Chapter 1: Pre-School

1989 August 17

Balor was sitting atop a large wall, inscribing runes into a blade. The boy was 9 years old – magic had been used to confirm his birthday, though his birth name was as of yet unknown, mostly because absolutely no one was interested enough to run another test to figure it out, not even Balor himself – and had been adopted for little over 4 years now.

He was tall for his age, and well muscled. Unlikely 5 years ago he no longer walked around with broken bones all over his body. He carried a few scratches on him from training, as well as his previous abusive life, but those were only from the more serious injuries. Magic was rather good at healing injuries.

His only notable scare was a lightning bolt shaped one on his forehead. He had that from before when he was adopted, and had no idea how he got it. Had he lived in the supposedly-civilized Magical Britain, he would have known the meaning of that scar. He didn't live there though, and so the scar was another mystery he just didn't really give enough damns to figure out. Between tasks from his father, training, and research, he was already busy with actually important stuff.

His hair was kept well trimmed, sitting at only 2cm or so in length. Enough to keep his head warm, short enough to absolutely never get in the way. He still had the emerald green eyes from 4 years ago, however the eyes no longer appeared dead. Now they danced with life, and a new intensity, as if they wanted to devour whatever they looked at.

Supposedly his eyes had been faulty, and he had needed glasses to see better, mostly from the beatings he had taken. He wasn't sure. What he knew was that after he had been adopted, magical doctors had tended to him for over a month, and at the end of his, he could see perfectly, his entire body didn't hurt, he had some muscle mass, and had started looking like a regular 5 year old, instead of an anorexic 4 year old. Today, he looked like a fit 11 year old, rather than the 9 year old that he was.

During the past 4 years, Balor had trained intensely. His father never personally trained him in combat. It wasn't necessary. After all, one of his father's authorities was the ability to bring back anyone he had killed as an undead servant. Given that his father was nearly 300 years old, had made enemies of a lot of great warriors – and then slaughtered them – and had spent a decade early on in his life hunting down entire squadrons of mage knights terrorizing the land by using guns with magic, this was a lot of people he could bring back.

Whatever it was that Balor wanted to learn, he was also insured access to the best and the brightest to learn from. Of course, these undead servants lacked motivation. They didn't divulge information willingly, but only answered his questions directly. This put the pressure on Balor to dictate his own education, find his own strengths, and push through on those. All his father ever did, was keep throwing challenges at Balor, forcing him to struggle as hard as he could to better himself.

Also Balor had many mage knights he could learn from, he was rather bad at martial combat. He excelled at mobility based magic, but his hand-to-hand combat, or weapon based combat was rather poor. Still better than an untrained amateur without experience, but that wasn't saying much.

He had a lot more success at magic. He knew of two types of magic: the combat magic that mage knights used, as well as wand magic.

Most of combat magic relied around raising one's physical capabilities, or the offensive powers of their weapons. However, there were some spells dedicated to the manipulation of the environment. Balor was a prodigy at any kind of magic that improved his mobility, but other kinds of stat boosting spells, or raising the offensive powers of this weapons didn't work too well for him. He was also pretty decent at environmental manipulation.

Balor definitely wasn't a prodigy at wand magic. However, he had a talent for it, and he trained hard at it. Considering most witches and wizards apparently started learning the style when they were 11, and he had been training with a wand for 3 years now, he was rather excellent for his age. However, this was more of a side-trick to throw into his main combat style. He could easily tell that he only had a temporary lead that others would make up, not a permanent one.

Balor's true forte, was the creation of wards and magic items, and imbuing weapons with permanent magical properties. This was a style that was rather time-consuming, and so could not be used mid-combat. However, he was able to spend time out of combat creation magical items, so that when it came to a fight he could use them in combat. That, or he could sell these and make money.

