Chapter 91: Calamity Passing
"Boom!"
A slab weighing over a hundred pounds was kicked flying by an invisible, high-pressure airflow, slamming hard against the opposite wall, where spiderweb-like cracks exploded outward.
Cassius stepped out of the doorway.
No roaring, no frowning; his entire face was like a slab of iron, stagnant and still. Yet, beneath this extreme calm, there was a suppressed killing intent capable of piercing the sky.
With every step he took forward, the temperature in this underground corridor—which never saw the light of day—plummeted off a cliff.
This was no ordinary cold; it was an incredibly domineering, physical drop in temperature—highly compressed magic was indiscriminately plundering every shred of heat from the surrounding environment.
"Crack... crack..."
A layer of pale, thick frost spread along his trouser legs down to his feet. The frost, like some starving maw from the abyss, devoured the bluestone floor tiles frantically; wherever it passed, the water droplets on the walls instantly shattered into ice crystals.
The green torches lining both sides of the corridor struggled wildly for half a second before being abruptly snuffed out, accompanied by a harsh hissing sound.
In mid-air, restless, ghostly blue electricity faintly flickered.
"Crackle!"
The air emitted a teeth-grinding friction sound. It was the "Dual-Soul Furnace" inside Cassius, pushed directly to the maximum redline, to the point where it would burn through the caster himself! The overflowing magic was so thick that it had begun to physically rub against the air!
At the corridor corner.
The top-tier protective ward personally set by Snape, which not even an adult Auror could easily break, had just touched this chill—
It didn't sound an alarm; it didn't resist.
The invisible runes on the wall erupted with a burst of red light, and with a muffled "bang," they overloaded and shattered on the spot.
The wall was blasted into a fist-sized crater, and the rubble froze into ice chunks in mid-air before even hitting the ground. The underlying logic that the magic circle prided itself on was nothing in the face of this unreasonable, brute violence; it was physically exorcised!
Cassius didn't even lift an eyelid at the destruction around him.
His blue eyes, which originally carried a hint of grey, now completely lacked any highlights. The pupil, iris, and sclera had blurred into one, leaving only a ghostly blue so pure it was appalling.
That was the gaze of a god looking down upon ants.
That was an extreme calamity that would shorten one's lifespan just by a single glance.
At the same time, in the highest tower of Hogwarts.
Albus Dumbledore had just finished a tiring round of bickering at the Ministry of Magic and was dusting the ash off his robes as he walked to his desk.
Just as he picked up that sterling silver goblet, his withered hand trembled violently.
Warm pumpkin juice splashed out, covering his iconic half-moon spectacles.
"Skree—!!"
On the golden perch, Fawkes the Phoenix suddenly erupted in blinding golden-red flames, letting out an extremely terrifying shriek. This magical bird, which had died countless times, was actually burying its head deep into its wings like a frightened quail, its feathers standing on end.
Dumbledore turned around abruptly, his gaze locked tightly onto a certain direction underground.
The floor was shaking.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was the defensive leylines of Hogwarts, forged by the four founders and dormant for thousands of years, emitting a desperate wail!
Deep in the Castle's foundations, that vast and ancient magical circuit seemed to be gripped tightly by a violent giant hand reaching out from the abyss. In the face of such pure will of destruction, the millennial wards were actually trembling! They were retreating!
That source of the eruption was pushing forward in a straight line, completely ignoring all spatial and physical obstacles, toward the restricted area on the third floor.
That was the place holding the greatest variable in the wizarding world—the Philosopher's Stone, and the remnant soul of Lord Voldemort.
"He has lost control."
The greatest white Wizard of this century was now as pale as a sheet of paper. He knew all too well what kind of nuclear bomb Cassius Malfoy was carrying inside him.
There was no time to grab Floo powder, and taking the stairs was out of the question.
Dumbledore swung his wand violently, and his entire body transformed into a beam of blindingly intense white light.
"Clang!"
The heavy stained-glass windows of the headmaster's office were shattered by force. Amidst the rain of glass, Dumbledore streaked through the air in a jagged line, racing desperately toward the third floor.
Cold sweat finally trickled down the old fox's forehead.
This game of chess had completely spiraled out of control!
Meanwhile, at the other end of the dungeon.
In an office perpetually filled with the bitter scent of Potions, Snape was focused intently on brewing a high-precision antidote.
The glass stirring rod in his hand had just made a half-turn counter-clockwise when it suddenly stopped.
Snape's breathing stalled instantly.
Dust fell from the ceiling. A bone-chilling, cold magical force, not even bothering to conceal itself, pushed past overhead with an attitude of crushing everything in its path.
He had only seen this kind of nauseating, high-density magical field when the Dark Lord was at his most enraged. No, the Dark Lord was cold and sinister, but this force just now could be described by only one word—erasure.
Heading straight for the restricted area on the third floor.
