Theodore's mocking voice rang across the beach, and Flint's words came to an abrupt halt.
Now that he had almost completely turned into something inhuman, fragments of his human memory surfaced only rarely—but this time, one of them did.
He remembered, all too vividly, the brutal humiliation Theodore had dealt him at Hogwarts.
The next instant, a frenzied killing intent burst from Flint's body.
The bone-deep dread already gripping everyone on the beach grew even worse.
Frank and Alice stared at the monstrosity before them, their hearts full of horror that could not be put into words.
Their memories were still rooted in the First Wizarding War. The savagery of that conflict was far beyond anything later generations could imagine.
Strictly speaking, compared to the First Wizarding War, the conflict from the original timeline's second war was almost child's play.
That later war had only really lasted two or three years, and much of that time was spent with scattered resistance forces working in the shadows against Voldemort and the Death Eaters. The only true large-scale battle had been the final Battle of Hogwarts.
But even then, Voldemort's side had been much weaker than it was during the first war. That was why he had been forced to drag werewolves, giants, and Dementors into open battle.
The true elite of magical Britain—whether the most vicious dark wizards or the strongest defenders of the light—had largely been exhausted in the First Wizarding War.
Back then, it had not been unusual to encounter grotesque creations of dark magic on the battlefield, or dark wizards who had twisted their own bodies by imitating Voldemort's experiments on flesh.
And yet even battle-hardened veterans like Neville's parents had never once seen anything as horrifying as the thing Flint had become.
And from the sound of it, this creature had been a Hogwarts student only recently?
What kind of magic could turn someone into that?
Frank and Alice had no time to dwell on it. Acting purely on instinct, they raised their wands and stepped in front of the younger students.
Years of unconscious struggle against madness had tempered their wills. Having fought that internal war for over a decade, the two of them now carried something of the feeling of cultivators who had survived a heart-demon tribulation.
Reflected through their magic, that meant their power had not diminished in the least.
If anything, it had grown stronger.
At this point, they were already no weaker than the finest professors at Hogwarts.
Two silvery lights burst forth as they cast the Patronus Charm, and the glow of their Patronuses descended to ward off the madness rolling off Flint.
"Children, stay behind us!" Frank and Alice shouted.
But Neville was the first to refuse.
His eyes blazed like living fire.
He had only just gotten his parents back. There was no way he was going to let them fight alone.
At that moment, the usually timid Neville cast aside every trace of weakness. His face was hard with determination, already carrying a hint of the Gryffindor Sword Saint he would one day become.
Wand raised toward Flint, he fired spell after spell without hesitation.
"Reductor!"
"Incendio!"
It was like a signal.
Hermione, Harry, and Ron instantly fell into the same rhythm they had once found when facing the three-headed dog together. One polished spell after another flew out in seamless coordination with Neville's attacks, drowning Flint in magical force.
Frank and Alice exchanged a glance, and delight shone in their eyes.
Neville was only in his first year.
Yet that spellcasting? That combat instinct?
Even in wartime, it would have put him on par with a third-year student.
And Neville's friends—every one of them was astonishing. Their teamwork was flawless.
For a moment, joy welled up in the two adults' hearts—along with a deep sense of guilt.
They were overjoyed that their son had grown into such an exceptional young wizard, and that he had made such outstanding friends.
And guilty because, for all these years, they had done nothing for him.
But the shriek of cutting wind shattered that moment.
"Protego!"
Almost instinctively, the two of them cast Shield Charms.
Then came a rapid string of cracking noises. The thick magical shields shattered layer by layer under the lash of a single tentacle.
If they had not reacted in time, that strike might have cut them in half.
Their expressions turned grave as they looked toward the blast zone created by Neville and the others' spells.
Flint's body was still there, hideously writhing—
without the slightest injury.
A jolt ran through them, and they were about to warn the children when Hermione shouted first.
"It has high magic resistance! The tentacles are fast—Formation Two!"
Harry, Ron, and Neville responded at once, splitting apart and firing in an orderly pattern while additional hindrance charms sprang into the air to disrupt the paths of Flint's tentacles.
Frank and Alice shared another look, then silently abandoned any thought of warning them.
Those children's real combat instincts far exceeded what they had imagined.
Did Hogwarts really focus on practical combat this much now?
Hermione then called over her shoulder,
"Theodore, let us handle Flint for now!"
"You spent so much time training us—we need to prove ourselves!"
Hearing that, Theodore smiled with quiet satisfaction.
With him standing guard from the side, there was no real danger.
This was the perfect chance for Hermione and the others to gain experience against this kind of aberrant horror.
If Theodore was right, then creatures like this would only appear more and more often in the future.