His father was more than capable of supplying him with money. Hell, Balor could have lived life as a pampered prince until the moment he died of old age if his father had felt like it. The problem was, his father wasn't like that. He pushed Balor to excel at what he was good at, to become a master of combat even if it meant having to march straight off of the beaten path, and stumble through a forest, blind, to find his own path. No hardships were spared so long as it helped nurture Balor's capabilities.

In essence, Balor had spent the past 4 years training to be a human weapon. As far as he could remember, these were the happiest years of his life. He realized that wasn't saying much, but he was still happy. It was hard, but success felt rewarding.

Today, he was looking forward to another success. He was currently enchanting a saber with some basic magical properties, that would than be given to some magical knight. It wasn't Great Knight-worthy yet, but it was still pretty damn good. However, his enchanting was just a way to pass time.

Balor was waiting until the sun came down. Today was a full moon, and in the courtyard were 4 werewolves. Normally sitting on a 3 meter high wall in a courtyard with 4 werewolves, when you were the only human around, on a full moon was a bad idea. This wasn't a normal event. Balor was running a test, a test that he couldn't believe no one else had done before.

It was known that the full moon made werewolves transform. However, there was precious little literature on why this happened. Balor had been able to limit it to three possibilities: the sight of a full moon, the magical energies given off by the full moon, and the full moon altering the magical energies in the environment. Today he was going to test which was the correct one.

Although wand magic dealt precious little with the magical energies of astral objects – in fact, most wand witches and wizards completely forgot about it after learning about it in school – it was different for the battle magic of mage knights. Most of their magic revolves around manipulating various holy and spiritual energies. There were very extensive written works on the properties and manipulation of the magical energies of the moon.

Balor had set up three areas for testing. One was a steel room where no light could enter, including no moonlight. One was this courtyard, with a ward set up to absorb the magical energies of the moon. Finally, there was another courtyard a short distance away, where the magical energies from the moon were permitted in, but the alterations they made were forcefully reversed by a ward. Each area had one observer, and 4 werewolves, all volunteers. Balor had chosen this courtyard, because he was certain this experiment would give the desired results.


A few hours later, it was finally night time, and the full moon was rising. He could hear a few werewolf howls a short distance away. But the 4 in this courtyard still weren't transforming. They were playing chess, and drinking beer.

Excellent.

Balor displayed a vicious smile. This smile was something he had gotten from his father, somehow. He had only seen his father display a smile like this twice – once when fighting the exalted Luo Hao, and once when fighting a god – both times when pushed to his limits. It was the smile of a beast that was cornered, and aroused from the joys of danger, and flirting with death.

Balor wasn't sure why he smiled like that.

It was true that this ward wasn't terribly useful to werewolves. It was cheaper and superior to wolf's bane potion, but it still wasn't good enough to let them lead normal lives. However, it showed him where to go.

Getting off his ass, he activated leap magic, channeling magic to his feat. He leapt the distance of 20 or so meters necessary to reach the next wall in one bound. Leap magic didn't allow for flight, but it did allow for jumping pretty long distances. Masters of it could even keep up with cars on the highway by leaping from object to object.

As Balor looked down upon this courtyard, he saw an interesting sight. All the werewolves in here were going through a cycle of partially transforming, then de-transforming, then re-partially-transforming, etc. It looked painful, but there was nothing he could do. They had volunteered, knowing of this possibility. If this kept up, they would be out of it for the next 2 or 3 days, but the confirmation would be invaluable.

He already had an idea for how to make an object that solved the problem of lycanthropy. This experiment was merely to confirm the theory the item was based upon.

"I'm sorry." He said to them. "I promise I will free you of your curse. So please bear with this."

As he said that, he leapt back to return to the courtyard he was supposed to be observing.


1990 January 11

It was the fifth full moon since he had run the experiment with the wards. He had made the items that would solve the Lycanthropy issue. At least in theory.

The item was relatively simple. All it was is a leather wrist-band, with a circular sphere attached to it. The outside of the sphere was made of silver, so as to store the absorbed moonlight. A few needles would prick the wearer, and through it the lunar energy would be drained from the wearer. The sphere altered the energy into healing magic, and released it into the wearer through a different set of needles.

