From Hogwarts to Strixhaven.

Chapter 259: Flying among the Clouds (1000010000)

The orc riders did not seem to intend to launch an attack immediately, but to wait until the expedition's physical strength was exhausted by the desperate rush.

Ivy rode on the back of Golden Horn, wanting to do something. He had the spell of teleportation. After luring the orcs away, he could escape over a longer distance. He would definitely be much faster than the other people in the expedition who were moving on two legs.

But the uncertainty of using teleportation spells was too great, and he didn't want to gamble on Ilúvatar's tolerance for teleportation.

Gandalf quickly realized what Ivy was thinking: "Don't think about leaving the main force to attract the attention of the orcs. They won't be fooled a second time! They are draining our energy. We must find a place to defend!"

"I don't have much time to use magic, Gandalf!" Ivy slightly controlled the speed of the golden horn, "Do you have any way to escape?"

The golden sunlight shining on the hillside had completely disappeared, and the strange-shaped trees stretched out countless hands in the darkness, each of which looked like the pus-covered arms of the orcs.

Gandalf led the way, running out of breath: "Oh...we must go to a higher place! A higher place! Preferably a cliff!"

"Cliff? Those orcs are driving us towards the cliff." Ivy looked at the woods around him. The dark vision granted by the Philosopher's Stone was taking effect. Except for the direction the expedition was heading, there were orcs everywhere on both sides of the woods.

Moreover, Ivy could see the end of the woods ahead. There was a cliff covered with pine trees, and behind it was a large forest. However, there was a drop of at least several thousand feet between the pine forest and the forest.

"Beware the Wargs!" the warrior Dwalin warned, swinging his hammer and hitting a Warg on the chin.

These bloodthirsty and greedy beasts began to attack.

Another Warg launched an attack from the protruding rock, targeting the Hobbit in the middle of the crowd because he looked the weakest. Attacking the old, weak and sick has always been the instinct of wolves, and even a terrifying beast like a Warg is no exception.

The hobbit's hairy feet tripped over a branch of a pine tree and he fell to the ground, avoiding the wolf that was pouncing on him from behind.

As soon as the wolf landed, it turned around flexibly and prepared to launch the next attack.

Bilbo rolled on the ground and drew his elven dagger. The warg opened its mouth and pounced on him. Bilbo closed his eyes and pushed the dagger forward. Then he felt a furry creature jump into his arms.

He opened his eyes carefully and found that his dagger had been deeply inserted into the wolf's upper jaw and reached its brain. At this time, the wolf's big head was lying motionless beside his hand.

"Hurry up and climb up the tree!" Gandalf swung the sword in his hand, cut off the head of a wolf that rushed too fast, and climbed up the tree nimbly.

An old man's face always makes suggestions more acceptable, even to dwarves who are known for their stubbornness.

The thirteen dwarves in the expedition climbed up the tree as quickly as they could without a word of complaint.

Hiding in a leafy pine tree, the brothers Kili and Fili looked like bearded elves on a Christmas tree.

The two brothers Groin climbed up a very tall fir tree, the branches were very close together, so even a dwarf could stand at a very high place. The three brothers Noli were also on the tree, they helped each other to get closer to the moon, but the other two dwarves who arrived earlier stopped them.

Bofur and Bifur were helping their brother, Pangbo, the biggest, fattest, and bald cook. Fortunately, the brotherhood between them was strong, and Pangbo was out of danger.

The warriors, namely Balin, Thorin and Dwalin, were responsible for covering the rear. They believed that they should take on the most dangerous task.

"Ugh!" Bilbo's dagger was still stuck in the warg's mouth. Almost all the force used to insert the dagger was provided by the warg itself, so even if Bilbo used all the strength of his hands, it would be difficult to pull the dagger out.

By the time Bilbo remembered that he still had the use of his feet, the dwarves had all climbed up the tree.

"Why did he leave the Snitch behind?" asked Gandalf, who sat on the highest branch. "Didn't you see he killed the Warg all by himself?"

With the help of Golden Horn's kicking, Ivy killed the last of the surrounding wolf and was about to climb the tree. She saw Bilbo standing among the pine trees, feeling at a loss.

