System]. They were not two separate plug-ins, but two sides of the same essence that together formed Eric's soul.
Logic was his skeleton.
Investment was his flesh and blood.
He did not, like any other first-year, passively wait for his soul's traits to be read, weighed, and labeled.
He chose to act.
Toward this ancient thousand-year-old collective consciousness, he initiated an unprecedented "investment."
The investment target was a question—cold to the extreme, pure to the point of stripping away all emotion—a logical interrogation.
You—
a magical construct nurtured by the subjective will of the four Founders,
stuffed with the motley memories of countless students,
a tool in essence—
What right do you have to define our attributes?
What right do you have to decide our destinies?
This was not a question spoken through vocal cords.
It was a highly condensed stream of information, an irrefutable logical paradox meticulously encoded by [Perfect Logic].
It became an invisible scalpel—precise, cold, utterly without tremor—driving straight into the very cornerstone of the Sorting Hat's consciousness structure!
The Sorting Hat's entire existence rested upon an absolute premise:
that it possessed the authority and capability to define others.
It read.
It classified.
It pronounced judgment.
For a thousand years, this process had never been challenged.
But it had never been read itself.
Nor had it ever been defined!
Eric's vast mental power—far beyond ordinary comprehension—became the surging energy that carried the scalpel.
And [Perfect Logic], stripped of all warmth and emotion, was the razor-sharp blade itself.
To the Sorting Hat, this invasion was no different from a two-dimensional being suddenly being forced to comprehend the existence of three dimensions.
It was dimensional suppression.
A total destabilization of its very foundation of existence!
"No! No—!!"
The scream no longer echoed through the Great Hall, but raged deep within Eric's mind as a mental storm.
This was no longer the consciousness of a magical item—it was more like a central processor infected by a logic virus, its core code being violently rewritten, howling on the brink of death.
"You're not a first-year! You're absolutely not a ten-year-old child! Who—what—are you?!"
The Sorting Hat's consciousness thrashed in panic within Eric's mind palace, only to discover there were no emotional barriers behind which it could hide—only endless labyrinths of cold data and logic stretching infinitely outward.
"Your soul… your mind… this is impossible! I can't read it! I can't read anything!"
"You're attacking me!!"
Eric did not respond.
His cognitive core merely maintained the output of that paradox, steadily and indifferently—like a star, continuously scorching the Hat's very basis of existence.
"I refuse! I refuse to sort you!"
The Sorting Hat let out its final roar, filled with terror and resistance.
Outside, in the Great Hall, time seemed to have been stretched into a viscous gel.
All the teachers and students could see was that battered, filthy hat atop Eric Prince's head—violently trembling and convulsing.
At times it went taut; at others, it sagged limp.
The brim twisted irregularly, as if enduring some invisible torture.
One minute.
An entire minute had passed.
In Hogwarts' history, the Sorting Ceremony had never exceeded five minutes—such rare cases were known as "Hatstalls," occurring perhaps once in several decades.
Now, merely one minute of silence had already compressed the atmosphere to a suffocating extreme.
The Great Hall was so quiet a pin drop could be heard. Even the faintest breaths were amplified, pounding against everyone's eardrums.
Dumbledore's gaze had never been so grave.
The lightning in those blue eyes withdrew, replaced by an abyssal depth of contemplation. The hand gripping the Elder Wand had gone slightly white at the knuckles, the wand tip adjusting within a margin of 0.01 degrees—ready to intervene in this silent war at any moment.
At that moment—
Eric slightly raised his head.
His black eyes calmly swept across the crowd—faces filled with fear, confusion, and wariness—before finally fixing on the white-haired headmaster at the high table.
He ignored the entire hall.
In a voice only he and the collapsing consciousness above him could hear, he spoke flatly, as though executing a prewritten program.
He issued his final ultimatum:
"You're not unable to sort me."
"You're afraid."
"Now give me the best choice."
"Otherwise, I will destroy your logical foundation."
The words were light—yet they carried enough weight to crush a thousand-year-old soul.
This was not a threat.
It was a statement of fact.
A preview of an inevitable outcome.
The Sorting Hat's frenzied struggle abruptly stopped.
It completely surrendered.
It neither dared nor wished to probe this monster's soul any further. That domain was, to it, more terrifying than the abyss—more incomprehensible than chaos itself.
It wanted only one thing: to escape this horrifying mind immediately.
At the very instant the Sorting Hat made its decision, a series of cold mechanical notifications rang out with perfect precision in Eric's consciousness.
[System Notification: S-rank destiny deviation detected! Target: Hogwarts Sorting Hat.]
[Emotional Anchor: Soul-deep terror and logical collapse.]
[Congratulations, Host. S-rank causality investment completed! Triggering special Hogwarts Castle sign-in!]
[Congratulations, Host. Platinum-tier reward obtained! Platinum Treasure Chest x1!]
System messages cascaded like a waterfall.
And as Eric received them—
Outside, that battered hat, which had trembled violently for a full five minutes—
After enduring the longest, strangest, and most nerve-shattering Sorting in Hogwarts' founding history—
Finally exhausted its last ounce of strength, drained every trace of magic it possessed, and screamed a House name that instantly crashed every mind in the Great Hall:
"RAVENCLAW!!"