Apart from the faint, almost inaudible groans of pain from the transformed Muggle girl whose body had become so distorted that she no longer resembled anything recognizably human, the room was so quiet you could hear a pin drop.
Every single person in the chamber stared with wide, unblinking eyes at the unexpected intruders: Bryan Watson, and the blonde girl beside him. Their thoughts had become frozen in a state of complete shock.
The silence stretched on like a stiff wire ready to snap, broken only by the mechanical humming of the alchemical device that continued its work, oblivious to the drama unfolding around it.
Steam continued to hiss from various joints and connections, creating ghostly vines of vapor that drifted through the air like the spirits of the dead.
"Impossible—" Jasna finally managed to whisper, and her voice was almost inaudible above the background noise of the machinery.
Her fingertips trembled uncontrollably as she shook her head in small, rapid, disbelieving movements. When she spoke, it was with considerable difficulty, in a hoarse voice:
"You couldn't possibly have found this place, Watson. The location is protected by layers upon layers of concealment charms. Apparition is forbidden within these walls. How did you possibly manage to—"
Halfway through her desperate words, Jasna suddenly realized something that made her blood run cold. A terrible understanding began to appear in her pale eyes, and she abruptly looked down at the golden pocket watch that still rested in her palm.
"Your reflexes are quite sharp, Miss Rosier," Bryan said in a mild, conversational tone. "Unfortunately for you and your group, they're simply not matched by an equivalent level of intelligence."
Hearing this assessment, Jasna felt her lips press together in a tight line.
Rage and humiliation warred with terror in her chest, creating a toxic mixture of emotions that began to overwhelm her usual self-control.
She raised her arm high above her head with sudden determination, as if to smash the golden pocket watch with all her strength against the stone floor. But before she could complete the motion, an irresistible magical force extracted the watch from her grip and landed it precisely in Bryan's palm.
"This pocket watch holds precious emotions and memories, Miss Rosier," Bryan said with that same infuriating mildness. "If you don't like it, you can give it to me. As it happens, I have some other uses for it."
Bryan smiled slightly and casually placed the pocket watch in his own pocket. Seeing him do this, Jasna looked as if someone had seized her by the throat—she couldn't make a sound.
The heavy, oppressive atmosphere in the room made Louise struggle to breathe properly. The hand that had previously provided gentle, reassuring support to Louise's arm was now gripped tightly in both of hers.
She cautiously surveyed her surroundings. There were many aspects of this underground laboratory that she couldn't understand, but this complete lack of magical understanding didn't prevent her from recognizing the essential truth of what she was witnessing, these people surrounding them were unquestionably the absolute scum of the wizarding world, a group of vicious criminals who had dedicated their lives to inflicting suffering on others for their own twisted purposes.
Yet as disturbing as these revelations were, what struck Louise even more was the way these criminals looked at Bryan with terror flickering in their eyes. And Louise finally gained a direct understanding of what the title "most powerful wizard of the age" truly meant in practical terms.
Her gaze also focused on Bryan's cold face, and her eyes showed awe.
Tap, tap, tap—
Unexpectedly, Bryan, who had become the central point of every fearful gaze in the room as if he were a predator surrounded by prey that didn't dare to move, didn't immediately draw his wand and begin the massacre that everyone seemed to be expecting.
Instead of unleashing the devastating magical spell that his reputation said was inevitable, he took a step toward the experimental table, toward the Muggle woman who had been reduced to what could only be described as a "cocoon-like" state.
Louise, sensing the importance of staying close to her only source of protection in this scenario, followed step by careful step, her grip on Bryan's hand tightening unconsciously as they approached the table.
The cocooned woman lay motionless on the surface of the experimental table. The woman, whose appearance was completely unrecognizable, had only slits for eyes, but in them flickered a pleading light—not pleading for life, but pleading for death.
Bryan knelt beside the experimental table as he extended one finger toward what remained of the woman's arm area as he traced along the surface of her transformed flesh, picking up some thread-like particles of black sand that clung to her skin like parasitic organisms.
After collecting a small sample of this mysterious substance, he held it close to his face for careful examination.
"Can she still be saved?" Louise asked.
Despite her complete lack of magical understanding, Louise had the basic reasoning ability and human compassion to recognize the similarity between what had happened to this unknown woman and the fate that had befallen her brother and friend Valeria and this recognition filled her with a complex mixture of sorrow for this stranger's suffering and anger at those responsible for such casual cruelty.
"There's no saving her," Bryan replied without any attempt at evasion or false comfort, and gave his judgment directly.
"She's been parasitized by the concentrated power of an Obscurus, transformed into a living vessel designed to seal away dark magic and evil thoughts that would have otherwise consume their host."
