Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

Chapter 490 There's no reason for a good person to kill someone so easily.

Two miles away in the direction of the estate, all the windows on the second floor of the main house were open, and several faces were crowded out looking out.

The sky above the western slope was abnormally bright, with blue and white light illuminating half the sky, and even the outline of the mountain ridge in the distance was clearly visible under the curtain of light.

The heatwave could be felt from two miles away; the hot wind hitting my face made it feel like summer had arrived in an instant.

Claire stood by the window in the corridor, her mouth agape, unable to close it.

Jean-Pierre's straw hat was askew, and he still held his wand in his hand, staring at the blue and white light in the direction of the western slope, remaining silent for a long time.

Madeline leaned against the wall, forgetting to smoke, and stared for a while before muttering, "Damn it."

Felix stood at the entrance to the main house, his hand holding the wand a little stiff.

He was the person in the manor who knew Regulus best; he had read Orion's briefing about the heir's combat abilities.

The wording was restrained, the data was vague, and it was only said that he possessed a fighting level that was beyond his peers.

Felix knew all too well how flexible the assessment of being "above one's peers" was. It could mean learning the Iron Mantra earlier than others of the same age, or it could mean escaping unscathed from an attack by three older students.

Later, the host sent someone to explain things to him in person.

It is said that the young master defeated a witch in her early twenties in a head-on confrontation. That witch was considered to be in the top tier in the entire British pureblood circle.

It is said that the young master is skilled in shapeshifting, has mastered a large number of difficult spells, and has a calm and efficient fighting style.

After hearing this, Felix had a general impression of the heir: exceptionally talented, and perhaps after graduation, he would be able to reach the level of an elite Auror.

The sky outside the window is now filled with blue and white flames, the air is distorted by the high temperature, and the outlines of distant mountains and hills sway in the heat wave.

Two miles away, the heatwave warmed the windowpanes, and the doorframes swelled slightly, emitting a faint creaking sound from the heat-expanding wood.

He entered the Ministry of Magic's Enforcement Training Camp at the age of sixteen and worked there for more than a decade. He witnessed dark wizards setting fires, saw Fiendfyre go out of control and burn down entire buildings, and saw dragons breathing pillars of fire into the sky during their mating season.

He had seen blue-white flames before; both the High Temperature Curse and the Compression Combustion Curse produced this color temperature.

But those were spells that were fired one at a time; he had never seen a curtain of flames spread out over everyone's heads like this before.

He flipped through a top-secret report in the Auror's office files, analyzing Gellert Grindelwald's use of magic in his duel in 1945.

The report mentions that some of Grindelwald's magic skips specific spell structures and directly drives the elements with his will.

The report's author added a note at the end: "This ability cannot be acquired through training, cannot be replicated, and is not recommended as a reference for Auror training."

Now he was witnessing another wizard do the same thing, a thirteen-year-old heir to the Black family.

He slowly exhaled.

The people sent by the master didn't lie to him; they were just being overly polite.

Footsteps came from the other end of the corridor. DuPont turned from the stairwell and walked to his side, following his gaze into the distance.

The old butler's face was half-lit by the firelight, his stubble casting dappled shadows in the light, and his voice trembled involuntarily: "Is this the young master?"

Felix nodded.

DuPont was silent for a moment, then tucked his wand back into his sleeve: "I'm going to make some coffee. I'm going to be busy tonight."

On the east side, a lean man peeked out from the canopy of an olive tree.

The moment he saw the flames spread across the sky, he recognized what they were.

He had worked for the Black family for nineteen years, since the time of Arcturus III, but this was the first time he had ever seen anything like it.

He turned to look towards the ridge; his companion's signal hadn't lit up yet, and he was probably also looking at the same curtain of fire.

On the edge of the old vine area on the south slope, a woman with her hair tied back stands on a rock. Unlike the man in the olive tree, her specialty is perception and tracking.

Her understanding of magical structures was deeper than most battle wizards; she watched the entire process of Regulus unleashing his flames from beginning to end.

