A Step Towards The Future.

Loki's idea was simple.

Simple in a theoretical sense, but practically he knew the idea he had settled on was bound to take him weeks if not the entirety of the rest of the summer vacation until the start of next year.

To secretly start his own school at Hogwarts, he would unquestionably need Dumbledore's approval since he'd first have to ask either Snape or McGonagall which would mean the news would eventually reach 'Him' anyway.

Even if Loki tried to keep it a secret with Snape's help he knew well that Dumbledore would immediately know what was going on when any significant number of students joined.

And that was another problem in this entire situation.

'What's stopping 'Adam' from investigating into my 'school' when a lot of students join it?'

The only other way would be to use Salazaar Slytherin's help to keep everything a secret so that even if Dumbledore stared the information in the face he wouldn't be able to comprehend it since Salazar would have hidden it away.

But that had its own problem.

If Loki used Salazar's help to set up a system for his own magic, Salazar would immediately realise what Loki was trying to do when he would 'hijack' the current system of magic.

While this wouldn't be a problem in the traditional sense with Salazar trying to stop him since 'He' was a fan of Mr. Error and would probably even welcome Mr. Error joining their little experiment of 'magic', it would mean that Loki wouldn't be able to finish the advancement ritual for Sequence 3 Mentor of Deceit.

Since the advancement ritual needed Loki to parasitise a 'fundamental' rule in the universe without anyone realising he had done it, asking Salazar and by extension, Rowena for help would cause him to fail his ritual since he would no longer 'parasitise' anything. He was just in a symbiotic relationship.

And so Loki had come up with a theoretically simple solution.

There was one common way Loki could communicate with everyone at Hogwarts all at once.

And he was sure that he could do it in a way such that he could always keep the entire process a secret.

The idea had emerged after looking at the item Rowena had 'gifted' him for waking her up.

The item was the simple Chatterbox.

With the item's ability to control people's dreams, Loki aimed to modify the item to connect it with the Sefirah Castle so that it could use the Grey Fog.

For what did he want to do that?

Loki wanted to connect the dreams of all the people in Hogwarts using the Chatterbox and obscure all those connections with the help of the Grey Fog.

And in this common dream, Loki would run his own school.

It was a pseudo-Tarot Club sort of thing.

'A brilliant plan if I say so myself!'

'Hehehe~ sometimes my own genius scares me!'

But thinking of such a plan was simpler than actually implementing it in reality.

Loki had experience working with the Sefirah Castle before when he invented the ring that would allow him to teleport items to and from the outside world and the Sefirah Castle as long as he wished.

He did that by anchoring himself to the castle with the symbol of the Error pathway behind his seat.

But working with the Grey Fog wasn't as easy as he had expected it to be.

There was no way for him to directly exert control over the Grey Fog while he was outside the castle.

He did have access to a meagre amount of Grey Fog after advancing to Sequence 4 Parasite. And he could exploit that connection with the help of the Sequence 3 Mentor Of Deceit Beyonder Characteristic, but Loki wanted to make a system that did not depend on that.

That was because Loki knew he would have to use the Beyonder Characteristic to keep Tom from escaping when he was fully repaired and being tortured with drops of his Sequence 3 Blatherer potion.

As such Loki came up with a compromise.

The system wouldn't be guarded as heavily as Loki had imagined it to be.

Instead, Loki would only use the meagre Grey Fog he had control over while outside the Sefirah Castle.

And as soon as an attack was detected, Loki would make sure that he would go to the Sefirah Castle himself to fully defend against the intrusion by using the entirety of Grey Fog then.

It wasn't a perfect system.

But it was the best Loki could do for now and he didn't have time to do much better when there were so many things revolving around him all the time.

On the side, Loki had started working on fixing his malnourished-looking old body.

Although the Grey Fog had prevented it from rotting too much, Loki still needed to fix the body and bring it to the perfect condition so that Tom's soul wouldn't reject it more than it already would.

For that, Loki had dunked his old body into a unique potion.

It was a potion he had read about earlier and even seen it being used. In fact, he already had a small copy of the potion with him.

It was the Polyjuice potion.

The potion Loki was using wasn't exactly the Polyjuice potion, but it was very similar.

The Polyjuice potion was something that transformed a person into the exact replica of another person whose hair or nails could be obtained.

The potion was rich in nutrients and unlike transfiguration physically altered the body by pumping it with the right nutrient ingredients such that the body would morph and look exactly like the genetic information obtained.

Of course, the potion did a lot more and this was just a high-level explanation, but Loki ended up using this new potion he had created by modifying the Polyjuice potion to recreate/repair his old body to look exactly like his new one.

Except since his old body was dead, he had to depend on the body's natural absorption factor for the Polyjuice potion to be mixed into it.

The body was swimming around in a deep vat in a corner of the Sefirah Castle undisturbed.

Loki observed the process every few hours and made sure that nothing was going wrong. This wasn't something he did out of impatience.

It was something Loki did out of worry since it made him a little afraid to be healing a body that had been corrupted by an actual True God before.

Even though the fear was irrational, Loki still felt it each time he looked at the body swimming in the vat in such a relaxed manner.

'I hope things go smoothly this year…' Loki wished as he continued to work on the Golden Chatterbox which he was modifying for his secret school.

Things had never been 'easy' for him, especially since the third year.

And so when Loki had himself stepped into making long-term plans to execute his own Advancement Rituals, he felt like he was right at home.

'I just have to make sure that there is absolutely no way for anyone to interfere with me…'

'...but there's also that strange person out there who can mess up my memories.'

Loki frowned as he worked diligently to carve a rune.

But then smiled again.

'I'd like to see that person try messing with me after I become a Sequence 3.'

But then he frowned again.

'And then there's Grindelwald…'

'What am I going to do with him?'

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