Chapter 403 Moros and Pandora's Box

Rice soon received Helga's letter.

Helga didn't say much in the letter, it can be summed up in one sentence: Wow, Salazar, save me!

Although the situation was not as critical as Helga described, she had run to her own private classroom to isolate herself from the curse, so it was not exaggerated.

Helga was not afraid of the minor troubles caused by the curse. What she was worried about was that it would implicate other people or cause irreversible damage to the castle.

More importantly, if the situation is described as serious, Slytherin can be tricked into coming. Even if the curse problem cannot be solved, it can still help her make some puppet parts, right?

Rice, who saw Helga's letter, naturally guessed this, but he still decided to go to Hogwarts. The reason was very simple. Helga wrote a sentence in the letter: "Only you can help me."

Since she said so, Les no longer hesitated and went straight to Hogwarts.

He might have to work hard for the whole summer, but Rice didn't care, because his friends needed his help, and that was enough.

Moreover, he had an unexpected gain from this trip, that is, Helga allowed him to enter Helga's underground city.

That was Helga's private classroom. Les had never been there since Hogwarts was founded, and he didn't even know where it was.

This was not Helga's privilege, nor was it his Slytherin's exclusive classroom. The four of them had a tacit understanding that they would not ask about the location of each other's exclusive classrooms, and everyone respected each other's privacy.

Everyone needs a little privacy to indulge in their hobbies. For example, when Rice kept a basilisk in his secret room, no one asked about it.

Now, in order to invite him to break the curse, Helga has gained the right to enter Helga's exclusive classroom and to enter Helga's dungeon to find out what's going on.

It’s hard not to be moved!

The Greengrass family's fireplace leads directly to Hogsmeade village, so Les reached Hogwarts without much effort.

During the summer vacation, Hogwarts will be closed and no students will be allowed to stay on campus.

In fact, in the beginning, Hogwarts allowed students to live in the school all year round. There was no clear concept of holidays at that time. Students would only be suspended for three months at a specific time so that the young wizards could return to their hometowns to reunite with their families or fulfill their obligations as vassals of the lord - including paying tribute and participating in wars to guard the border.

Later, because Hogwarts' supervision of students would be much lax during the long holidays, these hot-blooded young people would often cause trouble in the castle, so Hogwarts banned students from staying on campus.

But Les was not an ordinary student. Countless restrictions seemed to be non-existent in front of him. He walked straight into the campus and arrived at the Hufflepuff Common Room.

Following Hufflepuff's instructions, he entered Helga's private classroom.

"Awesome!" Les exclaimed in admiration the moment he entered Helga's dungeon.

Helga is worthy of being a legendary wizard with the earth domain. The size of her dungeon seems to be larger than the area of ​​Hogwarts Castle.

Such a vast space was confined to a relatively small space by her spatial magic, resulting in a huge difference between the internal and external spaces. Even Les was amazed by this extraordinary spell.

At the same time, he could also feel the rejection of this space.

Rice silently warned himself in his heart not to piss off Helga here, otherwise he would be in real trouble.

Helga felt Les' presence the moment he came in. In fact, it was Helga herself who let him in.

As soon as she thought about it, a clay figure appeared in front of Les.

"Salazar, you're here at last." The clay man's head twisted, and Helga's facial features appeared on it, and her voice came out of the clay man's mouth.

"Of course, I can't miss the opportunity to observe your private classroom." Les replied while looking around Helga's dungeon.

"This place is really grand. In comparison, my private classroom is as shabby as a bathroom, not to mention Rowena's."

"Thank you." Helga was very happy to be praised by her old friend. It was not easy to get such recognition from Salazar.

"How is it? Is the curse still bothering you?" After chatting casually for a while, Rice found that Helga was in good condition, so he went straight to the point and asked about the curse.

"It's much better now. You don't know how unlucky I was before!" Helga complained to Les and told him about her experience in detail. Les was extremely shocked.

