Regulus of Hogwarts: Lord of the Stars

I've finished Chapter 571, but I'm a bit confused.

Hilde's speed is still increasing.

Geralt's magical senses detected the change.

The connection between the magic beneath Hilde's feet and the earth underwent a certain adjustment, changing from a passive contact to an active, deep embedding.

Before his foot landed, the ground had already adjusted the magic to a density just enough to support his entire weight.

When he jumps or exerts force, the ground instantly retracts the magic and then pushes outward in the direction of his force.

There was no lag or misalignment throughout the entire process; the ground cooperated with his every movement.

The 5.5-meter-tall fully armored giant started running at full speed in the training ground. Before the first step even landed, his center of gravity had already shifted to its maximum position.

The moment his front foot landed, the ground jolted upwards, and his body completed a heavy and rapid acceleration in a very short time.

The air at the front edge of the breastplate was compressed into an arc of white mist, which exploded backward after he broke through the speed threshold, leaving a cone-shaped mist trail behind him.

He left a series of brief white bursts in his path, like cracks left by something plowing through the air.

The 5.5-meter-tall structure moving at this speed creates an extreme physical and visual impact, like a mountain crashing forward.

The battle axe in his hand dragged beside him as he ran, the temperature of the axe blade had gone from bright red to incandescent, and the distortion of the air around the axe blade had changed from ripples to continuous optical distortion.

A buzzing sound continuously emanated from the rapid vibrations of the axe blade, overlapping with the sound of the armor striking the air, covering the entire valley across the entire frequency range from low to high.

Heat radiated from the axe blade, the incandescent metal leaving a trail of sustained high temperature in the air, which rippled visiblely.

Geralt watched this scene, a grin spreading across his face, and the golden light in his amber vertical pupils suddenly leaped.

He alternated between the Sprint and Swiftness spells. The Sprint spell extended his straight-line acceleration, while the Swiftness spell provided instantaneous direction switching and sudden stops. The two sets of movement spells covered all his movement needs through high-frequency switching.

All the data accumulated from the first three battles of the "free-range chicken" tactic were re-run in Zones 1 and 2, and the new model was updated within a second.

The two people entered the highway at the same time.

The dark purple sword light continued to expand its coverage area, with the halo spreading from the arm to the shoulder.

Hilde's every attack carried extreme physical pressure, her strength several times greater than in her previous purely physical state. The axe blade moved through the air at speeds exceeding the limits of the air itself, each swing accompanied by a short, sharp sound.

A loud, urgent explosion.

Geralt's attacks were silent; the blade sliced ​​through the air quietly, without any explosions or tearing, and even the disappearance of the remaining marks was silent.

His physical speed couldn't keep up with Hilde's full-force swing; in a pure contest of speed and power, the giant crushed him.

But the mind can make up for the physical gap. His prediction in Zone 2 always allows his sword to arrive at the right position in advance, and his compensation in Zone 3 makes up for the difference in force of each collision.

The consumption was increasing exponentially, with each collision burning a large amount of magic reserves, and the consumption of physical strength was also rising in tandem. The monitoring data from Zone 4 was already sending red signals to the main consciousness.

Geralt ignored it; his mind was occupied with different tasks, and his main consciousness had no spare attention beyond determining direction and timing.

But in the gaps between those decisions, he felt a pure, unadulterated excitement stripped away from the density and intensity of the fight itself.

Their minds were working overtime, their bodies were being overworked, but the fight got faster, fiercer, and more exhilarating. Every collision pushed them to even greater intensity.

Dark purple light burned in his hand as the giant opposite him charged forward in the yellowish-brown and incandescent light, his axe crashing down with a deafening roar as it shattered the air. His sword met the attack before the roar even reached the target.

I stopped thinking about anything else; I just kept chopping, hitting, charging, and bumping.

The two men's high-speed maneuvers left intersecting tracks on the training field, which had a diameter of seven kilometers.

When Hield sprinted at full speed, he traveled from one end of the training field to the other in less than ten seconds, and when he turned, his feet crushed an arc-shaped crater with a radius of more than ten meters on the ground.

The gravel flew outwards like shrapnel due to the centrifugal force of the turning direction, while the support of the earth allowed it to cut in another direction with almost no loss of kinetic energy.

Geralt's free-range chicken could barely keep up with his alternating speed and sprint. The two were like two shooting stars chasing each other in the valley, leaving behind a pile of debris with each collision.