The arc of the wand spinning, the texture of the magic surging forth, the flames rising from the tip of the wand to mid-air, and then spreading horizontally at each stage.

She knew such a thing existed, but seeing it with her own eyes was another matter entirely.

On the western slope, the middle-aged witch with scissors was inserting them into her belt, her eyes fixed on the blue and white sky.

In the shadow of the stone wall on the north side of the main house, a man in a dark gray robe looked up at the sky and muttered something.

Beneath the curtain of fire, thirty or forty intruders huddled together; some were trying to escape.

A tall, thin man stood on the periphery, wand still clutched in his hand, his eyes wide open, pupils shrinking to two small black dots in the blue and white firelight.

He darted to the side, his body contorting and shifting like a phantom.

He couldn't take it anymore; he'd rather risk splitting himself than stay here.

Regulus turned his head to look, without raising his wand or chanting a spell, his gaze fixed on the distorting figure, his mind locked on it.

Suddenly, a crack appeared in the curtain of fire overhead, and a piece of flame peeled off the curtain.

The blue-white fireball plummeted downwards, leaving a straight, bright line in the night sky. It struck the person who was apparitionizing and engulfed him.

Flames burned from his shoulders down to his knees, and from his back to his chest. The man was pulled out of the half-formed spatial distortion, and his body reappeared in the same spot, but he had become a human made of fire.

He stumbled forward two steps, letting out a scream as if he were being suffocated by flames, his hands flailing wildly in the air, and the spatial fluctuations of Apparition completely dissipated.

The fire was still burning; the skin was blistering, cracking, and charring from the intense heat; the robe was burned away; and the wand in his hand had turned to ash.

He fell to the ground, rolled twice, and then stopped moving.

They weren't burned to death, they're still alive, but it would have been better if they were dead.

There was a moment of silence in the open space, then someone ran off from the other side as well.

The three people darted off in different directions at the same time, probably thinking that if they ran in different directions, some of them would escape.

The curtain of fire overhead split open again, and three blue-white fireballs simultaneously broke off, fell, and crashed onto the three fleeing people.

Three pillars of fire ignited simultaneously in three different locations in the open space, accompanied by screams, before extinguishing one after another.

Two more people on the periphery simultaneously raised their staffs and fired spells at the fire curtain above their heads, using shattering and blasting spells in an attempt to blast a hole in the curtain.

The Shattering Spell collided with the curtain of fire, and the white beam dissipated in mid-air without even causing a ripple.

The orange-red orb of the Explosion Spell was swallowed up by the fire curtain, and the impact of the explosion was engulfed by the blue-white flames, disappearing with a muffled thud.

Two fireballs fell from the curtain of fire, striking the two people casting the spell precisely.

One of them fell backward, hitting the back of his head on the gravel. Flames burned across his face, silencing his screams. The other lunged forward, frantically digging at the ground with his hands, and then fell silent.

No one ran away anymore, and no one resisted anymore.

Some people squatted on the ground, their hands covering their heads, their wands lying to the side; others leaned against their companions, their lips moving, probably reciting prayers.

Someone's hand holding a wand was trembling violently, the tip of the wand pointing at the curtain of fire above their head, but they didn't have the courage to try another spell.

The few remaining members of the core group who were still able to move looked at each other while lying on the ground. No one spoke, and no one raised their wands again.

Then three people in the crowd suddenly acted strangely.

Two members on the perimeter and one member of the rearguard, standing in different positions, stopped all their movements at the same instant.

The trembling stopped, the squatting people stood up, and the people who had been holding their heads put their hands down.

Their pupils dilated simultaneously, the edges of their irises changed from their original color to a hollow black, and their muscles relaxed and tensed instantly, as if something had taken over their bodies.

The next moment, the wands were raised simultaneously, the movements mechanical and precise, completely different from the panicked and trembling postures just now.

The tip of the staff glowed green.

Three Killing Curses were fired at Regulus from three directions simultaneously.

Regulus's magical perception had already detected the change before the green light appeared; the magical properties of the three people changed simultaneously in an instant.

