The wild beasts of the jungle possess instincts far keener than any wizard's, as this intelligence was ingrained in their genes by millennia of survival—especially a Nundu standing at the apex of the food chain, its body was evolved as a result to countless victories over loser predators.
Among the three wizards blocking its path, its pitch-black pupils released a malicious gleam that seemed to pierce through flesh and bone. The eyes locked firmly onto the gray-haired wizard who held no wand. In the Nundu's perception, the man standing calmly in the back radiated danger like heat from a forge.
Sizzle... sizzle...
The area shrouded by whip-like electric light gradually expanded, each crackling vine dancing with deadly beauty. The supernatural electricity spread out like a living thing, slowly creeping toward Bryan and his two companions.
Remus swallowed hard, his throat dry as parchment, banishing all distracting thoughts from his mind. Since Bryan had said they must hold this Nundu here, he would obey without question. He didn't expect Amelia to be of much help against such a creature, but Bryan's quiet promise to provide backup gave him a slight sense of reassurance.
Finally, like a predator supremely confident in its superiority, the Nundu leisurely raised its massive front limb. Muscles rippled beneath its yellowish-brown coat as it began moving forward. Even with his nerves stretched to their absolute limit, Remus had to admit that the creature's prowling walk looked magnificent.
But this moment of aesthetic appreciation was immediately torn apart by his rational mind as crushing pressure came crashing down. The very air seemed to thicken, pressing against their lungs like invisible chains.
Clatter... clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter...
The approaching Nundu's thick-padded claws, each the size of a man's hand, stepped on the gravel fragments scattered beneath the railway sleepers. The rhythmic rattling sound of stones grinding and colliding against each other struck Remus and Amelia's hearts like hammer blows against an anvil, each impact sending tremors through their ribs and making their breathing increasingly rapid and shallow.
Especially Amelia's.
Her chest rose and fell in quick, panicked gasps that misted in the cool night air. Facing a magical creature with the same danger level as a fully-grown Hungarian Horntail in direct confrontation with both predator and prey locked in mortal hostility—this had exceeded the limits of what a young witch fresh out of School's walls could endure.
The theoretical knowledge from classes crumbled before the reality of yellow eyes that promised death.
So, she couldn't help herself—
Whoosh! —Bang!
Amelia's wrist jerked sharply, as if pulled by invisible strings, sweat beading on her pale cheeks. All of her training abandoned her in the face of primal terror.
A cluster of orange-red spell light—a Blasting Curse cast in desperation flashed through the darkness like a comet torn from the heavens, streaking forward with the fury of her fear and exploding in a dazzling burst of flame on the railway bed.
The spell struck nothing but steel and stone, sending up a shower of sparks that lit the night like a twisted firework display. The momentary brightness caused a flash of confusion in Remus's pupils, white afterimages dancing across his vision, but as he immediately snapped back to awareness, he inwardly cursed their misfortune!.
Looking closely, the Nundu had vanished from its spot like a wisp of smoke, as if it had never been more than a dream. Simultaneously, the two rows of power poles on both side of the tracks exploded in bright showers of electric sparks.
"Get out of the way!" Remus's voice cracked like a whip through the chaos.
Having experienced the horrors of war and spent time navigating the underground world, Remus had faced death many times, had felt its cold breath on his neck and learned to dance just beyond its reach.
In the instant he lost sight of their target, his rich experience, bought with blood and nightmares, had already led him to a grim judgment. He roared urgently while his body twisted into the familiar spiral of Disapparition.
Remus's warning was mainly for Amelia—he trusted that Bryan would make the right call.
The anxious Amelia, whose desperate attack had missed its mark by yards, was indeed momentarily stunned.
Fortunately, with Remus's warning cutting through her panic, she snapped back to attention just in time. At the critical moment, just as her body was being swallowed by the twisted space of Apparition, a massive claw descended from above like the sword of a vengeful god, brushing past her scattered hair.
Crash!
The three scattered in different directions like leaves before a hurricane, and the moment they reappeared in the air, emerging with the distinctive pop of displaced atmosphere, violent shockwaves accompanied by thunderous roars had already caught up with them!
"Protego!" Remus roared, his voice nearly lost in the turmoil, his Iron Armor charm barely managed to deflect the bullet-like debris and tsunami-force winds that threatened to tear him apart.
Within the foul-smelling 'storm', Remus maintained his shield through sheer force of will while straining his eyes to locate Bryan and Amelia through the chaos. His magic felt like fire in his veins, the protective charm was drawing magic deeply from his reserves.
The debris-filled tempest, born from the Nundu's fury, tore down more power lines with condescending ease.
Electrical cables whipped through the air like angry serpents, spitting sparks and adding their own deadly dance to the chaos. For a terrifying moment, this section of railway resembled an ocean caught in the grip of a storm, with wind, rain, thunder, and lightning all converging at once in nature's most violent masterpiece!
Uncontrollable panic drove Amelia to Disapparate to a spot farther from the battlefield. The fierce winds had lost much of their lethal force by the time they reached this distance, but the stones pelting her body still drew pained grunts from her lips.
She staggered back a step, her legs trembling like a newborn foal's, but missed her footing on the uneven ground. In a moment, she accidentally fell backward onto the railway tracks. The moment her supporting palm touched the already-deformed rail—
Crack!
White electrical sparks suddenly burst from the track like angry fireflies, the residual magic and severed power lines creating a deadly trap.
Amelia whimpered in a sound of pure agony and rolled aside with urgency, clutching her blackened arm where the electricity had branded her flesh with its cruel kiss.
By now, basic spells cast wandlessly had become as natural to Bryan as breathing. Like Remus, he used an Iron Armor charm to block the debris storm.