Bryan paused in his examination and murmured. "No wonder—no wonder you have that kind of power,"
With a light sigh, Bryan stood up and looked calmly at the blonde young man beside Jasna.
"Did naturally occurring misfortune and tragedy create you, or were you forced into this by artificially manufactured disaster?"
With just one sentence, Angus Aeschylus's expression became ferocious. Black smoke rose from his pale, bloodless face.
"Bryan Watson, you think you can just—!" he had just began.
"So, it was the latter then," Bryan interrupted with a slight nod, cutting off Aeschylus's furious outburst.
For just a moment, a trace of sympathy appeared in Bryan's purple eyes, a flicker of compassion for the child who had been deliberately broken and transformed into this monster. But that moment of human feeling vanished almost instantly.
Then Bryan then turned his attention to Louise: "I can be certain now, Louise. This man is the wizard who murdered your brother. What do you plan to do? Do you want to kill him?"
Louise, still struggling to process the rapid succession of revelations and horrors she had witnessed, looked at Bryan with confusion written clearly across her face.
The magical terminology he was using was mostly incomprehensible to her.
"What exactly is an Obscurus?" She asked.
"The power of magic comes directly from the heart," Bryan explained.
"An Obscurus is someone born with magical talent who, during their childhood, experienced a severe psychological trauma that it completely destroyed their soul's natural development. The heart, in response to this damage, begins breeding dark magic that devours both life force and sanity. Generally speaking, wizards who become Obscuri have extremely limited lifespans but he—"
Bryan's gaze pointed toward Aeschylus, whose human form was disintegrating, and continued matter-of-factly:
"He has learned to constantly expel the ever-growing dark magic from his own body before it can accumulate to lethal levels, temporarily lodging it inside other people who serve as repositories for his corruption. Through this method of periodically transferring and suppressing the destructive power that would have consumed him, he has managed to extend his life."
"You think you can leave this place alive, Bryan Watson!" Aeschylus suddenly roared, his voice breaking through Bryan's explanation like a thunderclap.
Perhaps the provocation came from Bryan's straightforward dissection of him. Or perhaps it was the realization that Bryan seemed to be speaking so casually and confidently while his presence continued to hang over everyone in the room like multiple swords of Damocles, preventing them from taking any action through sheer intimidation alone.
This psychological pressure, the constant awareness that they seemed to be completely at the mercy of someone, caused rage to surge through Aeschylus's corrupted heart.
The careful control he had maintained over his transformed nature finally snapped completely, and he threw back his head and roared with a voice that seemed to come from the depths of hell itself:
"You will pay the price for your contempt!"
ROAR!
In an instant, Aeschylus's body began to disintegrate and transform into a great mass of black sandy mist. The black sand, which constantly emitted fierce howls that seemed to come from a thousand tortured throats simultaneously, rapidly expanded as it began rotating with increasing violence.
The expanding mass of dark energy crackled against the room's four walls with tremendous force, each impact sending shockwaves through the stone that had been reinforced with decades of protective magic. But even these defenses with layer upon layer of containment spells that had been designed to hold back the most dangerous magical forces, began dissolving under the attack like paper in acid.
"No—" cried the old wizard Christopher, whose transformation into something neither human nor animal through years of forbidden magical experiments had left him with an intuitive understanding of just how catastrophic this situation could become.
His scaled face was twisted with panic as he finally came to his senses and realized the true magnitude of what was happening. He looked toward Jasna with desperate urgency, his eyes widening with terror: "We absolutely cannot allow him to lose complete control here—if his power reaches its full potential in this limited space, he'll destroy not just this laboratory but possibly this entire section of our stronghold!"
The light in Jasna's pale eyes flickered with rapid calculation as she weighed their options, but despite the obvious danger to herself and everyone else present, she made no move to intervene or attempt to restore control to the situation. Instead, she simply stood and watched the events unfold.
Roar, roar, roar!
The black sand continued its howling, the sound grew in volume and intensity until it seemed to fill the chamber. The high-speed rotating mist, now resembling a miniature tornado made of living darkness, whipped up tremendous hurricanes within the laboratory, creating winds powerful enough to lift and hurl heavy equipment across the room like toys in a child's tantrum.
All the furnishings were destroyed by the supernatural storm, reduced to debris and scattered fragments that filled the air like deadly projectiles.
Through all of this chaos and destruction, Bryan remained perfectly still and composed, his attention was focused completely on the Muggle girl lying at his feet rather than on the spectacular display of destructive power swirling around him.
Summoned by some invisible force that responded to the presence of so much concentrated dark magic, the corrupted energy that had been sealed within the transformed woman's body suddenly fell into violent agitation, resonating with the Obscurial power.
