"Ehm.. Kasenhis, you need to come with me," Dumbledore said, adjusting his slightly slipping half-moon glasses as he reached out to pat Kasenhis on the shoulder.
But Kasenhis was in the middle of speaking.
Before he could finish, Dumbledore activated Apparition with a soft whoosh, and the two of them vanished.
"...So, does that mean we're off the hook?" George, still shaken from his near-death experience, rubbed his nose and asked hesitantly.
"Looks like... we are?"
Another loud boom echoed through the common room.
"Gryffindor, minus 10 points. For sneaking out at night," Professor Kasenhis stated flatly.
With that, he disappeared again, proving himself a master of the art of coming and going like the wind—leaving behind no trace, no shadow…
Except for Gryffindor's 10 fewer points.
Wait, no—he also took the Weasley twins' custom-made night vision goggles with him.
Meanwhile, in the Headmaster's Office
"It seems you're quite invested in this... But I still can't figure out where you pulled out such a massive blackboard from," Dumbledore remarked, visibly surprised as he watched Kasenhis casually retrieve an entire blackboard from his ring.
Kasenhis had no intention of explaining. He couldn't exactly say: "My Office 2.0 is high-tech. The entire 2nd-floor office is basically one giant Ender Chest."
Even though that was the truth, he still chose to remain silent.
Ever since his office had been upgraded to version 2.0, it wasn't just a matter of pulling out a blackboard from his ring—if someone were inside his office, he could quite literally yank them out with the same method.
"Don't mind the details. What matters is that we now have two key pieces of information," Kasenhis continued. "First, when I was in the corridor, I saw what was lurking in the shadows through my monocle. It's definitely this so-called Basilisk. And Voldemort—he must be possessing it. Because at that moment, I saw the word Soul in the status bar."
"Second, magically enchanted lenses can weaken the Basilisk's deadly gaze to some extent. But regular prescription glasses? Useless. Moaning Myrtle is proof of that."
"You're planning to give all the young wizards enchanted glasses?" Dumbledore asked.
"And then let the Basilisk petrify them into stone, only for it to whip its tail around and smash their bodies to pieces?"
"...I wasn't going to do that," Kasenhis deadpanned.
"Of course you wouldn't. That would be incredibly stupid," Dumbledore said matter-of-factly.
Meanwhile, Kasenhis, who had been manually crafting a pair of glasses for about five seconds, felt a bit awkward as he rubbed the lenses between his hands.
"Didn't you just say you were worried the Basilisk might whip the young wizards to bits with its tail?"
"Ahem, this is different," Kasenhis coughed. "I've designed a rather interesting mechanism for this. The Basilisk's eyes—aren't they basically condensed death elements?"
"That's not quite right. A Basilisk isn't Medusa," Dumbledore corrected. "If it holds no hostility toward you, its gaze won't automatically kill you. But a Basilisk possessed by Tom… now that's a different story."
"So that's why I didn't detect any death elements at the time…" Kasenhis muttered. "But if my guess is correct, the Basilisk's eyes transmit a death element signal to its victims?"
Dumbledore nodded. "That should be correct."
"In that case, we can use alchemy to do something rather interesting."
Kasenhis pulled out an enchanting table and swiftly inscribed runes onto the glasses, enchanting them with Magic Resistance and Delayed Shattering.
"Now let's give it a 'Duplicate to Pair' effect."
Dumbledore tapped his wand on the glasses, and in an instant, they split into two—one original and one duplicate.
Kasenhis placed the original glasses on the table, then pulled out a chest. He carefully placed the duplicate glasses inside before setting up a comparator, redstone wiring, a redstone torch, and a piston.
Since the comparator detected an item inside the chest, the redstone signal it output caused the redstone torch to turn off, preventing the piston from activating. The latest_epɪ_sodes are on_the 𝗇𝗈𝗏𝖾𝗅•𝖿𝗂𝗋𝖾•𝗇𝖾𝗍
Finally, Kasenhis set up a bubbling water column using a magma block in front of the piston. He tossed an Ender Pearl into the column, and it immediately started bouncing up and down inside the bubbling water.
"This represents the essence of death—similar to what the Basilisk's eyes produce. Just to be safe, I also took the twins' night vision glasses. With the overlap of two different magic effects, at least one of them should work," Kasenhis explained excitedly, holding a pair of glasses in one hand while summoning a concentrated essence of death in the other—something he had previously synthesized using Chaos and Fate.
He eagerly introduced his setup to Dumbledore.
Dumbledore, completely baffled and having absolutely no idea what he was looking at, maintained his usual composed demeanor, quietly observing as if he understood everything.
"...Alright, I can tell you don't get it. You can just ask, you know," Kasenhis said bluntly, seeing right through Dumbledore's act.
"...What exactly is this supposed to do?"
"Good question," Kasenhis said, placing the primary glasses on the table.
"We're using this essence of death to simulate the Basilisk's lethal gaze."
With a flick of his wrist, he sent a concentrated stream of Death Essence toward the glasses. The moment it passed through the lenses, the glasses absorbed the majority of its power.
About a second later—crack! The entire pair of glasses shattered into pieces.
Simultaneously, inside the chest, the duplicate pair of glasses also crumbled into dust, as it was linked to the original.
The comparator, no longer detecting an item inside the chest, deactivated the redstone signal. This, in turn, caused the connected redstone torch to flare up, activating the piston.
With a loud clunk, the piston extended forward, pressing directly onto the bubbling water column. The bouncing Ender Pearl was forcefully pushed out and shattered upon impact.
In an instant, Kasenhis suddenly teleported to the exact location where the Ender Pearl had broken.
"Well? Do you get it now?" Kasenhis asked, looking at Dumbledore expectantly.
"...Nicolas Flamel wasn't lying about you… I don't understand a damn thing about alchemy," Dumbledore admitted, still in a daze.
"So? What do you think?" Kasenhis pressed on.
"You want to set up this mechanism," Dumbledore began, organizing his thoughts. "Pair it with the enchanted glasses, creating a teleportation system where the Basilisk's lethal gaze is reduced to only a petrifying effect due to the glasses' enchantment."
"Then, once the glasses shatter from absorbing the impact, the device activates, smashing the Ender Pearl, instantly teleporting any petrified student to a safe location within a second?"
"That's exactly it," Kasenhis nodded.
Dumbledore, having fully processed the plan, sat down in a chair and adjusted his glasses on the bridge of his nose.
"...I still don't understand a damn thing about alchemy."
"Didn't you just say that?" Kasenhis raised an eyebrow.
"I was simply emphasizing my amazement… Every time I meet someone as extraordinarily gifted as you, I can't help but marvel at the greatness of both magic and fate…" Dumbledore exhaled deeply, still caught between awe and confusion.
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