When Amelia's pained cry reached his ears, he glanced in her direction and was about to step forward when his brow furrowed slightly, his calm expression suddenly rippled with the first trace of true alarm.
Only novice wizards' duels proceeded one turn at a time, following the civilized rules of classroom practice but life-and-death battles were about striking while your enemy was down, about seizing every advantage and going for the kill without hesitation or mercy!
After missing its first strike, the Nundu had vanished from its position like a nightmare dissolving at dawn, only to reappear the next instant on a power pole bent by the supernatural winds.
The metal squeaked under its weight but held, due to both engineering and magic. Its cold gaze ignored Remus and Amelia completely—they were no longer threats worth acknowledging. Instead, those predator's eyes focused with intensity on Bryan, who posed the greatest threat to it.
The Nundu's speed was so incredible that it seemed like a weightless ghost given body. With just a slight push off the pole top, it was already at Bryan's side, covering incredible distance in the space between seconds!
Man and beast locked eyes for an almost frozen moment. Then the Nundu extended its front claw, its several-inch-long talons gently hooking toward Bryan's neck. In its estimation, this wizard who had given it such an unprecedented sense of threat was about to lose his head.
Faced with this life-or-death crisis, Bryan remained utterly calm. Before the Nundu's claw could touch him, he was enveloped by twisted space and, in the blink of an eye, appeared on a railing fifty feet away, his landing as light as a cat's.
"Growl!"
Two consecutive failed attacks had completely enraged the Nundu. Bryan could see the malice blazing in the creature's pitch-black pupils like twin fires of hell as it wheeled around!
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Having fallen and been badly shocked, her arm throbbing with waves of agony that made her vision blur, Amelia lay on the cold railway bed. The metal beneath her was like ice against her heated skin. But before she could catch her breath, a series of thunderous crashes erupted from a hundred feet away.
Supporting herself on her good elbow, gritting her teeth against the fire racing up her arm, she endured the pain to look in that direction and witnessed a scene she would never forget for the rest of her life!
A reddish-brown lightning bolt—no, something far more considerable and infinitely more dangerous continuously darted across a long section of railway track. The Nundu was only barely visible each time its limbs touched the ground.
With breathtaking speed combined with tremendous force that shook the ground, the Nundu racing along the tracks was whipping up a violent hurricane in its trail.
The air itself screamed as it was torn apart by the creature's passage, creating a miniature tornado of debris and destruction that followed like a loyal servant.
And Bryan Watson—impossibly, incredibly, defying every law of magic and physics that Amelia thought she understood—the Nundu was chasing him with everything it had, but it couldn't catch up!
His figure never remained in one place for more than three-tenths of a second. Each time he appeared, solid and real for just an instant, he immediately Disapparated dissolving back into twisted space before reappearing at another location.
In the space filled with ash and supernatural storm, it was as if dozens of Bryan Watsons had suddenly appeared!
'Apparition could be used like this?'
The thought struck Amelia.
'Was... was this still a wizard?!'
Shock and awe, mixed with something approaching terror, nearly made Amelia drop her wand. Her fingers went numb around the wood as her mind struggled to process what her eyes were showing her.
Any qualified wizard could master Apparition after a period of training and practice, so the technique itself wasn't particularly rare or remarkable. Amelia herself had participated in the mandatory learning of this transportation method after reaching the appropriate age, had felt the familiar discomfort of Side-Along Apparition, had successfully mastered the art of intentional teleportation.
But she had never imagined—never even conceived in her wildest theoretical discussions that anyone could use this common transportation technique to such a degree of mastery.
It was like watching someone turn a simple candle into the sun itself.
She stared dazedly at the many seemingly motionless Bryan Watsons frozen in her perception like a photograph of impossible movement, unable to fathom just how resilient and powerful Bryan Watson's mind must be to maintain such high-frequency Apparition without splinching himself across half the countryside!
Remus, who thought he already understood Bryan's capabilities after their previous encounters, found that the scene unfolding before him still made his eye twitch uncontrollably.
He had seen Bryan fight, had witnessed displays of magical prowess that defied conventional understanding, but this—this was something else.
Earlier, not all the patrons of the Blind Pig had been cowards driven by simple self-preservation. Some curious souls, driven by the irresistible human urge to witness and brag about it, hadn't left but instead lurked nearby in the shadows, hoping for a chance to profit from any chaos or at least to have a story worth telling in the years to come.
The commotion on the elevated railway was impossible to ignore and was growing more spectacular by the moment, and this quickly caught their attention. These folks appeared one by one under hastily-cast Disillusionment Charms as they emerged from their hiding places.
When they made out what was actually happening on the tracks and recognized the rapidly flashing figures in the storm, they froze as if struck by Petrification curses, their faces wearing expressions so ridiculous and comical that they might have been carved by a comic's mold.
"This is insane!"
"Is this something a human can accomplish?!" Another voice said with disbelief.
"Unbelievable!" The word was breathed like a curse.
Whispers emerged from the dense vegetation like the rustling of frightened ghosts. Some observers were so alarmed by what they were witnessing, so afraid that their unauthorized observation might anger Bryan Watson that they fled immediately. They feared that after he finished with the Nundu, he might turn his terrible attention to them as well!
"Roar!"
After this standoff lasted approximately two minutes, the furious Nundu could endure no more. It stopped its futile pursuit and released an earth-shaking roar.
Then—
Crash!
The Nundu vented its frustration with a massive swipe at the twisted railway tracks. The already battered bridge section, weakened by their battle and stressed beyond its engineering limits, finally couldn't withstand this final assault.
Under this last devastating blow, over a hundred feet of bridge deck came crashing down to the ground with a thunderous clatter that echoed across the landscape like the death knell of giants, sending up clouds of dust and debris that would take hours to settle!
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