"Yeah, this thing is pretty cool! Hey, this inscription..." Sirius leaned his head forward, examining the glowing triangular inscription in the center of the trident Kasenhis was holding.

"What's up with the inscription?"

Sirius tilted his head. "This rune looks like... some kind of ancient organization symbol?"

Lupin also leaned in. "It really does look like it. Like the emblem of the Brotherhood of the Holy Blood."

"...What are you guys talking about?" Kasenhis exchanged a confused glance with Harry and asked.

"Just an ancient magical organization, used to be hostile to wizards. But they should be extinct by now. As for the trident and the Drowned who was holding it earlier, they're probably remnants of that group. Maybe some poor wizard got caught and cursed into eternal torment like that," Sirius explained.

"There's a group like that...? Forget it. Did you guys see anything else?" Kasenhis asked.

"Just ruins. Nothing worth looking at," Harry shook his head.

"Then let's move on." With that, Kasenhis turned the steering control, and the little tracked vehicle rolled off in a new direction.

"By the way, with so many of us crammed into such a small space, won't we run out of air?" Lupin suddenly asked an important question.

"Ah! I completely forgot about that." Kasenhis smacked his forehead, then took out three flowerpots and stuck in three pixelated saplings. "Just breathe on them, and they'll give you back some oxygen."

The three of them took the pots and looked at the saplings, which looked more like pasted-on textures than actual plants. They weren't sure if they should act surprised or not, but then they remembered the square trees in Kasenhis's office and the various pixel-style alchemical creations…

Maybe it was just his thing—he liked this aesthetic and had deliberately cultivated it..?

The three mentally convinced themselves of that, each hugging a little flowerpot and slowly breathing into it.

…

The next morning,

On a beach full of humans, a wooden tracked vehicle slowly drove out of the sea—and was immediately targeted by one camera after another.

Kasenhis was the first to step out. Frowning as he looked at the unfamiliar beach, he mumbled in confusion, "Oh Merlin, where the hell are we? Is this still the Netherlands?"

A big-bearded man not far away, who fortunately understood English, looked at him in puzzlement. "Ovviamente, this isn't the Netherlands, this is Italy."

"Oh, perfect—Eh?"

As soon as the bearded man finished speaking, Kasenhis hurriedly pulled out a globe.

After checking it for a long while, he finally pieced together the situation, then climbed back into the tracked vehicle, a bit awkwardly. "We may have… accidentally traveled through space."

"?"

"??"

"???"

Kasenhis pointed to the narrow sea channel between England and the Netherlands on the globe. "Last night, theoretically, we were somewhere in this channel."

"And then?" Lupin asked in confusion.

"And then," Kasenhis took a deep breath, "we somehow spent the whole night bypassing the Netherlands, bypassing France, bypassing Spain and Portugal—twice—and ended up crossing half of Europe to arrive at a beach in Italy."

"...Where's the globe? Let us take a look."

Kasenhis handed over the globe, and the three of them crowded around, poking and pointing all over it.

"So... this makes no scientific sense. We really space-jumped?" Sirius said, echoing Kasenhis's exact words.

Bang bang bang!

"Welcome to Sicily, gentlemen. You first—what is this, a homemade submarine?" A man in uniform walked over, knocked on the top of the tracked vehicle, and frowned as he asked.

"Uh... Mamma mia, officer. Buongiorno. We're from somewhere up in England. Maybe... we got swept here by the tide?"

"Oh... you think I'm buying that?" the uniformed man squinted at them with a half-moon glare.

"Alright, fine. I'm a student at the University of Manchester. He's my little brother," Kasenhis said, patting Harry on the head. Then he pointed at Lupin and Sirius. "And these two are professors. They brought us here... for research."

"Yes, that's right—research," Lupin nodded while discreetly crouching down to tighten his shoelaces. He was already prepared to give the uniformed guy a solid whack and then bolt like Bolt—five traffic lights and one beach would only take him three footprints flat.

"Oh... and your IDs?" the uniformed man asked casually.

Kasenhis made a show of patting his pockets, then discreetly used his Ender Ring to pull out his student ID.

The uniformed man took the ID and frowned. "Your enrollment date..."

"Ahem, academic underachievement. I, uh, got held back," Kasenhis replied with a cough.

The uniformed man's expression turned strange as he glanced at the group's well-tailored clothes—one had a look of pure, innocent stupidity, one had a kind old-man smile, one looked not particularly bright, and then there was a literal kid...

"Forget it. This vehicle can't be driven on the road. Maybe you guys should call a tow truck." Weighing his salary against the effort it would take to stuff these weirdos into a police car, he finally just waved them off.

"Grazie, generoso signore!" Kasenhis quickly shut the car door and slammed the gas. The little vehicle began moving forward… slowly.

"Tsk, Inglesi pazzi." The officer muttered under his breath, shaking his head.

They drove the contraption to a quieter spot with fewer people. Once there, Kasenhis dismantled it cleanly in just a few swift moves. Only then did they hit the streets—on foot—scouring the city for a pizza shop.

After all, they still needed to test whether eating pineapple pasta pizza with iced American coffee on an Italian street would actually get them punched.

Even though it might hurt a bit… it sounded fun!

The group hailed a taxi and straightforwardly told the driver they were from England and wanted to eat the most authentic pizza. They asked the driver to take them there as quickly as possible.

The driver, hearing this, agreed cheerfully.

After all, watching people from a culinary wasteland come to taste the most authentic Italian pizza—and then gasp in exaggerated awe—was one of the better forms of entertainment in an otherwise dull day.

Soon, the group stepped into a long-established pizzeria, and the driver also came along, grinning, clearly eager to watch the show.

"Dai Dai! Give it a try! This is the best pizza place in all of Italy. Oh, and their espresso here is also excellent," the driver recommended.

"Molllllto bene alllllloraaaa~" Kasenhis said with a stereotypical Italian accent, then directly called over the front counter staff. "I'd like one extra-large pineapple pasta pizza, and four espressos—serve them with ice water so we can drink them as iced Americanos."

CRACK!

That was the sound of a glass shattering.

_________

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