Having lost the technological suppression provided by the alchemical instruments, which had been designed specifically to contain and control such forces, the girl's tortured body quickly began to melt like a candle exposed to intense flame with the dark magic that ate her from within, and the evil power that had been sealed inside her body began rapidly merging with the black hurricane that filled the chamber.
Bryan watched as the Muggle girl's body dissolved, the life force rapidly drained from her gradually peaceful eyes, but he didn't intervene with the natural conclusion of her suffering.
The hurricane of dark energy, having absorbed this additional power, grew several times stronger. The increase in magical force was so high that even Jasna was forced to raise a hastily constructed Shield Charm just to resist the suffocating sensation that filled the air.
Louise, as the only completely non-magical person in the room, was completely defenseless against the waves of supernatural energy that washed over everyone present like tsunami waves of pure force. She relied entirely on her grip on Bryan's arm to keep from collapsing under the attack.
Suddenly, from the raging black hurricane that now filled most of the chamber's considerable volume, a massive surge of concentrated dark sand erupted with the explosive force of a volcanic eruption.
The attack took the form of what could only be described as a giant dragon suspended in mid-air and it revealed rows of bloody fangs that gleamed like fresh wounds in the swirling darkness.
This manifestation of energy charged straight toward Bryan, who appeared to be completely absorbed in staring at the small pile of ashes that was all that remained of the Muggle girl who had finally found peace on the cold stone floor.
Just as the black surge was about to strike with enough force to tear through solid stone, Bryan suddenly twisted around. His eyes, when they met the approaching attack, were filled with an endless coldness that seemed to drop the temperature in the immediate area by several degrees.
Raising his arm, Bryan brought his wand down in a sharp, decisive motion, as if he were whipping the air itself into submission rather than merely casting a spell.
BOOM!
Silver light exploded across the dim laboratory with the intensity of captured lightning illuminating every corner of the chamber. The flash was so bright that it seemed like thunder was made visible.
The air within the limited space of the laboratory vibrated so violently from the magical shockwave that several researchers with mediocre magical power immediately rolled their eyes back in their heads and collapsed to the floor.
Even Jasna's hastily erected Shield Charm shattered like glass under the tremendous impact. The backlash sent her stumbling backward until she hit the wall with enough force to drive the breath from her lungs, leaving her pale-faced and gasping as blood began seeping from the corner of her mouth in a crimson stream.
Throughout this devastating display of magical power, only Bryan himself and Louise, who remained protected within the milky-white barrier of his defensive magic, stood as the only two people still standing in the entire room.
The black storm, struck by Bryan's powerful counterattack, burst apart with piercing screams that seemed to come from a chorus of the damned. But even as the dark mass seemed to disperse under the attack, in the blink of an eye, the scattered fragments of dark energy reformed themselves back into their original configuration.
"Bryan Watson!" came an eardrum-shattering, high-frequency scream that seemed to bypass normal hearing and attack the nervous system directly.
The sound filled the laboratory with such intensity that loose stones began falling from the ceiling, and the remaining functional equipment sparked and smoked as delicate magical circuits overloaded under the acoustic attack.
Intense lightning flashed continuously throughout the air, which had become ionized by the concentration of powerful magical energies, creating a display that was both beautiful and terrifying as electrical discharges leaped from surface to surface, destroying everything they touched with devastating efficiency.
Whoosh!
The Obscurus was now completely enraged beyond any possibility of reason or restraint, and had transformed into something that resembled an endless sea of liquid darkness that never dried up, never diminished, never showed any sign of exhaustion despite the tremendous energies it was expending.
Black torrents of pure evil force dove down from the ceiling, washing against the white barrier that surrounded Bryan and Louise.
The collision between these two completely different types of magic—Bryan's controlled, precise defensive enchantments and the wild, chaotic power of the Obscurus—created a spectacular light show as magical energies of opposing natures met and struggled for dominance.
The point where they made contact burst into intense flames of various colors, creating a complex pattern of light that quickly made the temperature in the room rise to unbearably scorching levels.
The heat was so intense that the air began to shimmer like a desert mirage, and several pieces of equipment that hadn't already been destroyed by the physical attack began melting or catching fire as their magical components overloaded under the thermal stress.
Ignoring the howling black storm that continued to rage around them, Bryan's gaze swept over the researchers who had collapsed unconscious on the debris-scattered floor. His attention then moved to Jasna Rosier, who was struggling desperately to maintain her protective Shield Charm.
After a moment of consideration, Bryan raised his wand once again and struck the air with even greater force than before.
BOOM!
The second magical detonation was accompanied by deafening, agonized roars, mixed with silver-green flashes of light that swept in all directions like the birth of a new star.
Amid the rolling clouds of smoke and dust that rose from the epicenter of the magical explosion as it was torn apart by forces beyond its design tolerances, the entire laboratory completely collapsed with a thunderous roar.
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