After a sustained high-frequency attack, Hilde suddenly created some distance, her body slightly sinking, and the ground beneath her feet began to glow with a golden light rising from the soles of her feet.

The temperature of the tomahawk continued to rise, shifting from incandescent to bluish-white, and the air within half a meter around it was heated to the point of complete optical distortion.

Geralt felt an overwhelming pressure, as if the earth was cooperating with everything Hilde did, and magic was constantly gathering from the ground beneath his feet into his body.

His sword-sheathing motion paused in mid-air. Dark purple hues spread from the sword to his arm, then to his chest, and then to his entire body, gradually enveloping his upper body. The boundary between the sword in his hand and the hand holding it became blurred.

His eyes were also tinged with color, the golden light and dark purple in his amber vertical pupils intertwined, the golden light dancing in the purple.

Hilder accelerated again, the hum of his armor and weapons shifting from low to mid frequencies, and a visible force field formed around him with golden light.

The air in the valley was completely out of control. The airflow generated by the high-speed maneuvering and intense collision of the two people overlapped, bounced, and collided in the narrow valley, creating a continuous turbulence.

The more they fought, the faster they went, the fiercer they became, and the more unstoppable they became.

Dark purple and gold hues clashed and intertwined at the bottom of the valley. The ground had sunk three or four meters, and the deepest part of the central area resembled a crater created by a meteorite impact.

Large sections of the rock face collapsed, and huge rock fragments were peeled off the surface, shattered into powder by the aftershocks of the collision in mid-air, and swept into the sky by the turbulent currents. The entire valley was filled with gray dust and a dark purple-gold intertwined light.

Then, in a split second, the two men passed each other at high speed, each rushing behind the other, turning around at the same time, their eyes meeting in the dust and light.

An unspoken understanding, the two of them gathering their strength at the same time.

Hilde raised the axe overhead with both hands, and all the magic in her body flowed from her limbs and torso into her arms.

The golden light on the armor began to converge upwards from the leg armor, from the waist armor to the breastplate to the shoulder armor. The golden light was drawn away from the armor layer by layer, converging along the arms towards the axe.

The battle axe overhead suddenly fell silent; the hum ceased, the vibration stopped, and all the heat radiating from the axe blade dissipated.

The ripples of power were withdrawn in the same instant.

The color inside changed from blue and white to an unbearable brightness. The temperature was so high that from Geralt's perspective, the outline of the axe blade had melted into the light, and all that could be seen was a ball of intensely concentrated white-hot light hanging above Hilde's head.

Geralt stood about thirty meters away from Hilde and raised his sword as well.

A dark purple light shot up from the sword, piercing straight into the sky and reaching a height beyond sight.

Geralt's eyes were shining, and his mouth was stretched into a wide grin.

He wasn't sure if he could unleash such a strike under normal circumstances. Every part of his mind was working overtime, every muscle fiber in his body was contracting under overload, and the output of his magic had reached a peak he had never experienced before.

But in that very instant, everything was there, everything that should be there, not a bit more or less, just exactly what this attack should have.

He looked across at the other side.

Hilde's upper body was blurred by the white-hot glow of the axe blade, and her icy gray eyes behind her visor were completely obscured by the light and could no longer be seen.

But Geralt could feel that gaze pressing heavily on him.

His mouth stretched even wider, and dark purple and amber gold light danced in his eyes.

The two men struck down simultaneously, and a dark purple beam of light and a white-hot axe blade fell towards each other in the space between them.

In the final instant before the collision, the two forces, which had not yet intersected, began to clash in the air, separated by a distance of more than ten meters.

The light in the entire field of vision dimmed, the brightness exceeding the range of visual processing, turning into a pure white that was impossible to see clearly.

The sound disappeared, the wind stopped, the dust and stone powder that filled the air came to a standstill, and the ground stopped shaking.

The entire valley fell into an unreal silence just before the final collision, all sounds and movements swallowed up by the pressure created in space by the two extreme forces.

Like a painting suddenly paused, every speck of dust in the picture is suspended in place, and the light slowly expands in mid-air into a soft white cloud.

In the blank space, a hand reached out from Hilde's side.

His palm was facing up, his five fingers spread out, and it was even larger than Hilde's armored hand.

Heroga had somehow appeared beside Hilde, his five fingers clasped together, gripping the falling axe blade.

The white-hot metal pressed against the bare palm, hissing as a plume of white smoke rose between the flesh and the scorching metal.