On a regular human, this would be a fancy-looking, inconvenient wrist-band that healed them on full-moons, and full-moons only. On a werewolf, it registered the bodily alterations as physical harm, and tried to heal those. Balor had attempted to use the disposition of witches – the mage knight style witches, not wand-wielding witches – as the baseline to heal them back to.

Witches were not simply females who could use magic. Witches were descendents of Divine Ancestors – fallen gods that had lost most of their power – who retained some of the powers of their ancestors. They had access to magic and abilities that could not be normally replicated. While the exact abilities differed from witch to witch, a few of the abilities were universal. Such as the ability to fly, or extended life-span depending on their magical levels.

Essentially what the wrist-bands did on full-moons, was attempt to alter the were-wolves into demi-witches. On the first full-moon they hard worn the bands they had constantly transformed back and forth, though less severely each time. On the second full-moon the transformations were minute – a wolf ear, wolf eyes, and some claws – though the pain was still there. On the third full-moon they experienced some pain, but no transformations, and no pain at the end of it.

This would be the fourth full-moon since they had started testing the wrist-bands. Some of the were-wolves that had gone through three cycles would not be wearing wrist-bands today. If they didn't transform, if they remained normal, lycanthropy was cured. If they did transform, well another group was wearing the bands for the fourth full-moon in a row.

Balor was agitated as he waited, and watched the sun sink below the horizon. The brandy for celebration was out and ready in case of a success. In fact, preparations had been made to contact the majority of the werewolf clans throughout Europe as soon as it was dawn tomorrow if today was a success.

If he succeeded, Balor's name would go down in history. At the age of 9, he would have already made one of the greatest contributions to magical society in this generation. Not for his brilliance, but because of how little everyone else cared. Of how little literature there was on the material. He had access to the magical knowledge of two completely different magical cultures. That was his only advantage, the only advantage he needed.

If he failed though... Balor didn't know if he could live with himself. Live with the disappointment he would cause everyone. The hopes he would crush and shatter under his naivete.

And so, he waited, and he prayed. He prayed that today was a success, that he could start ending the suffering of all these innocents.


1990 July 12

Balor Voban, and his friend Salvatore Doni, two 9 year old boys, looked up at a monster straight out of legends.

Both boys were considered both geniuses, and idiots. Balor was a genius artificer, but an idiot at martial arts. Salvatore was a genius of martial arts – already his skills with a sword were better than some of the Great Knights – but a complete idiot at nearly everything else. He couldn't use any kind of magic at all, and didn't have the slightest knowledge about magic.

At their own specialties both boys were so good that they could already qualify for the title of Great Knight. The second highest rank, only topped by the Paladino, a title held by precisely one person in all of Europe. And yet their other skills were so abysmal that they would never become mage knights. Not even of the lowest rank.

While Balor had the hope of being recognized as a Sage, a master of magic, there was no hope for Salvatore. The genius, a boy of talent seen only once a century, would never be recognized by any serious magical organization no matter what his accomplishments may be. Balor too would never be recognized as a fighter. He could defeat Great Knights in battle, and he would never be accepted as a combatant.

It was these two hopeless idiots that looked up at a 6 meter long scorpion. It was a Divine Beast, a magical creature of such power that gods often kept them as pets and used them in combat. A being of such power that a team of Great Knights using the correct tactics could not guarantee victory.

One might ask, why were these two idiots fighting a Divine Beast. It would in fact be a very reasonable question. The answer, surprisingly enough wasn't that they had attacked the creature to prove themselves. Nor were they ambushed by a building-sized monster. After all, they were in a very empty desert, it was hard to miss a cactus, let alone this being. No, they were facing a Divine Beast, because Balor's father, Sasha, had thought it would be amusing to pit the two boys against such a creature.

Sometimes, I really hate my dad.