At the same time, he could take the opportunity to examine exactly what had happened to Flint.
His gaze passed over Flint, and a subtle light flickered in Theodore's eyes. In a single glance, he saw that Flint was not a true Old One or proper abomination of the deep.
He was something transformed afterward—more like a forced hybrid.
The madness coming off him was far weaker than the horrors Theodore had previously encountered.
"He mentioned pure-blood lineage before," Theodore thought. "And the Flint family is one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Their ancestors also stole the authority of the unnameable in the ancient age."
"Looking at him now, the core of this body—that fish-like thing—is probably what lies closest to the origin of his bloodline."
Theodore clicked his tongue inwardly, feeling a reluctant sort of admiration for the ancestors of the Sacred Twenty-Eight.
To mate with something like that for the sake of bloodline power?
Heavy taste.
Far too heavy.
"As for the rest of him…"
"It looks like he's carrying fragments of power from several different horrors."
"There are even a few familiar old friends in there. The thing behind werewolf bloodlines—what the System calls Zhunti Daoist. And the one deep in the underworld—Empress Houtu. Both of them granted Flint a portion of their power."
"Did they really think that would be enough to erase me, this variable?"
Theodore's eyes showed a trace of confusion.
The threat Flint posed to him was practically nonexistent—nowhere close to the danger Theodore had felt in his earlier encounters with true horrors.
And over this last stretch of time, Theodore's strength had leapt forward so violently that he was no longer remotely the same person he had once been.
The things hiding behind the scenes actually thought this mishmash could kill him?
Had they lost their minds?
Before he could finish the thought, the battle shifted.
Flint had clearly grown tired of being toyed with like this.
He had finally obtained what he considered supreme power, only to spend it entangled with a few buzzing flies. That was enough to fill him with rage.
More importantly, his great Father Dagon was watching him.
He had to perform well.
The next instant, denser madness poured out from his body.
Shrieking winds tore across the shore, while the black sea roared and smashed itself against the rocks.
Flint plunged into the water.
Then he became a streaking shadow, circling the beach at terrifying speed.
He resembled an octopus—
but one far faster and far more horrifying.
Every warning bell in Hermione and the others' minds went wild.
A moment later, the whipping tentacles and Flint's fish-like monstrosity erupted from the sea, and the children's faces instantly turned white. Fear from the deepest part of their blood seemed to rise to the surface.
Frank and Alice's spells were crushed effortlessly by Flint. Even their two Patronuses, which had been covering the battlefield, let out pained cries before being smashed apart by his tentacles.
Without the light of the Patronuses, maddened whispers began ringing through everyone's mind.
The entire coastline seemed to be murmuring insanity.
They clutched their heads, struggling against the voices, while before their eyes there slowly appeared—
the deeper, darker reaches of the sea below.
An eternal abyss of stillness.
And within it, an immense shadow slumbered.
Then suddenly a stream of cool clarity entered their minds, dragging their consciousness back from that dead sea.
Hermione opened her eyes.
The fragrance of the Clear Spirit Pill was on her breath.
Looking ahead, she saw Theodore's back standing before her.
Had Theodore stepped in again?
In the end, was she still unable to do anything on her own—still only relying on Theodore's protection?
At that moment, Theodore spoke.
"Hermione, all of you did brilliantly."
"Thanks to you, I finally understand what those things were relying on."
"Rest."
"I'll take it from here."
Hermione froze for a moment, then smiled faintly.
She had helped Theodore?
That was wonderful.
The next second, however, the deep exhaustion of fighting against madness rushed over her. It felt as though she had absorbed too much information in too little time, and she, like Harry, Ron, and Neville, slipped into unconsciousness.
Now only Theodore remained standing on the beach, alone against Flint in his current form.
Flint sounded delighted.
"Theodore Ashbourne—if I offer you as a sacrifice to great Father, He'll favor me even more."
But Theodore only laughed.
It was the sound of someone hearing the most absurd joke in the world.
His gaze swept over Flint with utter indifference.
"You really think you matter that much?"
"Just you?"
"You're bold enough to dream. But your great Father probably doesn't even expect anything from you."
Flint exploded in rage at once.
"What would you understand?"
"A mere Mudblood. A mere mortal. How could you understand how strong I am now—"
Before the sentence finished, Theodore's face stayed perfectly blank as he clenched his fist—
and punched.
One blow.
The air itself shattered.
The raw strength of a body refined through the first turn of the Eight-Nine Mystical Art was unleashed in full, plowing a trench through the black water.
As for Flint, who happened to be standing in the path of that punch—
he exploded into a cloud of stinking blood mist.
A moment later, the mist pulled itself back together as if alive, and Flint's incredulous scream echoed out.
"Impossible…"
"What the hell are you?"
