NOVEL WEB Chapter 426: Returning Home.
Back in the Flamel's house, Loki trained with Prenelle on her new spell she had made for him.
Prenelle looked at Loki's spell with a frown and chided him lightly, "Why do I feel like I will get scammed if I accept your spell?"
Loki laughed softly before speaking, "Well your instincts would be on point since I'm pretty dangerous."
"No…this isn't just about danger…I feel like as long as I accept the spell you can do something to me."
"Seriously? Do you think I'll do something to you? I'm pretty sure you'll have me hanging by my legs if I even tried something." Loki attempted to laugh it off.
Prenelle gave him one last glare before nodding. "Alright. I'll stick out my neck because you promised me."
As soon as Prenelle accepted his ritual and responded to it with the flick of her wand, Loki suddenly saw the spell he had cast take effect.
A dim golden light encompassed him before washing through his entire body as it searched for something. However, since Loki wasn't currently corrupted or even affected by the corruption of some God, he found himself free of inspection as Prenelle opened her eyes calmly.
"Good. You got it." Prenelle nodded with a smile and Loki immediately questioned her-
"So I'm good to go to the Abyss according to you?"
Prenelle frowned instantly, "Yeah…I forgot you were doing this for that stupid idea of yours. Well, whatever. It isn't my problem if you die off suddenly now. Not even after I taught you my secret spell."
Loki's smile just broadened before he walked up to Prenelle and gave her a tight hug-
"Thanks…old hag!"
-and then went to Nicolas's experimental room to hide himself.
"What do you think? I'm ready?" Loki asked, with a slight nervous undertone.
Even without looking at Loki, Nicolas sent out a gruff laugh, "Why? You don't think you're ready after Prenelle gave you the go-ahead?"
"What? Are you two connected to each other or something? How did you figure that out? I literally just walked from her room and arrived here!"
Nicolas laughed and said nothing else, creating a soft silence that Loki enjoyed. After a bit more of the usual wand-waving Nicolas finally looked away from Loki's alchemical puppet.
"How's it?"
Nicolas looked at it for a while before nodding.
"It's fine. Better than anything I could've built at your age."
"Seriously!?" Loki asked with joy at the compliment causing Nicolas to shake his head before he matched his gaze and spoke seriously.
"Promise me you'll do whatever you're doing carefully."
Loki nodded before adding a snarky comment, "If I don't, I'm sure Prenelle will come wherever I am to beat me up….and don't be so serious. I ain't going to the Abyss myself anyway. It's just a puppet."
"A puppet that has a piece of you in it~!" Nicolas gently reminded and Loki scoffed casually before packing his alchemical puppet and walked out of the room with Nicolas so everyone could have Prenelle's lovely lemon cake and biscuits that she'd baked herself.
After spending two days of his holidays with the Flamel's Loki finally left their home to visit someone he'd promised he'd meet soon.
Waiting at a secluded spot in Knockturn Alley, Loki looked around for his client but seeing no one there yet he simply pulled out the Alchemical puppet and began testing it one last time.
'Still can't get used to the split vision I have when I pilot the damn thing by myself.'
It took a while of waiting, but Loki eventually sensed a short disturbance in space and closed everything before looking in its direction as he saw someone teleport to be right in front of him.
He quickly steadied the alchemical puppet and covered it under an illusion. He made it look as human as he could and waited for his guest to show up.
There was a soft *pop* before Laura came into view. Her eyes scanned around for a few seconds before they landed on Loki.
"Why here of all places?"
"Well…it's just easier to hide in a place like this from everyone else anyway.", Loki said, shrugging his shoulders.
Laura nodded before looking at the puppet that Loki had beside himself.
"An alchemical puppet? No…it's alive? An animal's controlling it?"
Loki just smiled without responding to the lady's questions. He was surprised that Laura could tell what he had was an alchemical puppet, he'd expected her to mistake it for a human.
But he guessed that she had seen her share of weird things since she headed the Unspeakables.
"Everyone's got secrets and if I told you mine it wouldn't be fun any longer now would it?"
Laura simply rolled her eyes at Loki's antics before asking, "What are you going to do?"
"I'll send it into the Abyss after a few days, I only need what I asked you to get, did you get it?"
Laura nodded before tossing towards Loki a brass ring.
Lokki grabbed it from the air and looked at it for a few seconds before tossing it to his alchemical puppet. It was a ring that Nathan Drake owned, something that was close to him and so it would help Loki use divination from the Sefirah Castle to figure out where the man exactly was at each moment.
He still couldn't continuously keep divining about it since that would also alert Mother Tree Of Desire, but it was better than going in blind.
"Why do you need a few days to send it to the Abyss?" Laura questioned softly.
Loki looked at her and shrugged before giving her the real reason.
"I need to strike a few deals to be able to navigate the Abyss effectively and that'll take me some time. But I'm sure I can do it so you don't have to worry about it."
Laura nodded since Loki had kept up his part of the bargain until now and then they vanished from their spots in Knockturn Alley after discussing Loki's real reward, the Time Turners.
But all that Loki learnt was that he wouldn't be getting his hands on them until the end of the year.
Once he apparated away after converting the Alchemical puppet into a rune, Loki arrived in front of a house he was very familiar with while staring at the door with a little bit of worry.
'I mean…Grandma shouldn't reject me right?'
'...right, she didn't even discriminate against me when I helped her out. She was pleasant and worryful…'
'But I wonder how Sirius'll react to this…'
Loki was about to grab the knocker on the door and give it a tug to show he was standing outside and waiting for someone to open the door, but as soon as his muscles twitched, the door opened on its own.
'...didn't something like this already happen the first time I was here?'
But this time instead of the door being left open, Loki quickly spotted a shifty haze leave the door, but since he was standing in the way it froze and tried to figure out what to do.
Loki easily recognised that Sirius was trying to escape from home using a cheap invisibility cloak but before he could simply step aside and not react to whatever was going on in the Black family, Loki heard a soft creak on the stairs.
Walburga walked down from the upper floor and her face lit up when she saw Loki.
But the moment she saw the misty haze, her eyes froze before she whipped out her wand and sent a stinging hex in its direction.
"OOOUWWWWWWWWW!!!!!! You wretched old lady why did you send a stinging hex towards me!? And why does it hurt so much!? Did you use dark magic for this!? How crue-"
"Zip it." Walburga complained in seething anger before she looked at Loki and smiled once again.
"How nice of you to come here Loki. I was wondering when you'd arrive."
Loki smiled and extended his hand when Walburga walked past Sirius whose invisibility cloak had fallen.
Sirius was left stunned when he saw his mom smile and several stray thoughts entered his mind when he saw Loki laughing along with her.
"What about Da-"
Before Sirius could say anymore, Walburga hit him hard enough to knock his teeth out.
"Speak a word more and I'll make sure that you never go to that wretched meeting of yours. You still wag your tail like an obedient mutt for that foolish old man. How long will it take you to understand that the world doesn't run on white and black!?"
"I don't care if it doesn't! Since I'm sure your heart is as black as the Abyss!" Sirius complained walking back into the house by stomping his feet, leaving Loki's handshake hanging.
Loki's ears perked since he deduced that Walburga was talking about Dumbledore but even though he didn't understand much yet he was able to easily deduce what was going on.
'Meeting?'
'Is 'Adam' finally going to do something about Voldemort?'
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