Doni didn't seem to share his annoyance. That boy seemed very eager to get right to the fight-to-the-death. That was the thing with Doni. He didn't care what people thought of him. He was too busy enjoying fights, and defeating opponents far beyond his level to care about such petty things.

Well, might as well get started.

The scorpion stuck out with its tail at the boys at a speed that an ordinary person would barely have time to react to. After the training that they had gone through, the boys found the speed to be rather slow.

Balor used leap magic to dodge to the right by about five meters, materialized his wand in his left hand, and fired off two stunning spells, as well as a body-binding spell with a yell of "stupefy, stupefy, petrificus totalus!" Two balls of red light, and a ball of gray light shot out of his wand, striking the creature, and doing absolutely nothing.

Divine Beasts had a very high level of magical resistance. It wasn't like most magical creatures where the spell simply did a lot less. Rather, spells that were too weak did absolutely nothing what so ever.

Doni in the meantime side-stepped the attack, and used a two-handed sword that was rather large for someone his side, to deflect the attack to the right. He covered the rest of the distance to the scorpion in a moment, and stuck one of its legs with his sword before rolling off to the left, away from the creature's attempts to stump on him.

That attack also did nothing, as the Divine Beast seemed to have skin of hardness comparable to some softer metals. So neither of their attacks were able to harm the creature. Naturally, both of them grinned like complete idiots. After all, even though it was technically a Divine Beast, it was very low on the ranking of those. Mostly due to mobility issues.

With a quick wave of his wand and a short chant, Balor transformed some of the sand into a pair of lions that charged the scorpion. The scorpion immediately attacked the two lions, attempting to tear them apart.

Of course, neither lion was a match for a real lion, let alone a Divine Beast. They didn't even completely look like lions. They were just a simple transformation that created a creature with vaguely the right shape, and a lion's agility. The scorpion tore them apart in 10 seconds flat, but that was 10 seconds that Balor had to lay down his real spell.

He placed his hand on the ground and concentrated, channeling magic under the scorpion. He used basic alchemy to slightly modify the composition of the sand. The scorpion was already sinking nearly an entire foot into the sand with its claws, so he just had to let it sink further.

As the two lions were torn apart, the sand under the scorpion turned into quicksand. Suddenly, it started sinking into the ground at a rather slow pace. It raised its front feet, rather to climb out, when Doni decided to remind it that he was still here.

The boy charged in, dodged a stab from the scorpion's tail, and leapt along the scorpion's legs onto its back, swinging at the muscles in one of its front legs. The tendons in the leg were cut, causing the scorpion to stumble when it couldn't put both feet down. As such, it didn't move forward, and sank further into the quicksand.

Now, amongst swordsman, there was a theory that it was possible to reach such perfection with swordsmanship that your weapon didn't matter. You could pick up a random branch off the ground, and slice with it with the speed, precision, and sharpness of a rapier, or wield it with the force and bluntness of a greatsword. That you could pick up a kitchen knife, and use it as the greatest sword in existence.

Doni had not reached this level of perfection. However, in his idiotic drive to constantly push himself, he had reached the point where a sword in his hands did more than it should be able to. Of course, the fact that he was wielding a sword that Balor had personally spent two weeks enchanting the ever loving crap out of did help.

Even so, it only gave the scorpion a scratch. The muscles in that leg worked, the creature just needed to adjust how it moved them. Not that Balor was planning to let it.

He materialized a paintball gun he had brought along for the mission in his free hand. In wand magic, this would have been an extremely high level spell. So he used the mage knight variant of it; similar effects, different and easier mechanics. He then introduced the scorpion to the concept of fully-automatic paintball gun to the face.

The gun of course didn't do any damage. However, it turns out that having one's face covered in paint does not mesh well with attempts to see targets. Especially when very smelly paint that chemically reacts with air to produce enough heat to blind heat senses is used.

"And they laughed at me when I said I was going to fight a Divine Beast with a foot-long stick and a paintball gun."