All the heat, all the magic, and all the power being conducted through the axe blade ceased as Herogia closed his hands.

The white heat of the axe blade subsided within a few breaths, returning from incandescent to bright red and then to dark red, and the axe surface returned to a dark gray with a bluish tinge.

At the same moment, Herogia's foot sank into the ground, and a straight crack split open from the bottom of his foot behind him.

The crack had no branches or spread out; it was just a narrow straight line that cut through the valley floor and stretched for about two or three kilometers before crashing into the cliff behind it.

That wasn't the end of it. The crack climbed up the rock surface, tearing a fissure from bottom to top in the granite surface, before stopping at a height of about 100 meters.

Herogar loosened his grip on the axe blade, his hand falling naturally to his sides. A wisp of white smoke drifted slowly from it, and his grey-green eyes stared silently at Hilde's visor.

Geralt also had his own situation; at the same moment Heroga appeared, Dumbledore appeared in front of him.

The old man appeared out of nowhere, and it was unclear whether he had been there all along. He raised his right hand, and from a distance of half a meter, with his palm facing forward, he gently pressed down.

Geralt felt the sword in his hand suddenly become lighter, and then the dark purple beam of light began to fade.

Starting from the tip of the sword and moving back, the dark purple light seemed to be wiped away from top to bottom by an invisible hand, peeling away the sword layer by layer.

The height is also shrinking, from a hundred meters or so to a dozen meters, then to a few meters, and then back to the original length of one meter.

The dark purple on the sword was fading, from the tip to the blade to the hilt, the color faded from dark purple to fragments of crimson and blue, then from fragments to transparency, and finally even the outline of the sword faded away.

All the magic, all the outburst, all the protection, all fell silent.

Geralt's hand, still holding the sword, remained raised in the air, poised to strike.

Just moments before, my brain was operating at full capacity, all areas were at full output, my main consciousness was making all the decisions for the final blow, and my emotions were at their peak of excitement. Then, everything was suddenly put on hold.

The inertia of his mind brought his thoughts to an abrupt halt. He stared blankly at Dumbledore in front of him.

Then he saw the old man's blue eyes peer out from behind his half-moon tint glasses, with a slight curve, and wink at him.

Geralt stared at him for a while, his eyelids blinking as he looked on, puzzled.

The next moment, something clicked through his mind.

There was one thing the old man overlooked: Rigel, the invisible sharpness of the star. He didn't miss everything, only a tiny bit.

The old man did it on purpose.

Everything happened so fast that he hadn't even had time to figure out what was going on before he caught the changes on the other side out of the corner of his eye.

The unseen sharpness struck directly above Hilde's helmet, and with a crack, the sound of metal fastening breaking echoed.

The side buckles of the helmet were cut off, the visor lost its fixation, flipped forward, and the entire helmet slid off the top of the head, tilted backward, and fell down after losing the support of the visor.

Thick, dark bronze braids cascaded from beneath the helmet, hanging heavily on either side of the shoulder armor.

The braid was long and tightly braided, with the ends of the hair being half a shade darker than the roots. Stray hairs that had been pressed down by the veil for a long time were scattered from both sides of the forehead.

Geralt saw the true outline of those icy gray eyes for the first time.

The eyes are long and narrow, with a slight upward tilt at the outer corner. The brow bone has a clear curve that sits above the deep eye socket, casting a narrow shadow on the upper edge of the eyes.

His cheekbones were high, but the curves were gentle, lacking the ruggedness and abruptness often seen in giants.

The bridge of the nose is narrow and straight, the nostrils are thin, and a smooth curve runs from the brow bone to the tip of the nose.

The jawline is strong, tapering down from the earlobe to the chin, with a slight curve at the tip.

His light gray skin was much smoother than that of ordinary giants, and it was flushed after the battle. His lips were pursed into a very shallow arc, making it impossible to tell whether he was serious or still in shock.

His entire face was exposed to the air after the helmet landed, and he quietly looked in Geralt's direction, at the silver-haired wizard who was holding his empty hands.

Then her eyebrows lifted very slightly before falling back down, her facial features remaining exactly the same as before.

But that very slight frown added a subtle hint to his face, a look that was hard to define as either confusion or bewilderment.

Geralt finally lowered his hand from mid-air, stared at that face for a long time, and then slowly exhaled.

Herogia stood beside Hilde, expressionless and silent.

Dumbledore stood in front of him and winked at him again.

Geralt winked too.