Ordinary Hobbits never leave the ground in their entire lives. Climbing trees is a huge challenge for Mr. Baggins. His hands and feet, which are shorter than those of dwarves, make it difficult for him to climb up by clinging to the branches.

"Sheath your sword, Mr. Baggins!" Ivy urged Golden Horn to rush in Bilbo's direction and grabbed him as he passed by.

The West Wind Horseshoe once again showed its power. Golden Horn jumped lightly, bounced back and forth on the tree trunk, and soon stood on the highest branch. However, this poor branch could not support Golden Horn and Ivy on its back, so they had to move down a bit. In the end, the huge Golden Horn even had to cross two different trees to completely stop the tendency of the branch to break.

Before the expedition team could even catch their breath on the tree branch, more wolves appeared under the tree.

"Azog!" Thorin's hateful roar reached everyone's ears.

"Is that the smell of fear? Thorin, son of Thorn..." Azog, riding a giant white wolf, appeared and stood on a rock platform a little further away.

The individual differences between orcs are so great that they are no longer the same species.

The orcs chasing the expedition team outside the Ogre Forest looked only a head shorter than ordinary humans; the orcs living in the dungeons of the Misty Mountains were all wretched and hunched; Azog, who was riding on the back of a white wolf, had pale skin with countless scarlet scars. He was taller than all his men and was almost on the same level as Ivy and Gandalf.

Azog's left hand ended at his elbow, with a metal claw as a prosthetic limb. However, the metal claw was not tied to the limb with a leather sleeve and knot like the prosthetic limbs made by human craftsmen. Instead, it was a long metal nail that pierced through the only part of his arm and elbow joint that was left.

Azog's voice was low and terrifying, like the rustling sound of a giant python crawling across the ground: "I remember the stench of your father and the taste of the blood in your grandfather's head... Now it's your turn, Thorin."

"Look at my arm!" Azog raised his metal hook. "This is a shame, this is a failure! But it will no longer be! I will kill you and all your dwarves and feed them to the wolves! But your head will not become a toy for the wolves, I will keep it as a souvenir! I will use the gold that your clan Durin loves most to plate your head and let it become a decoration on this hook! This! This is my kindness to you, Thorin..."

"Azog!" Although he had heard the news about Azog in Goblin Town a long time ago, Thorin still found it difficult to suppress the anger in his heart.

Azog killed Thorin's grandfather and cut off his head in the Battle of Moria. Even his father could not bear this blow. After the war, he left the tribe alone and went mad. It was Gandalf who met him in Dol Guldur. The map and key of Lonely Mountain on Thorin's body were all obtained by Gandalf from his father Thorn.

"Attack! Push down the tree! Kill the man! Leave the dwarf to me!" Azog roared and ordered.

The orcs and wargs surrounding the cliff immediately launched an attack, but the expedition team in the trees was not without the ability to fight back.

Gandalf gathered a great heap of pine cones from his hiding-place, and lighting them one by one with a flame, he threw them at the Warg under the tree.

The fluffy, dry hair of the Wargs is very flammable, and the burning pine cones immediately ignite the hair when they hit the Wargs.

The rider on the wolf's back tried frantically to put out the fire, but was still thrown to the ground by the wolf in pain and fear.

Ivy was not idle either. He had a lot of second-level spell slots left, so he could use the Oil of Fuel to help spread the fire. So he specifically targeted the wolves that were already on fire, making their feet covered with flammable grease.

The flames shot up into the sky and illuminated the night sky. Large numbers of wargs that had no time to dodge rolled in the grease. Once they slipped and fell to the ground, there was no possibility for them to stand up again.

The range of the fuel magic is not large, but it is enough to block the entire cliff. After all, these orcs cannot launch attacks by stepping on the air, so the only place the expedition team needs to defend is one direction facing the mountain.

Yes, other people in the expedition also participated in the defense, mainly because Gandalf found that it was too inefficient for one person to throw pine cones, so he distributed fire to other dwarves who were also on the pine trees, so that they could fight back together with burning pine cones.

"Haha! Eat shit! Azog!" The dwarves uttered vulgar words, wiped out the first wave of wolves that rushed under the tree, and immediately let out a cheer that resounded through the sky.

Soon the dwarves stopped laughing, because the wind direction changed at night, and the fire quickly began to spread to the pine forest. Ivy's oil magic provided a lot of fuel for the fire, and the forest burned much faster than anyone imagined.