Isn't this curse too strong? How come even Helga was affected so strongly? If it is true that the curse was cast by Voldemort as the legend says, then this guy really makes Rice look at him in a new light.

Rice felt that the curse was related to the strength of the person who was cursed, that is, the stronger the person, the stronger the person. Otherwise, if the strength of the person Helga encountered was always the same, how could the former professors of Defense Against the Dark Arts survive?

But Rice noticed a detail: the power of the curse faded after Helga entered her exclusive classroom. This is really interesting.

"It seems that although the curse is powerful, it will not have any effect as long as there is the protection of the domain." Les came to a conclusion and urged Helga to drive the domain to the ground to try it out.

Helga felt that what Rice said made sense, so she directly opened the field and took a walk around it. Surprisingly, she was not affected at all.

"You see, the problem is solved. You just need to keep the field open to resist the effects of the curse." Rice said with a smile.

Helga:…

She refuses.

Although it was not impossible for her to keep the domain open all the time, how could this be a solution? Did it mean that all future Defense Against the Dark Arts would have to have its own domain?

This behavior is as outrageous as when a main road is blocked by boulders and the person in charge does not think about clearing the road but instead suggests that people can take a small path to bypass the blockage.

After being rejected by Helga, Les also fell silent.

He actually had an idea, which was to let the current Defense Against the Dark Arts professor resign, then change his name and re-enter the job to see if he could circumvent the restrictions of the curse.

Because according to his knowledge, it is difficult for a curse to be both powerful and wide-ranging at the same time.

This kind of curse that can even affect Helga is likely to have a long list of restrictions ahead of it, and it’s actually quite easy to circumvent it.

Based on the currently known information, the triggering of the curse requires two conditions: one, the professor must be a professor of Defense Against the Dark Arts, and two, the professor's term of office must be more than one year.

There seem to be two ways to circumvent the curse. One is to rename the course "Defense Against the Dark Arts" to something like "Dueling" or "Self-Defense." The other is to change the professor every other year and try to get the professor to change the name to see if the curse can be avoided.

The person you want to curse is Smith White. What does it have to do with me, White Smith?

But now neither of these two methods seemed to work, because Helga obviously wanted to eradicate the curse once and for all.

After thinking carefully for a while, Les felt that he should support Helga's idea.

How could Salazar Slytherin and Helga Hufflepuff back down from a small curse? He couldn't accept the rumor that "Voldemort's curse could not be broken even by Slytherin and Hufflepuff working together".

"My intuition tells me that this curse is not simple."

Helga rolled her eyes: Everyone knows it's not easy.

"Can you feel where the curse comes from?" Les decided to use the process of elimination to explore the state of the curse on Helga.

Salazar's question stumped Helga. She carefully recalled her experience and then said with certainty that she did not feel any trace of the spell or the flow of magic power.

"I guess so. I'll prepare a bottle of exorcism potion for you." After ruling out the possibility of a spell, Rice decided to try to exorcise Helga and remove the negative state on her.

"Okay." A hint of joy flashed in Helga's eyes.

The production process of this exorcism potion is quite complicated and takes several weeks to make. It is estimated that no one in the world can make it except Salazar.

Since Helga wanted Salazar's help, she naturally had to prepare good enough conditions for him.

So she directly mobilized the power of the exclusive classroom and built a spacious and comfortable cabin for Rice.

Les stayed in the cabin and started making potions for Helga.

In the blink of an eye, a month passed.

Les gave Helga the carefully crafted exorcism potion, and he also prepared a bottle of luck potion for her - it was not as magical as the felicity potion, but it could also dispel bad luck.

"Thank you." Helga took the two bottles of potion, drank them all, and then left her dungeon directly.

Not long after, Helga came back covered in dust.

"No, it has no effect at all. I still get into trouble as usual." Helga looked a little depressed.