Snape's hollow black eyes contracted sharply, and he whipped his head around to stare fixedly at the silver compass deep on his desk.
In the corner, the silver light representing Draco Malfoywas flickering frantically. Its light was as dim as a match in a storm, on the verge of going out completely!
Snape's perpetually deadpan face instantly twisted into that of a vengeful ghost.
He understood.
The machinations of that old lunatic Dumbledore had directly triggered the only, absolute, irreversible bottom line of that monster!
"Damn idiot!"
The Potions Master, who was always so careful with his words, swore a rare curse. He slammed his palm onto the workbench, the immense force knocking over the priceless cauldron.
Scalding dark green Potion splashed everywhere, corroding the stone slabs with a sizzling sound and white smoke; he didn't even bother to cast a cleaning spell.
His black robes tore through the air like the wings of a giant bat; with bloodshot eyes, Snape kicked open the wooden door and rushed toward the stairs.
Cutting back to the restricted area on the third floor.
Inside the completely demolished Wizard's Chess room. The smell of blood and dust mixed together, choking enough to make one retch.
Ron Weasley dropped to his knees on the cold black and white floor tiles.
He pressed hard against the terrifying depression in Draco Malfoy's chest.
Warm blood sprayed out from between Ron's fingers like an open faucet, staining the Gryffindor school uniform in a large, shocking patch of blackish-red.
"Don't die... Malfoy, you bastard, hold on!"
Twelve-year-old Ron's voice was completely hoarse. Tears mixed with dust hit the ground, shattering.
Draco's blonde hair was matted with blood, and his chest showed almost no rise and fall. He was taking in more air than he was letting out, and his body temperature was plummeting in Ron's palms, cold as a block of ice.
No Potions, no healing spells.
This extreme sense of despair, belonging only to ants, completely drowned Ron. He pulled out his broken wand, but couldn't even cast a simple Aguamenti. He could only watch helplessly as this Slytherin young master, whom he usually found the most repulsive, turned into a corpse bit by bit to protect him.
"I'm sorry... I'm really sorry..." Ron cried until he couldn't catch his breath, trembling like a leaf in the autumn wind.
And in the final room, just one wall away.
Harry Potter was standing on the edge of a cliff.
He was facing the nightmare whose name could not be spoken—Lord Voldemort.
Beneath Quirrell's turban, that pale, remnant face with no nose, like a twisted viper, had just used Legilimency to force Harry to look into the Mirror of Erised.
In the mirror, Harry stuffed the bright red Philosopher's Stone into his pocket.
There was indeed a heavy, bulging sensation in his pocket.
Harry took a sharp step back, gritting his teeth, determined to lie to the end.
"He is lying!!"
The face on the back of Quirrell's head twisted into a grimace, letting out a roar like fingernails scratching glass, "He has it! Kill him! Take my stone!"
Quirrell, like a rabid dog, threw away his wand and lunged at Harry with hands reeking of rot.
Harry rolled frantically, relying on his Seeker instincts. He threw punches, he kicked, trying desperately to pull out his wand.
But in the face of the combined weight of an adult Wizardand the Dark Lord, eleven-year-old Harry was as weak as a fledgling bird waiting to be slaughtered.
Less than two seconds.
Quirrell's withered, iron-like claws clamped tightly around Harry's throat. Using the momentum, he forced Harry up into mid-air by his neck!
Harry's feet left the ground, kicking wildly in the air in desperation.
His windpipe was cut off, oxygen depleted. Black spots began to rain down across his vision, and his throat could only emit a dying "gurgle."
Death was gripping his throat, claiming his life.
"Harry Potter, those eyes are so like your mother's."
Lord Voldemort's bone-chilling laughter echoed in the empty basement, filled with high-and-mighty mockery, "But the game ends here. Hand over the stone, and I will grant you a quick death..."
Lord Voldemort's words were stuck in his throat forever.
Because, in this absolute restricted area where not even a fly could enter.
A set of footsteps suddenly sounded.
"Tap. Tap. Tap."
Unhurried. Yet it was as if the Grim Reaper were tolling the death knell of the underworld.
Chapter 92: Overwhelming Firepower
Less than fifty meters from the final room.
At the entrance to the third-floor restricted area.
Cassius stopped in front of the heavy, solid wood door, which had been reinforced with dozens of defensive and anti-shock magical arrays.
He did not draw any wand, nor did he attempt to chant any Alohomora spell.
He just stood there expressionless, like a statue looking at a dead object.
Then, he slowly raised his right hand.
No charging, no complex magical conduction preamble.
Visible to the naked eye, extremely thick, deep-blue, high-density magic wrapped around his entire palm and knuckles like a breath.
He casually, as if brushing a speck of dust off his coat, pressed his palm against the center of that centuries-old solid wood door.
"Boom——!!!"
