Two Styles of Fighting
Bellatrix made her move.
He plunged the wand into the ground with a powerful thrust, and Magic Power flowed from the tip of the wand into the earth.
The dark floor tiles exploded in the direction the Magic Power was injected, and rubble and dust rushed toward Regulus.
With a flick of his left hand, the long table that had collapsed in the center of the Banquet Hall stood up, twisted and contorted.
The four table legs snapped into spikes, the tabletop cracked into several jagged pieces, and the entire long table flipped over on the ground, springing out from behind the pile of rubble and heading straight for Regulus.
With the spell sandwiched in the middle, Bellatrix flung out Cutting Curse from the gap between the table legs. The silvery arc flew along the side of the long table, the first half of it being blocked by the table's movement, only emerging from behind the broken planks halfway through.
Regulus moved two steps to the right, the Shield Charm deflecting the Cutting Curse, and the long table followed suit, its spikes scraping across the ground, carving four deep furrows into the stone slabs. He tapped his wand in the path the long table had come from.
The Transfiguration seeped into the floor tiles beneath his feet, instantly making the surface of the stone slabs extremely smooth, filling in the gaps between the tiles, and the entire surface lost its friction. When the long table reached that spot, its legs slid sideways, deviating ninety degrees, grazing past him and crashing into the wall, splintering wood chips and plaster outwards from the point of impact.
Before the dust had even settled, Bellatrix's wand was already waving again.
Dozens of shattered stones from the earlier explosion floated in the air in front of her, elongating, narrowing, and sharpening, their tips glowing red-hot, the heat distorting the surrounding air.
It was the same move Regulus used against her, only with more attacks and more frequent strikes.
The dense, sharp Stone Spike whistled as they pressed down, completely sealing off the space on either side of him.
Regulus tapped his wand three times rapidly in mid-air, the Magic Power striking the tips of the three foremost Stone Spike from a distance.
The tips of the three Stone Spike began to expand, growing from the thickness of a forearm into an irregular stone ball the size of a fist, and the flight speed suddenly decreased.
The stone sphere unfolded again, becoming extremely thin, spreading out to the size of a tabletop, and opened up in the air.
The Stone Spike behind them couldn't be avoided in time and crashed into them due to inertia.
A series of cracking sounds filled the air as Stone Spike the stone surface and shattered, scattering gravel all over the ground.
Bellatrix's Stone Spike had all shattered, but she was no longer in the same spot.
As the Stone Spike shot out, she moved, stepping on the gravel to dodge to the side.
With a sweep of the wand, the cracked load-bearing wall on the side of the hall was completely ripped off its structure.
The wall bricks are bulging outwards, and the mortar between the bricks is crumbling into powder and falling down.
The entire wall was pulled out of the building's framework, tilted in the air to form a huge plane, and pressed down on Regulus.
The Exploding Charm pierced through the gaps in the wall bricks that hadn't completely peeled off.
Regulus dodged to the side, the Exploding Charm exploding behind him, the shockwave sending rubble flying and fragments crackling against the Shield Charm. As he landed, he unleashed a Reducto Reducto, which Bellatrix dodged, striking the moving wall and leaving only a few loose bricks falling from the edge.
He unleashed another Exploding Charm with his other hand, but Bellatrix blocked it with the wall, Mars flew out from the cracks in the wall.
The wall is closing in.
Several tons of bricks and stones came crashing down with a dull thud, the noise of bricks rubbing against each other making your teeth ache.
Regulus raised his wand and pointed it at the center of the wall.
The Transfiguration was applied from the tip of the staff into the heart of the wall. The stone bricks on the wall began to fade from dark gray to light gray, and then to a withered white. The structure changed from stone to raw earth, becoming brittle, dry, and unable to support its own weight.
The wall collided with a broken section of a stone pillar sticking out from the pile of rubble, splitting in the middle and the crack spreading in all directions.
Several tons of material shattered into powder in the air, and grayish-white smoke was propelled several meters forward by the impact.
Bellatrix's Piercing Curse had already emerged from the smoke and dust, extremely thin and fast, the pale beam almost invisible amidst the falling ash. Regulus tilted his head, the Piercing Curse grazing his left ear and leaving a small, charred hole in the wall behind him.
The instant the Piercing Curse passed through the smoke, Bellatrix's wand traced an arc beside her.
The entire floorboards were ripped off.
In the center of the Banquet Hall, a large area of floor tiles curled up along the grout lines, cracking and rising up in sections.
The broken stone slab exposed the soil beneath, and as it turned, it swept up all the bits of wood and candlestick debris along the way, which creaked and crunched between the stone slab and the soil.
The incantation followed.
Bellatrix ran behind the swirling stone slabs, her figure appearing and disappearing in the dust, spells shooting out from the cracks in the stone walls.
Explosion Charm, Cutting Curse, Piercing Curse, Reducto —one after another, using the swirling ground as cover, Bellatrix would move to the next crevice after each strike. The direction in which the stone slabs swirled cut off her line of sight, allowing Bella to relentlessly attack Regulus's blind spots as she moved.
Each spell was cast outside her line of sight, relying entirely on her judgment of the terrain and Regulus's movement habits.
These are the things she truly honed on the battlefield: combat instincts.
She didn't need to look to know roughly where he was or which direction he was hiding in, so she could launch her next attack in advance.
Regulus took a step back; this was the first time he had retreated.
The Cutting Curse chased after him from the cracks in the stone slabs. He deflected one with his wand, parried another with Shield Charm, and then swung Reducto at the nearest piece of rubble.
