The pink-clad old woman, Umbridge, cut in with her shrill voice: "Do you have any idea how precious the Minister's time is? Do you understand that?"
Fudge frowned, glancing toward Dumbledore, who gave him an indifferent nod. Putting on airs, he said, "Fine, you've got one minute."
Vincent pulled Fudge aside and repeated, with a bit of extra embellishment, the same pitch he'd already given Bernadette earlier. The gist of it:
The Peter Pettigrew situation was, in fact, wonderful news for Minister Fudge — proof of his own brilliance and foresight, having spotted a problem left behind by the previous administration ahead of everyone else, decisively dispatching a trusted subordinate to Azkaban for a quiet investigation, and uncovering the truth in under a week, clearing the name of the real hero, Sirius Black.
This showcased the Ministry's fairness and rigor, and, more importantly, showcased the Minister's own competence — after all, Sirius had once been a member of Dumbledore's own Order of the Phoenix, and even Dumbledore himself had given up on him. And yet the great Minister Fudge had personally seen justice restored to him.
What brilliance. What greatness. Practically deserving of an Order of Merlin himself — solid proof that choosing him over Dumbledore for Minister had been exactly the right call!
As for what this meant for the previous Minister's legacy — who cared about that.
As he listened to Vincent's pitch, Fudge's initial impatience gradually gave way to delight. The earlier points alone had already piqued his interest — but the moment he heard how this would highlight Dumbledore's own "incompetence" while elevating his own brilliance, he made up his mind almost instantly.
Settled, then!
"Hahahahahaha!"
Fudge suddenly burst out laughing, clapping Vincent's shoulder repeatedly, radiating warmth. "Excellent! Truly excellent! No wonder I picked you out myself — carrying out the secret mission I assigned you with such flair! Well done. Very well done."
"No, this is all thanks to your own brilliant leadership, Minister."
Fudge chuckled, pleased. "Ha, no need for modesty — if you weren't capable enough, I couldn't very well lead you, could I? Come, join me in my office — we should discuss the details further."
He glanced toward the still-baffled Umbridge. "Dolores, go make our great hero a cup of coffee. Use my finest beans."
"???"
What is happening?
Wasn't I your most trusted sweetheart? How did I suddenly become the coffee girl?
Umbridge, despite her simmering displeasure, forced a saccharine smile. "Of course."
Vincent said to Dumbledore, "Professor Dumbledore, I'll be back shortly."
"Yes, all right."
Watching Vincent and Fudge walk off together, Dumbledore's deep blue eyes, framed by his half-moon spectacles, carried a note of genuine confusion — even now, he still couldn't quite understand why Charles had suddenly decided to take a position at the Ministry.
Especially now that he knew the man possessed power strong enough to take down Voldemort — even a fractured, incomplete Voldemort was still, undeniably, Voldemort.
"Ah, I truly must be getting old. I can't seem to follow the thinking of young people anymore."
Dumbledore shook his head, and dissolved into a burst of flame, vanishing.
...
The Lord of Mysteries world.
Enlisting Boneva's help to shatter the Sage's Diadem had gone smoothly. Whatever sibling bond Bernadette once shared with Boneva — now little more than pure divinity — might well be gone, but perhaps by the will of the god she now served, Boneva had never gone out of her way to distance herself from Bernadette either.
Which, if anything, only made Bernadette more reluctant to see her — because she always felt like the person standing in front of her wasn't the little brother she'd once raised, but the God of Steam and Machinery itself.
The two siblings walked out of the church, one after the other.
Boneva paused at the church entrance, watching Bernadette's figure grow distant.
Suddenly, she called out, "Was it really him who ordered Dad's assassination? Just because Dad wanted to ascend to Black Emperor, breaking free of his control?"
Boneva shook her head. "I don't know. I already told you — I only learned about it after the fact myself. But..."
Her tone shifted. "I don't believe ascending to Black Emperor — especially after Emperor Roselle had already successfully done so — would be enough, on its own, to make my Lord decide to start an open conflict with him."
"The 'assassination' is just the version ordinary people know as 'fact.'"
"In truth, killing a god requires another god to do the deed — and that would mean a divine war."
Her meaning was clear enough: if a genuine divine war had broken out back then, Trier would likely have been razed to the ground.
"I understand."
Vincent had told her before that he suspected being stabbed at White Maple Palace had actually been Dad's own plan all along — an attempt to use the Black Emperor's death-and-rebirth trait to cleanse the corruption, one that had ultimately failed.
But just as Boneva had pointed out — by that point, Dad had already completed his ascension, a genuine true god. How could he possibly be assassinated so easily?
"Do you know where Dad's Sequence 1 'Knowledge Emperor' Beyonder Characteristic ended up, after he was killed?"
By the law of Beyonder Characteristics' indestructibility, once Dad died, every Beyonder Characteristic he held should have been expelled from his body. The three "Order-Slaying Prince" Sequence 1 characteristics had somehow ended up in George III's hands — so where had the "Knowledge Emperor" characteristic, from before he strong-jumped pathways, gone?
Boneva was quiet for a moment. "It's with my Lord."
That was more or less expected.
Bernadette nodded and was about to step into the Spirit World to leave when Boneva spoke again. "Do you want that 'Knowledge Emperor' characteristic?"
"???"
She blinked, then said, cool and distant, "What's the price?"
"He didn't say."
"I'll consider it, then."
Bernadette stepped into the Spirit World, heading toward Emerald Island.
Back when she was very young, Dad had taught her a simple truth: whatever's free is always the most expensive thing of all. And this was a true god's idea of "free" — no telling what he was really scheming for.
A few minutes later, Bernadette arrived once more at that ocean-facing room in Emerald City.
She tried reaching the Nation of Disorder a few more times, and prayed to Lord of Chaos several times over as well, feeling her patience wearing thinner by the moment.
Because, going by everything so far, this situation seemed to be sliding, bit by bit, toward the worst possible outcome.
But all she could do was wait. Wait, and wait some more.
After a good while, Bernadette finally settled her mind, then pulled out every material needed for the "Sage" potion from the "Secret Door," adding them one by one into a glass vial.
Several extraordinary materials — some solid, some liquid — reacted rapidly the moment they touched, melting, boiling, settling, merging, finally becoming a bubbling, effervescent liquid, each bubble containing, faintly, a single translucent eye.
Her own spirituality immediately surged with an urgent craving, desperate for her to drink the potion at once.
But Bernadette didn't rush. She closed her eyes instead, drawing her consciousness inward, bit by bit, preparing herself for the advancement ahead.
Glug, glug, glug.
She lifted the glass and drank the potion down in one go.
The instant that ice-cold liquid slid down her throat, Bernadette felt a sensation identical to what she'd experienced using the Sage's Diadem before — her being splintering into countless streams of information.
Except before, with the Sage's Diadem's help, she'd been able to control that information-stream form with relative ease. Now, her consciousness was scattered apart in an instant, splitting into countless fragments alongside every stream of information.
Each fragment seemed to carry its own separate consciousness, repelling one another, unwilling to draw close, using their information-stream state to scatter and flee in every direction, desperately, tearing her soul apart into pieces.
Left unchecked, Bernadette would lose control entirely — her body transforming into a monster covered head to toe in eyes, her soul shattering into countless fragments, scattering, vanishing forever.
To be continued…
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