There was no scene of wood chips flying or bursting everywhere.
Under this wave of extremely compressed magic, with a density so high it defied physical laws, the entire door, along with the half-meter-thick granite load-bearing stone walls on both sides of the door frame,
In an instant,
Were pulverized by this palm strike into powder a thousand times finer than flour.
There was no deafening crash, only a dull hiss as the material structure was completely destroyed.
The originally sealed entrance was directly physically erased into a huge, smooth circular hole with a diameter of five meters.
The dust covering the ground permeated and rolled in this space like a thick gray fog.
Cassius skipped even the act of dusting off his hands, stepped on the debris of floor tiles that were who knows how many years old, and walked into the dust.
The huge noise startled the monster guarding the first level.
In the center of the room, that three-headed giant dog, Fluffy, which was chained up and as large as an elephant, suddenly opened its six copper-bell-sized eyes.
The violent ferocity of the watchdog after being provoked was completely ignited.
It exerted force with its four limbs, snapping the thick iron chains. Its three blood-red maws, capable of easily crushing stone pillars, opened simultaneously, and one could even see the fangs dripping with mucus inside.
Carrying a disgusting, fishy stench, Fluffy roared and lunged fearlessly at this two-legged sheep who dared to trespass into its territory.
The three mouths sealed off all angles for Cassius to dodge.
However.
Facing this beastly pounce that felt like Mount Tai pressing down, Cassius didn't even intend to stop his pace.
His eyelids didn't even lift by a millimeter.
The [Dual-Soul Furnace] inside his body emitted a low rumble.
Tenfold gravity field.
No chanting, no wand guidance, the range precisely locked fifteen meters directly in front of Cassius.
Without warning, full power crashed down!
"Bang!!!"
An extremely terrifying dull thud.
That three-headed giant dog, weighing several tons and still baring its fangs in mid-air, couldn't even manage to let out half a roar from its throat.
Its huge body was slammed by what felt like a mountain cast from invisible celestial refined iron, and its entire spine collapsed instantly at an angle that defied physiological structure.
"Crack, crack, crack, crack——snap!"
The harsh, dense sound of bones cracking was like lighting a long string of firecrackers in the room.
Fluffy was flattened against the hard granite floor by an absolute force that could not be resisted, without any cushioning.
The ground sank directly by half a foot under this force.
This magical creature, known as a five-star danger, had its limbs twisted in a weird anti-joint manner, and all seven orifices of its three mouths spewed scarlet blood mixed with organ fragments simultaneously.
Its six huge eyeballs bulged outward in despair, pressing hard against the cracked ground, and it could only squeeze out a whimper weaker and more pitiful than a puppy's from its leaking throat.
One-hit kill. Overwhelming.
It couldn't even be called a battle.
Cassius strode over, his military-grade dragon-hide boots mercilessly stepping over Fluffy's broad, still-twitching spine.
Just as a human would crush an ant that didn't have the eyes to move out of the way while walking.
He didn't look down to take another look.
He walked straight to the trapdoor in the center of the room that had long been shaken open, didn't climb down the stairs, but jumped straight down.
Below the trapdoor was absolute darkness.
The Devils Snare growing in tangled roots below, belonging to extremely bloodthirsty magic plants, immediately sensed the scent of fresh living things falling from above.
Tens of thousands of thick vines woke up like a tide, like a net of frantically twisting green sea snakes, sweeping up and covering the sky, attempting to strangle this prey to death in mid-air.
Facing those terrifying plants with barbs, Cassius, while falling, kept his expression as dead and still as water.
The piece he wore close to his body—an absolute battle armor woven for forty years by the leader of the Acromantula in the depths of the Forbidden Forest, Aragog, and tempered through four rounds of the Dual-Soul Furnace.
At this moment, suddenly lit up with blinding, magma-like dark red runes.
Its heat resistance and magic conductivity were perfect to the extreme.
The extremely violent fire magic, having lost all restrictions, followed the natural patterns of the inner armor, turned into a substantial, extremely high-temperature shockwave, and erupted spherically around Cassius!
No need for a wand to release those ridiculous flames.
Those vines known for strangling and blood-sucking didn't even have time to react and instinctively retract this time.
The moment they touched the three-meter vacuum range around Cassius.
The terrifying absolute high temperature of over two thousand degrees directly destroyed all the moisture in the plant cells.
Tens of thousands of Devils Snare, without even struggling in mid-air, were directly vaporized into a huge, pungent cloud of black smoke.
Not burned to death, not even a speck of ash or charcoal remained.
"Thud."
Cassius landed steadily on his feet.
Around him, a perfect, charred, smooth, and huge deep pit had been cleared.
Without any pause.
He walked through the stone corridor that was trembling slightly from the blast and came to the next room.
Looking up, there was an extremely high dome that one couldn't see the top of.