The creature opened its mouth to let out a screech. Normally this would have been a terrifying experience. Unless you are a campione, you do NOT want a Divine Beast screeching or screaming at you. That means they have officially determined you as a threat. Of course, given that this was the idiot duo, they were specifically hoping for this to happen.

Doni shoved his sword into the creature's mouth, trying to cut some of the muscles, while stopping it from closing its mouth. Due to the magical enhancements on the sword, the muscles around the area would be weakened while the sword was in there, even if it didn't touch those specific muscles. Balor in the meantime unleashed a barrage of stunning spells into the creature's mouth, yelling "stupify" over and over like a broken record. His wand lit up like an imperial storm trooper's blaster on auto-fire, except he actually had decent aim. Given how the scorpion couldn't see the attack, it didn't know to try dodging until it started getting hit in the mouth with stunners.

Yes, it was true that Divine Beasts had very high magical resistance. However, they didn't hold a candle to Gods, Campione, and Heretical Gods. And being raised by a Campione, Balor knew that even those beings would be fully affected by a spell if it was released internally into them. Meaning, shoved into their mouth. He was banking on the same thing happening with Divine Beasts. Because if not, he had just exhausted himself for no good reason.

The scorpion did seem to be faltering under the barrage of spells. It was sinking into quicksand, and its body was stiffening up. With one final screech though, it released all of its magic, canceling the stunning effect on itself and stuck with its tail at the one target who's location it knew; Doni.

Doni did the reasonable thing of abandoning his sword, and jumping the hell off of the creature. He got out of the way of the tail just in time for the scorpion to stab itself in the back of the neck, killing itself. Sadly, in this final effort it got enough strength in its jaws to also snap the sword in half, making Balor let out a string of – sadly non-magical – curses.

Doni landed on the sand with barely a sound as he rolled, reducing the force of impact to negligible, and stood up. Balor banished his two weapons, and the two of them looked at the creature that they had slain. And the sword it hat cost them.

"You are now going to demand that I make you a new sword, aren't you?"

"Yup." Doni said with a bright smile, and clapped Balor on the back. Balor simply fell to the ground from the force of it.

"Could you at least recover the pieces of the sword? It would make things easier for me."

"Okay." Doni answered like an idiot, being stepping into the quicksand. He then started yelling something about there being quicksand. Balor was too exhausted to laugh.


1990 July 31

Today was Balor's 10th birthday. Normally he didn't have birthday celebrations. Actually, even today wasn't technically a birthday celebration. It was a celebration of his "cure" for lycanthropy. To celebrate the occasion, he was wearing a new-suit – a gift for his invention – that was dark blue. He had light make-up on to cover the scar on his head, while he wore a cheap watch. He was offered a Rolex, but punched the idiot in the face who thought coming to meet people suffering from poverty because they were assaulted years ago and have been discriminated since, wearing a watch more than their entire fortunes, was a good idea.

While the band did cure lycanthropy in 3 moon cycles, it did have side-effects. Side-effects included being in pain and unable to function properly during the 3 full moons, extended life-span – to about 140 years of life expectancy – resistance to diseases and viruses, regaining a more youthful body – based on witch dispositions and changes it was estimated that former weres would have the body of a 40 year old if they died of old age at 140, but this slowed aging didn't kick in until the teenage years - and significantly increased magical core sizes.

One didn't need to have a magical core to become a mage knight. Stamina, not magical core was used when casting those kinds of spells. However, the size of the magical core that one was born with had a huge impact on one's ability to perform wand magic. All werewolves that gained the benefit of his "cure" now had a great potential as wand-witches and wand-wizards. Essentially "get bitten by werewolf + wear wrist-band for 3 month" was a more effective formula for gain a large magical level, than being a pure-blood witch or wizard.

Balor still had a larger potential than most of the werewolves. In fact, or the two hundred or so that had been cured, only two matches him in core size. Of course, that was more a testament to his massive core size. While his skill wasn't anything special, his magical core size was rather astounding.