Theodore's face darkened.
"You're the 'thing,' not me."
Another punch.
The half-regathered blood mist was blasted apart again.
But after a few breaths, it gathered once more.
Flint's voice returned.
"It's useless, useless. The power of the gods is beyond what you can imagine."
"My flesh and soul are deathless and imperishable. You can't kill me. You'll only make me stronger."
This time, two identical Flints emerged from the blood mist.
Theodore's eyes narrowed with interest, and he threw another punch.
The mist exploded again—
and then four Flints appeared, their hoarse, chaotic voices echoing across the beach.
"Go on, kill me."
"The more you kill, the more of me there are…"
"Struggle…"
"The gods have already chosen you as a sacrifice. You can't escape…"
Theodore said nothing.
He only continued to throw punch after punch, each one kicking up a storm.
Only when Flint had multiplied into the hundreds and thousands, until the entire beach seemed covered with frog-like eyes and octopus-like tentacles, did Theodore finally lick his lips with the anticipation of a glutton about to walk into an all-you-can-eat feast.
"That should be enough to eat…"
Before Flint could make sense of what he meant, Theodore flicked a hand.
The Abi Hellscape Sword burst out from his Origin Sea as a streak of blood-red brilliance, flashing like a meteor.
The full terror of the Slaughter Sword Dao was unleashed.
In an instant, it pierced countless Flint bodies at once, leaving killing-intent sword qi rampaging inside them and feeding on the slaughter itself.
Flint was just about to sneer that it was useless—
when terror unlike anything he had known seized him.
The power clinging to that sword seemed inexhaustible.
The faster he regenerated, the faster that power killed.
He had become food for the sword?
The next second, one of the madness currents inside Flint retreated, as if it remembered all too clearly what such a sword could do.
His body exploded completely, beyond any possibility of recovery.
Theodore swept his hand through the air. The countless sword q
i, now thoroughly fed, converged back into the Abi Hellscape Sword, causing the Slaughter Sword Dao within it to grow denser and more terrifying.
Its sword-light blazed toward the heavens.
Still, Flint's insane voice continued to echo across the beach.
"You can't kill me! You can't kill me! My soul is deathless and eternal—"
Theodore answered only with a strange smile.
The Judge's Brush appeared in his hand, dark radiance glimmering at its tip.
"Deathless soul?"
"In front of a judge of the dead, you dare utter such nonsense? You're courting death."
Then Theodore drew the Judge's Brush through the air.
The power of Soul-Severing and Spirit-Extinguishing surged forth.
A cold wind swept over the beach.
Flint's voice managed only a single terrified scream—
and then everything fell silent.
The Judge's Brush, meanwhile, became just a little more solid.
A satisfied expression entered Theodore's eyes.
Killing Flint had saved him an immense amount of tempering for both the Abi Hellscape Sword and the Judge's Brush.
The System screen likewise filled with fervent text.
[After a fierce battle, the host has slain a heaven-proud talent of demonic bloodline, one who received transmission from a Saint and sought to seize the position of the tribulation's protagonist.]
[At the end of the primordial world, who stands at the peak? The moment one sees the host, one's Dao comes to nothing.]
[Who dares call themselves invincible? Who dares claim defeat has never touched them? All are but bones beneath the host's path.]
Yet only moments later, trembling and chaotic words began appearing again.
[The instant the host kills the demonic heaven-proud talent, chaos boils, Heavenly Dao trembles, and an overwhelming pressure sweeps across the primordial world. All living beings shudder.]
[A Saint is transmitting power. An avatar descends!]
Theodore looked into the depths of this sea.
Beneath the black, heaving waters, an immense shadow—like eternal darkness given form—was swelling larger and larger, as though some ancient being that had slept for countless ages were finally beginning to reveal even a fragment of itself.
A tide of madness far beyond Flint's rolled over the beach.
Yet Theodore showed no surprise.
He had already suspected as much.
Flint could not kill him.
Theodore knew it.
And the things behind Flint would certainly know it too.
They might be mad, but Theodore did not believe they were stupid.
If they had gone to such lengths to set this trap, then they must have held some truly decisive method in reserve.
Now that answer had become clear.
Looking at that growing shadow, Theodore rose into the air, the Purple-Gold Crown of Auspicious Clouds above his head and the Abi Hellscape Sword in hand.
Then he spoke its name.
"Dagon?"
"One of the sources of wizarding magic bloodlines. A horror. A so-called god. An Old One."
"It doesn't matter."
"Whether today this is a projection or an avatar…"
Theodore bared his teeth in a grin.
"This Daoist is a true disciple of the Jade Void Palace beneath the Chan sect."
"I hereby invite this Old One to die."
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