Thousands of antique keys with all kinds of metal wings, like a huge, chaotic metal tornado, swirled back and forth in mid-air, emitting a sharp, ear-piercing friction sound.
These dead objects, cast with vicious collision spells, sensed a living person entering the territory.
They instantly turned around, and the "swarm" underwent a drastic deformation.
Then, it turned into an overwhelming, cold-glinting blade storm, crashing down on Cassius, blocking out the sky and sun!
The speed was so fast that even a top Seeker could only dodge its edge.
Cassius finally stopped his pace.
He suddenly raised his head.
In those pure blue eyes that had lost the boundary between whites and pupils, a terrifying sharp glint lit up, causing the surrounding airflow to stagnate.
No dodging, no looking for a flying broomstick.
He slowly raised his hands to his chest.
His ten fingers, like eagle claws, opened and gripped the air.
The magic circuits inside his body emitted a terrifying humming sound at this moment, operating beyond physical limits.
The data tested by the Black Lake flashed through his mind.
Four-Channel Shunt. Overclocking. Full power unlocked!
Find the right key here?
Use tactical evasion?
This is a jigsaw puzzle game for the weak.
Cassius only believes in one principle—absolute firepower coverage.
"Hum——hiss hiss hiss!!!"
Blinding pure blue points of light instantly formed at the tips of Cassius's ten fingers and entered a high-pressure state.
Miniature, but no less powerful, Reducto spells poured out wildly from his fingertips like a real Gatling storm!
Ten shots per second.
Fifteen shots per second!
Twenty shots per second!!
Dual channels charged alternately, and the magical trajectories crossed in mid-air into a dense firepower net with no blind spots!
The entire huge room seemed to have been moved into a Phalanx CIWS used in modern warfare to intercept missiles, conducting a crazy, no-blind-spot bombardment!
In mid-air, one burst after another of extremely blinding blue fireballs and sparks of metal shattering exploded.
The violent magic pulses tore the air layer by layer.
In less than three seconds.
Hundreds of miniature Reducto spells completely tore this arrogant metal storm to pieces.
Those so-called interference spells were as ridiculous as paper in the face of qualitative changes triggered by overwhelming quantitative changes.
All of the thousands of keys in mid-air...
Were blasted into iron filings and copper dust that posed no threat and didn't even look like their original shapes!
"Clatter clatter..."
Countless broken metal wings and bent copper pieces, like a hail of metal that was completely devoid of beauty and extremely absurd, pelted down on the stone slabs.
Cassius put his hands down without a ripple on his face.
The high temperature remaining on his fingertips caused the air to twist slightly.
He strode forward, stepping on the sharp, inches-thick scrap metal remains covering the ground, and approached the heavy oak door on the opposite side.
The sound of his footsteps echoed in this dead wasteland, tolling the countdown to the Grim Reaper's knell.
Chapter 93: Death's Judgment
Inside the blood-soaked Wizard's Chess room.
Harry had already gone to the next room, leaving Ronalone to desperately guard the dying Draco.
Just as Ron's heart was about to stop beating, the silent chessboard underwent a strange change.
The huge white chess statues, having lost their opponent's commands, seemed to trigger some ancient erasure mechanism and came back to life.
Their emotionless stone faces turned simultaneously, empty eye sockets staring fixedly at the two intruders on the ground.
Accompanied by the heavy, grating sound of stone rubbing against stone, they raised their thick stone swords, stained with Draco's blood, and strode toward Ron with an oppressive force that seemed to tear the air.
There was no escaping it.
Magical exhaustion, physical depletion.
Ron trembled and closed his eyes in despair. Instinctively, he pressed his thin body in front of Draco, waiting for the fate of being crushed into pulp.
However, what came was not the blade.
The next second.
The heavy oak door behind Ron was not pushed open as usual.
Instead, it exploded inward along with the wall in a deafening roar.
Razor-sharp wooden splinters, mixed with a violent wave of magic, whistled past Ron's scalp and slammed into the opposite stone wall.
Ron turned his head in horror.
Cassius stepped slowly out of the billowing dust and absolute darkness.
He drew no weapons and chanted no spells.
His ice-blue eyes merely glanced nonchalantly at the white chess statues, weighing thousands of pounds, that were in the middle of bringing down their swords.
Then, Cassius's right hand suddenly pressed down into the air.
There was no sound.
Just an extremely oppressive physical phenomenon occurred.
The air above the statues—that is, the air between the ceiling and the floor of the entire room—seemed to be drained in an instant, and then quickly condensed into an invisible, intangible iron block weighing tens of thousands of tons.
Gravity was forcibly rewritten in magnitude.
"Crack... Rumble!!!"
Those five or six-meter-tall marble statues, hardened by high-level magic and capable of easily resisting bombardment from various spells.
In Ron's dull gaze, his eyes nearly tearing from strain.