Balor's father wasn't here at the celebration. He was off in Indonesia having heard that a heretical god had descended there. Balor didn't mind. It was hard to have fun with father around. It was hard to loosen up around a guy that turned you into a salt statue by looking at you if you annoyed him. Even if you were named after the god that ability came from.

There were, however, a number of other important people here, besides a lot of former werewolves, that seemed to be debating the vital topic of what to call themselves now. The leaders of various packs were here, as well as magical associations coordinating the creation and distribution of the cures. Balor got the credit for creating them devices, but it was important that a lot of people knew how to make them, so that they could be produced quicker.

Balor himself didn't mind being left out of coordinating the logistics. He still got to know all the important personnel here, just didn't work with them right now. After all, he had no experience with this kind of coordination.

"Mr. Voban?"

He turned to see a beautiful girl of around his age looking at him. She had a beautiful blond hair and clear blue eyes. She had a smooth white skin, that was so beautiful, and such a fine, toned build, that he almost missed the few scars that were visible on her. She wore a simple white dress, and yet her beauty somehow made it look regal, making him blush.

"How can I help-"

He was cut off as she leaned down slightly and kissed him. Only now did he notice that she was slightly taller than him. Strange how he thought about that as he tasted her lips for a moment that was all too short as she pulled away from him again.

"Thank you for everything."

The girl said in a surprisingly cheerful manner, as Balor's face took on the color of red paint. This had been his first kiss. He had never even flirted with someone before. Somehow he never got around to doing that.

"I haven't done all that much-" Balor began, only to be cut off again by the girl who shook her head.

"Earlier today I got a letter from Hogwarts saying I was accepted to the school. Everyone of my age was accepted to either there, or Durmstrung. They also accepted older students as transfers. I don't know what kind of political influence your father has, but apparently he got half a dozen magical organizations to pressure the schools. Those who weren't accepted there were accepted into magical organizations to train there."

Balor was surprised. First, he hadn't heard about this. However, that wasn't so surprising. What was surprising was his father giving a damn about the well being of someone else. That seemed incredibly out of character for the man. Bullying and threatening magical organizations across Europe was perfectly in character for him though.

"After I was infected, I thought that like my parents, I would never be treated as a human. Thanks to you and your father, we are finally being acknowledged as humans with our rights. Thank you. We owe you everything."

The girl seemed to be crying with happiness. For one horrible moment, Balor was tempted to take credit for it. If all the werewolves felt this way, he could build up his own private army. In a few years, he could form out of them a magical organization that possessed both magical knights and wand magic, full of hundreds of extremely talented people loyal to him. However, it wouldn't be the right thing to do.

Also, his father would have killed him. As his father said "I expect you to be a villain, but I expect you to have standards." In this family it was okay to rebel against the government, or to bring it crashing down. It was okay to rule others through right of might. It was even fine to create an army of people who feared to not follow you. What wasn't okay, was to manipulate people when they were emotionally weak into following you. Ambition was fine. Cunning was fine. Psychological manipulation was not okay.

So instead, he brushed the tears from her eyes, and brought her into a hug.

"You don't owe me anything. I didn't give you anything you didn't deserve to have. The people who took those from you or denied those from you owe you for the pain they caused you. I just did what was right, and what needed to be done."

She smiled at him for that. Naturally, as with all important conversations stated by important people, most people in the room heard them.

For Harry's abilities, he will be using a mix of magic from both campione and the HP universe. In my opinion neither style of magic is superior to the other. Rather at somethings one is better, at other things, the other style is better.

Other than that, his spell repertoir should be around 2nd year level. By the time he enrolls in Hogwarts, I'm planning to have him master all spells up to 2nd year level. Plus stupefy, because that spell is useful, and I can't figure out what year it is.

As for his skill at wand magic, the amount of magical energy he has is exceptional. However, he doesn't learn spells quickly. He will have a massive advantage since he will have 4~5 years of practice on everyone else, but learn slower until others eventually catch up.