great-warnovel Chapter 356 Sliding into the Abyss
Chapter 356 Sliding into the Abyss
Chapter 356 Sliding into the Abyss
"I paid such a high price to gain this power, how dare you stand at the same level as me!" Perhaps shocked by Hermione's immense destructive power, Lucius cursed angrily.
These days, busy with his hidden devouring of nobles, he has had no time to pay attention to major events in the outside world. Although he had overestimated the little girl who had once defeated him, he found that she had made even greater progress in their actual confrontation, which he found hard to accept.
A beautiful rainbow of light, mixed with a filthy crimson hue, shot from Lucius's countless palms, illuminating half of the inner city as a strangely colorful world.
Hermione carefully kept her distance from him, flying in the air to avoid being touched by the light.
"We are the rulers of the world! We are the creators of order!" he roared, his voice seemingly mixed with the voices of countless others.
It was like a collective cry from the purebloods; they were now united as one, with one thought and one will, wielding all power.
Where the rainbow light radiated, the ravaged earth seemed to receive a command, trembling and shaping sharp spears, while the broken rubble rose up, transforming into a sky full of black crows and locusts.
"We control magic! We control the population and the land!"
"Gold! Food! Even air!"
"You lowly creatures! You think you can rise up by trampling on our noble bloodline?"
"Dream on! We have blood completely different from yours! Your life, and everything you have, comes from our bounty!"
Hundreds of voices mingled together, uttering an arrogant and domineering cry. Not only Hermione, but everyone in the entire Malfoy Castle heard Lucius's confession.
"Has he gone mad!" Even if the nobles really thought that, they couldn't just say it out loud.
As she spoke, countless spears gleaming with cold light, along with black crows and swarms of insects, surged towards the little witch in the sky.
"Whoosh~" Hermione exhaled a breath of cold air in the air, and the frost wind with ice crystals rolled bigger and bigger like a snowball until it became a terrifying frost storm that froze and destroyed all the shapeshifting creations.
But Lucius today is not the same as before. Wherever his rainbow light shines, it seems that the world truly obeys his command, and those destroyed creations are reassembled and reshaped, surging forth endlessly.
Compared to the thick, blood-red light he displayed at the beginning, the current seven-colored rainbow light seems to be much more powerful, representing his true peak form.
He seemed completely unconcerned about the cost, his magic seemingly inexhaustible. The swarming locusts and crows made a terrible noise, squawking as if they wanted to devour their enemies. Hermione clashed with him magically, and although they were evenly matched at the moment, she was still suffering from the effects of her magic. Even with the Golden Snitch's Brilliant Stone to sustain her, she couldn't continue like this indefinitely.
"Boom!" A deafening thunderclap resounded, and suddenly dark clouds filled the sky above the magic dome as thick bolts of lightning struck down.
It was Dumbledore who took the brunt of the onslaught in Hermione's place, stepping into the battlefield between the two.
The leaping lightning bolts spread in a chain among the deformable objects, destroying as many as they were generated, as if the sky were rubbing and colliding with the earth.
"Lucius, it's time to wake up." His face was ashen, his long beard moved without wind, and his translucent body revealed his current state, but there was no need to hide it anymore.
He radiated a white light, resisting the unhealthy rainbow light, and molded the soil into soldiers holding halberds and hammers. As he moved forward step by step, the soldiers grew from a few to rows and columns, their steps perfectly synchronized, like a silent army.
"Surrender and repent for your sins in the prison!" Two great wizards, one of whom was Dumbledore in his prime, were no match for Lucius, no matter how powerful he was. His stolen power was no match for these two.
The dilapidated inner city barrier had collapsed in most places. With the Aurors' evacuation efforts, the people had mostly fled the city and were peering out from behind the black low walls of the shantytowns, watching the situation on the hillside.
"Can't they fight somewhere else?! What has Lucius gone mad about?! This is the city his father founded!" Fortunately, the barrier has prevented the three great wizards' battle from affecting the outer city yet, but the residual power of their magic is almost completely shattering the magical sky.
"But it was you who drove the Malfoys out of the city," Sirius Black said, adding fuel to the fire.
"How is it?!" Harry rushed to the group.
"Nonsense! What are you all doing here!" James turned around and saw not only Harry, but also Neville, Ron, Maria, and a whole bunch of other kids. Except for Hilmi, who was ordered by Hermione to stay home, all the other kids had come over.
"Draco's already come, how can we just watch him risk his life alone!" Perhaps it was the camaraderie forged from years of adventuring together, but Harry said matter-of-factly. They hadn't managed to get through the Malfoys' fireplace; they'd gone to the Potions Department office instead.
I came through the fireplace outside the Leaky Cauldron.
"Lucius—he's probably really gone mad..." Narcissa leaned weakly against the wall, watching the various colors of light shooting out from the broken barrier. If Draco hadn't been holding her up, she would have almost lost her balance.
The crowd around her was bustling with people, all residents who had come from the outer city. Of course they recognized Narcissa, who had once moved between the inner and outer city with an air of nobility, casually observing the other lower-class people.
They whispered about everything concerning the woman, about her and her husband, her family and scandals, looking at her and her son with malicious, contemptuous eyes. Had they not been among the members of the Order of the Phoenix, perhaps someone would have already made a move on her.
Even worse than these residents of the outer city, those who watched the disaster unfold with amusement, were the migrants from the original shantytowns outside the city. These people, who couldn't even afford the city entry tax, felt a sense of pleasure watching the disaster spread from the inner city to the entire city.
"Fight! Fight! Smash everything! Only then will we have a chance to sneak in and fish in troubled waters!"
The barrier around the inner city finally gave way, and like a tilted and collapsing eggshell, it slowly fell inward.
"Even if you all come at me together! You can't stop me from ruling this world!" Lucius roared arrogantly.
Within his murky rainbow light, all the architectural ruins on the ground soared into the air, transforming into a swirling, overwhelming vortex of earth and stone, threatening to pulverize Hermione in the air.
Like shattered glass refracting dirty sunlight, his hundred hands waved wildly, causing the rainbow light to swirl and stir the earth and the wind.
From these ruins, he saw the house-elves buried underneath, who had miraculously survived. They had all received Lucius's orders to hide in the basements of their respective manors and not to come out. Now, with the ceilings blown off, they were all trembling in terror as they looked at the apocalyptic world.
"You, you lowly servants!" Lucius's voice was mixed with the voices of each of their elves' former masters.
"Don't just stand there, go take those annoying toys apart! Go kill Dumbledore!"
The elves could not possibly kill Dumbledore, but Lucius was very accustomed to using the lives of these lowly creatures to buy time.