The Reducto struck the stone slab, but it didn't break.
He only altered the internal structure of that section of the stone slab, making it brittle. Once brittle, gravity pulled it down half a foot, creating an angle difference in mid-air. He slid over the side of that angle difference.
At the same time, the wand was flicked downwards, and the Transfiguration seeped into the seams of the floor tiles beneath their feet, softening the seams.
The force that caused the stone slabs to flip came from the Magic Power infused by Bellatrix, pushing them from back to front, one slab at a time.
As soon as the seam softened, the force broke at that point, and the first three or four overturned stone slabs lost their support and crashed back.
The stone slab struck the stone slab, reversing the entire rolling process from front to back.
The dust has increased.
Bellatrix cursed in the dust, her voice drowned out by the sound of gravel hitting the ground.
The ground beneath her feet was collapsing, and the cratered ground she had created was collapsing back. She jumped back two steps, landing on a relatively stable stone slab, and regained her footing.
A Cutting Curse flew out from the dust.
She blocked it with her wand, but then a second one came from another direction, which she twisted away from.
The third one, she didn't see where it came from, the Cutting Curse grazed her side, tearing a hole in her robe and revealing the skin underneath, a shallow bloodstain.
Bellatrix gritted her teeth and pushed her way out of the dust, stepping onto a collapsed stone pillar to look down.
She saw Regulus standing seven or eight meters away, dust flowing past him, and he stood there as if he were standing in an open field.
His breathing was even, his robe was clean, and even his hair was neat.
She jumped down from the pillar, and as she landed, she flicked her wand, unleashing an Explosion Charm.
Regulus tilted his head, the Explosion Charm passed by his ear and exploded behind him, and he countered with Piercing Curse.
Bellatrix dodged to the side, and the Piercing Curse struck the ruins behind her.
The two faced each other again.
The dust is slowly settling.
Bellatrix stood atop the rubble, her chest heaving, sweat and dust mingling on her forehead, her mouth still parted in a grin, her teeth still showing. Her Magic Power was still surging out, but at a slower pace than before; the wide-ranging Transfiguration had taken a heavy toll on her.
Regulus stood still, his wand hanging at his side, watching her.
The space between them was filled with rubble and ruins.
The Banquet Hall is no longer Banquet Hall at all.
The ground rolled over and collapsed back down, uneven and barren. More than half of the stone pillars had fallen, two walls had collapsed, and several large cracks had appeared in the ceiling. Lime and debris were still falling down.
Orion drew his wand from his robes and let it hang at his side, and a semi-transparent silver barrier unfolded in front of him.
Gravel, dust, and stray spells—the blast had already covered most of the Banquet Hall.
The barrier held it in place, but occasionally fragments and spells would bump into it, making two soft thuds before being deflected.
He stood at the very front.
Lucius was half a step behind him on the right, with his left arm around Narcissa and his right hand holding his wand.
His eyes remained fixed on the center of the field, his brows unfurrowed, his lips still, but his eyes darting around.
He was watching Regulus's playing style.
Those few blows just now—the wall was completely torn down, the floorboards were flipped up—that was the highest level of destructive power a wizard could unleash within the scope of conventional spells and Transfiguration.
But throughout the entire series, Regulus never used a spell more powerful than Bellatrix's.
It might not work, it might not be possible, but that doesn't matter.
The important point is that, in this situation, Regulus clearly has the upper hand again. He's not stronger than Bellatrix; he's just more accurate. So accurate that it seems any other wizard could have achieved the same result with Bellatrix using the same methods.
A smooth surface, a brittle stone slab, a softened seam.
Who can't do it?
But that's not the case; the cost of this approach is an extreme amount of computation.
The moment the opponent makes a move, see through the entire structure of the attack, find the weakest point, and then strike with minimal Magic Power.
Ordinary wizards can't do this; they may have enough Magic Power, but their minds can't keep up.
Lucius quickly thought through all the adult wizards he knew, and none of them fought like that.
Hogwarts wouldn't teach like that, and even if they did, no one would be able to learn it.
How exactly did the youngest son of the Black family train?
When he has a son in the future, will he be able to follow suit?
The thought flashed through his mind, and his eyes began to dart around again.
Narcissa stood behind Lucius, her fingers gripping his robe.
She glanced at Orion.
My uncle stood behind the barrier, one hand holding his wand, the other resting on Walburga's wrist, his face expressionless. Even after the fight had escalated to this point, he showed not a trace of tension.
She suddenly realized that all of this seemed deliberate, as if the situation had been under her control from the very beginning.
Narcissa frowned and stopped looking at Orion.
Walburga stood beside Orion, having already passed the stage of confusion.
She was looking at Regulus.
Watch as he passed between the shattered floorboards and crumbling walls, using a Transfiguration to make the entire slab of stone collapse on its own.
Watch him effortlessly deflect Bellatrix's powerful attack, watch him stand amidst rubble and dust, his breathing perfectly steady.
This was completely different from the image of her youngest son who obediently listened to her instructions in Grimmauld Place.
A thought suddenly popped into her head: Where's Sirius?
Is Sirius like that too?
She suddenly realized that she might never have truly seen her two sons; she had only seen them according to her own needs.
She thought Regulus was obedient, therefore he was good; she thought Sirius was disobedient, therefore he was bad.
She never considered how different what she saw was from what they actually looked like.
She glanced at Sirius.
That's how Regulus was.
What about Sirius?