Chapter 57: 57: Flesh, Flame, and Spellcraft
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"Indeed, I have no reason to act again…" Sagres nodded slightly to the woman, his tone softening.
The woman's tense shoulders relaxed slightly, only to stiffen abruptly the next second—
"But I never need a reason to do things!" Sagres changed the subject, and a spiral-shaped silver-white light cone tore through the air with a whistle.
Swoosh! Boom!
The woman was blasted back, spitting blood, and flew out like a rag doll, even her wand flying from her hand.
Sagres's situation was no better; although he tried to defend himself at that instant, the damage seemed to appear out of nowhere, unavoidable.
Pulling open his wizard robes, a hideous wound was revealed on his chest. He clutched his wand tightly, his knuckles white from the force.
Fortunately, he was more resilient than his opponent, and his wand was still in his hand.
Raising his hand to cast a Quick-Heal on himself, he looked up at his opponent and found that the woman was also slowly recovering.
It seemed this spell was quite troublesome, but he also felt the chains had weakened slightly, so Sagres instantly made a decision.
A ruthless glint flashed in his eyes, and he pressed his wand against his chest with a backhand.
"Bombarda Minima~"
The moment the dazzling white light entered his chest, Sagres trembled violently. The woman opposite let out a shrill scream, her recently healed wounds tearing open again.
Looking at the woman lying on the ground, he felt his guess had been correct.
"Hoisted by one's own petard…" Casting a healing spell on himself once more, he noticed that as both of them recovered slightly, the chains became even lighter in color.
"Almost forgot…" Sagres said with a cruel sneer. "My mother's favourite spell, heh~—"
"Crucio!"
The moment the red light struck him, the woman instantly arched her body, letting out a series of inhuman wails.
"Ahhhhhrrrrrghhhhhhh~~~!!!!!!!!!!"
Her fingernails dug deep into the ground, her knuckles twisted and deformed from the intense pain. Every nerve was burning, every drop of blood boiling, as if countless dull knives were slowly carving her soul.
An indescribable agony exploded in her chest—it wasn't ordinary pain, but the torment of tens of thousands of red-hot steel needles simultaneously piercing every nerve.
Her heart felt as though it were being clutched and twisted by invisible claws, each beat bringing fresh torture.
Sagres remained expressionless, but his opponent was already on the verge of collapse.
"It seems your tolerance for pain isn't as good as mine…" Sagres walked up to her, again touching his chest with his wand—"Crucio!"
"Urrrggghhhh!"
The blue runic chains grew fainter and fainter, finally shattering abruptly amidst the woman's screams.
The threads of Legilimency instantly invaded her mind, but before Sagres could even search, an intense killing intent surged toward him.
"Corrupting Gaze!"
Sagres didn't even turn around, and the fire crow had already set up a defense behind him. His movements were so fast they were almost precognitive; even the green light of the Killing Curse couldn't match such reaction speed.
But he was still hit. Almost as soon as the spell sounded, a cold sensation spread across his back.
He transformed into a crow-shaped shadow to change position, and only when he descended from the sky did he see the person who had just appeared behind him.
It was an extremely handsome man, with high, sharp cheekbones and pure indifference in his eyes. Sagres couldn't detect any emotional fluctuation on the man's face; he stood there like a precise, cold instrument.
He took the opportunity to glance at his back—his wizard robes had rotted to ash, and the exposed skin was festering at a visible rate. Yet he strangely felt no pain, only a cold numbness.
"Venenatum Devora et Reverte!!"
A deep purple spell light enveloped his entire body, and the festering wounds immediately glowed with an eerie green light.
This was a forbidden spell that converted toxins into healing energy—a method of fighting poison with poison. He generally didn't like using it because if the healing failed, the damage would be far more severe.
However, today was different; he had drunk a few drops of Felix Felicis in advance.
The man opposite frowned slightly, and this subtle expression made Sagres's heart clench—not because of the reaction itself, but because he noticed the man's lips subtly twitching, emitting a hoarse, low hiss.