They were crushed, inch by inch, starting from the crown on their heads by that invisible giant force descending from the sky!
The sound of stone bursting was incessant, followed by the chests and bases.
In less than a breath, these behemoths were all crushed to the ground, turning into white dust that scattered with the wind, leaving nothing behind.
Overwhelming aesthetic of violence.
Cassius ignored the dust and walked steadily to Ron.
Ron was so scared he slumped onto the blood-soaked floor tiles.
He shivered violently, his legs as soft as noodles, staring in terror at the monster before him, who exuded an aura of disaster that didn't belong to a human, thinking the other would casually tear him, a useless Gryffindor, to pieces.
But Cassius didn't even give him a glance.
This thorough, condescending disregard made Ron feel a suffocation from the depths of his soul, even more than the most vicious Cruciatus Curse.
Cassius knelt on one knee neatly, not caring at all that his expensive boots were soaking in a pool of blood.
He suspended his slender palm over Draco's terrifyingly collapsed chest.
His deep blue eyes, now locked tightly onto that broken body as never before, contained a storm capable of strangling everything.
The originally violent magic showed at this moment the absolute dominance Cassius had over it, reaching a realm of perfection.
Pure, high-density magic was extracted, turning into hundreds of thousands of thin blue glowing threads that were almost indistinguishable to the naked eye.
If Professor McGonagall or Madam Pomfrey were here, they would surely exclaim that this was extremely counter-intuitive.
These magical threads were not gentle at all.
They drilled extremely roughly into Draco's torn skin and muscle texture.
Ignoring any formal medical rules or physiological structures.
Relying on absolute computational power, Cassius forcibly reconnected the severed, bleeding arteries, stitched up the bleeding, failing damaged organs with a magical network, and violently pulled the broken ribs that had pierced the lungs back into place, inch by inch, fixing them with magic.
This was high-handed magic that trampled the authority of Death underfoot.
"Hmph..."
A muffled, painful, and hoarse groan came from Draco's throat.
He still didn't open his eyes, but his paper-white face miraculously gained a faint but stable flush of color.
Though his chest rose and fell weakly, it finally became regular.
He had been forcibly dragged back from the gates of hell.
Cassius confirmed the stability of his life force and slowly stood up.
He looked down at Ron, who was still slumped on the ground.
At this moment, at the end of the room, that wall of raging purple magical fire blocked the way. This was the only passage to the final level.
"Watch him."
Cassius's gaze was fixed on the flames, not looking back.
His flat voice, devoid of emotion, rang coldly against the empty stone walls, chilling to the bone:
"If he loses a single hair, I swear I will completely erase the Weasley name from every family tree in the Wizarding world."
This was not a threat in the style of boasting.
But a declarative sentence, spoken by a tyrant from on high with the most certain tone, that would absolutely be fulfilled.
Cassius walked toward the wall of purple fire.
He didn't even glance at the wooden table next to him, which held seven puzzle-solving Potion bottles.
What puzzles, what poisons, what logic.
None of that was needed.
The [Soul Furnace] within him was pulled to the limit of the red-line output warning zone at this moment.
Blue solid magic, like viscous liquid, seeped out of his body, forming a thick, armor-like magical force field exoskeleton on Cassius's surface.
He just strode forward directly.
Using the most savage, most brutal, and rule-ignoring method, he used absolute magical density to directly smash and extinguish the high-level magical fire personally cast by Dumbledore.
Forcibly stepping into the final room.
...
Inside this sealed room, which was at the deepest point and the final line of defense.
The situation was already at a critical moment.
Quirrell's hands were like iron hoops, tightly choking Harry Potter's slender neck. Harry's face had turned a terrifying blue-purple, his eyes rolling back, only seconds away from dying of suffocation.
Suddenly.
The remnant soul of Lord Voldemort, hidden behind the turban on the back of his head, sensed something strange.
That was not magic; it was a terrifying oppressive force that made even a soul in his undead state tremble instantly, as if a natural predator had descended.
That was the absolute dimensional crushing displayed by a higher-level predator against a powerless lower-level prey.
"Let go!"
This noseless, pale face, which had once been arrogant and made the entire Wizarding world tremble with fear, now let out a shrill scream as if it had seen a ghost!
The voice was even mixed with tremors caused by extreme fear:
"Quirrell! Run—!!!"
Quirrell, a Death Eater, was completely stunned; his hands loosened slightly, and he prepared blankly to obey his master's command.
But the moment Lord Voldemort shouted the word "run," it was already too late.
An invisible giant hand that could easily crush this entire hard underground room along with its foundation had already carried terrifying magic, completely isolating and locking down all escape routes in this space.
Apparition? Spatial jump? All failed!
Cassius stood calmly at the destroyed entrance.
