Hermione and Snape were still caught in their shock.
Not far away.
The Chaos Vortex on the Bronze Gate began to spin again, and within the viscous mist that churned there, that familiar figure slowly emerged—the long silver beard, the half-moon spectacles, the starlight flickering on the purple robes. As the evil Dumbledore stepped out of the vortex, the air in the Forbidden Forest grew unbearably tense once more.
"Why is there another Dumbledore?"
Hermione stared wide-eyed in stunned disbelief.
However.
Snape could not give her any answer either. What was happening now went far beyond the understanding of a first-year Little Witch, and even he, the Hogwarts professor and Head of Slytherin, felt a kind of incomprehensible eeriness. All the knowledge he possessed could not explain what they were seeing.
Silence.
Still silence.
And the Albus Dumbledore standing beside them did not seem surprised by this at all.
"Is there going to be another fight?"
Hermione's nails dug deep into her palms, and the Magic Wand in her hand was trembling slightly. The battle just now had already left her terrified, with a small, gnawing sense that she could die at any moment; she had only just relaxed the tiniest bit when it ended, never expecting that it would suddenly feel as though time had rewound itself.
Another Dumbledore walked out from within the Bronze Gate.
Hermione's heart leapt back into her throat. The night wind seemed to freeze. She realized her breathing had become unnaturally difficult, as if a pair of invisible hands were closing around her throat.
The two identical old men faced each other across the distance, moonlight drawing a silver boundary line between them. Snape's expression kept shifting, his mood unbearably tense.
They're going to fight.
The Little Witch was scared out of her wits.
How could he be any different?
He merely had better emotional control than Hermione, able to mask the tremor in his heart with a blank face—that Hogwarts professor wanted to say something.
But when he turned his head, he saw that the Albus Dumbledore beside him had not raised his Magic Wand, and the Dumbledore who had just walked out from the Bronze Gate across from them gave a soft chuckle when he saw this.
"Relax, Severus. You are quite safe right now. I will not attack, because I know it would be a pointless attempt. I am sorry to have made you afraid of me."
"Wanting to kill you was never truly my intention; it was simply the choice I had to make in order to escape, and now I have lost even that choice."
The evil Dumbledore spoke softly, his tone and pitch exactly the same as the old Headmaster in Snape's memories, with no hint of imitation that could be distinguished.
"Only I know that I never fight a battle I am certain to lose." He was clearly like the Giant Dragon Ian had encountered before—each time he perished and then walked out again, he still carried the memories of the previous time.
Because of this.
The real Dumbledore was indeed not surprised. He took a step forward, the hem of his robe sweeping over the scorched earth. "So it seems you do retain your memories. Does this gate keep Reviving you?"
As he spoke.
The real Dumbledore looked up at the intricate Magic Runes covering the Bronze Gate. If Ian were here, he would probably also realize that his inability to interpret the Bronze Gate was not his own failing.
Even someone as learned as Albus Dumbledore was the same—of course, he could see more than Ian, yet even he could not fully decipher all of the Magic Runes.
From this it could be seen.
Just how profound and vast the knowledge behind the power of this Bronze Gate truly was, and what kind of person could possibly forge such a thing.
Just amassing that kind of knowledge—an ordinary human lifetime would never be enough. Dumbledore was quite certain of this, for all the knowledge he had accumulated over his life only allowed him to interpret a tiny fraction. As a man deeply proud in his heart, Dumbledore did not believe that, throughout history, there were many whose talent and brilliance so vastly surpassed his own.
This was not narcissism.
It was simply the way things were.
Throughout history.
There had only been one exception, and even then he suspected that this exception was not a "normal" exception at all—Dumbledore's confidence came from a very clear understanding of himself.
And this understanding.
He believed no Wizard would mistake for mere vanity.
Ian would not think so either.
He might even agree with this more than most Wizards—outstanding as a Wizard since youth, becoming a Guardian of the Magic Realm in middle age, and still able to duel Voldemort at over a hundred years old, Dumbledore commanded more Magic Knowledge than anyone else in today's Magic World, a universal genius who had set foot in nearly every Magic Domain.
He had surpassed his era.
Just like Merlin in his day.
Compared with Merlin, what he lacked was merely a bit of the good fortune of living in a more brilliant age. Dumbledore thought so himself; he did not believe that, starting from the same line, he would fall far short of Merlin.
For that very reason.
He felt that this Bronze Gate had to be either the collective work of countless people's efforts, or the creation of some long-lived genius; in either case, it was absolutely not something a single person could complete in two hundred years.
"An astonishing creation indeed."
The erudite Dumbledore's eyes flowed with curiosity.
Erudition does not mean omniscience.
The real Dumbledore could at best infer part of the Bronze Gate's power; he was far from grasping it clearly, so he needed to seek confirmation from the version of himself that had walked out from within the gate.