The reason Lucas didn't immediately kill the man had nothing to do with mercy or hesitation. He simply still had too many unanswered questions.
Who exactly had the original owner of this body been? Who was this black-robed wizard? Why had a child been imprisoned and tortured inside a cage? And perhaps most importantly… what year was it now?
Lucas needed answers before he could decide what to do next.
Although he didn't know Legilimency, the wizard remained completely vulnerable under the effects of Imperio. As long as the curse remained active, Lucas could extract plenty of information.
He dragged over a dusty wooden barrel from the corner of the cave and sat down calmly before beginning his interrogation.
"What's your name?"
The black-robed wizard stared ahead blankly, his voice dull and lifeless.
"Bloor Rex."
Lucas nodded slightly before continuing. "What year is it? Who am I? Where did I come from?"
He still possessed absolutely none of the original owner's memories. The system had mentioned that the boy's mind had already been broken, but having no memories whatsoever still felt strange.
"It is 1991," Rex answered mechanically. "You are an orphan from a Muggle orphanage in London called Woods Orphanage."
"An orphanage…" Lucas muttered quietly.
For some reason, the name Woods Orphanage sounded oddly familiar, though he couldn't immediately place it. Still, that wasn't his biggest concern right now.
He leaned forward slightly and asked the question that mattered most.
"Where is this place, and why did you bring me here?"
"This is Albania," Rex replied emotionlessly. "We are inside a cave within the forest."
"The boss ordered us to gather in Albania before the first of July this year. Every member was required to deliver a young wizard with magical talent. Half a year ago, I abducted you from the orphanage."
Lucas's expression slowly darkened.
Over the next several minutes, he continued questioning Rex until he finally pieced together the full story behind everything that had happened.
Rex wasn't just a dark wizard.
He was also a werewolf.
More specifically, he belonged to a werewolf organization led by Fenrir Greyback.
Lucas instantly remembered the name from the original books. Greyback was infamous even among dark creatures. A savage monster who delighted in attacking children and spreading terror throughout the wizarding world. Professor Lupin himself had become a werewolf after Greyback deliberately targeted him as revenge against his father.
But the reality Lucas learned now was even darker than anything described in canon.
Fenrir Greyback didn't merely enjoy attacking people.
He enjoyed eating them.
Especially young witches and wizards.
The werewolf organization regularly kidnapped magically gifted children. Some were simply devoured alive. Others were transformed into werewolves and forced into the pack. Either way, their fates were horrific.
Lucas listened silently while Rex continued explaining everything under Imperio's control.
Apparently, Greyback possessed a particularly vicious form of dark magic capable of forcibly transforming young wizards into werewolves while also binding their loyalty to him through bloodline influence.
The ritual could only be performed once each year, and using children with magical talent significantly increased the success rate.
Ordinary werewolf bites didn't guarantee obedience. Victims often retained their free will and could resist Greyback's authority. But the dark ritual was different. Anyone transformed through it became instinctively submissive to him.
The original owner of Lucas's body had been selected as one of the ritual sacrifices.
Fortunately, the ceremony had not happened yet.
Unfortunately, what happened instead had been just as horrifying.
Lucas slowly tightened his grip on the wand as Rex continued speaking in his flat voice.
The reason the original owner had lost his sanity was painfully simple.
Rex himself was a sadistic psychopath.
For entertainment, he tortured the child every single day.
And during the past half month, he had begun repeatedly using the Cruciatus Curse.
Even adult wizards struggled to endure Crucio. The original owner had only been a child. There was no way he could survive endless torture from one of the three Unforgivable Curses without eventually breaking.
Day after day, the boy's mind had been destroyed piece by piece.
And the worst part?
Rex hadn't even noticed.
Seeing that the child was still breathing, he simply continued the torture without a second thought.
Eventually, the original owner died.
And at that exact moment, Lucas had transmigrated into the body.
Which explained why the first thing he experienced upon waking up had been agony from the Cruciatus Curse.
"Animals…" Lucas whispered softly.
A cold fury spread through his chest.
"No… even animals are better than you people."
If the system hadn't awakened in time, his future would have been unimaginably miserable. Best case scenario, he would have survived only to become one of Greyback's enslaved werewolves.
As Lucas sat there in the dim cave, he suddenly realized something important.
The moment he transmigrated here, this world had stopped being fiction.
This was no longer a story inside a book.
The darkness hidden beneath the surface of the wizarding world was real now. The cruelty, the fear, the twisted parts of human nature that the novels only briefly touched upon… they all genuinely existed here.
And now he was standing directly in the middle of it.
Lucas remained silent for a long time.
Then he slowly raised his wand.
The Imperius Curse dissolved instantly.
Rex's dull expression vanished, replaced by confusion and horror as his memories rapidly returned. The moment he realized what had happened, terror exploded across his face.
"You—!"
Without hesitation, Rex lunged at Lucas like a mad beast.
"Crucio!"
But Lucas was already faster.
"Crucio."
The difference between the two curses was like the difference between a candle and a wildfire.
Rex's body collapsed to the ground before he even finished his attack. He slammed face-first onto the cave floor and immediately began screaming in agony.
"AAAAAAHHHHHH!"
His entire body twisted violently as he rolled across the stone ground in unbearable pain.
As one of Fenrir Greyback's followers, Rex had naturally suffered punishment from his master before. He knew exactly how terrifying the Cruciatus Curse could be.
But he swore that every previous experience combined didn't equal even a fraction of the agony he felt now.
Lucas's Crucio had already reached maximum mastery.
But more importantly—
His heart was overflowing with hatred.
Not simple anger.
Hatred.
Monstrous hatred.
Lucas understood clearly that part of this emotion belonged to the original owner whose lingering resentment still remained inside the body. But he had no intention of suppressing it.
This revenge belonged to the boy as much as it belonged to him.
The overwhelming hatred pouring into the curse caused its power to multiply several times over. And to ensure Rex remained fully conscious through every second of suffering, Lucas had deliberately released the Imperius Curse first.