Pine and cypress trees are rich in oil. One of their survival strategies is to fill every open space in the forest with pine needles that are not easy to rot and rich in oil. These piled pine needles usually contain many loose gaps that can preserve oxygen as a combustion aid. As long as the dew on the pine needles in the right direction one morning, it can easily cause a forest fire, which is why coniferous forests in mid- and high-latitude regions on Earth can also ignite wildfires.

The branches of pine trees can withstand high temperatures better than any other trees, and the roots hidden underground rarely lose their vitality due to fire. Therefore, when other plants in the forest are burned by wildfires, the entire land will become the territory of pine trees.

The pine trees' somewhat despicable survival strategy now began to bother the expedition members who were climbing up the tree, forcing them to jump from one tree to another to stay away from the threat of the flames.

"What are we waiting for? Gandalf!" Ivy asked loudly. He had already started to prepare the fog spell. The thick magical fog could extinguish the flames, but with the current fire, one or two fog spells would only be a drop in the bucket. "Hold on a little longer!" Gandalf looked up at the moon and shouted, "Hold on! Don't fall!"

"We are going to get burned!" Noli shouted. "Think of a solution, wizard!"

Ivy called for a cloud of fog, which temporarily enveloped all members of the expedition. Although this prevented the pine trees where they were standing from being ignited, it also caused them to lose their vision.

"Cut down the trees, move them!" Azog ordered loudly. The fuel that Ivy had spread on the ground had burned out. Except for the pine trees that were still burning on the periphery, the scope of the fire had begun to shrink. However, once Ivy removed the fog and cloud that protected everyone, the fire would expand again.

"The mountain wind is too strong!" Ivy shouted with a frown, "These clouds will soon be blown away! We need to think of another way!"

"There is only one way!" Thorin's voice came from the clouds, and then everyone heard a rustling sound.

"Thorin!" cried Balin, who was in the same tree with Thorin. "You can't go down there! Azog will kill you!"

"I used oak as a shield and cut off one of his arms. This time I am fully equipped and I can definitely kill him!" Thorin insisted.

"Oh! Don't let me worry about the stubbornness of the dwarves any more!" Gandalf's voice came from higher up. "Come back! Thorin!"

"Let's go down too, Jinjiao." Ivy patted Jinjiao's neck and rode his horse out of the coverage of the cloud spell.

The burning pine trees had been cut down, and the orcs had cleared a path through the fire. Azog, riding a white wolf, stood at the front of the team, looking at Thorin in front of him.

"You don't want to be a coward, right?" Azog showed a bloodthirsty smile on his pale face, "Then you will soon become a dead man!"

"Let me do it myself! Wizard!" Thorin stopped Ivy who wanted to offer some help, "This is my destiny!"

Ivy rolled his eyes in his heart. These dwarves were so hot-tempered and stubborn that they actually tried to be heroic at such a critical moment.

But if this could delay the orcs' attack, Ivy wouldn't mind it. Apart from that, Ivy only sighed. Since he became a fifth-year student at Hogwarts, he hasn't seen a complete encirclement of the enemy for a long time, not to mention that he needed to use fire to delay the enemy's attack.

"Azog! Come and face me! The last blood of the House of Durin! Your nemesis! Thorin Oakenshield!" Thorin stood under the burning pine tree and challenged the pale orcs in the distance.

"Oak Shield?" The white wolf leaped forward, reaching a distance where it could attack at any time. "I only see pine wood on your arms!"

"That's enough!" Thorin swung the sword in his hand and took the initiative to attack.

Ivy sighed in his heart. Although he had only been a melee professional for less than three months, his combat experience was already extremely rich.

Faced with a walking charge by mounted enemies, especially dwarves, who have short legs, Ivy could only say that Thorin was indeed very courageous.

Azog, riding on a white wolf, also charged, swinging the octagonal hammer in his hand.

Just as Thorin and Azog were about to collide, the white wolf suddenly jumped to the side, immediately avoiding the arc of Thorin's long sword. Azog on the back of the white wolf leaned sideways and hit Thorin on the forehead with a hammer.

Thanks to the dwarves' heads being as tough as their tempers, Thorin, who was lying on the ground, looked only a little dizzy and seemed to still be able to fight.

