A scorching wave slammed into him.
The air twisted from the heat; every breath carried the acrid stench of sulfur and char, burning his throat and lungs.
The massive creature sprawled in the center of the clearing—a body made of hundreds of intertwined Ashwinders—was a mobile furnace brimming with malice. Purple-black flames slithered between each scale, condensing into pure destructive intent.
To fight head-on would be suicide.
Alan gripped his wand; its shaft was already warm to the touch.
His heartbeat was steady, his blood flowing at a calm, constant rate. Fear—an inefficient emotion—had long been purged from his Mind Palace.
On his retinas, the monstrous snake was being rapidly deconstructed, analyzed, and digitized.
It was no longer a living creature.
It was a program.
An obese aggregate composed of hundreds of independently overloaded "heat modules."
Its strength came from aggregation, but its structure was full of redundancy and chaos. No central processor, no unified instruction set—only the most primitive, instinct-driven attack logic.
A crude, yet devastatingly powerful "destruction algorithm."
As a program, it must have a bug.
A fatal bug capable of crashing the entire system in an instant, triggering a catastrophic cascade.
Streams of code raced through Alan's Mind Palace at light speed, simulating countless attack paths and energy interactions. In less than a second, ten new combat sequences were compiled and locked.
A precise "chain reaction" program.
"Step One: Module Separation."
His Mind issued the first command.
The tip of his wand rose like a scalpel, targeting the outermost edge of the snake construct—a single smaller Ashwinder, jittery, tongue flicking, and seemingly frail compared to the rest.
The tip glimmered, not with destructive red, but with a faint, nearly imperceptible pure magical aura.
"Impedimenta!"
The spell left his lips without stirring any grand elemental waves. The faint light sliced silently through the scorching air, striking the node where the small snake was coiled.
It wasn't the "vital point."
It was the most unstable "data interface" connecting the small snake to the main body.
The little snake felt no pain—only the precise impact severed its energy link to the main mass.
It fell from the massive snake body like a burnt rope snapping, landing on the cracked, blistering ground.
Confused, it twisted about. Without a unified command, it had no clue what to attack.
A single, independent, bewildered "heat module."
"Step Two: Targeting."
The second spell followed instantly as the first hit.
"Levicorpus!"
An invisible force field enveloped the fallen small snake, lifting it from the ground.
Alan's mental focus was absolute. At that moment, he was a top-tier drone pilot, his will functioning as the ultimate control command.
The small, burning snake had become a chess piece in his hand—a deadly guided missile.
The main snake body sensed the threat. Ten massive heads turned simultaneously, spewing chaotic purple flames hot enough to melt rock, attempting to intercept the "traitor."
Yet, guided by Alan's supercomputer-like predictions and control, the little snake darted in a Z-shaped path that defied all aerodynamics, weaving through the infernal fire.
It brushed against one fang, then narrowly evaded another jet of flame.
The entire maneuver was fluid, a breathtaking display of deadly precision.
Finally, Alan sent the burning little snake to hover at an inconceivably precise angle over the "head cluster" of the monstrous snake—a formation of nineteen fused heads.
It hovered there, less than a foot from those menacing eyes.
A perfect detonation coordinate.
"Step Three: Core Ignition!"
Alan's gaze sharpened. Every calculation, every setup, had led to this final strike.
His third and final spell:
"Incendio!"
This time, he made no attempt at delicate control.
He poured every last ounce of his remaining magic into the wand tip, unleashing a perfectly standard, blazing, violent fire spell.
An intense orange-red column tore through the night sky, ripping apart the purple fire that shrouded the monstrous snake construct and striking the small Ashwinder hovering in midair.
This was not like lighting a match and tossing it into a gasoline barrel—it was far more precise, far more calculated.
This was like pouring an erupting volcano straight into an already highly unstable nuclear reactor!
Boom—
No sound.
The first sensation was a pure, absolute light that seemed to bleach the world white.
Immediately after came a shockwave powerful enough to rupture eardrums.
The little snake, used as the "fuse," experienced a violent, geometrically multiplying energy overload the instant Alan's external fire spell injected additional magical energy into it.
It became a miniature, unstable purple sun.
Then came the chain reaction.
This explosion was just the first domino falling.
A devastating, irreversible sequence of chain reactions was fully triggered.
The explosion at the snake monster's head instantly detonated the ten or so Ashwinders that formed its massive head! Their internal energy cores, destabilized by the blast, cascaded into further explosions.
The chain reaction from the head then detonated the snake clusters in its neck!
The neck's explosion triggered blasts through its chest, torso, and tail…
In under three seconds, the monstrous creature, composed of hundreds of writhing Ashwinders, was completely consumed by an internal energy storm—hundreds of times more violent than its own attacks!
It became a massive, writhing, twisting, howling purple fireball.
Countless snake silhouettes appeared on the fireball's surface, only to be shredded instantly by deeper, successive explosions.
Finally, with a bone-chilling roar of pain and defiance that split the clouds, the enormous purple fireball was utterly destroyed, collapsing completely.
The destructive energy transformed into a raging sea of purple flames, consuming the entire forest clearing.
Alan's eyes reflected that purple inferno, yet his gaze lingered not a moment.
He immediately cast a cooling charm, enveloping himself in a thin, icy magical barrier that shielded him from the heat waves capable of roasting a human alive.
Holding his breath, he took advantage of the brief pause caused by the flames' intense consumption of oxygen and lunged forward with his whole body.
His legs exploded with incredible force, propelling him like a projectile through the scorching wall of fire.
Purple flames twisted and warped his vision.
His skin stung with burning heat.
He pushed through the inferno.
Finally, beneath a charred, leafless tree stripped down to its massive trunk, he reached his destination.
Fred and George.
They were bound tightly to the trunk by black vines that had grown up from the tree roots, pulsing with eerie magical light.
Their heads hung limp, eyes tightly shut, trapped in a deep, enchanted slumber.
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