The hoarse whisper echoed across the wilderness, and the ground began to tremble uneasily. A sudden guess flashed through Sagres's mind.
With a wave of the man's pale arm, hundreds of corpses burst from the earth:
Rotten hounds revealed their stark white bones, humanoid figures wrapped in burial shrouds had eerie blue flames flickering in their eye sockets, and there were even a few Giant skeletons, with a large nest of venomous snakes coiled inside their hollow chests.
"I hest the dead to cometh f'rth, arise!! Martii Mortuorum!."
The man's voice was like a blade scraping stone. The army of the dead all turned their heads, hundreds of lifeless eyes locking onto Sagres simultaneously.
The corpses in the front row suddenly began to charge forward, thick black mist seeping from their bodies and condensing in the air into a massive, tormented human face.
"Oh? A powerful age of god's spell huh..? Too bad, I have my own."
Sagres didn't hesitate. He raised his wand toward the sky, then swung it down sharply—
"Deus Belli! Heareth mine own calleth, ₼€₮€Ꮻ₹ $Ʉ₼₼Ꮻ₦!"
A massive fiery meteor tore through the clouds, plummeting with a long tail of flame. Its speed was so great that it scorched the ground black even before landing.
At the moment the meteor fell, the handsome man extended his wand toward the woman.
The two were drawn together by an invisible force, and then the ground swelled—a giant snake burst from the earth, swallowed them both whole, and swiftly fled from the meteor's impact zone.
"Trying to escape?"
A cold light flashed in Sagres's eyes.
"Frenzy Reducto!" struck the middle section of the snake's body with precision, blasting it into two pieces. Immediately after, a crimson spell light streaked across, shredding the upper half of the snake into a rain of blood.
Within the blood mist, the man and woman reappeared, disheveled. His lips moved, hissing in Parseltongue. Three eerie green venomous snakes suddenly shot up from beneath Sagres's feet!
Hissss~~~<
"What a majestic snake, truly! But I like birds more—" Sagres jumped high, "Carnem Exuere~"
Sagres flicked his wand violently, and a gray-white light swept past, instantly stripping the three venomous snakes of their flesh, reducing them to white bones that clattered to the ground.
But more giant snakes surged from all directions, each as thick as a bucket, with strange purple flames flickering in their vertical pupils.
"Tsk," Sagres looked at the oncoming giant snakes, his expression unmoved. He coldly uttered four words: "₼€₮€Ꮻ₹ $Ʉ₼₼Ꮻ₦: ʂƚαɾʂ ϝαʅʅ"
The sky suddenly darkened, and hundreds of meteors tore through the clouds, raining down with long, fiery tails.
This forbidden spell, which had leveled the Goblin fortress "Black Iron City" in 1717—a combined incantation that originally required seven powerful wizards and could only be performed atop the ruins of an ancient observatory—was now cast effortlessly by Sagres' Everlasting wand.
The air was filled with destruction, and all that met his eyes were falling meteors, indiscriminately bombarding everything in sight.
Taking advantage of the lull in the meteor barrage, Sagres waved his wand again: "Accio Corpses!"
All the blasted giant snakes and undead remains gathered toward him, their blood transforming into crimson threads, weaving eerie runes in the air.
"Flesh and Blood Forging!"
The remains began to twist and merge, bones grinding together with a teeth-clenching screech.
Another infamous forbidden Transfiguration—a dark spell explicitly banned by the International Confederation of Wizards. This terrifying magic, capable of forcibly fusing the flesh and blood of multiple living beings into a war beast, was once again used by Sagres without hesitation.
Within mere seconds, an 80-foot-tall flesh-and-blood behemoth rose from the ground. It had the torso of a Giant, the wings of a Dragon, the tentacles of an octopus, and a series of heads from various creatures.
"Creeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!!"
Each head let out a shrill howl, the sound mingled with the wails of all the beings that had been merged.
Sagres stood on the behemoth's shoulder, his black robes fluttering in the heatwave. He looked down at the two disheveled figures below, a cruel smile playing on his lips.
"This'll be fun~"