Azog, who passed by Thorin on his wolf, turned around and was about to launch a second attack.

Ivy, who was standing not far away, shook her head, made a few gestures and pointed at Thorin. The magic light hit Thorin, who was standing there in a daze, at a faster speed than Azog's hammer.

It was a first-level gigantic transformation, which could double Thorin's height and make his weight eight times the original, making him one level larger and gaining two points of size bonus to his strength.

The change in height also changed the location where Azog's hammer hit, from the head, which could have been fatal, to the abdomen, which was not as critical.

"Ah--" Thorin cried out in pain, and Azog was also at a loss for words by this sudden change.

When Thorin came to his senses and saw that Azog riding on the wolf was not as tall as himself, he took the lead in launching the second round of attack.

However, the increase in size brought Thorin an advantage in strength, but it also greatly reduced his already low flexibility, not to mention that Azog had a wolf under his crotch.

After barely holding off Thorin's attack, Azog used his warg to leave a huge wound on Thorin's thigh. While Thorin was in pain and exhausted, Azog swung his hammer at Thorin's chest.

Now no matter how powerful Ivy's magic was, it couldn't help him.

Ivy instigated Golden Horn to rush forward and slashed at Azog who was about to take off Thorin's head.

Azog raised his hammer to block, but the beast-biting sword in Ivy's hand cut off the handle of the hammer, leaving a big wound on his body. The blood-stained beast-biting sword changed its trajectory in the air and launched a second attack. Since Ivy's professional level of sword master reached level 8, he can swing two swords in one round of attack. Azog is the first half-orc to have this treatment.

In panic, Azog raised his other arm with a metal claw to resist. The seemingly solid metal claw still failed to block the beast bite sword for a moment. The sword did not leave a wound on Azog, but hit the wolf under his crotch.

Because at the same time that Ivy launched the attack, Golden Horn also kicked the wolf in the face with his two big hooves, and by chance, he hit the wolf's nose. The nose is a place where canines have very dense nerves. Although the wolf in the world of Arda is a dark creature with a mysterious origin, its weaknesses are not much different.

The wolf leaned back in pain and accidentally took the hit for Azog.

"Attack! Attack!" The wounded Azog urged the wargs to flee backwards, and at the same time ordered the orcs and the wargs to launch a new attack.

Before Azog got away from Ivy, the Beast Bite Sword launched another attack. This was an attack of opportunity. The elf curved sword slashed Azog's back, cutting off a large piece of flesh. However, this attack still failed to cause a serious blow or kill. Azog, who was injured again, ran faster.

Ivy frowned at not being able to kill Azog in one strike, turned around to remove the giantization effect on Thorin, lifted him up, and returned to the expedition team's location.

At this time, the cloud and mist spell had been completely blown away by the mountain wind, and the members of the expedition team had gathered on the outermost pine tree on the cliff, looking precarious. In a few minutes, even if they were not burned to death by the fire, the pine tree would be crushed and they would fall off the cliff.

"Where is your help? Gandalf!" Ivy shouted loudly while urging Golden Horn to move forward.

"There! Look! They are coming!" Gandalf pointed to the moon in the distance, but Ivy saw nothing.

"Can they fly?" Ivy leaned over and said something in Jinjiao's ear, then stood up and asked.

"What else?" asked Gandalf.

"Very good!" Ivy didn't slow down and rushed out of the cliff in the Golden Horn. "Listen to me! Let's jump down together!"

Before the dwarves could fully understand this sentence, Ivy had already jumped off the cliff on Golden Horn and fell towards the forest below.

"No!" Balin, who was hanging on the tree, shouted, but soon he discovered that Ivy and Jinjiao were falling unusually slowly.

"It's magic! The wizard's magic!" Balin shouted in surprise, and then quickly let go of his hands. He was already exhausted.

Seeing that Balin was still waving to them from the air, the dwarves in the pine trees immediately jumped off the cliff like dumplings. The last one to jump was Bilbo. Hobbits were always afraid of heights, and he couldn't overcome it. But when he closed his eyes and prayed, a strong wind blew him down.

Ivy, who jumped first, could already see what was flying at high speed - a giant eagle.

　Burnt out...! Continue tomorrow! Ahhhhh

　　
　
(End of this chapter)