His pair of pure blue abyss pupils, which had lost all human warmth, were now watching Quirrell and that disgusting remnant soul of Lord Voldemort coldly, without a ripple, just like observing two ridiculous insects pinned in amber.
His hand, which held no wand, slowly lifted.
At the tip of his right index finger, a small, blinding ball of deep blue high-compression magic, like a collapsed star, containing the power to blast this place into an abyss at any moment, was jumping crazily and rhythmically.
The surrounding stable spatial barriers, unable to withstand the manifestation of this power, were undergoing visible, water-like, severe distortion.
Cassius's voice lacked even a trace of the anger and roaring that a villain in a movie should have.
It was as calm and natural as a morning greeting.
But to the remnant soul of Lord Voldemort, this voice was like the coldest funeral bell judgment before Death himself swung his scythe.
"You touched him."
Cassius watched Quirrell, who was shaking like a sieve, and the light ball at his fingertip reached its peak brilliance.
"So, die."
Chapter 94: The Tyrant's Physical Combat and the Deity's Downclocking
The azure orb of light left his hand.
There was no shriek, no sound of it tearing through the air.
The extreme high-pressure magic drained the air along its path, forcibly plowing a straight vacuum channel through the room.
Quirrell's scalp tingled.
His instinct for survival completely overwhelmed his fear of the Dark Lord, and his hands, which had been tightly gripping Harry's throat, were suddenly flung away as if he had been electrocuted.
Harry hit the floor tiles with a "thud."
He clutched his purple-black neck, retching violently, gulping down mouthfuls of air that tasted of lime.
"Useless!"
The remnant soul of Lord Voldemort, hidden at the back of the head, let out an ear-splitting shriek. He was truly desperate now, forcibly overdrawing his source, his gray-white spirit body frantically pouring into Quirrell's meridians.
Instant possession, taking over the body!
Quirrell's body twisted violently in an extremely horrifying, reverse-jointed posture.
His withered palms pushed outward, playing his final trump card! All remaining power of the Dark Arts was completely squeezed dry, condensing into a dark green, high-level viscous shield.
The blue light collided with the green shield.
The air froze for half a second.
Immediately after, an intensely blinding white light swallowed the entire end of the basement!
Block it? It was impossible to block!
The green shield was torn to shreds instantly like a piece of paper, and the violent surge of magic flattened all Dark Arts barriers.
Under this unreasonable impact, Quirrell's arms fractured on the spot, twisting into grotesque knots.
He was sent flying like a ragdoll, spewing black blood, and slammed heavily against the stone wall ten meters away.
Cassius's eyes remained calm, and he lifted his right leg, preparing to go up and deliver a physical finishing blow.
Just then, a tearing sensation shot up from deep within his spine, reaching his bone marrow.
He paused.
The [Dual-Soul Furnace] inside him, which had been boiling all this time, now emitted a roaring warning of severe overload.
Forcibly dismantling three high-level magic circles, kicking over the Cerberus, carpet-bombing with thousands of Reducto spells, plus forcibly dragging Draco's life back...
This eleven-year-old mortal body had finally reached its physical limit.
The furnace's forced protection mechanism was triggered.
The surging magic channels were forcibly locked, with a "click" that jammed the valve shut.
The armor-like layer of blue magic on Cassius's body quickly dissipated. His maximum instantaneous output power was locked by this physical limiter to a fixed ceiling—
"Average adult Auror" level.
The cliff-like drop in magic power could not be hidden.
Amidst the pile of rubble, that noseless, pale face suddenly turned around.
Lord Voldemort keenly sensed the dissipation of that terrifying pressure from Cassius.
His features, previously filled with despair, instantly twisted into frantic ecstasy!
He thought that the brat had run out of mana!
"Cough... You ignorant little beast..."
Lord Voldemort sneered hoarsely, using one hand to control Quirrell's battered body, and grabbed the wand on the ground.
Without even a wind-up, the tip of the wand erupted with a burst of pure, deathly, sickly green light.
Avada Kedavra.
The absolute-lock, lethal green light aimed straight at Cassius's face!
Harry, slumped on the ground, watched the green light that had killed his parents, his eyes splitting with rage, and he roared desperately: "Dodge!!!"
Cassius stood where he was, not even blinking an eyelid.
Blocked from using heavy firepower?
So what.
His terrifying combat intuition had never relied on stacking stats!
Cassius didn't waste a shred of magic to put up any defensive shield. Instead, he did something extremely crazy—
He compressed all the remaining magic in his body and stuffed it tightly into the muscles of his right leg and the dragon-hide boots on his feet!
The killing curse was only 0.1 seconds away from his nose.
"Bang—!!!"
The bluestone tile beneath his feet was crushed on the spot, exploding into a half-meter-deep crater!
The pure physical reaction force was absurdly large, and Cassius pulled an afterimage that defied the laws of physics, forcibly sliding two feet to the left!
"Boom!"
