620. Crushing

She didn't even look at the wand, simply using Wingardium Leviosa to flick it into a corner of the tunnel.

The third man bringing up the rear did not cast a spell. He turned and ran, trying to go back the way he had come to warn the main team above the shaft.

He ran fast, but his magical signature had already been etched into Vivi's field of perception.

She merely tapped the tip of her wand against the ground, and an Anti-Apparition Lockdown Curse spread silently from beneath her feet, covering the entire tunnel and the full depth of the shaft.

Then she flung out a long-range Binding Charm. Silver-white light chased around the bend of the tunnel, caught up with him, and precisely wrapped around the legs of the man climbing the iron ladder, yanking him straight off the rungs.

At the same time, the main team above the shaft had already noticed something was wrong below.

Two rearguards stood watch at the Maintenance Well entrance. One of them raised his wand and cast a Detection Curse down the shaft, while the other was talking to someone through a Two-way mirror.

Their magical signatures were as clear as coordinates in Vivi's perception. She drew a precise Cutting Charm across the ceiling of the tunnel with the tip of her wand—according to the markings on the architectural blueprint, she knew the abandoned connection point of the former Radar Station's ventilation duct lay right beside the Maintenance Well entrance.

The Cutting Charm sliced open a gap along the old weld seam of the ventilation duct. Broken stone burst out from the wall beside the well opening, and before the two rearguards could react, they had already been knocked to the ground.

One of them tried to cast a spell as