Hogwarts: Chill, I'm Not That Tom Riddle

Chapter 165: The Pure Obscurial

— — — — — — "No! Reject it—reject it NOW!"

The system’s chime barely faded before Tom snapped upright, his command ripping through the room.

A reward? Turning him into an Obscurial? This wasn’t a gift. It was a death sentence.

The Obscurus was a dark, destructive magical force, born from children who repressed their magic until it twisted into something monstrous. Its host was known as an Obscurial.

Back in Andros’s time, when wizards and Muggles lived side by side, there was no such thing. It wasn’t until the Middle Ages, when the Church and Muggles hunted wizards, that the conditions arose for Obscurials to be born.

Every Obscurial lived short, tragic lives. The Obscurus constantly devoured its host’s emotions and magic to grow stronger, until eventually it consumed their very life. Most didn’t live past ten. Those with strong talent and a sturdy foundation lasted longer—like Ariana Dumbledore, who made it to fourteen. If she hadn’t been fatally caught in the crossfire, she might have lived decades more.

Or like her nephew, Aurelius Dumbledore, who somehow survived into his twenties before the Obscurus drained him dry.

Tom liked to think his own constitution was stronger than either of them. But that didn’t mean he wanted something parasitic sucking the life out of him from the inside.

Almost as if it had read his mind, the system displayed a new message across his vision.

[Please rest assured. This reward has been optimized and will not harm the host.]

Tom blinked. "...For real?"

Tom opened the talent details.

[Obscurus (Pure Variant): All consciousness has been purged. What remains is a powerful well of dark magic fully under the host’s control.]

[Current state: embryonic. Requires feeding with magical energy to grow.]

[Note: Host possesses the Heart of Dark Magic. Feeding the Obscurus with this will provide amplified effects.]

Tom thought for a moment, then Apparated to the mountain behind the village. After making sure he was alone, he accepted the reward.

At once he felt something new stirring within his magic—like a small presence curled inside him, pulsing with hunger.

"You want food? Fine. Eat."

He raised his hand. A wisp of shadowy, threadlike matter floated into his palm, no bigger than a glass bead. As Tom funneled magic into it, the Obscurus began to swell.

Its drain on his power was about the same as casting steady spells. Even so, after consuming nearly a third of his magic reserves, the bead had only grown to the size of a basketball.

Tom stopped. The hunger was still there, tugging faintly at him, but the Obscurus didn’t take more without permission. He let out a breath of relief.

So the system wasn’t lying. The Obscurus’s craving was instinct, but its instincts were leashed. That meant no risk of it spiraling out of control.

This wasn’t a curse—it was a gift. A controlled talent, not a ticking time bomb.

ic—even to wizards.

"I made some upgrades," Tom said casually. "Better defenses. More efficient too."

A Ravenclaw seventh-year let out a low whistle. "Your alchemy is insane. I honestly can’t imagine how you managed this."

He’d taken Alchemy as an elective himself, and he wasn’t bad at it. But looking at Megatron, he couldn’t make heads or tails of the techniques involved.

Some had even gone to the Alchemy Professor, asking how they could build their own Megatron.

The professor had just laughed helplessly.

"Children, the worst mistake you can make in any subject is aiming too high before you’ve mastered the basics. Riddle’s ’Megatron’... is not something you should be imagining yourselves creating."

Even he admitted that he couldn’t decipher the spellwork or energy channels involved in Megatron’s transformations. His advice had been simple: "Focus on your coursework. Don’t waste your time trying to break down things far beyond your level."

Word of that spread fast. Everyone now knew the professor himself had said Riddle’s alchemy outstripped his own.

So when the Ravenclaw praised him now, Tom only smiled faintly and said nothing.

...

Not long after, Daphne returned with Hermione in tow, both of them holding books.

Everyone else knew the drill: they had to wait their turn. First the two girls got to play until they were satisfied.

"Ooof, if it wasn’t Megatron!"

Just as Daphne was about to activate the construct, a laid-back voice with a strong American accent rang out across the field.

.

.

.