The lethal green light grazed his ear by a hair's breadth, melting a charred, deep hole into the stone pillar behind him.
The wild laughter on Lord Voldemort's face instantly froze.
His snake-like pupils shrank to pinpricks.
Dodging Avada Kedavra with pure physical movement...?!
The Dark Lord's worldview was almost crushed by this sight! Before he could recover, a deadly cold wind was already against his face.
Using the kinetic energy from his slide, Cassius aligned his waist and stance, and pushed off the ground a second time with his right foot. He lunged like a cheetah out of a cannon, killing his way to within a foot of Quirrell.
Point-blank melee.
His right hand was formed into a knife-hand, and at the joints of his index and middle fingers, a highly compressed Reducto glowed with a ghostly blue light.
There were no flashy moves whatsoever.
With a flick of his wrist, he delivered an incredibly domineering inch-power strike, landing solidly in the center of Quirrell's chest!
"Crack—!"
The crisp sound of the sternum collapsing made one's scalp tingle.
Quirrell's battered chest cavity completely caved in. Like a puppet with cut strings, he was pushed backward by this hidden force, slamming heavily against the brass base of the Mirror of Erised.
The base emitted a teeth-grinding metallic wail.
"You little beast! I will skin you alive!!!"
Feeling the host's life force draining away frantically, Lord Voldemort completely broke down.
Ignoring that the body was about to collapse, he forcibly squeezed out the last bit of Quirrell's soul essence.
The ultimate curse of the Dark Arts descended.
Three thick, pale tongues of fire spewed from Quirrell's deformed mouth, expanding in the wind and turning into three hideous, terrifying fire snakes!
Fiendfyre.
Without any warm-up, the three Fiendfyre snakes locked off all of Cassius's escape routes, bearing a terrifying heat capable of burning through anything, and crashed down upon him!
At the Auror level, there was no such thing as a magicshield that could withstand Fiendfyre head-on.
The depths of Cassius's eyes remained as dead and still as water.
Sparks can hide in the dust, and legends can be born from the mundane; if defense can't block it, then change the terrain!
He aimed his right foot at the ground and stomped heavily.
magic poured through the soles of his feet into the stone tiles, and the "holistic definition" thinking taught by Professor McGonagall instantly constructed itself in his mind.
"Rise."
The entire load-bearing stone slab in front of him, three meters in radius and half a foot thick, was forcibly lifted along with its foundation!
Cassius jerked his left hand upward, and the massive stone slab bent and folded in mid-air, instantly transforming into a giant inverted stone bell!
"Boom—!!!"
A loud crash.
The heavy stone bell, along with the three Fiendfyresnakes that were just about to pounce, plus the dying body of Quirrell beneath...
Were forcibly and tightly pinned to the spot by him, as if he were trapping a stink bug!
From a desperate situation to a counter-kill.
In less than three seconds, the Dark Lord was locked in a coffin.
Chapter 95: Physical Transcendence and the Old Fox's Compromise
Inside the sealed stone clock, the remaining air was sucked dry by Fiendfyre in a tenth of a second.
The out-of-control Dark Arts flames, finding no fuel, decisively rebelled on the spot, turning around to consume Quirrell's broken husk.
From beneath the heavy stone slab, a pungent smell of burning flesh seeped out, accompanied by a desperate, ear-piercing shriek.
Lord Voldemort's remnant soul knew clearly that if this continued, the capital he had accumulated over ten years would be completely lost at the hands of this eleven-year-old monster.
Without any hesitation, he decisively sacrificed the pawn to save the king, abandoning Quirrell's carbonized body.
A mass of thick black mist, carrying extreme cold, forcibly squeezed out from the gap at the bottom of the stone clock, breaking through the seal.
The moment it rose into the air to flee, Lord Voldemort was filled with resentment.
The black mist made a rapid U-turn in mid-air, transforming into a pitch-black, sharp soul spear, aiming straight for the heart of Harry Potter, who was slumped to the side.
Before leaving, he had to take at least half the life of the Savior!
Harry was completely frozen in place; his physical exhaustion made even moving a finger a luxury, and he could only watch helplessly as death approached.
Cassius snorted coldly, his pure blue pupils overflowing with murderous intent.
Playing a diversion tactic right in front of him? It was like a person seeking death — he was tired of living.
He held his right hand out flat, and the high-density magicremaining in his meridians compressed frantically along his arm.
From the edge of his palm, a three-foot-long, dazzling, azure high-pressure magic blade was forcibly pulled out!
With force from his waist and his right foot as the pivot, Cassius half-rotated his body and delivered a fierce, wide-sweeping diagonal slash with a backhand motion.
Never having cultivated good deeds in his life, only loving to kill and burn!
The light blade tore through the air, cutting off the path of the soul spear with extreme precision in mid-air.
