Chapter 57: Astral Divination

Since Harry had put it that way, Roger did not try to persuade him any further.

"Just return it to me when you're done using it." Roger casually tossed the failed second-generation prototype over.

Roger was willing to shelter an eleven-year-old child and spare him from facing the bloody reality too early, but if Harry insisted on going, Roger would not stop him.

Catching the orb, Harry felt a wave of relief wash over him.

It was not just because he had obtained a powerful asset, but more importantly, Roger's action itself was a statement of stance.

Initially, Harry had learned from Roger that Voldemort was not dead and was lurking within Hogwarts.

At the time, Roger had told him not to worry about Voldemort, saying the headmaster, the professors, and he would handle it.

Later, Harry accidentally learned of Professor Quirrell's odd behavior from Professor Snape. Comparing the two pieces of intelligence, he had basically pinpointed Voldemort's whereabouts.

However, this gave rise to a problem.

Would his own actions interfere with the school's plan targeting Voldemort?

Yet now, since Roger was willing to give him this device, it meant he had been worrying needlessly.

Clutching the secondary brain, Harry thanked Roger. Just as he was about to leave, a thought occurred to him, and he turned back to ask a question that had crossed his mind when he first used it.

"Roger, the data panel in the study planning function—I understand the rest, but what does 'Life Tier: [First Boundary]' mean?"

"Ah that? Just a random wizard ranking system I designed on the a whim," Roger said casually.

"Currently, wizards generally use the O.W.L.s (Ordinary Wizarding Levels) and N.E.W.T.s (Nastily Exhausting Wizarding Tests) to categorize a wizard's tier. But that kind of classification is fine for ordinary wizards; for wizards who are beginning to explore high-end fields, it holds little meaning."

"Moreover, the possibilities brought by a wizard's mental power make it difficult for general data categories to summarize it properly. So I thought about it, and dividing it by 'Life Tier' might be appropriate."

"Still, that doesn't mean much right now, so you don't need to pay too much attention to it."

In Roger's eyes, wizards were actually somewhat like the chakra-using ninja from the world of his past life—every single one of them was a glass cannon with high attack power and low defense.

A lower-tier ninja with a couple of broken kunai and explosive tags still stood a chance of killing a higher-tier ninja.

Destructive power and physical resilience were completely disproportionate.

Roger planned to grant all wizards an 'upgrade' once he possessed the strength to speak with authority on a global scale.

He wanted to make wizards' survival capabilities proportional to their magical prowess.

At the very least, they should be like Gandalf, going toe-to-toe with a Balrog in hand-to-hand combat, before they could be considered proper wizards.

That classification system was meant for future use; it was not suitable for the present.

***

There were still a few days left until Christmas, and Roger had expected this period to pass smoothly.

Unexpectedly, an accident still occurred.

Early in the morning, Hagrid came looking for Roger.

It was not about magical creature experiments, but rather that something had gone wrong in the Forbidden Forest.

Hagrid's most trusted person had always been Dumbledore.

During the previous Fear Demon incident, Hagrid had learned that Roger possessed a magical token given by Dumbledore, granting him immense authority within Hogwarts.

Since Dumbledore trusted Roger so deeply, when trouble arose, Hagrid naturally sought him out first.

Age? Such a concept held zero reference value when placed alongside the titles of 'Prophet' and 'Dumbledore's Appointee'—at least, as far as Hagrid was concerned.

"A unicorn has been killed, with tooth marks on its carcass and its blood drained?" Upon hearing this, Roger didn't even need to investigate to guess who was most likely responsible.

Aside from Voldemort, who was left with only half a life, who else would have such a need?

Unicorn blood was not easily consumed; while it possessed various miraculous powers capable of extending life, the drinker would also be cursed.

Of course, Roger did not blindly submit to the trajectory of fate; he still followed Hagrid into the Forbidden Forest to inspect the scene in person.

Based on the tooth marks, Roger cross-referenced the dental patterns of everyone at Hogwarts in his memory and confirmed that the culprit was Professor Quirrell, who was possessed by Voldemort.

...Voldemort was cautious; to weaken the curse's potency, he had even found himself a 'filter.'

This incident occurred earlier than in Roger's memories, but Roger felt no surprise.

After all, the current Voldemort was much more active than in the original timeline, so consuming more resources was only normal.

"I know who did it. You don't need to worry too much about this, Hagrid." Roger, who had been squatting down to examine the unicorn's wound, stood up and said to the half-giant beside him.

Having said that, Roger turned his gaze toward another direction. "You three, why are you looking at me like that? Do you have an issue with me?"

Unicorns were a particularly miraculous species of magical creatures, holding unique significance for wizards and other non-human sentient races alike. The death of a unicorn had not only drawn Hagrid's attention, but also that of other sentient beings dwelling within the Forbidden Forest, such as... the centaurs.

When Hagrid went to find Roger, several centaurs had been guarding the spot.

At this moment, among those three centaurs, one looked at Roger with persistent terror, the second was nervously pawing the ground due to Roger's inquiry, and the third appeared relatively composed—though Roger could detect from his rigid muscles that he was far from as calm as he seemed.

Faced with Roger's query, the seemingly composed centaur stepped forward. He had platinum-blonde hair, a human upper torso, and the body of a silver-maned horse from the waist down: "I am Firenze. I offer my apologies to you on behalf of my companion, powerful Prophet. My companion was merely startled; he meant no disrespect to you."

"Startled?" Roger felt somewhat baffled. He hadn't done anything.

"The shifting of the stars—the very moment you stepped into the Forbidden Forest, they fell into chaos. Mars, Mercury, Venus, Jupiter... the starlight transformed in ways beyond our comprehension."

In this world, non-human sentient races were not simply different in appearance and physiological structure from humans; vampires, veelas, giants, goblins, merpeople, and house-elves often possessed distinct magical attributes and abilities.

And the ability of the centaurs was astral divination.

They were inherently sensitive to changes in starlight, and through centuries of research and synthesis, they could observe future trends to a certain extent through astrological shifts.

Although they could not observe specific future imagery, as long as they grasped certain information and combined it with trend omens, they could basically make a rough judgment about what would happen in the future.

Yet if the grasped information was incomplete, the direction of their deductions was likely to deviate.

A miss as small as a hair could lead to an error of a thousand miles.

Centaurs had suffered losses in this regard, which was why they generally swore oaths never to defy the will of the heavens, choosing not to interfere with the flow of fate, but rather quietly acting as observers, watching and avoiding misfortune.

Yet at this moment, the centaurs suddenly could no longer read the will of the heavens!

This threw the centaurs, who had always relied on astrology to guide their actions, into a panic.

"Oh? Could you tell me about it in detail?" Roger suddenly developed a hint of interest.

He seemed to have come across similar phenomena in some books related to prophecy and divination.