She did not doubt the quality of Salazar's potions, because he was the world's top potion master. If even he couldn't make a good potion, then don't expect others to do it.

"Then it's most likely not your fault." Rice's eyes became quite deep.

Come to think of it, who was Helga? How could a mere Voldemort have cursed her without her noticing?

Besides, it has been a long time since Voldemort fell...

"Then there is only one possibility." Helga understood what Salazar meant.

"Laws." Rice said in a serious tone.

Laws are the laws of how things work, and they are natural rules. Just like the sun rises in the east and sets in the west, things fall from high to low. These are all laws, and they are very advanced concepts.

The "curse" that Helga encountered is a force at the level of law.

The reason why the domain can isolate curses is because the domain has its own laws. In the domain, in addition to the basic laws of nature, wizards have the highest authority, and the laws of curses are excluded.

"Drink this, it can greatly enhance your perception." Les took out another small bottle of potion and handed it to Helga.

He had considered this possibility long before he started preparing the luck-transferring potion and the exorcism potion, so he naturally made preparations for the third possibility.

It was obviously impossible for Voldemort to comprehend the power of the law. If he had that ability, why didn't he just kill Dumbledore or curse him? So he probably hid something like a divine corpse in Hogwarts Castle. He used the law emitted by that thing to curse the Defense Against the Dark Arts professorship.

Then they just have to find it.

After taking his special potion, Helga's perception will be dramatically enhanced. She must find the source of that strange law as soon as possible.

Only he or Helga could do this, because their souls were strong enough to look directly at the laws. If others took this potion rashly, it would be tantamount to suicide. At the least, they would become insane, and at the worst, they would die on the spot.

"I understand." Helga took the potion and walked out of the dungeon under the cover of the field.

Les was not very reassured about her, so he followed her out.

Helga walked outside the Great Hall and drank the potion.

The next second, the blood vessels on her forehead bulged and her eyeballs rolled up, leaving only the whites of her eyes exposed.

A few seconds later, Helga's body began to tremble. Les understood that she was trying to sort out the ubiquitous and complex laws in the environment and trying to find the abnormal law among them.

Helga soon made a discovery.

She ran her hand across her body as if picking up a thread.

Helga raised her head, with only the whites of her eyes staring at the top of the castle.

She locked onto the location of the abnormal law.

Helga flew out of the window without any hesitation, and driven by magic, she quickly headed to the eighth floor of the castle and landed in front of a tapestry.

In an instant, the tapestry changed, and a very smooth door emerged on it.

Helga opened the door and rushed in.

Behind the door was a room filled with all kinds of sundries. Les, who followed closely behind Helga, did not pay too much attention to these sundries.

He just took a quick glance and followed Helga's footsteps into the depths of the pile of junk.

Helga's face flushed, her powerful perception brought her tremendous pressure, but fortunately, all this was about to end.

After bypassing one mountain of garbage after another, Helga finally stopped in front of a pile of abandoned desks.

As soon as she raised her hand, a box with an ancient shape floated out from the desk.

Seeing that Helga had found the source of the curse, Les hurriedly poured the perception-blocking potion into her mouth.

After taking the potion, Helga sat down on the ground, with beads of sweat the size of beans appearing on her forehead.

The dust has settled.

Les looked at the box in front of him, and after making sure that there was no defensive spell on the surface of the box, he took the box in his hands.

Before he could study the box further, a voice came from inside the box.

"Lucky man, make a contract with me, and I can fulfill one of your wishes."

'It's Ancient Greek.' Les recognized the language the voice was speaking.

"Who are you? Why are you locked in the box? What is the origin of this box?" Rice replied in ancient Greek.

"I am Moros, and I am temporarily living in Pandora's Box." The voice in the box answered honestly.

Les:…

Good guy! Since it is a combination of these two guys, it is not surprising that they can cast a law-level curse on a wizard of Helga's level.

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Here’s the update, good night~