There was no roar of weapons clashing, only the dull sound of old cloth being violently torn.
The azure light blade sliced into the black mist, and the extremely high-density magic evaporated the spirit body on the spot.
This slash forcibly shaved off a full third of Lord Voldemort's remnant soul!
The remnant soul let out a tearing wail; the black smoke churned violently, visibly thinning by a large margin.
Where was there any unwillingness or resentment now? He was left only with deep psychological trauma from the Tyrannosaurus Rex before him, completely beaten into submission.
The black mist didn't even dare to look back, exhausting its last bit of energy to smash through the vaulted stone wall above, vanishing into the night like a stray dog.
The very next second after the black mist escaped.
"Boom—!"
The ceiling of the entire room completely collapsed, and huge stones fell like raindrops.
Albus Dumbledore, carrying an aura of furious magic, his beard and hair bristling, like an enraged old lion king, crashed directly from the sky into the center of the ruins.
That battle-hardened old wand pointed straight ahead, its tip glowing with destructive white light, ready at any moment to take on the Dark Lord's strongest counterattack.
However, the next second, this greatest white Wizard of the century froze in place.
There was no sea of blood and mountains of corpses as expected, nor was there any earth-shattering magic duel.
Quirrell's body was firmly suppressed under that huge overturned stone clock, revealing only a piece of a completely carbonized lower leg emitting black smoke.
Harry Potter was slumped in the pile of rubble, gasping for air, with a frightening circle of purple-black bruises on his neck.
And on the other side of the ruins.
Cassius was slowly and methodically dusting the lime off his cuffs.
The terrifying pressure he had exerted earlier, enough to overturn the ley lines of the entire Castle, had been reined in to the level of an ordinary adult Auror.
But standing there, even without using a shred of magic, that iron-blooded aura of having everything under control still made people unable to breathe.
This extreme contrast shattered the psychological predictions of the old fox, Dumbledore.
"It... it was Cassius who saved me." Harry endured the tearing pain in his throat, swallowing saliva mixed with blood, and stuttered, breaking the dead silence.
Dumbledore's deep gaze passed through his broken half-moon spectacles and locked tightly onto Cassius.
The old Principal's eyes were incredibly sharp; he saw through the slight stagnation in the boy's magic circulation at a glance.
Forcibly over-exhausting magic led to the self-protective locking of the meridians; this complied with the objective laws of the magic world.
But the stormy waves in his heart could not stop at all.
This Tyrannosaurus Rex, which was usually completely uncontrollable and always had its foot on the gas, had swept through all the traps in the restricted area.
And in the end, it wasn't for the sake of seizing the Philosopher's Stone at all.
It was purely to save Draco, and he even happened to save the Savior's life on the side?! This scope of things was opened up so unexpectedly!
However, Cassius couldn't be bothered to seize the opportunity to play the hero who did a righteous deed.
He lowered his arms, his pure blue eyes sweeping coldly over the man standing at the pinnacle of power in the magic world.
There was not a shred of reverence, nor a single word of explanation.
Cassius stepped over the broken stone steps and casually tossed out a statement that was wildly arrogant:
"Quirrell was bothering me. By the way, if your crappy traps make my brother shed a single drop of blood next time."
He paused his steps, tilted his head slightly, his profile cold and sharp as a knife in the firelight.
"I won't mind grinding your Principal's office, along with that crappy chessboard outside, into flat ground."
Throwing down these words, he crossed the ruins and walked into the darkness deep in the corridor without looking back. He left after the deed was done, hiding his name and achievements.
Dumbledore's fingers holding the old wand tightened slightly, and a thousand words finally turned into an extremely complex sigh.
Just then, rapid footsteps came from the door outside the ruins.
Snape, like a giant black bat that had gone completely mad, wrapped in the pungent smell of Potion, burst violently into the Wizard's Chess room.
Ron was covered in tears, kneeling helplessly beside Draco.
Snape shoved Ron aside, leaned down quickly, and stared fixedly at the scalp-numbing, sunken wound on Draco's chest.
The moment his fingers touched the wound, an extremely bizarre, delicate magic fluctuation came.
That residual magic had actually forcibly locked and perfectly sutured Draco's shattered internal organs and arteries!
Snape's usually hollow and dead black pupils contracted violently in an instant.
The power was extremely savage and overbearing, yet the operation was precise down to the cellular level.
This kind of magic dominance that snatched people directly from the hands of Death was completely beyond the scope of existing knowledge in the magic world! It was simply outrageous beyond belief!
This Potion master, known for his strictness and coldness at Hogwarts, raised his head slowly with stiff movements.
He looked toward the back that had long since vanished into the darkness deep in the corridor.
At this moment, all the probing and defensiveness in Snape's eyes were stripped away completely.
Only bone-deep awe remained, along with a trace of extremely morbid fanaticism hidden deep in his eyes.