My soul is not just ordinary. Pride is a sin, of course, but right now, I'm... I'm bigger, better, stronger.

"...Young Lord Black." ​​

Which means... Which means you're screwed!

Swimming out of my own thoughts, I looked into Riddle's eyes.

"That's right, Muggle scum," I smirked back at Riddle. Even though I have nothing against any strata of the population, castes, and classes, it is a sacred thing to bring an opponent out of balance.

I love to see Riddle's face contort in rage, and his eyes flashed red.

"I am!" he yelled in my face. "Lord! Volde..."

"Dead," I stabbed my hand into his chest without a swing.

"Whaaat?! You dare me..."

"Destroy."

My mind, my will, my world around me, and I don't care if it's not so!

Riddle was instantly enveloped in a whirlwind of blood, raising a terrifying rumble and wind in the semi-darkness of the hall. The human mind is where true freedom lies, the absence of limits and boundaries.

Voldemort, rather than Riddle, tried to emerge from the vortex. Bald and noseless, with his face open in a mute scream, as if he were trying to break through a canvas of dark red silk. But it was all in vain. I understood a simple thing. Will and faith are the tools of the battle of the minds. So was the soul.

Yet even Voldemort's piece was strong and was beginning to break free, despite the pressure and force with which I sought to destroy it. Well.

There was a quiet rustling and grinding of something hard against the stone behind me. Without even turning around, I could feel the presence of a real "train" of organics. The presence of something cold and... It was as if it were an extension of my body. I could feel the basilisk's head hovering behind my right shoulder, and Voldemort suddenly began to slow down in his movements. I knew exactly what I had to do, but I couldn't. I couldn't just take Voldemort's shard and destroy it without a pose.

Pulling my left hand toward the giant bloody vortex, I snapped my fingers, and all that blood spun even faster, immediately starting to shrink and turn from a vortex pillar into a sphere. Smaller and smaller. Occasionally there were protrusions on its surface as if someone was trying to get out, but it was in vain, and soon there was a dense sphere of dark, almost black blood, no bigger than a volleyball in front of me. Without a sweep, as if with a rapier, pierced the sphere with the Sword. As if a long cry of despair could be heard from far, far away, and tiny droplets quickly began to separate from the sphere, immediately absorbed into the sword.

"No, no, no! Only destruction!"

I tried to put a volitional effort into the sword, and it worked - the sphere began to decompose, to rot. Rotting depressions and dents appeared on it until it was gone, along with a hushed cry of despair. However, a tiny number of droplets did soak in. Well, I don't think it's all that bad.

My legs went limp, and the contact of my ass with the cold marble floor brought to me all the tension that I had experienced in the last minutes. When I looked around, there were no basilisks - just an empty room in the darkness. Nothing was happening or changing.

"I hope I don't have to destroy and devour every square inch here individually with my sword... Doesn't this hall symbolize the diadem?"

With a grunt, like a hundred-year-old man, I got up off the floor and looked at one of the massive slabs, and without a second thought, I stabbed my sword into it. The slab scattered with glowing yellow sparks, beginning to accumulate on the blade of the sword. But the sparks did not absorb but froze in a tiny glowing dot as if waiting to continue.

"That won't do."

A wild thought flashed through my head and demanded its immediate implementation. With a slight movement of my left hand, I wrapped a bloody film around one of the floor slabs, growing from this film a large elongated drop, as if hanging from the ceiling, but from the bottom up. And then I calmly pierced the drop. Inside, the bloody structure gleamed dully with tints of yellow sparks, which inside the drops reached for the sword but did not absorb into it, but only slightly increased the speck's size on the blade.

"Excellent."

A volitional effort and a dark pool of blood quickly spread from me across the floor, covering every millimeter of the windowless and doorless room in a couple of seconds, and it took on a horrifying, not just frightening appearance. It was blood, after all.

A drop of blood rose from the floor in front of me on a thin stalk, and I immediately pierced it with my sword. The blood on the hall surfaces glittered dully, and these glitters slowly flowed to the drop, to the sword. It was a mesmerizing picture. The stream of sparks became so dense that through the blood, contrary to all the laws of optics and opacity of blood, a bright monolithic stream of yellow light was seen, which formed a rapidly increasing stain on the sword blade.

With the last spark, the speck of yellow light finally formed, blinked, and disappeared into the sword. A sharp and intense pain threw me to the floor. Just oceans of pain... somewhere inside... unclear where. Everywhere. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know how much time had passed. But the pain is gone.

There was a darkness before my eyes, in which multicolored circles swam now and then, burning out from within, merging, changing shape. It didn't last long, and in a few seconds, I could see the mountains of junk in front of me. I was still kneeling on the floor, with a lot of ash on my shoulders and clothes. I ran my hand over my forehead, wiped off the large drops of sweat, and, along the way, smeared myself in the ashes.

There was no pain, but my hands and legs shook from the overwork. Well, and everything else. I collapsed on my back without energy, and the only thought that came to me was to sleep. I must sleep.