A massive bitch slap was all it took to knock such a fierce magical creature unconscious on the spot—watching from the side, Ron was nearly dumbfounded.
Back when his whole family went to Romania to visit Charlie, it wasn't as if he had never seen a legendary Class XXX X X magical creature like a dragon before.
However, the raw aura of a dragon paled in comparison to this giant octopus in front of him.
Ron examined the well-developed biceps on the Eight-Tails Gyūki's thick arms; he had zero doubt that a single punch from this thing could beat those dragons into hemiplegia and leave them questioning their existence as dragons.
Looking at Kyle standing atop the wooden human's head with an easygoing, relaxed demeanor, it was obvious he hadn't even used his full strength.
Fred had said that as long as he became this so-called Eight-Tails Jinchūriki—which meant sealing the Eight-Tails Gyūki inside his body—he would be able to gain one-third of Kyle's power.
Lying on a smooth stone table, Ron began to calculate.
His individual strength in front of Kyle and the Eight-Tails Gyūki was virtually negligible.
Framed like that... one Eight-Tails was roughly equal to one-third of a Kyle?
So... could he seal a few more inside himself?
Ron suddenly really felt like saying: I don't mind having a few more—it'd be best if you gave me eight or ten of them.
That way, he could kick Albus and punch Gellert.
Just as Ron's mindset was growing increasingly inflated, the four Father-Troublers acted simultaneously.
A cubical light cage trapped the unconscious Eight-Tails Gyūki within it. The Eight-Tails' body looked as though it were disintegrating, continuously dissolving into pure magic.
Because it had undergone some negative side effects during its Dark Magic modifications, the Eight-Tails Gyūki's magic didn't present itself as a translucent, deep blue, but rather an orange-red tinged with a violent aura.
Under Kyle's control, most of the negative emotions were stripped from this magic power, which was then slowly channeled into Ron's body under the guidance of the other three Father-Troublers.
The process was completed very quickly.
Once the very last bit of the Eight-Tails' magic in the light cage vanished, a complex sealing formula materialized on Ron's stomach as well.
The Eight Trigrams Sealing Formula.
Sitting up from the stone table, Ron rubbed his belly with an expression of sheer disbelief.
That's it? Why don't I feel anything at all?
What about the immense power I was promised? Why can't I feel that either?
He drew his wand and flicked it toward the nearby cave wall. "Reducto!"
A fist-sized orb of light slammed against the wall, gouging out a small hole that was neither too big nor too small.
This spell's power... hadn't been enhanced in the slightest.
"Alright, alright, stop showing off," George interrupted his movements. "You have to gain the Eight-Tails' approval or forcibly tame it before you can draw upon its power."
Ron looked utterly bewildered. Was it not that simply sealing it inside his body would let him borrow the Eight-Tails' power?
Fred saw right through Ron's thoughts at a glance. "Dream on."
"As for how to master the Eight-Tails Gyūki's power," Kyle spread his hands, "you'll have to figure that out yourself. After all, you're the first test subject, so we don't know how to do it either."
Hearing Kyle's words, Ron was completely stunned on the spot. Are you pulling my leg?!
"Let's go, let's go."
The Father-Troublers began packing up their things and getting ready to leave, leaving behind a thoroughly bewildered Ron standing dazed in place.
A moment later, he snapped back to reality. "Hey! Wait for me!"
As the days drifted by, time quickly reached June, and the Hogwarts end-of-term exams were drawing near.
The summer heat left the students with little heart to revise for their exams; all their minds and spirits were focused entirely on the upcoming Quidditch final.
During this time, a massive upset erupted at Hogwarts: in the previous Quidditch Cup matches, Hufflepuff had actually lost two matches to Gryffindor for the very first time.
Currently, the landscape of the Hogwarts Quidditch Cup was essentially a Hufflepuff monopoly, with Gryffindor and Slytherin vying for second place, while Ravenclaw sat perennially in fourth.
This was simply unavoidable.
On Hufflepuff's side, they had three exceptionally dominant ace flyers taking the pitch—Kyle, Cedric, and Hannah—and the average quality of their other four players was by no means low.
If one were to classify the strength of the Hogwarts Quidditch players using Naruto combat power scaling, then the four Father-Troublers—Kyle, Cedric, George, and Fred—were roughly above Kage-level existences.
Furthermore, a cheater like Kyle was at the absolute pinnacle of above Kage-level, having reached the tier of the God of Shinobi.
As for Hannah, Cho Chang, and Harry, they could barely be counted as standard Kage-level.
The rest of Hufflepuff's players were basically at the Jonin level, whereas the quality of Gryffindor and Slytherin's players was hit-or-miss, ranging from Elite Jonin to Special Jonin.
As for Ravenclaw, you couldn't expect Cho Chang to single-handedly carry a team of mid-to-low-tier Chunin and Genin.
They weren't world-destroying Leaf Genin, after all.
With Hufflepuff losing those matches, this final Quidditch match in June became the crucial decider for the championship title between two houses.
The students' attention was firmly captivated by this match.
In previous years, there had been zero suspense surrounding the champion; facing a gap of nearly a thousand points, unless Gryffindor or Slytherin were willing to shamelessly farm a thousand points off each other, it was impossible to beat Hufflepuff.
This year was different.
The cumulative point difference between the two teams was currently under fifty, meaning whoever won this match would take home the Quidditch Cup.
Thus, the student body was in a frenzy.
On Saturday morning, students gathered early at the Quidditch pitch—they had never shown this much enthusiasm even for meals.
At the sound of Madam Hooch's whistle, fourteen broomsticks shot into the sky together.
Because the championship was on the line, both teams fought brutally for control of the Bludgers.
In the past, players on both sides prioritized fighting over the Quaffle at the start of the match, but ever since Kyle joined the Hufflepuff Quidditch team, everything had changed.
Whoever grabbed the air-to-air missile—err, the Bludger—first gained complete dominance over the match.
The intensity of the game far exceeded the crowd's imagination. In less than three minutes, Hufflepuff's Zacharias and Gryffindor's Alicia were both blasted right off their broomsticks.
Kyle seized the opportunity to chase after Alicia and deliver a relentless beatdown.
This was already the fifth time Alicia Spinnet had been shot down by Kyle this season; ever since that shout she let out in the Great Hall, Kyle had held a grudge against her straight through to the present.
By the fifth minute of the match, both teams had traded one player each, and then... there was no "after."
With absurd luck, Harry caught the Golden Snitch directly.
Because the players on both sides had spent all their time dogfighting over the Bludgers, no one had paid any attention to the Quaffle at all.
And so, Gryffindor claimed the match outright with a score of 150 to 0.
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