The original chaotic, fearful, and almost collapsing magical characteristics, baked by the high temperature, were replaced by a cold and rigid fixed structure, transforming chaos into a kind of orderly pattern driven by external forces.

The curse-triggered control, executed with practiced skill and even sophistication, is embedded at the interface of nerve and magical circuits.

The thought flashed through his mind, but his body reacted before he could even think.

The Killing Curse is ineffective, the Diamond Shield is useless against the Death Curse, and the Ironclad Curse is also useless.

He used a side-shifting spell, his body flashing two meters to the side, the first green light grazing past his left shoulder a foot away.

Then he leaned back, bent his knees, and slid his whole body diagonally backward, the green light passing less than ten centimeters from his face.

The third shot has arrived, coming from the right.

A boulder about half a person's height rose from the ground and stretched into a stone wall.

As the green light struck, cracks spread outwards from the point of impact, and the entire wall disintegrated into fragments within the green light.

In that brief moment of blocking, Regulus was no longer in his original position; the Side Shift spell pulled him seven or eight meters to the left and back.

Baruch stuck his rear end out on his shoulder, and a wisp of spider silk shot out, precisely sticking to the wand of the spellcaster in the middle.

The man's pupils were still dilated, and his face was expressionless.

Even after his wand got stuck in the spider silk, his fingers continued to make silent spellcasting motions at the same rhythm, completely unaware that the tip of the wand had been pulled off course.

Baruch pulled his buttocks back, forcibly tilting the wand at an off-center angle.

A beam of green light shot out from the tip of the staff, soaring into the sky, piercing through the blue and white curtain of fire, and disappearing into the darkness high above. The curtain of fire dimmed briefly where the green light passed, then closed again.

Regulus pointed his wand forward, and a silvery arc of light sliced ​​through the caster's arm holding the wand.

The forearm and wand rolled off together, blood spurting from the severed wound, splattering onto the gravel with a hissing sound and a puff of white smoke.

The man looked down at his empty elbow, his hollow eyes showing no reaction, no pain, no fear.

The severed arm was still swinging, more blood splattering out, then the body swayed and fell forward.

The other two spellcasters activated their killing curses again, this time firing in alternating fashion.

One shoots first, forcing him to move, while the other calculates the landing point and casts a spell in advance.

Baruch's spider silk had already stuck to the tip of the man's staff on the right. With another pull, the green light veered upwards. At the same time, Regulus's throwing spell struck a core member who had fallen to the ground at his feet.

The person was conscious and struggled desperately as they were pulled into the air.

He was aware of what was about to happen, but his body was completely out of his control, and he flew sideways toward the green light on the left.

Its face showed sadness and fear. After struggling a couple more times, it simply stopped moving.

The green light struck the man squarely in the chest. He froze in mid-air for a moment, then remained motionless, continuing to fly horizontally and crashing into the caster. The two of them fell to the ground together.

The spellcaster struggled to crawl out from under the corpse, his wand still glowing green.

Regulus followed up with a Shattering Curse, which struck the caster's exposed shoulder, shattering the entire arm along with the wand.

Just as the spellcaster on the right, whose staff tip had been pulled off course by Baruch, aimed the staff tip back at Regulus, another cutting spell slashed across him, and just like the previous one, his hand and staff fell to the ground together.

The green light went out completely.

Regulus lowered his hand, his wand resting against his side, and the moment the green light shone, he understood.

The person behind this put him under a death curse, wanting to see if he would kill when the time came.

I must say, it was well-arranged and quite thoughtful.

Regulus glanced down at the corpse he had pulled up to block the Killing Curse, and a slight twitch appeared on his lips.

The cause of death was a karmic curse, not his own spell.

He looked at the horrific scene on the battlefield: severed limbs, charred marks, wails, and burning remains.

Someone died, but I didn't kill them. What can you do about it?

He arrived in France immediately; he was merely a proper heir to the Black family and a proper Hogwarts junior wizard.

Murder? What good person would kill someone so easily?

Li, Li